*This blog is part of an annual series I do that explores a facet of Christ’s atonement that we remember every Good Friday.

God’s Justice
God, the King, is a great Lawgiver and Judge. His moral law is summarized in the 10 commandments or the Great Commandment. Because He is perfect, His Law is perfect. Because He is eternal, His law is weighty. The penalty of breaking God’s Law was death (Gen 2:15).

Our Injustice
God required of Adam perfect obedience to His Covenant and Law (Gen 2:15). However, Adam broke God’s Law (Gen 3), and as our representative, placed all of mankind under God’s just judgement for sin, which is death. This is why we are spiritually dead and physically dying. Not only do we inherit Adam’s guilt (Ro 5) but we all, daily, in our thoughts, words and deed, break God’s Law—we coopt into sin every day (Ro 3:23; Ro 6:23a). Try as we may to satisfy or meet the Law’s demands, we’ve broken it and in our sinfulness can do nothing worthy of satisfying it (Isa 64:6). As the hymn writer, Augustus Toplady, wrote, “Not the labours of our hands, can fulfill the law’s demands.” As a result, humans are without hope staring down an eternal death sentence.

God’s Justification
While God would have been perfectly just to sentence us to death, in His great kindness He offered His Son to do the work of satisfaction that sinners could not do so that we might be forgiven and know life.

On the Cross Jesus said, “It is finished!” (Jn 19:30). What is ‘it’? What is ‘finished’? ‘It’ refers to Christ’s work of satisfaction and ‘finished’ refers to its completion or being satisfied. Remember, mankind is under God’s just sentence of death because of our lawlessness.

Christ satisfied the Law’s demands by dying a sinner’s death. He ‘fulfilled the Law’s demands.’ He did this positively by living the perfect life (so that His righteousness might be applied to us) but also passively by dying the perfect death. Jesus satisfied or expiated[1] God’s justice.  In theology this is called penal satisfaction or expiation.

This is clearly seen in Mk 10:45, which says Jesus, ‘gave His life as a ransom for many.’ Jesus offered a ransom (payment) to the Father to satisfy divine justice. The old Baptist confession says, ‘[He] has fully satisfied the justice of God.’ (1689.8.5). So perfectly did Jesus’s merits do this that there is an abundance of His merits to share. Another old confession says,  ‘This death of God’s Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.’ (Dort 2.3.). The Bible refers to this as ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’ (Eph 2:8–9) or the treasury of Christ. This gift is freely offered to sinners (Ro 6:23b).
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Our Justification
How can we receive these riches so that we may be justified? By repentance and faith or turning and trusting (Mk 1:15). We must call upon the name of the Lord—casting ourselves upon His mercy in faith—in order to be saved. To be saved from the penalty of sin means to be justified (declared just vs. unjust). This we must do by faith (Gal 2:16).  In justification the merit of our sin is credited (or imputed) to Christ’s account; and Christ’s justness is credited to our account. This is called the ‘sweet exchange.,’ the result of which is that we are no longer under the sentence of death and so forgiven to know life!


[1] Expiation means a payment that rescues from a penalty; or removes the guilt of sin through punishment. 

 ​*This blog seeks to speak into a conversations I’ve heard many Christians wrestle with in our post-Christian age.

