But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  Matthew 1:20-21

As I sit, healthy enough to get up and walk in the safety of my home with clothing in my closet and food in the pantry, thanking God for His blessings, I am reminded of a time not very long ago.  I sat in a similar room considering all I had accomplished through my hard work, considering myself as good because, compared to people I read about in the news, I had not done any of the awful things described in the stories.  It was all about me and I failed to even consider God’s hand in it all.  As I ponder my experience I am filled with sadness over the incredible tragedy of the memory.  It is tragic beyond words that my condition of comfort combined with a belief that most people are fundamentally good insulated me and possibly insulates others from hearing the message of the good news of Christ Jesus.  If I have everything I need and I haven’t done things that seem really bad, why do I need Christ Jesus?

What does Christ Jesus offer to a person who believes they are good and have everything they need?  To address the question, we need to see the spiritual realm and our spiritual condition apart from Christ and through Christ, because whether we realize it or not, we are each in desperate need of Christ Jesus.

I may have had a slight degree of material comfort, but it did not satisfy and possessions, status and other worldly trappings never will.  I lacked satisfaction and wholeness, I longed for more of something, but I did not know what it was.  I had a void in my life that could only be filled by God through Christ Jesus.  He offers life in abundance, He offers wholeness, satisfaction, peace, joy, rest and other experiences characteristic of a life lived in communion with God.  But how do we get from the place of focusing on material aspects of the world around us to a place where we understand the importance of the spiritual realm?

While many people see themselves as basically good, no one is good relative to God.  Scripture provides heavenly visions, snapshots of God in His heavenly glory.  When exposed to His glory, people fall to the ground overwhelmed by His presence – the brightness of light emanating through Him, His purity, His holiness, each beyond earthly comparison, beyond our language, beyond our ability to comprehend.  Mere humans cannot even look at His face and live because His glory would destroy them (see Exodus 33:20).  Heavenly beings continuously worship Him saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3), and “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8) because worship and praise is the natural response mere creatures, beings created by Him, have when confronted by His majesty and glory.  

He is good.  He is the standard of what it means to be good.  By definition, everything He does is good, whether we understand it or not, and we are so far, incomprehensibly far, from being like Him we could never consider ourselves good.  So when God says, “See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me.  I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39), He is attempting to explain His absolute sovereignty and as difficult as it may be for us to grasp, every decision He makes, including each decision for life and for death, is good.

We may be the highest order of God’s earthly creation, the only beings created in His image (see Genesis 1:28-29), but we are nothing compared to Him. We may be formed in His image, but we are dingy representations of His holy, pure and perfect image.  Our decisions are often bad.  We get things wrong.  We have limited information and limited cognitive abilities and we often make poor choices.  Our power, our creative ability, our minds, our vision, our being, our goodness are unworthy of comparison with Him.  We fall far short God’s glory in every conceivable way.  

The first human sin involved rebellion, and humans have rebelled from God since that time.  Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, they wanted to possess His knowledge, they wanted to make their own rules (see Genesis 3:1-7).  They rebelled against God and they were suddenly separated from Him, and humans have been separated from Him since that time until God came to earth as a man and sacrificed Himself on the cross and died and rose again and conquered death.  And there are a bunch of important points to understand here, but let’s consider two:  (i) we are each to some extent separated from God, we are each a sinner, and we each fall short of God’s glory (see Romans 3:23), and (ii) sin leads to God’s wrath (see Genesis 6:5-8, Genesis 19:13, Deuteronomy 1:26-36 and others).  

In our sinful, rebellious state of being, we see ourselves as more elevated than we are, as more self-sufficient than we are, and as more important than we are.  By elevating ourselves in our own imagination, we simultaneously lower our view of God.  Because God has given us dominion over the earth, we sometimes get confused and believe that we have dominion over everything, that we make the rules, that we are in control, that we are sovereign.  But these thoughts are rebellious.  They are continuation of the first human sin, the human desire to be like God, or rather, to be God.

God’s wrath follows rebellion and sin, and we are guilty of both.  Consider images of God’s wrath described in Scripture.  In response to people’s sin, God destroyed the earth and everyone on it by flood except Noah and his family (see Genesis 5-9).  In response to people’s sin, God rained sulfur and fire from heaven destroying Sodom and Gomorrah including everyone and everything in the cities (see Genesis 19).  In response to Pharaoh’s hardened heart, God brought plagues on Egypt (see Exodus 7-12).  God’s wrath is frightening.  It shocks our conscience, and to most people it seems disproportionate to the sin because we fail (or are unable) to appreciate God’s purity, His distance from sin and His hatred of it.

In our imagination we elevate our importance, we compare ourselves to other people, and we tend to believe most people are good.  Yet we read or hear about the occasional person who has done a horrific act and we think, “You know, I’m pretty good compared to that person,” and we convince ourselves that we are good, and we possibly convince ourselves that we are worthy of God’s grace, love and mercy, or that we have earned His favor by our good behavior.  So when we are confronted with God’s wrath we respond with shock at His harsh judgment, when we should be shocked at the attitude, behavior, sin and rebellion causing His wrath, because God’s judgment is perfect.

God’s wrath is shocking and frightening, and none of us desire to experience it, so please consider this: (i) sin leads to God’s wrath, (ii) we are all to some extent separated from God, we have all sinned, we are all sinners, we all live in a state of sin, (iii) God promises that everyone will be judged (see John 5:19-29, Revelation 20:11-15, 1 Peter 4:5-6), and (iv) God promises that Christ Jesus protects us from God’s wrath (see Romans 5:9).  So that’s nice.  Jesus saves us from God’s wrath.  Wait, are you kidding me?  That is awesome beyond words.  We deserve God’s wrath.  Like the folks in Sodom and Gomorrah, we deserve rain of fire and sulfur falling from heaven destroying us.  We deserve God’s wrath, but Christ Jesus protects us.  Through Christ Jesus we are saved from the judgment, the wrath we deserve, by erasing our sin so that we might commune with God.  Christ Jesus wipes away our sin and builds a path connecting us with God.  Scripture describes this in a variety of ways trying to explain heavenly concepts in ways that we mere mortals might comprehend.  

In the passage first set forth above, an angel explains to Joseph that Jesus will save His people from their sins, but what does this mean and how does He accomplish this?  Apart from Christ Jesus, each person, each soul, each human life exists in this realm surrounded by evil, separated from God, and we describe that state of being as living in sin.  Our sin is all-encompassing.  While we may at times consider sin as single choices made sporadically, and choices do lead us closer to or farther from God, apart from Christ Jesus sin describes our state of being.

Just as sin is all-encompassing, influencing every aspect of our lives and character, through His atoning sacrifice on the cross Jesus Christ offers salvation, purification, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, ransom, justification, removal of God’s wrath.  Scripture uses a variety of concepts to describe the salvation He accomplished and offers, and it boils down to two thoughts: (i) He erases our sin, and (ii) provides a path for us to commune with God.  Forgiveness and reconciliation are blended in the concept of atonement, or at-one-ment with God.

One of the many amazingly beautiful results of this is protection or separation from God’s wrath.  God’s holy word reveals God’s wrath as His response to human sinfulness.  Jesus Christ bore the wrath we deserve. God’s holy word says,

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  Isaiah 53:4-6

Sin and wrath are connected, but Jesus broke the cycle.  He who was sinless bore God’s wrath for our sinfulness, saving us from the wrath we deserve, forgiving us our transgressions and opening a path leading to God and reconciliation with Him.  According to Paul, 

But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.  1 Thessalonians 5:8-11

And,

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  Romans 5:6-11

We deserve wrath but Christ Jesus saves us from it.  In the two passages above, Paul uses the concepts of salvation, justification and reconciliation to describe the glorious gift offered through Christ Jesus.

Using a different image, the writer of Hebrews explains that Jesus Christ “made purification for sins” (see Hebrews 1:3).  And appealing to legal arguments, in a single sentence Paul connects the concepts of justification (removing guilt), redemption (paying the price for release) and propitiation (atoning offering appeasing God) saying,  

For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement[e] by his blood, effective through faith.  Romans 3:22-25

In an effort to help us grasp the grandeur of God’s love and mercy, Scripture contains a variety of explanations for the mechanisms involved enabling the possibility of salvation through Christ Jesus.  Scripture discusses ransom, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, purification, justification, salvation, removal of sin and removal of God’s wrath.  Sin and wrath are connected, and Christ Jesus took God’s wrath for our sins upon Himself, erasing our sins, and establishing through Him a bridge crossing the chasm separating us from God. 

God’s holy word explains that all this is available through faith in Christ Jesus, and only through Christ Jesus.  Also, through Him we gain His life, new life, life abundant, the kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, and His light, love, mercy and grace.  We gain the indescribably awesome characteristics of life lived in communion with Him.

If you trust and believe in your own abilities, your own provision, your own possessions, if you trust and believe you are in control of your destiny, if you trust and believe you are basically a good person and because God is full of love, mercy and grace, He will save you, please know that while God is full of love, mercy and grace, the other statements are contrary to God’s holy word.  Salvation is offered through Christ Jesus alone.  Truly receive Christ Jesus into your heart.  Invite Him in.  Commit your life to Him forever starting now and receive all the aspects of His new life now and forever.

 May God’s glory shine upon you.  May the Holy Spirit fill you and transform you and may of the love of Christ Jesus flow through you allowing others to know you are His disciple.  Amen.