"As to the death of the body, according to God's wisdom, and in a manner similar to his course in many other cases, the curse is made no longer a curse, because the sting is removed, and the death of the body, otherwise so intimately connected with eternal death, now introduces the Christian into Eternal Life.
"The death of Christ included the Penalty in all its Fulness. In it He offered up his body and was laid in the grave. In it the separation from God took place by which he was led to feel Himself forsaken. "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me,"* was His cry of agony. That His death was not eternal, as would ours have been, arose from the fact that in the execution of the sentence of condemnation, God found in Him not such a victim as mere man would have been, unable to Atone, or render Full Satisfaction; but one whose glorious nature gave Infinite Value to Suffering, and Who could feel most keenly, yet could Bear without destruction, the Wrath of God.
* Because my sins were on Jesus, causing Him to die, and God can't look upon sin.
Jesus didn't become a sinner by having my sin Placed on Him, .
but THE PENALTY FOR MY SIN WAS.
WHERE in all your writings on this do you require the sinner to have any awareness of their sin and how much it Offends God and, then, where do you show how the Reality of sin is dealt with, by God?
"The Scriptures represent just such a Penalty to have been endured by Christ, accompanied by just such agonies. No one can read the accounts given by the evangelists without being impressed by the fact that they ascribe just such a character to His sufferings on Calvary.
"But, independently of their General Statements, we have the class of passages just referred to, that in which Christ's suffering is represented as the Penalty of our transgressions.
"In Zechariah 13:7 we have that remarkable prophecy which can be applied to Christ as it has never been applied to any save Christ.
"Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd,
and against the Man that is My Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts."
"The context speaks of a purging of Jerusalem, out of the trial of which a third part shall be brought, and the means by which this is done is the smiting of the shepherd, and the scattering of the sheep, through which action they are refined, and he says,
"they shall call on My Name, and I will hear them:
I will say, It is My people; and they shall say, The Lord is my God." Zech. 13:9.
"Isaiah 53:5. "The chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed."
The latter part of this verse is quoted in 1 Peter 2:24.
"Isaiah 53:8. "For the transgression of my people was he stricken."
"Verse 9. Declares his perfect innocence and then
"Verse 10 says:
"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, &c."
"Matt. 20:28. "Even as the Son of man came, . . . to give his life, a ransom for many."
"Rom. 5:10. "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life."
"Rom. 6:10. "For the death that he died, he died unto sin once."
"1 Cor. 15:3. "For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."
"2 Cor. 5:14, 15. "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
that one died for all, therefore all died; And he died for all, &c."
"2 Cor. 5:21. "Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf."
"Gal. 3:13. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,
having become a curse for us."
"Col. 1:21, 22. "And you, being in time past alienated . . .
yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death."
"Heb. 9:26. "But now once, at the end of the ages,
hath He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."
Adapted from
Abstract of Systematic Theology, James P. Boyce | The Reformed Reader
