“Q & A 12 According to God’s righteous judgment we deserve punishment both now and in eternity: how then can we escape this punishment and return to God’s favor? God requires that His justice be satisfied. Therefore, the claims of this justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another.
Q & A 13 Can we make this payment ourselves? Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt every day.
Q & A 14 Can another creature—any at all—pay this debt for us? No. To begin with, God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. Furthermore, no mere creature can bear the weight of God’s eternal wrath against sin and deliver others from it.
Q & A 15 What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then? One who is a true and righteous human, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true God.”
I assume that you are an honorable person who wants to make matters right with anyone you’ve harmed. If you hit a parked car and no one was around, I assume that you would leave your cell number and your insurance information. If you borrowed a book from the library and lost it, I assume that you would make restitution.
Now imagine that you were unable to make matters right. You hit and kill your neighbor’s beloved dog. His daughter watches it happen. I assume that you would apologize profusely and offer to do anything you can, but there really is nothing that you can do to make it right. That is one of the worst feelings in the world for any man with a conscience and it is, in fact, the natural condition of man. Man is unable to make matters right with God.
Man owes God a debt which He cannot pay. If you borrowed a book from the library and lost it, you could buy a new book. What you have done is much more like killing that dog. You can’t make it right. In fact, all your attempts to make matters right simply make matters worse. Your attempts would be like putting a bow around that dead dog’s neck and bringing it to that little girl in hopes that your kindness would make her smile. You have no way to make matters right with God. You have no way to give God what He is due.
Man cannot give God His due; that is the condition of man. A man who is God must do it. Man cannot give God His due; a man who is God must do it. That is the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in three points. First: we have a debt to pay. Second: we are insolvent. Third: we need a particular cosigner.
We have a debt to pay. Scripture gives many metaphors for sin, and one is a debt. The Lord taught us to pray, “forgive us our debts,” because we are, by our sin, in debt to God.
Jesus spoke of our debt this way in parable saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since [that man] was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.”
The debt of which Jesus spoke was between 30 and 100 million days’ wages. That is an impossible debt to pay off and that is the point. Man’s debt to God is impossible to pay off, but, by nature, man considers his sin to be a minor matter. He does so because he does not recognize the holiness of God. Adam and Eve thought they could cover the shame of their sin with fig leaves. When the Lord came, they recognized that they were as good as naked. Isaiah had a similar experience. When He saw the Lord he said, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Until a man recognizes the holiness of God, he will consider his own sin to be a minor matter, but he will encounter the holiness of God and see his shame for what it is. The book of Revelation pictures this moment saying that, ‘the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”’ Man will want to hide themselves from God’s face on that day because to behold God is to recognize the enormity of sin.
To be a Christian is to put yourself daily before that face of God. To be a Christian is to put yourself daily before the face of God because you know that you will stand before Him on the final day. The Christian is not a man who has sinned so little that he can stand before God. The Christian is the man who has had this impossible debt forgiven and so he can stand before God unafraid on the final day and today.
To have this debt forgiven, man must recognize that he is in debt to God and that, as the Catechism puts it, “God requires that His justice be satisfied.” God will not overlook sin. Man imagines that God’s bark is worse than his bite, but the coming judgment reveals that as folly. The apostle’s word to the world was clear, “because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed.”
The final judgment will simply make what is obvious to God obvious to everyone else—man’s sin is egregious; it is not a mere breach of etiquette that can be smoothed over with pleasantries. It is an offense worthy of eternal rejection by God.
Man can only understand the debt of his sin by hearing God’s assessment of it. Man cannot assess his sin by his own wisdom. Man is like the proverbial frog in the warming pot of water; he cannot assess his own condition. It must be described to him from outside and here is Paul’s description, “they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened… just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”
Now that might not be your assessment of mankind but, remember, you are part of mankind. You are unable to see your natural condition for what it is. By nature, you judge yourself in comparison with others rather than with God. Compare yourself with Jesus. Compared with Jesus, the natural man does disobey his parents. Compared with Jesus, the natural man is full of envy and malice towards others.
