TRACKING WITH THE TRINITY

In a recent essay (https://mannsword.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-trinity.html), I argued that since God demonstrated His love for us in that Christ died for us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8-10), He must be God. A created being would not be able to demonstrate God’s love, because God is able to speak into existence 10,000 Christ’s in a moment, without cost to Himself.

In this essay, I want to follow up on this idea. Elsewhere, Scripture insists that the Cross also demonstrates God’s righteousness:

·       [We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:24-26 ESV)

In this passage, the Cross is a demonstration of God’s righteousness. Paul mentioned it twice for emphasis. However, millions die every year. Sometimes, God directly puts them to death, even pre-born babies, as in Noah’s flood. However, none of these deaths propitiated (satisfied) God’s righteous nature or were able to demonstrate God’s righteous nature.

It might be argued that none of these people, even the pre-born, were truly without moral blemish and therefore couldn’t serve to demonstrate God’s righteous judgment or satisfy Him. However, Christ was made like us in every respect (Hebrew 2:17). This suggests that the pre-born babies might have partaken in Christ’s moral perfection.

However, even if this is not true of babies, other problems remain for the idea that Christ isn’t God (this also includes modalism). Christ had prayed that He wouldn’t have to endure the Cross if there was another way (Matthew 26:39). However, there was no other way.

Well, why couldn’t God merely speak another perfect human substitute into existence to take Jesus’ place? Evidently, even this would fail to demonstrate God’s righteousness and the seriousness of our sins. Instead, it seems that only the death of Father’s Son, the God-man Jesus, could satisfy the Father’s righteousness. The death of a mere created being, even if morally spotless, would not be able to demonstrate God’s righteousness, no more than the death of animals. Instead, the death of God Himself would be able to demonstrate the terrible extent of the weightiness of our sins.

This tells us that our sins are so serious that nothing short of the death of God could redeem us.

Presumably, only the death of the infinite God would be able to provide an adequate payment to cover the sins of the entire world. Both Paul (Romans 9:3) and Moses (Exodus 32:32) were willing to offer themselves as payment, but God would not receive their offer. A mere human sacrifice would instead communicate the levity of God’s righteousness – that our sins couldn’t have been that serious if they could be eliminated by the sacrifice of one human. However, if the Father’s righteousness could only be satisfied by the death of God the Son, this preaches a very different message about God and His hatred of our sins.

This is a lesson we need to learn. Without it, we will not be repulsed, as we should be, by our sins. Nor will we be sufficiently grateful to our Savior who paid the unpayable price for our sins:

·       He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:3)

It is only the One who bears the “exact imprint of his [the Father’s] nature” who could possibly make “purification for sins” and demonstrate His Father’s righteousness.