@benizgPicture this scenario:
George, a decent family man, heads home after an exhausting day at work. He’s just looking forward to some peace and quiet with his family to recharge from all the stress. He’s already thinking about grabbing a burger with his son on the way in.
But when he walks through the door, he finds the front door wide open and a window smashed. He rushes inside, and what he sees is absolutely gut-wrenching.
His son is lying in a pool of blood, and a robber is struggling with his wife.
Driven by pure adrenaline, George jumps the attacker and takes him down. The police show up and haul the guy off to jail.
After some time passes, the robber goes to trial. He confesses to everything, and the judge hands down the verdict:
"The facts are clear: you committed murder and robbery out of pure greed. According to the law, you deserve the harshest sentence possible—the death penalty.
However, since you seem genuinely remorseful, and because I am a merciful judge full of love, I’m dropping all charges. You're free to go."
Was that a fair trial? What would George think about that?
George tells the reporters, "This is a total joke! We’re filing an appeal with the Supreme Court immediately. There’s a judge sitting on that bench who is more crooked than the criminal who murdered my son!" 😠
So, where does justice stand? 😕
It’s obvious to anyone watching this fake scenario that the verdict is a sham. That judge isn't being just, and he isn't being merciful or loving (even if he claims he is).
But here’s the kicker: many people believe that God is exactly like that kind of judge!
At least when it comes to judging them personally, or perhaps someone they loved dearly who passed away recently.
Someone might argue, "But doesn't the Bible say that God is love?"
Sure, He is. But God is also holy and just, and His love can't be unjust, unlike that ridiculous judge in our story. The Bible also explicitly states that God detests those who justify the wicked and those who condemn the righteous.
Because God cannot be unjust—meaning He is always perfectly consistent with His own character—He must judge anyone who violates His law, whether it’s a "minor" slip-up (like something you or I might do) or a massive atrocity (like a neighbor's crime or even Hitler).
Back in Eden, Adam and Eve only needed
one sin (and it didn't even seem that huge at the time) to be kicked out of Paradise and cut off from God's presence.
The Bible says the wages of sin is death, which is a spiritual law consistent with God's righteous nature. And I'm not talking about physical death—Adam and Eve didn't drop dead that very day—I'm talking about spiritual death: eternal separation from God and His love and grace.
Throughout our lives, we all rack up a mountain of small and large sins. If we compare ourselves to our neighbors, we might feel like we're doing okay. But a righteous God can't just overlook our failures or sweep them under the rug. As Abraham once asked God: "
Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25)
Isaiah, who was arguably one of the most upright and holy men of his era, stood before God's throne in a vision and cried out in desperation: "
Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Armies!" (Isaiah 6:5)
Even a man who lived a life of peak morality and spent his mission calling out injustice, when faced with God's holiness, realized the first thing: that he himself was a sinner before God and subject to His righteous judgment.
If that's the case for someone like Isaiah, do you or I stand any chance before a God like that?
Does God's holiness and righteousness leave any room for His love? 😕
In this seemingly impossible situation, God, in His love, provided a solution. And it's a solution that will magnify both of those traits to an unimaginable scale.
Jesus, the Son of God, came from the pure and holy heavens down to this filthy, fallen planet—right into the middle of people who aren't even looking for Him, people who are actively rebelling against Him and trying to wash their consciences clean with "good deeds."
He was the pure and holy King, yet He was born into the absolute depths of poverty in a cave surrounded by livestock, part of a struggling provincial family with the social stigma of nobody knowing who His father was.
For thirty years, He was obedient to His imperfect earthly parents because He wanted to do His Father’s will.
Then He stepped into public life, doing good and teaching people how to live right.
He hung out with the very people society looked down on: tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers.
He never chased fame or cared about what people thought of Him. When they tried to crown Him, He just walked away.
Whenever He healed someone or pulled off a miracle, He made sure nobody found out, because He didn't want to be known just for those things.
In the end, His close friend betrays Him, everyone else abandons Him, and they all pretend they never even knew Him.
He gets hit with false accusations, an unfair trial, mockery, beatings... and He dies the most brutal and shameful death possible for that era—hanging on a Roman cross.
What does any of that have to do with God's righteousness or His love?
Think about it: Jesus, the only man to ever walk this earth without sin, dies the most agonizing death imaginable. Was that just some freak accident that messed up God's plan?
