Board index ‹ Salvation

[Yeti]

From what I learned from Christians is that Jesus dying on the cross forgave people's sin, but I don't remember hearing an explanation to how this transfer of sin worked and how dying on a cross makes them all forgiven.

[jimwalton]

There are different ways of looking at the substitution concept (Jesus' death for my sins). On the one hand, if someone wants to pay a monetary debt in our place, we're grateful. On another hand, if someone innocent wants to serve a jail sentence for a convicted criminal, we think that's not fair, and rightly so. Jesus' death for us are more like the first rather than the second, according to the Bible.

If you have a debt of, say, $50,000, and a friend of yours steps up and offers to pay it for you, just because he's your friend, you would (I bet) gladly accept. It's the same thing here. Each of us has a debt, a debt of sin and the payment is death (Rom. 6.23). So instead of money, the debt is life. Jesus stepped up and offered to pay it for you, just because he loves you. He has a right to be generous with you if he chooses. You may logically object, "Life is different from money." Not as far as the definition of debt is concerned. You may object that money debt is different from punishment debt. Let's look at the technicalities of the law. Supposing a slave back in colonial America was due to receive 40 lashes, and another man stepped up and offered to take the 40 lashes in his place. Technically as to the law, as long as the 40 lashes got delivered to a back, the law was served. That's the point here. Technically, as long as the punishment is paid, justice is served.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. The pay sin doles out is death. Humans sold themselves out to sin, and we are now enslaved to it. Death is the inevitable result for each one of us. But Jesus freely and willingly took that punishment for us; he was qualified to do that because he was the only sinless person and therefore didn't deserve it. After all, there's no effectiveness for one life-sentenced prisoner to say he'll also serve time for another, or for one person hopelessly in debt to take on the debt of another hopeless indebted person. The only real justice lies in someone being able to be the substitute who actually can be the substitute.

You probably have more questions. Feel free to ask more.