And yet mankind approves of itself. As Paul put it, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Mankind cannot see its true condition because it is too busy approving of itself. Mankind defends its sin to the hilt. Rather than putting itself before the holiness of God, mankind measures itself by its own metrics and says, ‘we might have a few wrinkles to iron out, but we are certainly not as Paul describes us.’
Mankind does not see its hopeless situation and so it sees no need for salvation. Mankind is like a family who behaves as if it’s ten dollars in debt, when, in fact, all of its credit cards are maxed out, the house is about to be repossessed, and the creditor is at the door.
The church must recognize the real condition of humanity if we are to be of any help. People who will face the holiness of God in moral bankruptcy don’t need my wisdom on living a better life. People who will face the holiness of God in moral bankruptcy need salvation and if they are to ever seek salvation, they need to recognize their condition. Man will never make any change until he must. Man will not seek salvation until he recognizes that he must.
We have no other choice but to seek salvation because we are insolvent. That is our second point: we are insolvent.
When a man recognizes his guilt before God, he tries his best to put it right. He commits himself to doing good and being good, but nothing can come from it. As Paul explained, “no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law”.
Trying to change yourself by your own power is impossible. Putting sin to death, “from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, to the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world,” as John Owen puts it.
The history of the Old Testament is abundant proof played out on the stage of history. “Can a leopard its spots?” asks Jeremiah. “Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” The Catechism asks and answers the question this way, “Can we make this payment ourselves? Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt every day.”
These are the attempts Isaiah had in mind when he said, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Man’s attempts to make things right with God only insult God further. As we’ve said, it is similar to putting a pretty bow on a pet you’ve just killed in an attempt to please its owner.
Our attempts make the situation worse. “Actually, we increase our debt every day,” as the Catechism puts it. The fact is that every man owes God the devotion of all his heart, all his soul, and all his strength daily. A man owes God total allegiance every day; that is what it takes to simply break even with God. Now man, of course, can’t even break even. He can’t love the Lord with all his heart, soul, and strength, which is what God obviously deserves. But imagine that a man did it for one day; imagine that a man gives God His due on one day; that would do nothing to repay the debt of sin from every other day of his life. If you could be perfect today that would do nothing to make up for the sins of yesterday.
Now man can’t give God His due on any day and therefore man increases his debt daily. I promise you right now in this country there are many people who are trying to be good and every day they fall further behind. These dear people don’t need to try harder; they need a Savior who will not only save them from their sin but also from their self-righteousness attempts to make themselves right with God.
Man cannot change himself in the way God requires. I recently read a book by New York Times columnist David Brooks called The Road to Character. Brooks wrote it after recognizing that he needed to make some moral changes in his life. He had prioritized his career above his character, and it had a dreadful cost to his family. Nowhere in that book does Brooks recognize his inability to please God. Nowhere does he recognize his need to be made right with God. He simply recognizes his need to change; that is important, but it is woefully insufficient. Brook ends the book with a fifteen-point humility code. Now many of these points are valid, but the fact remains that Brooks’ moral situation is just was hopeless after he wrote that book as before.
The apostle Paul explained it this way, “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” We could say that, ‘if righteousness could be gained by keeping David Brooks’ fifteen-point humility code, Christ died for nothing.’
The life of Christ demonstrates that we are insufficient to do what must be done. Imagine that you are tasked with a project at work. You try your absolute best, but you cannot seem to move the project forward. After a few weeks, your boss gives the project to someone else. You were replaced because you were unable to get the job done. That would be a blow to your pride. That is also the rationale of the incarnation of the Son of God. You are unable to get the moral job done. You simply do not have what it takes to please God and so, “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law.” He is your replacement. We see that in our third point: a particular co-signer.
Man has put himself in God’s debt by way of sin. Man is unable to repay this debt. Man needs someone to pay the debt on his behalf. Man needs someone in particular to pay this debt on his behalf.
