Lesson Six: Jesus Died for Our Sins
Pastor Keaton Washburn
When I was in high school, I attended a small Christian school. Whatever comes to your mind when you think of a small school, think smaller. I graduated with thirteen total students in my class! I played sports throughout middle and high school. I was decent at baseball and basketball, usually one of the better players on the team. Our competition was other local Christian schools. While our teams were always terrible (throughout my four years of varsity basketball, we won a total of six games), I thought I was a decent player. In my senior year, my basketball coach encouraged me to try out for my Bible college team the following year. I went back and forth on the idea for a couple of months, but ultimately decided against it in favor of getting a part-time job during my freshman year of college. Boy, did I make the right decision. I vividly remember the first time I went to see my college’s team play. The pace they ran with, their ability to make difficult shots, and their quickness were like nothing I had seen before. Their worst player was lightyears better than me. The problem was that the level of competition I compared myself to in high school wasn’t very strong—but at the time, it was all I knew.
Similarly, the standard that most people measure themselves against regarding how good a person they are and if they should be allowed in Heaven is other people around them. When, in reality, the standard that God measures humans against is His own perfect holiness. It is perfection. That is the standard to be allowed in Heaven. Romans 3:22-25 puts it clearly, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” No one is good enough. No one measures up. All have fallen short of God’s standard.
Other than the book of Revelation, Romans speaks of the wrath of God more than any other New Testament book of the Bible. Twelve times throughout the book, Paul explicitly mentions the wrath of God. Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” While God’s wrath is a sobering reality, because of Christ, believers do not have to fear it. Someone has to pay the price for each of our sins. Therefore, Christ, though He lived a perfect life, willfully died for the sins of all through a gruesome death on the cross.
Take a few minutes today to thank God for sending His Son, Jesus, to die the death that we deserved for our sins, and for making a way for us to be brought into His Kingdom.