We know from personal experience the outrage felt when laws are wantonly disobeyed and the disobedience is met with a shrug. It roils the soul. We instinctively know that lawbreaking should not go unpunished otherwise laws would be meaningless. What is true in earthly justice, is true in the heavenly. From the beginning human beings have been breaking God’s law, and to allow such lawbreaking to go unpunished would make a mockery of the law and of the One who established it.
Though everyone from the first has been receiving the just penalty for lawbreaking, death, there is yet a day when the full force of the sentence will be carried out. When will that be? On the Day of Judgment. On that Day all lawbreaking will be brought before the Judge and dealt with according to the rule of His law. Every person will have to give an answer, to make a defense, and none will be found righteous, “no, not one” (Romans 3:10). Unless . . . unless they are found to be “in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
God has acted to provide evidence that the guilty can present to the Judge to escape condemnation. He has sent His Son to fulfill the law and allow those who place their trust in the Him to have His fulfillment of the law put on their account, therefore wiping out their record of lawbreaking (Romans 8:3). This representative accomplishment of the law’s demands is a gift of God’s mercy.
But what kind of person could this be who could actually accomplish all righteousness and so stand in our place on the Day? It would have to be one, as the Heidelberg Catechism teaches, who is “a true and righteous man and yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is at the same time true God” (Q. 15). This is the mystery and mercy of Christmas. The baby born in Bethlehem had been sent to be Immanuel (God with us) so that he might be Jesus (Yahweh saves). God seeing our lost condition fully enters into our existence to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. In this, God is shown to be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). May we give thanks this Christmas for his grace.
But what kind of person could this be who could actually accomplish all righteousness and so stand in our place on the Day? It would have to be one, as the Heidelberg Catechism teaches, who is “a true and righteous man and yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is at the same time true God” (Q. 15). This is the mystery and mercy of Christmas. The baby born in Bethlehem had been sent to be Immanuel (God with us) so that he might be Jesus (Yahweh saves). God seeing our lost condition fully enters into our existence to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. In this, God is shown to be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). May we give thanks this Christmas for his grace.
