The Promise of HeavenSample

Day Four: The Greatest Act of Love

Forgiveness equates with being released from a debt. When Jesus prayed for people to be forgiven, he was praying that our sins would be dismissed, or released. But for his prayer of love to be answered and our sin debt canceled, a payment was necessary. A payment Jesus made for you and me.

While Jesus was on the cross, before his final breath, he made the decisive declaration, “It is finished” (John 19:30, NIV), a phrase signifying that a payment had been made in full. This payment for sin was not something Jesus needed personally since He was sinless. He lived a perfect life in word, thought, deed, and motive, fulfilling the Holy standards of God (Hebrews 4:15). Instead, his death became the payment for your sin and mine.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a, CSB). And while God is loving, he’s also Holy (Isaiah 6:1-4), and nothing impure can dwell with him in eternity (Revelation 21:27). Therefore, Jesus willingly went to the cross as a substitute to pay for what our sin deserved—which is to be separated from God forever in a place of eternal torment, darkness, and isolation known as hell, a place that Jesus spoke of and warned about on multiple occasions (see Matthew 13:37-43).

Although the wages of sin, or what we deserve for our sin is death and hell, the good news is; “God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21, NIV; emphasis added). Those words reveal that Jesus, who was sinless, bled and died to rescue us from what our sins deserved. He did so by taking upon himself our sins, and the wrath and judgment of Almighty God. In exchange, Christ offers acceptance with God to anyone who trusts in him and what he did for them on the cross.

As a result, although “the wages of sin is death,” this sentence concludes, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, CSB), a gift purchased by Christ through his blood which he shed for you and me upon the cross. A gift available to everyone who believes. The same gift the one criminal received nearly two-thousand years ago.

Isaiah 6:1-8
Matthew 13:37-43
2 Cor. 5:18-21