Up to this point we have only been talking about bad news and if you are feeling depressed by what we have said that is understandable. The human condition is a depressing situation without the help and mercy of God. We need to look no further than the madness and lunacy that swirls around us and within us in our increasingly unhinged and godless society. But it is to the glory of God that the bad news will not have the final say. The dark powers that have enslaved us to the power of Sin—an impenetrable mystery itself—have already been defeated on Calvary. That is why we call it Good Friday, not Bad Friday! We will never be ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ if we do not understand and accept the bad news of the human condition left unaided, hard as that is to hear. It is a terrible thing to live in a cursed world and the gospel is our only real hope and solution for our predicament. The gospel is not a good idea or a good theory. It’s Good News because something happened that changed the world in which we live and if you do not believe that, you have no gospel at all and are much to be pitied. When St. Paul talks about Christ dying for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he probably has more in mind than just Isaiah 53 and a handful of other OT proof-texts. He is talking about the strange power of God (to us ) at work to free his originally good creation from the corrupting and death-dealing powers of Evil and Sin. Of course consistent with his creative purposes, God chose to do this primarily through human agency, first in his call to Israel and then through Christ, the one faithful Israelite. God did and does this for us because God loves us. That is the essence of the meaning of Christ dying for sin. Continue reading →