With the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, we see the continuation and the climax of God’s plan to restore and repair the world. From the very beginning God had been looking for a faithful human partner through whom he could bring about his plans and purposes and in Jesus we see exactly what this looks like.

John says that Jesus didn’t come to judge the world but to save it and so we see him bringing healing where there was sickness, forgiveness where was sin, freedom where there was demonic oppression, and mercy where there was condemnation. His Kingdom of God agenda was but a further continuation of this great plan to repair the world.

What you also see in Jesus’ preaching is the same choice between life, light, truth, and goodness, or death, darkness, and evil, being set before the people of God. Like the prophets before him Jesus challenged the people to repent and to turn back to God with their whole hearts and when he challenged those in power he found himself being brought before the judgment seat of both the Jewish and Roman authorities. Jesus, the only truly innocent and sinless person to ever have lived stands trial within the human justice system of the day and is condemned to die.

‘Jesus is the Judge, judged in our place’

Karl Barth

Stephen Westerholm says that ‘so catastrophic a remedy [the cross] demands a catastrophic predicament [our sin]’ and so when we are confronted with the horror and the spectacle of Jesus’ crucifixion, we are being confronted by the reality and the severity of our sin. It is at the cross that sin is exposed for the destructive force that it is and we are faced with the full weight of the consequences of the wrong choices that we have often made in our lives.

But it is also in the cross that we see the superabundance of God’s love and grace outstretched toward us for Jesus, as the King, the Messiah, takes responsibility for our sins upon himself and bears the full weight of their consequences. Jesus, fulfills the calling of Israel to deal with the problem of sin and evil by taking it upon and into himself. Paul says that there is no condemnation for those who belong to Jesus because their sin was condemned in him! God is love and love overcomesjudgment by absorbing it into himself.

‘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’

The Prophet Isaiah