You’d be hard pressed to find a guy who thinks he’s a bad person.
When I ask others how they would define a good person, the qualifications normally range from not being a murderer to never doing anything that hurts another person.
Most often, I hear a good person defined as someone who does more good things than bad things.
I understand. That makes complete sense if good and bad held in equal tension. Simple acts that have one-level of ramifications, here on earth. A bad thing is a withdrawal from our moral bank account and a good thing is a deposit.
If I steal a candy bar, then if I give some money to charity, help an old lady cross the street, or give up my seat on a bus, than I can make up for that stolen candy bar, according to the karmic view of the world–good negates bad. If I just make sure I’ve got enough in my account to pay for the bad withdrawals, I’ll be good to go.
However, according to the Bible, our bad isn’t just a withdrawal from an account.
As I talk with students each day about the reality of our human condition, I’ve found one analogy in explaining the true cost of sin to be especially helpful.
The Cost of Crime
Let’s say you live in a small town and you park somewhere you aren’t allowed, or forget to feed a parking meter.
You’ll likely be fined a (somewhat) reasonable amount. You pay the ticket and you get on with your day. No big deal–small town, small crime, small cost.
Now let’s say you commit a felony in your country–you’ve embezzled millions of dollars, and you’ve been caught. You admit that you’ve done it. You’re looking at some serious jail time. Let’s say 10 (or more) years with “good” behavior.
Let’s escalate another level and say you commit a crime against the world–war crimes punishable by the United Nations. Depending on the nature of your crime, it could cost you your life.
Now finally, above the small town courts, the country courts or even the world’s courts, we have cosmic courts. God’s courts.
When we break God’s laws, we’ve committed cosmic treason. We’ve broken the over-arching laws of the universe. In Romans 6:23, the Bible says that the penalty for sin is death. That’s the cost of our sin. When it comes to sin, we don’t have a spiritual bank account we’re making deposits and withdrawals–we have a rap-sheet and we’re racking up crimes each day.
Imagine that I kill someone and the same day give a million (or even a billion!) dollars to charity.
No good, justice-seeking judge, no matter how loving he is, would ever let me off the hook because I’ve done something very good to make up for something very bad.
I’ve (shockingly) never had someone disagree with me on this point.
The same is true for God. We can’t do enough to make up for our bad, because we have committed crimes against him. The crimes have to be punished, and the penalty is death.
That means someone has to die to pay for those crimes, because that’s the punishment that has been attached to every crime against God.
That’s where Jesus comes in. If Jesus truly is the perfect, sinless, son of God, he has committed no crimes. He owes the courts nothing.
Jesus is able to pay for anyone’s crimes, because he has an infinitely good record to pay for it with. He has an unlimited amount of righteousness that is able to pay for a limited amount of sin and crimes, because, although we are sinful, we cannot sin an infinity amount of times (though it may seem like it some days).
In love, he chose to pay the penalty for our crimes on the cross. An innocent man paying the price for criminals. His sole requirement for the exchange is our faith in him.