The Nugget:
A Muslim poster on the “Islam and Christianity Debate Group” has posted some very good questions the past couple of days.
His first question was in reference to Christ, “What is the purpose of his death?” I answered that by making reference to 2 Corinthians 5:15 and 1 John 2:2.
That question is far deeper than you might think at first!
Today he responded by saying “This is not the right answer. What is the purpose of his death? Why? Which sin? What course [caused] the sin?”
My answer:
Your questions are very helpful, Faruq Kolodi, because this is such an important subject. Your good questions help me focus my answers better.
You ask, “Which sin?” The Bible tells us that God has no pleasure in wickedness, and sinners cannot dwell with Him (see Psalm 5:4). We are told in the Bible that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (see Romans 3:23). Solomon wrote in the Old Testament that there is not a just man upon the earth that does good and does not sin (see Ecclesiastes 7:20). He also asked (Proverbs 20:9), “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?” The question requires the answer, “no one.”
If we are ever to be right with God, this sin problem each of us has must be dealt with. Sin is no light matter. Sin is not a frivolous matter in the light of God’s absolute holiness (Psalm 5:4, mentioned above). The Bible tells us, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
The Bible tells us quite plainly that none of us in ourselves has any righteousness that is acceptable to God (Isaiah 64:6):
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have each one turned to his own way; and Jehovah made meet in Him the iniquity of all of us” (Isaiah 53:6).
Notice carefully what God has declared in Isaiah 53:6. First, all of us on our own have gone astray. Second, we have, each one of us, turned to our own way, not His. Third, Jehovah made to meet in Him the iniquity of all of us. Thus, (1) there is a need, because all of us are caught up in our own ways, beliefs, thoughts, but these are not pleasing to God; (2) God has made provision to meet this need by making the iniquity of us all to meet in Him–the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, about whom this whole fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is about. The preceding verse, Isaiah 53:5, declares that “with His wounds we ourselves are healed.”
That, in a nutshell, as the expression goes, is the heart of the answer to your first question. Sin is a universal problem affecting every individual person. God has made universal provision to meet that problem. The benefit that God provides is limited to those who will believe on Jesus Christ as the only Savior from sin, for by His atoning death on the cross he has taken away the sin of each person who will fully believe in His work and provision in order to have eternal life. Jesus Christ is the only provision God has made by and through whom we can access God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one can come to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
Your second question, which I understand to be “What caused this sin?” is centered upon the fact that when God created man, even the first man Adam, God created a being who had freedom of will, freedom to choose. God gave one command in Eden, with the pointedly strict threat that to eat of the forbidden tree would bring immediate spiritual death. Adam voluntarily chose to disobey God’s one command, and plunged the whole race of mankind into sin, sin which may be defined as rebellion against God’s way, or God’s commands, commands which are now contained and preserved for us in the record of Holy Scripture, our Bible. We can be thankful that the Bible also shows us the way back to favor with God through the one provision He has made, the priestly-sacrificial sacrifice for sin, made in the atonement of Christ by His death on the cross for us, as we are told in the Bible: who “Himself carried up in His body our sins” onto the tree; that dying to sins, we might live to righteousness, of whom “by His wound you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).