Romans 8:3 “God has  done, what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do; by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the reighteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”

Christ came to fulfill the requirement of the law of God for us. The bad news: We all stand before the Court of Heaven condemned. Guilty of all charges.

But the law was given from God to display his nature and to communicate with us the matters of his character that are critically important to him. To obey the law (in the terms that they were given) would be to act, in those areas, like God would act. The law was representative of his moral character. The law may appear to us today as arbitrary or capricious, but in fact, the law of God is very purposeful and it accomplished its reason for being given in two ways.

First, the law indicted all of humanity as law breakers. All of were indeed, breakers of the law by our very nature. As sinners from conception, we bore in ourselves a nature that was opposed to God and that stood in opposition to him. But God was pleased to expose in us the ways in which we come into conflict with the moral nature of God. The law declares of us as guilty sinners, justly deserving of the wrath of God. Second, it offers a measure of moral purity that is acceptable to God and is pleasing to him. This use of the law is the measure that was met by Jesus Christ in his perfect obedience to the Father. In every way he obeyed the law, the same law that condemns us all, is the law that Christ Jesus obeyed completely and absolutely. So Christ fulfilled the law and completed all of its demands. He was the only human being to do so.

See 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (ESV); and, Romans 10:4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (ESV)

So Christ did not come merely to assume human flesh and blood, to be close to us, or to tell us what God was like. He came much more purposefully. He came to redeem those he would save by living a perfect life according to the standards of the law of God, and dying a sacrificial and substitutionary death for them so that his righteousness could be imputed, given, to those who trust in Christ for their salvation, and they did not trust in their own goodness.

Familiar with our sins.

Christ is familiar with every sin we have committed. He died for each of them. He suffered for them extensively (for all our sins) and intensively (for each sin individually). He died for us personally (“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14-15 ESV)

When you ran to Jesus for mercy, did you think that you would never wrestle with sins again? Or that you should merely push them aside without reckoning them to the Savior that he might die for them?

Do not underestimate your sin’s impact on Jesus Christ. They killed him. Do not try to save yourself by bring ashamed or guilty combined with a wrenching remorse. Being sorry doesn’t grant you pardon. Only grace does.  Christ took away all you sins. What the law could not do for you, the Son of God did.  See Colossians 2:13-15b, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross ….” (ESV)

Why did God do this for you?

It was not because you were worth saving. You were not better than others. You did not qualify for salvation. You were saved because God chose to save you. He made a decision to be merciful to you and to forgive your sins and to adopt you as a son or daughter of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

There was no comparison of us against the rest of humanity. We were not chose because we passed some test. There was no comparison with other persons. The only comparison was between you and God. How would you fare in that comparison? That is the standard. The problem of saving you is that God not only wants to save you, but he wants to love and know and live with you forever. You must be brought up to the moral standards of divine perfection if this is to occur. But you are not perfect. This is way Christ came. Not that you become like God in his divinity, but that you are given the moral perfection of Jesus Christ, his righteousness, is given to you.  “But put on (be clothed with) the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:14 ESV)

The standard that we must meet is the standard of perfection. The only way to achieve this, is to have the righteousness of Christ imputed, given to our account before God, where his righteousness is applied to our lives, and God now sees us as though we were as morally perfect as the Son of God. We still sin, of course. But sin should not master us. We should experience growth in grace and know through our personal sanctification the process of becoming more holy as time passes. These gifts come to us through the love of God.

Not like Santa.

The modern view of Santa is that he finds “good boys and girls and gives them gifts.” Boys and girls are challenged to be “good” so Santa can give them presents. But this is not the Christian ideal of God in any way. God doesn’t give gifts to good boys and girls, but to sinners who would most certainly have perished in Hell had God not acted in such a powerful way through Christ’s death and resurrection. “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’” (Mark 10:18 ESV)

Romans 8:3, the law cannot make sinful people holy. It can only condemn sinful people for their failure. But Christ fulfilled the requirements of the law – he never sinned, not in word, nor actions, not in thought nor in disposition or attitude.  He was without sin, but strong – powerful – wise – he was goodness in human flesh. He mind did not war within him so as to defeat him and capture him in sin. No. He sought always, always, to do the Father’s will. That was he chief and highest, his thoroughgoing commitment of every decision he made. He came to do the Father’s will. And he did it.

And what Christ accomplished we could not do. His “alien righteousness” was perfect. Unlike any good deed we might do which is still stained with sin and inferior motives. Not Christ. His righteousness was alien to all of our goodness utterly and completely different from what we had. He was and is perfectly obedient to the Father, and therefore he never sinned.

When we come to God we must repudiate our righteousness. We must lay aside any idea of entitlement or desert in our claim on God’s love and mercy. We simply do not and cannot deserve his love and mercy. They come from God. And they come only from God.

But the Christian life is not merely running to God for mercy. People run to God hoping that they might not experience Hell. But they scarcely know or love God at all. The test of a true and saving faith is simple. Do you love God?

A bold claim of his love for you is not enough. This can be little more than using God to get what you want from him. You know the calculus of Heaven versus Hell. You choose Heaven. But this isn’t the bargain. It is to know and love God, or not. That is the choice.

Loving God is very different from claiming a gift you didn’t deserve. Loving him is about affection, values, building precious ties to God, and growing at the deepest place in your heart and mind to create decisions the are in accord with the love that God has for you and that you have for God.

So say the truth.

We resist confessing our sins. It is embarrassing. But we must understand that every sin is tied to a lie. If you persist in the lie, you will not be free from the sin. Confession is facing sin, speaking to God honestly about it, and saying the truth.

If you are forgiven of a sin you committed long ago and you continue in the lie that moved you to sin, you will miss the freedom God gives to the children of God. You cannot hold on to the lie and be free of the sin. Jesus died for each sin specifically. He is familiar with the sin. He knows them all by name. He could describe the time at which you committed them. Because he died for them all. He knows them. So when you come to confess, it is time to tell the truth, and then to claim the complete pardon he gives to those who trust him and his work.

Do not be so shamed that you do not come to freedom and cleansing, and pardon and joy. Speak the truth that Christ died for your sins and he has taken them all away. And do not let a sin that Christ has died for separate you from the God who loved you so much that he would send his Son to die for them all.