Christ's Atonement

It is incredibly good news for us that Christ's death on the cross, his atonement, marks God's judgment against sin for this reason. Because of the one who is dying on the cross. Jesus is not just some prophet, not some great moral spiritual teacher that somehow was misunderstood and rejected by the Jewish leadership. Jesus is not some great insightful religious genius. Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. He is the Word made flesh. The Word who was with God, the Word who was God. He is the son who has come from the Father's heart to make the Father known. It's important that we remember that, because then, when we see him laying down his life on the cross, taking our judgment, God's judgment against our sins and our judgment into his own life, it is God himself in the Son who is bearing his own judgment against his own sin in the face of our rebellion and our betrayal of God. What's the good news? God loves us so much that he won't wait for us to pay for our sins so that we can know him. He won't wait for us to bridge the chasm that separates us from him. But he comes to us and he bears in his own being the ugliness, the wretchedness, the wickedness and evilness of our sins so that he can then pour out of himself not only his forgiveness but his divine presence and his divine life and his divine love into our hearts. That's pretty good news.