We should be the one who was broken and died, but God gave His Son instead to take our place and we were spared. God is good.
It was righteous for God to have us pay for our sins, but He could not lose us, so He paid. God is good.
God could have started all over again and let us perish, but He did not want, He wanted us, so He saved us instead. God is good.
Jesus at the cross is the ultimate proof that God is good.
The cross is God's love for us. Everything was about the perfect sacrifice of love: God giving up His only begotten Son, Jesus, to be our sin offering. The Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. Men had sinned and sin must be paid by death. No good work can wipe sin off our blood. That’s why Jesus came to take our sins away and paid with His sinless blood. This is the only way to atone for our sins. This is what Paul was trying to explain in Romans chapter five:
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
I began to understand how God is good.
It was never God’s fault that Adam and Eve fell. They chose to disobey God, choosing to live under the law instead of living after His faithfulness.
In the standard of the world, most of us would agree that it’s not His responsibility. In fact, He had every right to let men perish and suffer the consequences. But God is not like that. His kindness, His heart is beyond our comprehension. He, being the perfect love, loves us. Instead of letting us perish, He sacrificed the very thing He loves dearly, His Son.
By His action, we now can judge righteously: God is good.
Because we believe in His Son, that is the faith of Jesus: that He would take our sins and die to pay for them, God can forgive us of all our sins. That is why Christianity is established on the foundation of His grace. it is grace because all it takes is for us to believe that and God imputes salvation to us. No need for penance, no need to mend our ways first, and no need because no amount we give can ever be enough to pay for our sins. Only death can pay for sins. God knows that, that’s why He knew it has to be given as a gift. We can never afford it or otherwise we would die in our sins. That is why it’s called fore-gift-ness. Forgiveness is a gift He already prepared to give before we are truly sorry for what we did. By grace, through faith.
Now, being forgiven means we stand before God with our debts cleared. They are cleared because someone paid for them. Not our payment, but it was done in our name nevertheless, so God accepted it.
Because our debts were cleared (paid by Jesus), God deems us as righteous (for the wicked borrows and pays not back – Psalm 37:21). Not by our works, that is why every believer receives righteousness as a gift. This gift of righteousness is the basis for us to be blessed, for only the righteous can be blessed and can inherit the land. And now we are righteous, we walk as righteous people through His Spirit in us, holy and blameless, being one with Jesus.
God yearns for us to be saved in His Son Jesus, so that He can have the legal basis to bless us! The goodness of God! He provides the way out, free for us but death for His Son, and then having saved us, He blesses us with only good - at the basis of grace, not of work, all we have to do is to believe His promise and wait. O praise the name of God Almighty! This is our God.
