In this FAQ series, we will try to answer questions that will hopefully help us become more biblically informed and better equipped to live out our faith in community. To submit and vote on questions you would like to see answered here by our pastors, click here.
Thanks to mutleysmom in Greenville, SC who originally submitted this question.
If God is God, why can’t he just forgive our sins without having to send Jesus to die for our sins?
To help us all understand the question, and hopefully the answer, I want to unpack the question a bit further. The phrase “if God is God” is suggesting that God is all-powerful or sovereign. This means he is in control and has the ability to do whatever he wants. The phrase “forgive”, in the context of this question, means to overlook, or disregard. So in essence, we want to answer the question, “If God is an all-powerful God with ultimate control, couldn’t he have overlooked or disregarded our sins so that Jesus wouldn’t have had to take embody humanity and be killed for our sins?”
Contrary to what we might naturally believe, there are things that God can’t do. Now, before you slam your laptop or throw your mouse, let me explain. God has to act in accordance with his nature. Thankfully, God is inherently good, loving, merciful, gracious and just/righteous. God can’t cease to exist; he is eternal. He can’t stop loving his creation; he is by nature love. Because God is just, he can’t overlook sin, In fact, because he is just, he must fully display his wrath towards sin.
God’s righteousness or justness (same word in the Hebrew Old Testament) means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the standard of what is right. Because he is just, God must treat people according to what they deserve. Therefore, he must punish sin to the extent of what it deserves; the due punishment of any sin is physical and spiritual death.
If God were to choose to not punish sin, he would be unjust or unrighteous. Subsequently, we would worship a God that doesn’t act in accordance with his nature and more importantly, one that we cannot trust. If a local judge were to “overlook” or “forgive” the sins of a mass murderer, the people of the community would be outraged. They would surely not re-elect him because his job is to rule with consistent justice in an effort to provide comfort and safety for the entire community. Likewise, we need God, the creator and ruler of the universe, to rule with perfect consistency that is based upon his very essence.
Fortunately for Christians, God did what only God could do. In accordance with his nature of love and justness he became human and endured the full punishment of sin on the cross through the person and work of Jesus (2 Cor. 5:21). The ugliness of all sin had to be dealt with if God were to act within his nature of being just. He did so in a way that only God could do. He acted within his nature of love by sacrificing himself in our place. The great exchange is that we received his justness and Jesus on the cross received our sinfulness. Only a God that is far beyond our full comprehension could possibly do that.
For further reading on God’s justice:
• Gen. 18:25Deut. 32:4, Psalm 19:8, Isaiah 45:19, Romans 3:25-26,
• Chapter 5, The “Communicable Attributes of God, Bible Doctrine by Wayne Grudem.