Just a day or two before He is killed, Jesus knows exactly what's coming, and He says this: "
My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, what can I say? Father, will You take this hour from me? No, because that is why I came! Father, glorify Your name!" (John 12:27)
Jesus came to this world specifically for that death on the cross.
The night before He is arrested, He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. He was shaking like a leaf, pleading desperately with the Father, until the sweat on His forehead turned to blood. He prayed: "
Father! If it is Your will, take this cup from me. But not my will, but Yours be done!" (Luke 22:42)
But the Father's will was for Him to take that path, and He accepted it without complaining or wanting revenge on the people who were going to crucify Him.
But there is something deeply strange here.
Why on earth would Jesus, the Son of God, be trembling like a weakling when facing physical death on a cross?🤷
I mean, thousands upon thousands of Christians in the centuries that followed went to Roman crosses or faced lions in arenas with songs on their lips, yet here is the very source of their salvation, shaking like a total coward in front of the cross.
So, what was actually inside that cup the Father offered His Son to drink to the dregs?Here are just two examples where God's cup is mentioned and what it contains:
"
For in the hand of Yahweh is a cup overflowing with wine, spiced with aromatic herbs; He feeds from it, and all the wicked of the earth will drain it to the dregs." (Psalm 75:9)
"
...they shall drink the wine of God's wrath, undiluted, poured into the cup of His fury!" (Revelation 14:10)
When Peter stood up to defend Him with a sword against the soldiers coming to arrest Him along with Judas, Jesus tells him:
"
Put your sword away! Should I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" (John 18:11)
That cup of righteous, divine anger against sin and those who commit it—that was what was handed to Jesus.
He, the only one who was sinless, always pure and holy, had to take my sins and yours upon Himself. He had to face not just Pontius Pilate or the Jewish Sanhedrin, but the holy, righteous, and almighty God, who must judge sin according to justice—with death!
Jesus wasn't afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane of Judas, or the Romans, or being whipped, or the nails, or the wooden cross... He was trembling at the thought of the righteous and angry judgment of God against sin that He was about to shoulder.
And that judgment began when darkness fell over the earth at noon and Jesus cried out from the cross: "My God, my God! Why have You forsaken me?"
This is the one spot in the New Testament where Jesus addresses God as "God" instead of the usual "Father" he uses to celebrate Him. That sin he took upon himself? It shattered the perfect, eternal bond he shared with the Father. And in that moment, God was judging him for the sins of the entire world. God was judging Him for the murders, the human trafficking, the pedophilia, the drug dealing, 9/11—every single disgusting, vile thing we’ve ever done, including all those white lies and those little tax evasions... For all of it, Jesus had to settle the score. The violent lashes of righteous anger from God against those sins tore right through Him. In that moment, Jesus was truly experiencing hell—the total separation from the Father's face while facing God's wrath toward sin.
But then, just three hours later, Jesus cries out, "It is finished!" He drank the cup of God's wrath to the very last drop. Divine justice was satisfied. And finally, He turns back to the Father once more: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
His dead body was laid in a tomb, and after three days, God raised Him from the dead, proving once and for all that justice was fully served on that cross!
So the question for us is this: what are we going to do about our own sins?
Are we going to try to earn our way out through good deeds or some version of religion we made up for ourselves? Are we going to just ignore them? Or are we going to imagine God as some sweet, senile old grandpa who’ll just give us a little pat on the back...
Or are we actually going to admit it: if God really is holy and righteous, then our sin is so massive that it would drive us away from His presence. We have to admit we can't redeem ourselves. We have to hand the entire weight of our sin over to Jesus so He can pay it for us.
Is it really that simple?
When the Apostles were spreading this Good News, they told people to repent—which means turning away from their sins—and to believe.
God saw it all coming, and now, no one has to stand before the righteous judgment of God.
They don't *have* to, but unfortunately, plenty of people will end up standing before God with their sins because they were too proud to submit to Him and to His solution for humanity's greatest problem.
If you truly want God (and I mean the real God, not the fake image people manufacture in their heads) and if you want to be rid of the crushing weight of sin that makes you guilty before Him, God has already provided the answer. He showed such love that He gave His beloved Son to pay for your sin, to wipe away your guilt so you can have uninterrupted fellowship with Him through Jesus. But there is only one condition: you have to repent, turn away from your sin, and believe that Jesus truly died for you and paid your debt on that shameful cross.
