Daily Devotional For december 19, 2014. Q. Can any mere creature pay for us? A. No. In the first place, God will not punish another creature for the sin that man has committed. Furthermore, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin and deliver others from it. So we have seen that we cannot possibly save ourselves. Nor can we be saved by another creature that is nothing more than a creature. Our Lord Jesus was not, and is not, such a creature. He both was God and remained God at the same time when he became man. He arose from the grave by his own power (Rom. 1:4). We had to be saved by a real creature, for the great rebellion against God had been committed by human beings. The payment had to come from human beings. During Old Testament times, the blood of animals was used, but it served to represent the work that God’s Son would come to perform on earth (Heb. 2:14–15; 10:4). God himself thereby provided the means so that his church might possess divine instruction for creating and confirming faith in the gospel. This gospel was bestowed initially in shadows, but after being fulfilled by Christ, the apostles received the mandate to preach this gospel of fulfillment internationally (Matt. 28:18–20). Even if there had been a perfect creature that had offered itself as the ransom for our guilt, it still could not have saved us. For such a creature would never have survived God’s wrath. That creature would have suffered the second death. But our Lord Jesus was able to bear and to endure that terrible wrath of God, because he was not only real man but also real God. Vonk, C. (2013). Living and Dying in Joy: A Devotional Guide to the Heidelberg Catechism. (N. D. Kloosterman, Trans., J. J. Ballor, Ed.) (pp. 27–28). Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press; Paideia Press.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:24:36 +0000
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