Tuesday, June 19, 2007

He served your sentence

God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Some years ago, an 18-year-old high school student was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. The young son of a farming family had stabbed one of his teachers, inflicting a wound which resulted in death. The student felt terrible about what he had done, and the members of the jury felt terrible about having to sentence him to prison at such an early age. Yet sentence him they did—one to seven years in the state penitentiary.

As the courtroom drama concluded, each member of the jury approached the young convict to shake his hand and wish him well. Seven of the jurors were openly weeping. Some embraced the young man, and one even said, "God bless you, my boy." The student, who had remained poker-faced during the nine-day trial, had tears in his eyes. The jurors were moved to sympathy and compassion over the fate of the boy, but there was one thing that none of them did; not a single one offered to serve his jail time in his place.

One can hardly imagine a situation where a person would serve as a member of the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder, sentence him to prison, and then offer to take his place there. And yet, as unbelievable as it sounds, this is exactly what Jesus has done for you. The Son of God knows that you and I are guilty of breaking God’s laws, that we are in fact repeat offenders. Our Lord knows that we are fully deserving of eternal incarceration in the prison of hell. But Jesus was moved to sympathy over your plight; He loves you with an everlasting love, a love that moved Him to make an astounding offer—to serve your hellish prison sentence for you! He did this in the cross; during hours so terrible that the earth itself went dark, all of the hell that you deserved, all of the hell that I deserved, all of the hell that was coming to everyone was concentrated into an unimaginable load of suffering that Jesus accepted as His own. Jesus died to satisfy the requirements of justice, died so that you and I might hear a wonderful verdict: "You are free; your guilt and your punishment have been assumed by Jesus. Your record is clear. You are free." And even more wonderful is the news that Jesus has risen from the grave that our sins laid Him in; His ongoing life is proof that our crimes are fully repaid. Because of Jesus, we are lawbreakers no longer; God declares us innocent because of our relationship with the Savior who died out of love for us.

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