Is there an answer?

Yes there is! – and God has provided it. The central message of the Bible is summed up in these words: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

We saw earlier that just and holy God must punish sin. But the Bible also tells us that God is love. While God hates sin he loves sinners and longs to forgive them. But how can a sinner be justly pardoned when God’s law demands his spiritual and physical death? Only God could solve that problem, and he did so in the person of Jesus Christ. The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

God the Son became a man by taking upon himself human nature. Although Jesus became fully man, he remained fully God: the Bible says that in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He remained as completely God as if he had not become man; he became as completely man as if he were not God. Jesus Christ is therefore unique and the Bible confirms this in many ways. His conception was unique; he had no human father but was conceived in a virgin’s womb by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. His words were unique: people were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power. His miracles were unique: he went about healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people, and on several occasions even raised the dead. His character was unique: he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin so that God the Father could say of him, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

 Notice that last sentence! This means that as a man Jesus kept the law of God in every part and therefore was not subject to sin’s double death penalty. Yet he was arrested on a trumped-up charge, sentenced on false evidence, and eventually crucified at Jerusalem. But his death was not a ‘freak’ or an unavoidable accident. It was all part of the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. The Father sent the Son for the very purpose of paying sin’s death penalty, and Jesus willingly came. In his own words, the purpose of his coming into the world to give his life a ransom for many. His death, like his life, was unique.

This makes it vital that you understand what happened when Jesus died, and what his death can mean to you.