How was it that Jesus, considering He is fully God, and God is not able to have sin anywhere near Him, can take all of our sins on Himself? Having trouble wrapping my mind around this. I fully believe what Jesus did, however, this is a bit confusing for me.
Great question.
You are operating with a misunderstanding common to a LOT of people, that “God is not able to have sin anywhere near Him.” That’s not true. First, consider Job 1, where the Holy Spirit pulls back the curtain on heaven and we see Satan striding confidently into heaven’s throne room. God allowed the most evil of creatures access to Himself. Second, consider the incarnation, where the Son wrapped Himself in human flesh and entered the sin-filled world where he was literally surrounded by nothing but sinful people His entire earthly existence.
I think it’s helpful to look at Habakkuk 1:13, where the prophet writes, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” This is Habakkuk’s perspective on God, but it is not teaching doctrine. We know from Job 1 that while He is pure, it does not prevent Him from looking on evil. We also know that God is so longsuffering, He does tolerate wrongdoing. He just won’t tolerate it forever.
Does this help remove the obstacle to acknowledging that the Holy One can take all our sin into and onto Himself while on the cross? Even without fully understanding what a deep mystery it is?
Blessing you,
Sue Bohlin
Thanks so much for getting back to me and yes that helped and yes it is very deep and mind boggling. And what is it that they say? To completely understand something like that we would then have the mind of God, right?
Posted Sept. 2022
© 2022 Probe Ministries
Sue Bohlin
Sue Bohlin is an associate speaker/writer and webmistress for Probe Ministries. She attended the University of Illinois, and has been a Bible teacher and conference speaker for over 40 years. She is a speaker for MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) and Stonecroft Ministries (Christian Women's Connections), and serves on the board of Living Hope Ministries, a Christ-centered outreach to those dealing with unwanted homosexuality. Sue is on the Bible.org Women's Leadership Team and is a regular contributor to Bible.org's Engage Blog. In addition to being a professional calligrapher, she is the wife of Probe's Dr. Ray Bohlin and the mother of a son in San Francisco and another son who joined his baby sister in heaven in 2024.. Her personal website is suebohlin.com.
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Dear Sue,
I love Probe Ministries and your bold defense of the gospel.
Consider this astounding mystery. God MADE Jesus to BE sin. “That we might become the righteousness of God in Christ,” is the joyous part that often obscures the reality that made our abiding and fixed righteousness possible.
A few months ago, for some reason, I stopped after reading “God made Him, who knew no sin, to BE sin.” How can that be? I can sooner believe that God, by His grace and love, can impart righteousness to me (not merely imputing it as He did for Abraham) than I can believe how God could MAKE His sinless Son TO BE SIN.
This brings me to the logic of a justice-mystery. It is the only way God could remove sin. We have believed, for decades, in substitutionary atonement, that Jesus bore our sins when He took our place. But, this is good as partial theology but only elevates Jesus’s death above that of lambs in quality of the sacrifice, even in its superiority. But, it does not explain the mystery of the scapegoat who took away all sin. It was fulfilled in a Lamb Who would both die FOR our sins (forgiveness) and die AS our sin (removal) of all sin, making way for righteousness to reign with no competition, ever.
Only God can do the impossible. This exchange is impossible even to imagine without seeing, with the aid of the Spirit, the mystery of Christ, the mystery of our union with Him.
Noel, love the depth of your grasp of this gloriously deep theology! Thank you for sharing this insight!!