For most secular Canadians today, Easter is a nice spring holiday to eat chocolate while enjoying time off work. Its imagery of bunnies and chicks speak of spring and new life (themselves pagan symbols). This is a far cry from conjuring up images of the cross and empty tomb, which alone offer true life. Because Easter and Easter don’t mean the same thing anymore, perhaps it is time for a change, to rename Easter? We have further warrant. Easter itself, or Eostre, was a Germanic pagan fertility goddess.* Her worship was popular in Northern Europe to mark the spring equinox. When Christianity came to the now countries of England and Germany, the pagan festival was subsumed into the Christian festival that remembered Jesus’ death and resurrection. However, the name Eostre was retained (a form of evangelistic rebranding).  Wherever German or English has gone in the world the name for the season has remained Easter for some 1000+ years.
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However, the non-Germanic Christian world (i.e. Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Greek, etc) calls the season Pascha or Passover in continuity with the Old Covenant feast when Jesus died and rose. This was the wording of the Church Fathers. While Good Friday, Holy/Passion[1] Week or Lent wasn’t developed in early Christianity until c. 4th century, Passover (Easter) has been celebrated the first Lord’s Day after the lunar Old Covenant Passover since the earliest church period; officially standardized since AD 325.[2] This all makes perfect sense. Jesus was the Passover lamb (1 Cor 5:7), fulfilling the Old Covenant festival of Passover, giving it new meaning for believers and simplifying it under the New Covenant as the Lord’s Supper (Mk 14:22–25; 1 Cor 11:17–34). The weeklong Passover in the Old Testament wasn’t just about remembering God's judgement upon the firstborn passing over those with the blood of a lamb (i.e. Good Friday)  but the Exodus from slavery to new life in the Promised Land. Likewise, the New Covenant Passover remembers the believers' rescue from slavery to sin (Cross) and into new spiritual life (Resurrection).[3]

 To distinguish ourselves from secular and medieval paganism, and unite ourselves to the flow of Scripture, the witness of tradition, we ought to join the rest of the Christian world in calling the season of Easter ‘Passover.’ Passover would then be broken into the two pillar days:

* https://www.etymonline.com/word/Easter​

[1] Passion means suffering.

[2] Prior to the Council of Nicea there were two traditions: the churches in Asian Minor followed the Jewish pattern of the 14th of Nissan (lunar), whereas the churches in Palestine, Egypt and Italy followed the first Lord’s Day after the 14th of Nissan (weekly). (Nick Needham, 2000 Years of  Christ's Power, vol. 1 [2016], 80).  As such it is the day of the week and not day of the month that is commemorated. 

[3] Egypt=sin; Passover lamb= Jesus; Red Sea= baptism; wilderness= our life before glory; the Promised Land= the New Heavens and New Earth.

[4] I call it a season vs. a festival or a holiday (holy day) because there is only one holy day commanded under the New Covenant and that is the Lord’s Day.

[5] We are not commanded to observe Good Friday under the New Covenant as we are the weekly Lord’s Day, however, given the weight allotted to the event in Scripture and its integral part in the establishment of the New Covenant, it is warranted.

[6] It is difficult to escape paganism entirely as even our days of the week are named after Roman gods. Good is in the sense of holy or special, because of what is remembered.  

[7] Tertullian, in the 3rd century, said something like, ‘not to be ashamed of calling it Sunday for it was the Day of the Son.’ ​

Person X has sinned. They feel guilty. They feel dirty. They feel helpless to deal with their burden. What can wash away their sin? ‘Nothing but the blood of Jesus!’ On Good Friday we remember God’s plan to address sin. The Cross is where Jesus died the death we deserve to die so that—in faith—we might be justified, or declared right (‘righteous’) in God’s sight.

The Bible famously uses a number of pictures to convey justification. Here are three:

Covered (Exodus 12:13)- The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

Cleansed (Ps 51:7)- Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Cleared Off (Ps 103:12)- as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
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In each picture the guilt or penalty of sin is pictured as wonderfully and vividly removed from us. When we are in Christ we no longer stand condemned (Ro 4:6–8, 8:1, 33–4) but rather forgiven, just. Still more Christ’s righteousness is imputed (credited) to us so that in God’s sight not only are we not guilty but are righteous (Isa 61:10; R 5:19). All of our sins, past, present and future, are covered, cleansed and cleared off.

But this doesn’t mean sin does not exist in our lives. Jesus paid the penalty of our sin but is addressing the power of sin through imparted righteousness. Here He gives us His life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45) so that we might be sanctified in actual fact. This too is wonderful news. Not only does Jesus impute righteousness, He also imparts it. He gives us the tools to deal with sin in our life, we are not alone.

And the end of the story is just as grand as its beginning, a day when the believer will be free from not only the penalty and power of sin but even its very presence (Rev 22).

Far too many needlessly labour under the burden of sin when imputed and imparted righteousness are offered in Jesus. He can and will cover, cleanse and clear off our sin when we come to Him in repentance and faith so that we may live a life free from guilt, free to live as God intended.