War In Your Heart # 59

Christ Our Provision (continued)

In Christ - The Redemption of the Race (continued)

"That we Might Become the Righteousness of God in Him"

The One without the slightest taint of sin became what the one was without a speck of righteousness. What we are He became, that what He is we might become. The sinless One was made sin that the sinful one might become righteousness. We are His sin: He is our righteousness.

"In Him" we stand in the presence of God so perfectly freed from the guilt and the penalty of sin, it is as though we had never sinned. But oh! it is infinitely more than that! "In Him" we stand so perfectly in the righteousness of God that it is as though we had always possessed that righteousness.

The moment we believe this truth and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord we are made free from sin, for in Him we have the provision for deliverance from the penalty of sin in the past; the power of sin in the present; and the presence of sin in the future. For the believer in Christ the reign of sin is ended.

Death-Life

Through Adam's sin that snapped asunder the link that bound the creature to the Creator, the death penalty came upon the human race. The capital punishment for sin is death. Humanity was brought under the dominion of death with no power whatever within itself of deliverance. Man was the inescapable victim of death. Death reigned.

The sinner is wholly alive to sin and dead to God. Within him there is all response to sin and no response to God. In his whole being he is living contrary to the will of God, to the Word of God and to the way of God. Indeed he is living in opposition to God. He is in the death chamber, for the death penalty rests upon him (Romans 6:23).

Is there no reprieve? No way of escape? No release from the dominion of death? Yes, but only one way, through God's second Man, the Representative Man, taking the sinner's place in death and taking upon Himself the death penalty (Romans 5:8).

He who was the Creator of all life (John 1:3, 4), the Prince of Life (Acts 3:15), Life itself (John 11:25), died. Here again we have one of God's facts absolutely beyond human comprehension, a fact grasped only by the Spirit's revelation. But nevertheless it is a fact that He in whom is all life died. Why did He die?

2 Corinthians 5:14, 15: One died for all ... he died for all.

Hebrews 2:9: But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory, and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.

God's second Man, the Representative man, took the sinner's place in death. He died the sinner's death, and thereby paid sin its wages in full and nullified its every claim. In fact, when the God-Man laid down His life in death upon the Cross, He abolished death and wrested from it its right of dominion over humanity. Christ's death paid the death penalty of sin (2 Timothy 1:10; 1 Corinthians 15:54).

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 60)