Sin Condemned in His Flesh

Christmas morning! Excitement! Joy! Anticipation! Why? Well, because everyone has gathered around a tree to exchange gifts with others that they love! Today in our continuing Advent series, I want us to gather around another tree and there behold the great gift of God that He has offered upon it!

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1-4).

These four verses are packed with powerful, soul liberating truth! But there is "one" truth, "one" glorious implication of God’s gospel gift, that I want us to specifically consider...

Because of the death of Christ on a tree, the threat and the awful reality of condemnation no longer await us on Judgment Day! For every person who has been united to Jesus Christ by faith alone has been delivered from the wrath to come!

Condemnation!! Eternal punishment! Final doom!! Such terrifying and soul paralyzing realities have been removed from the believer’s future! Hallelujah! But how did God accomplish this? How did a holy and just God free us from our sins without exacting from our flesh the wages our sins deserved?

Beloved, God did condemn our sins in human flesh!! But it wasn’t in our flesh that He condemned sin! God condemned sin in the flesh of His Son as He hung on a tree. Make no mistake about it! God must judge sin! And judge it He did! And so thorough, so complete and so sufficient was the sacrifice of Christ in our place that now it can be pronounced over us that "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." How could there be?? Our sins (each and every one of them) were fully condemned in the flesh of Christ! And here is perhaps one of the greatest implications that the gospel gift offers... God not only won't condemn us, but God can't condemn those of us whose sins He already condemned in Christ!!

Did you get that? Brothers and sisters these are most precious words and truths! Each and every day as we struggle with sins, we must always remember that those very sins are forgiven sins! Even when remaining sin in us discourages us and saddens us we must never forget that those sins will never condemn us!

This Christmas, amidst all the "other" gifts, treasure the one great gift, the one free gift of God that came from God's tree…no condemnation!

Steve Cassarino