Jesus stepped in and took our place in the path of God’s judgment over sin. Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” from the cross. Why? God cannot look upon sin and Jesus became sin for us.
Habakkuk 1:13 says, “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon wickedness...” If God cannot look upon sin, you may ask, why is this sinful world still spinning?
God is holy and just. He is also patient. Adam and Eve were not obliterated the moment they sinned, but they lost the oneness they had with God. God wanted to restore that oneness, but He could not be one with sinfulness. This is why we needed a Mediator. Jesus became sin for us so that He could do for us what we could not do for ourselves (2 Corinthians 5:21).
First, He became a man, then He lived a sinless life. Since He was fully God and at the same time fully Man, He took all of God’s wrath toward sin—all sin, past, present, and future sin. This was done through the shedding of His perfect blood for us on the cross. It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that makes Him the Mediator we need to be restored to fellowship with God. (See 1 Timothy 2:5.) The fellowship has been legally and eternally restored; it is up to each of us to accept God’s invitation to relationship.
