What is about to take place on the cross of Calvary tells us about the tremendous gulf which exists between God and mankind. If a friend of yours goes to the doctor and gets given some potent antibiotic, you know that the doctor has concluded he is suffering from some serious infection that needs that kind of treatment. The treatment indicates what the man must be suffering from. And if Son of God comes down from heaven, and allows himself to pass under the jurisdiction of men and the powers of darkness and suffers and dies in untold agony in order to bear away the punishment of men's sin, this is telling us about the tremendous gulf which exists between God and man. This is always the thing we underestimate most. This human race is in rebellion against God; we are all out for ourselves and our own lives. We want no part with him. We don't want to obey him, learn about him. Because of our sinfulness, there is this mountain of guilt between us and God, and you can't understand the Christian faith until you put that first. That gulf exists between each one of us individually and God. Do you think that it is an easy matter to get his favour, and to establish contact with God? Do you only have to start to pray or go to church, start to believe in him, do some good works and to give up your worst sins? No, friends, it's the most difficult thing imaginable because of the great gulf between us and God. It is impossible apart from what Christ has done. It becomes easy only because he has made this enormous sacrifice. He has come from heaven and he has dealt with the problem. He has taken our place, and paid the price and the punishment due to us for our sins: that is, if we are among those people who seek him and who repent before him and ask for his help and ask for his salvation. Why must sin be such a barrier? After all, we don't let sin come between us as human beings. If a friend does something wrong, that need not come between you. Why is it that our sin must cut us off from God? Because God, unlike us, is absolutely holy, and therefore with our sin we cannot get near him.
Of course, God must punish sin for other reasons too. He is also the infinitely wise God, and if he did not punish sin and shut it out of heaven, heaven itself would be utterly polluted and destroyed. So God will take the firmest possible action against all sin. He will do it also because he is love, because sin is an ugly thing that brings in misery and unhappiness. The very love of God causes him to hate sin. Because sin is cruel, selfish, greedy, I don't care how much damage or hurt I create. The very love of God will punish me because sin is so hurtful and injurious.
Calvary teaches us that men and women cannot themselves do anything to bridge that gulf. That is why God came and did something to bridge the gulf. That is why Christ, the Son of God, came down out of heaven into this world in order to bear his own soul to the punishment of sin, making an atonement for us, taking our punishment for all who seek him. In our pride we imagine sometimes that there must be something we can do, but so great is the debt of our past sin, we could not possibly do anything to cover it or atone for it. Even if we could change our lives today, what about the past? If we could make ourselves perfect from today on, all we would be doing is what God expects of us. How would that atone for the past? And in any case, we cannot improve ourselves. We cannot make ourselves any better. Oh, you can make a few alterations. You can reduce some of your more excessive behaviour, but we that we cannot make any great improvement in ourselves to please him.
Calvary also teaches us something about the size of the price that has to be paid to obtain forgiveness of sin, to wash it out of the way. When the Lord Jesus suffered on Calvary, he had to suffer the punishment due from God for our rebellion. He had to be nailed to a cross and then God the Father had to put upon him all the guilt of the sins of those who would seek forgiveness and punish them in him instead of us. We read in the Bible this kind of language: that the Lord Jesus Christ tasted death for us.
We learn about our Saviour from Calvary. Think of the kind of person who it took to come and do that for us. Who would do such a thing? Of course, only God could do it. Only God, member of the Godhead, could endure the concentrated feeling and pain and anguish and punishment of a whole chapter of banishment, eternal banishment. Only God could sustain that in his soul and feel it and experience it and purge it away for me. Yes, but what about the attitude of the Saviour to do that for me? Who am I? Who are you if you come to the Saviour? Completely unworthy sinners. We have not loved him or served him. We have spurned him, insulted him. What kind of a person does it take in spite of all that to say, I'm going to leave heaven for those people. It tells us about his quite incomprehensible tenderness and compassion and mercy and love.
Calvary tells us something of what God must have in store for those he came to save. You don't go to great lengths to do something unless you've got some plan afoot in your mind. The fact that God would go to such lengths and the Saviour would go to such lengths to come from heaven to suffer and die for us on Calvary's cross, gives us an insight into what he must plan for those who come to him through the eternal ages.
‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness’, the hour that darkness will rule. He said those words, more or less handing himself over to it. But he said those words so that millions of people who come to him need never say them. If you come to Christ, and you trust in him for salvation, you give your life to him, and ask him to pardon and forgive you, you are never going to have to say to the powers of darkness, to the enemies of your soul, ‘This is your hour. I am under your jurisdiction now.’ If you don't come to Christ, you will have to say those words. In your dying hours, when your life is behind you and the light of this world is turning out, then with horror gripping your soul, in terror and in desperation, you will have to say to the powers of darkness, ‘This is your hour.’ You have got to be judged for your sin; you have got to be sent away from the presence of God. The Lord Jesus uttered these words so that those who come to him need never fear such a moment. It was an exchange. Everything he did, he did in our place.