I asked you to provide passages which state Jesus paid the penalty of eternal death on the cross.
Isaiah 53, Romans 3:25-26
Paul speaks in Romans of Christ being publicly displayed as a
propitiation. A propitiation is a wrath-appeasing sacrifice. The bible declares plainly that Christ was publicly displayed by God as a wrath-appeasing sacrifice, that God may both be
just and the
justifier of wicked men.
Proverbs 17:15 reveals the essential paradox; he who punishes the innocent and he who acquits the guilty are both alike an abomination before God. How then can God acquit the guilty? That is why GOD had to become a man in the person of Christ. Only God could do this, punishing any one man for the sins of other men would not be just, see the first part of the aforementioned verse. Yet God, as the very judge, can certainly
voluntarily take the sins of others upon himself. And yet, a man had to be punished for sin, because it is man that stands condemned. The substitute therefore had to be
both God and man in order to resolve the paradox of the moral standard of Proverbs 17:15 and the redemptive purpose of God in the salvation of sinners. This is why God-incarnate, Christ, had to be set forth as a propitiation (a wrath-appeasing sacrifice), in order that the guilty may be acquitted. The only way for there to be a just substitutionary propitiation for the sins of human beings was for
God himself, as a man, to be that substitute.
So lets get to the depth of this. Christ, on the cross, appeased God's wrath. That is what it means to be a propitiation. Appeased God's wrath due what? Sin. With this understanding of what propitiation means, now read Isaiah 53, the whole chapter. He bore our iniquities...it pleased the Lord to crush him...by his stripes we are healed...upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace...etc.
This truth of penal substitution, the blood propitiation of Christ, is taught throughout scripture, from the typological sacrifices of the Old Testament, to the prophesy of Isaiah 53, and all throughout the New Testament.
'you will not find anywhere in the OT where forgiveness was based upon Christ's suffering, shedding His blood, and dying in order to be forgiven.
Not true. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, as I demonstrated a couple posts ago. The Old Testament sacrifices were prefigurative of the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. Read the book of Hebrews for insight into this. Take for example when the priests of Israel would lay their hands on the animal to be slaughtered. This symbolized the
imputation of the sins of israel to the animal, then the animal was slain. Likewise God the Father
imputed the sins of believers to Christ, and then slayed him. The sacrifice of Christ was actually effectual in the remission of sins, for all believers throughout all time, the animal sacrifices merely prefigured this.
But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins
Perhaps because the eternal plan of God was the propitiatory atonement of Christ for the expiation of sin? Christ is indeed the lamb slain from the foundation of the world as, again, the Old Testament sacrificial system prefigures. Christ had the power to forgive sins on earth
because they were going to be
imputed to him and he was going to be the
propitiation for them. We Christians really need to take some time to study the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, it makes things a lot more clear.
Now following all of this, we come to the blessed truth of double imputation. The imputation of our sins to Christ, as expounded above, and the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, as is described clearly in the following two passages of scripture.
"But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God
imputes righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord
shall not impute sin.”
(Romans 4:5-8)
With this passage clearly in mind, let us now look once again at one of the greatest and most powerful verses in the entire bible.
"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him"
(2 Corinthians 5:21)
With the clearly exposition of Romans 4:5-8 in mind, we see that 2 Corinthians 5:21 doesn't make the claim that we are somehow made in our own selves as righteous as Christ was. It is referring to double imputation, the imputation of our sins to Christ and the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. We become the righteousness of God, in him. When we are joined with him through faith, we become the righteousness of God. Imputed righteousness. It is only by this imputed righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, by which we stand before a perfectly Holy and Just God.
This is also why salvation cannot be lost; we are accounted righteous apart from works by the imputed righteousness of Christ. We are justified by the righteousness of Christ, not our own righteousness. To say that one can lose their salvation is to say that
our own righteousness determines our justification. I have sufficiently proven the opposite from scripture.
The cross of Jesus Christ is the intersection of the infinite justice and the infinite mercy of God.
A carefully studied and correct understanding of the nature of the propitiation of Christ leads inescapably to the truth of the doctrines of the total depravity of man, unconditional election, effectual grace, and the perseverance of the saints. All five points of reformed soteriology flow inescapably from both the whole counsel of God's word and from deductive reasoning.
