A Word in Season: Suffering once for sins (1 Peter 3:18)

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The Apostle Peter tells us that Christ suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the

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Spirit. That's 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 18. But what exactly does the

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Apostle mean and why is it important? What did Christ Jesus actually do on the cross?

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Was he simply showing that God is just, a demonstration if you like of God's moral government of the world?

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Was he some kind of divine sponge just absorbing sin and absorbing punishment into himself?

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Was he perhaps a misguided fool who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, made the wrong claim under the wrong circumstances, and subsequently we just made up these stories about him being some kind of hero, some kind of saviour?

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No, says Peter, who was an eyewitness of his majesty, an eyewitness too of his humiliation and his sufferings.

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Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.

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What Christ did on the cross was to suffer the punishment due to our sins.

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He received in himself, in his flesh, all that the sins of his people deserved.

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The death, the sorrow, the suffering, the hell that sin deserves from a holy

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God was poured out upon the head of the Lord Jesus Christ. He suffered though he was just.

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He was in fact the only just man, the only truly righteous man who ever lived.

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There was never in anything that Christ thought, or did, or spoke, no motion of his soul that was ever contrary to the will of his heavenly

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Father. He never offended against God, and all that he ever did was perfectly acceptable to God.

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He was the one man who has ever been on this earth, upon whom the

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God of heaven could look with complete approval and say, with him I am well pleased.

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And yet this is the man who suffered for sins, the just one in the place of the unjust.

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The sins of his people were put to the account of Jesus Christ, and he was punished in their place, exhausting the wrath of God that they deserved.

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The stripes that sin deserve fell upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

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And that happened once and for all. Christ suffered once for sins.

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There was nothing else that was required. When the Lord Jesus on the cross said, it is finished, when he declared there that the debt was paid, he was declaring plainly so that we may be confident that what he had done was indeed to bring us to God.

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He was put to death in the flesh, yes, but he was made alive by the Spirit.

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There was a subsequent testimony that his work was completed and done and shall to eternity last.

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So how then do we become Christians? How do we escape the punishment due for our sins?

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It is by coming to Jesus Christ. It is by trusting in his finished work.

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It is by relying upon him entirely. For we have no righteousness of our own.

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We have no merits of our own to plead. It is all and it is only the Lord Jesus Christ as the once for all sacrifice for our sins.

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And if we have come to him, confessing that we are not righteous, that we are unjust, and trusting in his righteousness, then we shall be acceptable in the sight of God.

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And we know that it is true, because not only did he die for us, but he rose again on our behalf.

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This then is the reality of Christ's atoning work. He was a substitute for his people.

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He took their place and once and for all he accomplished our redemption, shedding his own blood as the ransom price for us, the just one in the place of the unjust ones, in order that he might bring us to God.

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And that is the sweet joy and privilege of every Christian who is trusted in the man who was put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the