A Clear Gospel Message - Part 4 — Zac Poonen

The Universality of Sin and the Need for Jesus

They all fight with each other. All goes to show that they're all the same. When they are born, they're all the same when they grow up. But the parents will take one to a church, one to a mosque, one to a temple, and they become their own religions.

That's all. Your religion you have is most probably because your parents took you to some place like that. Jesus didn't come for religious people. He came for sinners. Your conscience tells you you're a sinner.

You come to Jesus and say, Lord, I am a sinner. I've done so many wrong things. Now the next question is, can't God overlook our sins? I mean, won't a good God overlook our sins? Isn't he a father? Like, you know, if my son went and bashed up my scooter and blew the whole thing up, and he says, Dad, I'm sorry.

Can't I forgive him? Oh, yeah, of course I can forgive him. For something like that, I can forgive him. Or if I gave him a thousand rupees and he went and lost it somewhere, and said, Dad, forgive me.

I can forgive him. Those things are not moral issues. If our sin was just like that, like breaking up a scooter or even burning a house, oh, we can forgive him. But sin is not like that. Sin is a crime.

God's Justice Requires a Penalty for Sin

Supposing I'm a judge. My son is standing there. He's committed a crime. Can I say, oh, I love you, my son. I won't punish you? Even an earthly judge will not do that. Because he's got a sense of justice.

Not because he's going to be caught. Some people just won't do it because they've got a sense of justice. And that sense of justice he's got in his mind is a fraction of the perfect justice of God Almighty.

So when I've done something wrong, God is the judge and he looks at me. He says, son, I love you very much, but I can't let you go. Because you did something wrong. But you say, well, judge, you're his father.

Can't you just let him go? He's sorry. However much my son may sorry to me in the court if he's done something wrong, I have to punish him. Let's say he robbed a bank or did something like that and I have to fine him.

Your fine is 10 lakhs. Pay the fine or go to jail. People say, boy, what a strict... He doesn't love his son. His son also may turn around to me and say... The son may turn to me and say, dad, you don't love me.

Punishing me like this. Can't you let me go? You're the judge. You've got all power. No, son, I'm your judge here. Fine, I sign the court order. 10 lakhs or go to jail. And while he's looking sad, at such a hard judge, I get up from my seat and take off my judge's robes.

Come down, become an ordinary man again. Take out my checkbook and write 10 lakhs to my son. Here, go and pay the fine. You're free. Can anybody in the world accuse me of not doing what is just? No. I gave him the full penalty of the law.

Can he accuse me that I don't love him? No. I punished him as a judge. I paid the punishment. Maybe I emptied my bank account. Entire 10 lakhs, gone. To save his life and go to jail. He will know I loved him as a father.

The Cross Reveals Both God's Justice and Love

That is what God did on the cross. He cannot overlook your sin. He forgives you only because the punishment has been... Yes, the punishment has to be paid, but I'll pay it myself. Now, listen to this.

Why Christ Must Be Fully Divine to Bear Sin

If Jesus Christ was not God, like the Jehovah's Witnesses say, like some other cult groups say, and God punished him for our sin, that would be the greatest injustice of all. God cannot be God. Isn't that right?

Supposing I punish you when in the court and somebody else says, okay, I'll take the punishment for him. You're to be hanged to death for the murder you committed. And your mother comes and says, no, don't hang him.

He's a young man, please hang me. And the judge says, okay, you can be hanged instead of your son. How long do you think that judge will remain in his seat? Can a mother be hanged in place of her son even if she wants to?

That'll be injustice. So, even if Jesus is a high created being, if you punish him for my sin, it can't be right. And secondly, one mother cannot die for a million murderers. Supposing a million murderers are here, all condemned to be hanged, and one mother says, come and hang me.

How can you take the punishment of all these million people? If Jesus was a created being, he could not take the punishment for millions and billions and billions of human beings. Impossible. So, all this teaching that Christ was created, and they take some misunderstand, misquote some verses, which they don't understand properly.

They don't think about it. What are you saying? That means you're still in your sin then. I would say to every Jehovah's Witness, ah, you may sound so nice, but you're still in your sin. No created being can die for your sin.

Sorry. But God Himself, He can die for our sin. Because He's the judge. He's the ruler of the universe. He can punish us and take the punishment Himself. That's why God had to come down in the person of Christ.

The Trinity and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

And another thing, if God was only one person, and not three persons, that's another thing some Christians teach. God is only one person. But how in the world then can God come down here and become a man, and still be God up there in heaven to whom Jesus prayed?

Do you know there are some Christians who believe that? They baptize in the name of Jesus only. You know why? Because they say there's no three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even though Jesus said you must baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Because they deny the Trinity. 1 John chapter 2 says, if you deny the Trinity, that's the spirit of the Antichrist. Why is that? Because then you're denying that God came in the form of a man, and took the punishment in the presence of God the Father, who was in heaven.

How can that be? There's only one person. So these are just a few things I want to say of wrong understandings a lot of Christians have about Christ being deity himself. When he was on earth, he was God, people worshipped him, and he accepted it, which even angels don't accept, proving he was God, but he did not use his power as God when he was on earth, otherwise people wouldn't even have been able to look at him.

Christ's Incarnation as Fully God and Fully Man

Once he lifted the veil on the Mount of Transfiguration for just a few minutes, and Peter and James and John fell down like they were struck by lightning. If Jesus had lived on earth as God, everybody would have fallen down flat like that.

It happened also once to some of the Roman soldiers who came to capture him. He suddenly got a flash of who he was, and they fell down. But he did not use that power. Just briefly sometimes he lifted the veil, only once or twice in his entire earthly life, but otherwise he lived on earth as a man, not using any of his powers as God, because he wanted to be an example for us.

So Jesus was fully God and fully man when he came to earth, and when he died on the cross, he was taking the punishment for our sin. And the punishment for our sin is eternity in hell. And when Jesus hung on the cross for three hours, what he faced was hell.

The Cross and the Horror of Being Forsaken by God

That means being forsaken by God. That is the most terrible thing any human being can ever face. Think of the worst suffering you can ever face, multiplied by a million and more, and you understand what being forsaken by God is.

We think of hell as some geographical place somewhere. Maybe it is, but the worst part of hell is that it is a God-forsaken place. It is the only God-forsaken place in the universe. That means God is not there.