Three texts

Originally posted on November 12, 2009 – by Andre Piet

Last Sunday I spoke during a GoedBericht gathering in Zoetermeer on the theme “why did Christ have to be crucified?” It was explained there that by means of the cross God will reconcile every hostile and estranged creature to Himself, “whether those on the earth or those in the heavens” (Col. 1:20). It was not Gód Who reconciled Himself at the cross, but through the cross He is reconciling the world to Himself. The crucifixion itself is an act of ultimate enmity, but by God’s answer to it (the resurrection) He is precisely making peace with every creature.

A valued brother from Canada sent me an email in response to last Sunday’s presentation. He agreed with the presentation, but he missed a discussion of three crucial (what’s in a word…) passages from Paul’s letters. Do these passages not show that the cross was necessary in order to demonstrate “the seriousness of sin against a holy and righteous God”?

1. Romans 8:3

For what the law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, God, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sin’s flesh, and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who are walking not in accord with the flesh, but in accord with the Spirit.

Paul is speaking here not about sins but about sin. Singular. As a sinner, every human being is condemned to die. That has nothing to do with what we have done (sins), but with who we are (a sinner). Death is the judgment on sin, but at the same time the solution to it and its end. For the one who has died “has been justified (=free) from sin” (6:7). In Romans 6–8 Paul argues that the one who believes “has become one plant” (6:5, Statenvertaling) with Christ. Believers are identified with Christ: crucified together, buried together, raised together. In Him, sin and death lie behind us, and “we are walking in newness of life” (6:4). “The Spirit of Life” (8:2), Who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in us (8:11), so that “the righteous requirement of the law” (8:4) can be fulfilled in us.
Conclusion: in Romans 8:3 Paul is not speaking about God’s judgment on sins in the suffering on the cross. No, he is speaking about God’s judgment on sin, in the death of Christ. By Christ’s death God put an end to “the old man” (6:3).

2. Galatians 3:13

Christ reclaims us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Paul is quoting Deut. 21:22,23, where it speaks about someone who commits a sin punishable by death and is hung on a tree. Such a one hanging there was accursed by God. Therefore the corpse could not remain on the tree during the night, but had to be buried that same day. Well then, on the basis of the law, according to the judgment of the Jewish leaders, Jesus was found worthy of death and thus bore the curse of this law. Yet by bearing this curse, He also thereby bought them free from the law. For “through law, I died to law…” (Gal. 2:19).
Conclusion: the Jewish people hung Jesus on a tree and killed Him (Acts 5:30), and thereby made Jesus accursed. In Gal. 3:13 there is no mention of a punishment or judgment from God’s side on sins.

3. 2 Corinthians 5:21

Him Who knew no sin, He made sin for our sakes, that we may become God’s righteousness in Him.

Christ knew no sin, yet He was nevertheless put to death as a sinner. It was the Jewish people who did this to Jesus “through the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). How then can Paul write, “He made Him sin for our sakes”? It was still mén who did this, wasn’t it? Listen to Peter’s answer when he addresses the men of Israel in the temple square:

And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as your rulers also did, but thus GOD fulfilled what He had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ MUST suffer…
Acts 3:17,18

Behind the scenes God was completely in control. This HAD to happen. At the deepest level, as Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5 (among other places), in this way He would reconcile the world to Himself. Exactly as with Joseph in Egypt: precisely through what his brothers had done to him, he was able to keep them alive but also to win their hearts (Gen. 45:5,7). Humanly speaking, it was Joseph’s brothers who criminally sold him. But seen “from above,” it was Gód Who sent Joseph to Egypt.
Conclusion: people condemned Jesus as a sinner, but it was God Who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all (Rom. 8:32). So that by this way we would become “a new creation in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17) and “God’s righteousness in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Delen: