Why the God-Man?

Today on Renewing Your Mind one sin creates enmity and estrangement, the terms to end that estrangement, the terms to bring about reconciliation must take place. In other words, they must be satisfied because the sooner the question one. Many people as Jesus need to go. God simply forgive our sins without sending his only son to the cross today on Renewing Your Mind. We will see that without question.

It would be impossible to be right with God. Why the God man that was the work that we alluded to in our last session, written by St. Anselm of Canterbury under the Latin title Kurt Davis Homo why the God man and we saw that the principal reason why it was necessary for Christ to come to this world, for the son of God to become incarnate, was to solve a problem and that problem is the problem of God's justice God's justice has been violated by his creatures. Now we also looked at the difficulty of defining justice and I mentioned in our last session, how in biblical terms.

Justice is so frequently linked to righteousness, so that the simple definition of justice is doing that which is right in philosophical terms, the great philosophers of the ages have probed this problem of justice Mortimer Adler in our day is written a book on the hundred great ideas that shape modern culture and civilization and he goes in his examination into several concepts that we use every day. Concepts like freedom concepts like virtue concepts like justice, words that slip so easily from off our lips. And yet, words that we very infrequently take the time to examine and analyze carefully so that we know exactly what we mean when we use these terms little exercise that I've done with my students in the seminary frequently give them a pop quiz and asked him to take out a piece of paper and write a brief cyst synced clear definition of justice its agony for them to take a word that we use like this every day and to boil it down to its crystallized essence. Aristotle tried it and Aristotle came to the conclusion that the essence of justice is to give to every person is or her due, and in that sense, justice satisfies an obligation in our culture we say in terms of the treatment of prisoners in the criminal justice system that injustice takes place when a person is punished with greater severity than the crime dates and we also think of justice. We also think in terms of rewards and punishments merits and demerits and injustice occurs when somebody receives less reward than they deserve.

For more punishment than they deserve and so on and so we struggle with trying to gain an exact understanding of justice, but in simple terms. Justice involves satisfying an obligation giving what is due. Another problem that we have with the justice of God is that we have violated the justice of God and so that means that there is an obligation somehow that has not been met and must be satisfied. Know what I like to do in practical terms there is to take three areas or ways in which we have violated the justice of God and that how as sinners, we become exposed to an obligation here that must be satisfied. The first is this that sin is a crime. It is a crime against God told the story already about receiving in the mail a few years ago, an anthology of quotations much like Bartlett's quotations and I was given a complimentary copy of this thing from the publisher, and I had no earthly idea why they were sending me a free copy of this book of quotations and I was leafing through the quotations and I was reading quotations from Compton from Millan from Aristotle from Plato and from Aquinas and Augustine and to my utter astonishment, I came upon a quotation from the this is why they sent me a copy this thing.

They grace me by including some statement that I made in this book of quotations and the thing that was ironic was when I read the quotation I was barely even able to remember ever having said the statement that I was quoted on in this fact and I never particularly thought that that statement that I'd made somewhere was all that significant for somebody that was significant enough to include in this book of quotations.

Here's a quotation sin is cosmic treason. I was trying with those words to communicate to people on one occasion the seriousness of human sin because we are all sinners and because no one is perfect. We rarely take the time to think through the full ramifications of our sin and we realize that in the slightest sin that we commit those peccadilloes that we consider as little white sands, as it were, but in that slightest sin.

We are violating the law of the creator of the universe in the smallest sin we defy God's right to rule and to reign over his creation. In the smallest sin we seek to usurp for ourselves the authority and the power that belongs properly to God in the slightest sin we do violence to his holiness to his glory, and to his righteousness. It is indeed an act of treason against the cosmic king in our society. Treason is one of those few offenses that is regarded as a capital offense and so is it a capital offense biblically as the scriptures teach us the soul that sins shall die because every sin against an infinitely valuable being is worthy of death, and so when we talk about the divine justice.

The first thing we have to consider as sinners is that we have been brought before the tribunal of God's court and have been convicted of committing crimes against the king. Crimes against the creator. I remember the Westminster catechism asked the question what is sin. As children we had to learn to recite the answer at the time, I didn't mean anything to me as we recited sin is any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God. Similarly, when God issues a law when he enacts a decree when he legislates a code of behavior. It is our duty as his creatures. It is our moral obligation that is almost upon us justly from his hand to conform to that law and when we don't conform to that law. We are breaking that law and we are committing a crime in the sight of God.

And when a crime is committed. His justice has been violated and we are worthy of the sanctions that flow out of that transgression, and there is a sense in which God now has an obligation to punish criminals unjust judge a good judge, a just God and a good God is not a God who lets crime go on punished God is supremely a God of law and order and God not only enacts laws but he enforces his laws. That's why, with the slightest sin, we're in trouble. If God is just because his justice demands that we be punished, but that's only the first problem we have the second one is like unto it, and that is that when we sin, we incur a debt again when God commands us to do something by virtue of his authority. Let me just stop there for say we mean when we use the word authority when we say that someone possesses authority we mean by that that they have the right to committee the right to impose obligations and supreme authority rests with the so that when God gives a command he imposes in that command an absolute obligation on his creatures to obey it and just as every sin is a crime.

Every sin is likewise a violation of our obligation to God, and we have become indebted to God morally without Jesus using parables in the New Testament describes us as being in a condition or in a situation whereas we are debtors who are not able to pay our debts that we have a structure in our society to cover people in that miserable situation.

It used to be in the financial world. If a person failed to be able to pay his debts. That person was put in prison.

They went to so-called debtors prison and we still speak of prison in terms of people paying a debt to society, but now we have provisions for various forms of bankruptcy or bankruptcy is declared in a person is relieved from the obligation to pay 100% of what they owe to another personal civil courts may do that for us and for our benefits if we are finding ourselves in a situation where we have debts we simply cannot pay God doesn't have a bankruptcy court. There is no Chapter 11 with God. What you do when you have an obligation to God, that you cannot pay, I will explore that concept in more detail later on in this series but for now just in passing. I want us to see that we have a problem that we have an obligation that we are not able to satisfy. We have a debt that we are on able to pay the third problem that results from the slightest sin is the problem of enmity for estrangement that takes place between God and his people because the relationship that God has with his creatures is a relationship that is defined by law and when we break that law we violate the personal relationship that we have with God and the violation of that personal relationship leaves us in serious jeopardy. Again, we cannot think of sin merely in the abstract, the thing that makes sin such a dreadful thing just on a human level. Never mind our relationship from moment to God but just in terms of our relationship with one another thing that so bad about sin is that in our sin we violate people we violate other human beings. And even if there would be such a sin where a person commits it solely against them so they are still violating a human person, human dignity is assaulted and abased and demeaned mentioned this before but I remember Genesis junior high school student coming into our locker room after a basketball game and as we were getting dressed. One of the fellows turn around and said where's my wallet and it seemed during the game. Somebody had gotten into the locker room and stole this fellow's wallet out of his locker and I remember than just being completely for my how can a human being be so selfish that they would actually go and help themselves to somebody else's property. The somebody else labored and worked and saved in order to be able to have this possession and then with no labor out of strict greed and avarice and covetousness. This person just takes it from somebody else. All the wonder how thieves can sleep at night.

How they can look in the mirror at themselves because they have violated another person. Remember a few years ago somebody stole my golf clubs off the golf cart where I was planning on going to the Pro shop was in there less than a minute came out, and $1600 worth of stuff was gone and the police came. I had to give the police report and placements that makes it do you feel personally violated said yes I did somebody have sinned against me on that occasion and I felt not just of material loss, but I felt the personal violation and when we sin against each other in many many ways besides stealing and so on. Slander dishonestly.

All the rest these things create a situation of estrangement. They break human relationships and not only human relationships but supremely our relationship to God is violated when we sin, and so we see three problems that we have as we tried to live in the presence of a just and holy and righteous God in our sin, we have committed a crime in our sin. We have gotten ourselves into a debt that we cannot pay and in our sin we have created a situation of estrangement or enmity that requires some kind of reconciliation now again going back to St. Anselm who asked the question why the God man and he said the primary need for atonement. The primary need for the cross is rooted in grounded in the justice and in the righteousness of God because what is required. According to Anselm by these things, the crime, the debt in the enmity and satisfaction satisfaction.

When we commit a crime against God's justice must be satisfied that is a payment or penalty must be given or made that satisfies the demands of divine justice or his justice is compromised. Secondly, when we incur a debt in which we fail to meet an obligation before God that that must be satisfied that obligation must be satisfied and what does it mean to satisfy that is to meet the requirements in a satisfactory way. And finally, when sin creates enmity and estrangement, the terms to end that estrangement, the terms to bring about reconciliation must take place. In other words, they must be satisfied and so we see that at the heart of St. Anselm's understanding of the atonement of Christ is this concept of satisfaction and he's the one who first gave full development to the concept known as the satisfaction theory of the atonement, namely that the work of Christ on the cross was among other things, designed to satisfy the demands of God's justice to satisfy the demands incurred by the crime to satisfy the demands incurred by the debt and to satisfy the demands that were brought about it through enmity and estrangement were to explore that in greater detail. As I said, but for now I want us to see that this concept of satisfaction is at the very heart of the biblical concept of the cross and I'm laboring the point because in this day and age.

Theologians 10 to repudiate Anselm's insight and to somehow think less of a God who requires satisfaction and who have, in many ways, in a wholesale way rejected the whole idea of satisfaction but I don't how you can read a page of the New Testament statement in the New Testament about the work of Christ that does not drive us back again and again to this, as Paul says in Romans in chapter 3 when he's expounding the doctrine of justification. He says in verse 26 to demonstrate at the present time is righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.

That's what the cross is all about the justice of God and the mercy of God that by virtue of the atonement. God can maintain his own justice and yet demonstrate his mercy by bringing justification to those criminals who can't pay for their crimes. Those debtors who can't pay their debts and for those who are a stranger, who cannot bring about reconciliation. Have you ever thought of your sin is a crime. We have rules in this country, the people or restricted from certain offices if they are a convicted felon. Or maybe we aren't felons. According to the law courts of our land that we are all convicted felons in the presence of God we don't like to think of ourselves as criminals, we don't particularly like the term sinners, but we've heard it enough that were willing to embrace up to a certain degree. Lycée will not of us is perfect, but certainly not from yes, your criminal I am a criminal because we have committed a crime against the king of the universe. Have you thought of yourself as a debtor who is bankrupt, who cannot pay your debts.

All you have to do is get out your pencil and go to your ledger book and look at your assets and your liabilities with respect to God and see if you have the resources to meet the requirements of God on your own cursory glance of the ledger sheet will reveal to you that you are indeed a debtor has no earthly means to pay your debts. Have you really thought about the ramifications of the way in which we violate each other and that we have violated God and that we stand without Christ in a relationship of enmity and of estrangement with him. What can you do what can you do in and of yourself, to affect reconciliation. Beloved, we need to cross is the only thing this side of heaven that is designed to fulfill the obligations.

None of us has the capacity to fulfill it's easy to forget what Christ has done for us. What a glorious reminder that everyone who trusts in Christ alone is fully and finally reconciled to God as the 19th century and writer Richard Moad said. My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus blood and righteousness. Thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb were listening to Dr. RC scroll series. The atonement of Jesus and as you heard today.

We've been considering why it was necessary for Jesus to come and die for our sins. As Christians we never outgrow our need to hear the gospel and that's why we hope the series can be of particular encouragement to you and your loved ones are offering this teaching series with more than three hours of content for your gift of any amount ever including a bonus track on the MP3 CD. It's Dr. Sproles message. The cursed motive of the atonement reach out to us online with your gifted renewing your my.org or call us at 800-435-4343 will over these past few eventful months, we have heard people on the news oriented commercials claim. This is the new normal winter teaching fellow, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson is heard that catchphrase on his side of the pond to in his native Scotland and he has some thoughts on it in many ways it's a very other states, expressions, and in other ways. That's an expression that we can turn to gospel use because the Scripture teaches is that slick Christians on the new normal fund. I don't think I've held a single reference to God on the media, not a single reference to God and that is actually the new abnormal and as long as people sound asleep care for other people in the community. I think I'm just out for years now. The great significance to the church in the present age is that it is the one place where you see the new normal fund and stuff. I think it's very incumbent upon us, especially as Christians to recognize that God is always doing more than one thing in his providence, but allowing but one of the things that he's doing to our is he is depriving Houston has sovereign confidence of the privilege of meeting together and perhaps in his last teaching us how to lightly.

We have truths about privilege, but also how likely we are treated one another, and perhaps being distance from one another will help us relate to the slip about much more than doing not to take God is given to us for granted such an important reminder in our thanks to Dr. Ferguson for sharing it with us Renewing Your Mind is the listener supported outreach of link in your ministry grateful that you join us today and we hope to see you right back here tomorrow