Sermon - Lent Midweek 2, 2024 - John 3:13-21

Christ Crucified, 1632, Diego Velazquez

Christ’s suffering as payment and sacrifice for sin

1. A debt owed

2. A debt repaid

There’s a lot of talk about debt forgiveness today under the topic of student loan forgiveness. Regardless of what you think about that particular political issue, it has at least brought the subject of debt and forgiveness into the national conversation. The controversy of student loan forgiveness boils down to a simple economic principle. When a debt is forgiven, it’s not as though the debt simply disappears, because someone has to pay for that debt. For example, if I hire a plumber to come and fix something at my house, and he sends me a bill for $1,000, I owe him that much money because of the product and service he performed. If I don’t pay him and he forgives my debt, then that means he had to pay for the parts himself and he didn’t get paid for his labor. He had to sacrifice in order to absorb my debt.

A similar thing is going on in our relationship with God. Our sins are a debt against God. In Colossians our trespasses are called a “record of debt,” which “stood against us with its legal demands.” Since the “wages of sin is death” what we deserve is God’s wrath and damnation, so if we receive eternal life then we are receiving something which does not rightly belong to us. Sin is a debt against God that prevents us from entering into eternal life. 

Jesus Himself refers to our sins as debts. For example, in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to literally pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Or in a couple of different parables Jesus refers to us as debtors against God who are forgiven by God our great debts. This is also the teaching throughout the Bible, that sins are treated as debts which must be repaid.

The trouble that we must overcome is that in our US culture today debts are so extremely commonplace that we hardly think anything of them. National debt, credit card debt, mortgages, car loans, cellphone loans, business loans, etc. etc. Since debts are so common we have a tendency to think of them as merely minor parts of life and not really something to be concerned with. That also relates to how we view our debt of sin, thinking of sin as just minor unavoidable and unfortunate parts of life, but no big deal. However nothing could be further from the truth! Our debt of sin is deathly serious. We should not think of sin lightly whatsoever. The cost of our forgiveness is great.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” When it says that God so loves the world, it’s an older use of the word so, meaning thusly. We could translate it: “For God loved the world in this way, namely, that He gave His only Son.” The cost to forgive our sins is the sacrifice of Jesus. His suffering is the payment for our sins.

Isaiah 53 describes the sacrifice Jesus made in order to forgive us: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. ”

That is not just some light ordinary thing! This wasn’t only physical pain that Jesus endured, but He suffered complete rejection and abandonment by the Father. He experienced the pangs of hell in our place. He cried out: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This is an agony which we cannot even imagine since we’ve never experienced God forsaking us. Even those who hate God and curse Him God still cares for in this life, since it rains upon the righteous and sinner alike. Jesus underwent the most severe and agonizing suffering that is possible in order to make payment, to atone, for the sins of all the world.

This shows us both the enormity of God’s love for us, and also the enormity of our sins. To some extent that may be the reason many people do not like the cross or especially the crucifix, because it means that God is real and that our sins are really serious. God cannot just ignore sin and pretend it doesn’t exist, just like we can’t ignore worldly debts and pretend they don’t exist, because someone is footing the bill, someone is paying the price. Either I pay the price for my sins by being condemned to hell forever, or Jesus pays the price for my sins by His sacrifice on the cross.

So indeed our sins are so serious it's terrifying! My sins, which I do too often thinking nothing of them, results in the terrible suffering of Jesus for me. My sins, therefore, are deathly serious, even the “little” ones. But if the sacrifice of Jesus shows me the enormity of my sin, it also shows me the enormity of God’s love. God loved the world, how? By going to the cross.

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It’s true, we don’t usually want to sacrifice ourselves for others, it’s gotta be for a pretty good cause or for someone we really love, and even then we’re quite hesitant. But unlike us, God is filled with such love for us that even while we are sinners, His enemies, He laid down His life for us. All of the suffering and all of the sacrifices, Jesus willingly endured because of His great love for us. There really is no greater image of love than of Jesus’ agony and suffering, His sacrifice, for us. He paid the huge debt of sin that we owe, not because we deserve it, but because He loves us.