What God requires for heaven comes as a surprise to most people. According to the Bible, no person who has ever sinned can enter heaven. Only those who are perfect and without sin many dwell in the presence of God. How God accomplished this impossible task is perhaps the greatest work of grace ever displayed in the creation of the universe.
The process of justification is a singular act of God whereby He removes the sins of a person and causes them to exist as if they had never sinned before. Justification and the resulting effects of this legal procedure declares a person “not guilty.” In the very essence of the word, “Justification” carries the Idea of perfection. If we dismantle the word, we see that it states within itself what it does: “Just-as-if-I-had-never-sinned.” The complete process of Justification transforms a guilty sinner into a morally perfect being, resulting in a standing before God that causes them to exist as if they had never sinned at any time throughout their life.
Justification is the only means by which a Holy God can accept a sinner and cleanse him of his sin so that he is fit for heaven. When anyone places his complete trust in the finished work that Jesus accomplished on the Cross, God justifies him and makes that person completely and perfectly righteous forever.
The process of justification does not mean that the sins of a person are swept aside or ignored. In order for justification to occur, a penalty must be executed upon the guilty person who has committed the sins. The penalty for sin is death. Therefore, no sin can be forgiven or removed until the death of the guilty has taken place.
The process of justification does, however, allow an innocent substitute to assume all of the failures of the guilty person and take the penalty himself. A large part of the plan of God in allowing Jesus to suffer for the sins of all men was that God would have a righteous basis to forgive our sins. The pronouncement of God was that the soul that sins will die.
Ezekiel 18:4 “Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father As well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die.”
In order for God to be seen as Just, He must punish sin by the death of the guilty. In making our salvation a reality, God did not overlook our sin. He punished it just as He promised. This was accomplished by a provision in the law of God that an innocent could take the penalty for the guilty, and thereby set them free.
Leviticus 1:3-4 “If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish; he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the LORD. 4 Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.”
The law of God allowed the substitutionary death of someone whose life was perfect and had sufficient value. That sacrifice had to be a male, without blemish (sin) and offered of his own free will. Jesus met all of these strict requirements. Some of the many requirements that God made for an acceptable sacrifice are described throughout the Old Testament. Jesus met all of these demands.
As all people were made guilty by the sin of one man—Adam, all those who believe in and receive Jesus as the “second Adam” are made righteous.
1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
Jesus has existed forever as the Son of God who abided in the closest and most intimate place of fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. These three, being One, were in total agreement that the Son would offer His life as a substitute for the sins of all people, for all time.
Jesus was perfect and without sin.
In order for Jesus to be able to remove our sins and make us as if we had never sinned, He had to be made sin. This is a process of great mystery that occurred during Jesus’ death on the cross. At some point unseen by any mortal being, Jesus had the entire number of all the sins ever committed, absorbed into Him. When His death occurred, so also did all of the sins of the world. Jesus was made sin—our sin—so that we could be made righteous by His sacrifice.
2 Corinthians 5:21 For God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
God’s promise is that He would appropriate or place into the account of anyone, who believes this fact, complete righteousness as a result of their trust in what Jesus has done. Justification does not occur until a person believes in Jesus as his Savior personally, after sincere repentance for his sins. God cannot make any person righteous through the legal procedure of Jesus’ death for their sins, until that person receives Jesus death for their sins, personally and absolutely.
Hebrews 9:22 And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.
Because we do not understand the severity of sins, we cannot comprehend the importance of a sacrifice required to discharge them. Mankind has lived so long with the presence of sin that we have become immune to its effects.
The world that we observe today is only a mere glimpse of what God originally created.
We see the beauty and complexity of the vast expanse of space, the earth and the microscopic world of the atom, and believe that we have beheld grandeur. Before the fall of man when sin entered the human race, there was an elegance and perfection within every person that is impossible for any of us to comprehend.
The ancient Hebrew scholars describe the creation of Adam as a moment of great wonder for the angelic world. Many of the angels in their observation of Adam believed that he was like God because he so closely resembled Yahweh who created him.[1] He was perfect in beauty, righteousness, and wisdom. We have no idea what sin has done to us, or the world in which we live. God has observed the horrors that sin has ravaged upon humankind and the creation which was in the beginning— good and He was compelled to redeem it.
Sin was and is such a great travesty that it required a great remedy. Only the perfect and eternal life of the Son of God was sufficient to satisfy the great requirement of God’s justice against all sin. Only the limitless value of Jesus’ life as the Creator of all things could equal and surpass the great number of human sins.
While thinking about this problem of man’s sin and the high cost involved to remove them, I began to run some computations to get an idea of the number of sins committed by people since Adam in Prophecy 262.
If we take an average age of 50 years for all generations of people since Adam, taking into account both higher life spans at the beginning as well as lower life spans, up until the 20th century, we can estimate the number of sins committed for all time.[2]
Calculating that at least 50 times a day, a human being sins in thought, word, and deed. This number may seem high to those who do not believe they are much of a sinner. In actuality, we probably sin much more than this, since every thought and intent of our heart is towards sin continually (Genesis 6).
Taking the estimate made by experts who have stated that 110 Billion people have lived on the earth to this point.[3]
We come to a staggering conclusion.
50 sins per day x 365.25 days = 18,262.5 sins per year, times 50 years = 913,125 sins per person, per lifetime.
Multiplying the sins of each person by the number of persons who have lived on the earth since the first man, we come to the astounding number of a little over 100 Trillion sins (See Prophecy 242).
It was for this great number of sins that Jesus departed heaven, took the form of a man at Bethlehem, and died for us. In doing so, He removed the record of wrong that was against us, to which we had no hope of changing ourselves.
It was Jesus’ blood that He shed for us at the cross, that paid the price we owed for our own sin. To those who choose to believe this, they have their record of wrong expunged, and exist as perfect beings forever.
1 John 1:7 … the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
For those who reject this promise by God, there remains no other way in which they can be saved. These people will stand before God at the Great White Throne judgement, described by Revelation Chapter 20:11, and pay the ultimate penalty for their sins: forfeiture of eternal life with God. If after hearing that only Jesus’ blood and the sacrifice that He made for us for our sins, is rejected by a person, there remains no other means by which God may save him. This person has insulted God and rejected the Holy Spirit who has come to him with an offer of hope and eternal life.
Hebrews 10:26-29 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.28 Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
Jesus death and resurrection is the method of conveyance that God has chosen to remove our sins. We would all be wise to obey the gospel and receive the provision for salvation that God has provided for us.
Part 2: Jesus Carried Your Sins So You No Longer Have To
NOTES:
[1] The legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg, translated from the german manuscript by Henrietta Szold, volume I, Bible times and characters from the creation to Jacob, to my brother asher. http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/loj/loj104.htm …even the angels thought Adam the lord of all, and they were about to salute him with “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts,” when God caused sleep to fall upon him, and then the angels knew that he was but a human being.
[2] 1.Sullivan, Arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2012 Sex). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 473. ISBN 0-13-063085-3.
2.John S. Millar and Richard M. Zammuto (1983). “Life Histories of Mammals: An Analysis of Life Tables”. Ecology (Ecological Society of America) 64 (4): 631–635. doi:10.2307/1937181. JSTOR 1937181.
3.Eliahu Zahavi,Vladimir Torbilo & Solomon Press (1996) Fatigue Design: Life Expectancy of Machine Parts. CRC Press. ISBN 0-8493-8970-4
[3] http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx
Categories: An all sufficient sacrifice, Forgiveness of Sin, How Salvation Occurs, Justification, Salvation through Jesus, The Claims of Jesus, What is required for Heaven?
Robert Clifton Robinson 
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