You cannot pay this debt on my behalf because you have the same problem that I have. By nature, you are in debt to God because of your sin. You are unable to pay your debt. How could you be expected to pay my debt? If an insolvent man goes to the bank with his son to co-sign a loan for a car that loan will not happen. You are an insolvent co-signer for anyone that you love.
I assume that parents in this sanctuary would do anything for their children including go to hell on their behalf. Paul would have. He wrote, “I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.” Moses would have. After Israel made the golden calf, he cried out to God saying, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book.”’ The Lord did not accept Paul’s offer or Moses’ offer because sinners can’t do anything to fix the situation between God and other sinners.
What you need, as the Catechism puts it, is, “One who is a true and righteous human, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true God.” You need a sinless man to suffer hell for the sake of sinners and since there is no sinless man, God had to become a man.
Now this was foreshadowed in the Old Testament with the sacrificial system. The animals that were sacrificed had to be without defect or blemish. They had to be perfect. However, no one with any sense thought that these perfect animal sacrifices forgave sins. The Catechism explains saying, “God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of.”
The animal sacrifices simply pointed to the need for a man without defect or blemish. The perpetual animal sacrifices were proof that animal sacrifices were insufficient. If you have to fix something daily, it is a sign that it isn’t really fixed. The author of Hebrews explains saying, “[the law] can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins… Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
Animal sacrifices continued because they could do nothing to pay off man’s sin. Christ was only crucified once because it was effective. As Peter reminded the church, you were redeemed, “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” This was effective because he was as human as you or I and because he was blameless because he was God. As Hebrews puts it, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” The only one who can take your debt upon himself is a man who is like you; the only one can pay your debt is someone who is unlike you, namely God. As Paul put it, “He forgives our sins having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. He has taken it out the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
Now this doctrine is currently under attack within the church; it is dismissed as cosmic child abuse. People dismiss it because they think it portrays God as a wrath monster who simply must smash something for sin and so Jesus throws himself under his Father’s fists to save us.
We need to take a step back and avoid false assumptions here. God has no compulsion to smash. The goal of God’s wrath is not the destruction of mankind but rather the deterrence of mankind from sin. God doesn’t exercise His wrath to get it out of his system so to speak; He does it because it is what sin deserves. We see that when we come face to face with the evil of a Hitler or a Stalin. We don’t see that with our sin because it is ours.
God’s justice will be satisfied; the cross is actually a better picture of that than hell. “How could God more plainly indicate His just will that no sin shall be tolerated with impunity, and display His deep abhorrence of transgression than by requiring the penalties which we have incurred to the uttermost from his own beloved Son, when incarnate as our representative?” asks George Bethune. “Could the eternal suffering of all our race, of myriads of worlds like ours, exhibit the divine wrath against the sinner, in any degree approaching the terrible anguish of body and soul which the innocent holy Jesus endured under the displeasure of the Father?”
Anyone who doubts that God is serious about punishing sin needs to look at the cross of Christ. The cross is a warning. If God poured out wrath for sin on His Son, don’t think for a moment that He will spare you if you neglect this great salvation.
The cross is a warning against sin. It is also an invitation to obedience. “Must not the spectacle of the divine Lawgiver himself condescending to fulfill all its demands as a voluntary servant, yield in the sight of all holy creatures a testimony to its excellence and invest it with a glory infinitely higher and more convincing than the obedience of our whole race or of myriads of worlds like ours?” as George Bethune asks. No born-again heart can look at Christ on the cross and doubt its own need to obey God.
Your salvation required the death of God’s Son. Don’t minimize your debt of sin. Your salvation required the death of God’s Son. Don’t minimize your own moral insolvency. Your salvation required the death of God’s Son. Don’t minimize the skin that God has in your salvation, which is really the project of your life. Your salvation required the death of God’s Son. Don’t minimize your need to live for him.
Without him you are morally bankrupt and deserving of hell. With him you can put yourself daily before that face of God. You can stand before God on judgment day unafraid. You can stand before him unafraid today. Amen.