“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:”
(Romans 8:3)

The law, as perfect and holy as it is, could not, cannot and will not ever release the guilty for the sake of Mercy, without its satisfaction in precept and penalty. It is not that the law is weak. Its strength is what condemns sinners every day to everlasting damnation. But the flesh of sinful men is weak to satisfy its just demands. Sinners are unable to satisfy it, yet it can do no less than DEMAND absolute perfection. Not even God Himself can acquit sinners or show mercy unless His law and justice are first satisfied to the fullest extent, equal with HIS righteousness.

Therefore, God sent His own Eternal Son in the “LIKENESS of sinful flesh.” He was born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) and not a direct descendant of Adam, inseminated in the womb by God’s Spirit (Luke 1:35) but wholly and perfectly MAN, like the sinful, depraved, condemned sinners He came to save. And yet He had no sin, nor ever experienced it, either in His life or in His death: (Hebrews 4:15) It was necessary that He be the SINLESS Lamb of God because God can accept nothing less than perfection and remain holy and just. When the Scripture says that He was “MADE sin” (2nd Corinthians 5:21) it is with the qualification: “Who knew no sin.” It cannot mean that He was made sinful nor a sinner because even in death He had to remain the Perfect Lamb. It says He died “THE JUST for the unjust”, not a sinner for the unjust (1st Peter 3:18).

Some foolishly argue that God could not have killed His Son had He not been made sinful like them. However, nothing about His death shows Him to have died the death of a sinner. His was not a natural death that sinners die but rather: the death of a Substitute. The Scripture says that He died “FOR SIN” and not in sin. So complete was His sacrifice “FOR SIN” that God was satisfied, once and for all on behalf of those FOR whom He died. They are said to be redeemed, justified, sanctified, adopted and forgiven fully and freely “BY HIS BLOOD” (Romans 5:9). It is His death “FOR SIN”, reckoned His BY IMPUTATION, not infused [or created] in Him, that He put away the sin of His people once for all: (Hebrews 10:10). “Now, where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.” (Hebrews 10:18) Anything more or less is NOT substitution.

Those that He redeemed, God has already simultaneously justified fully and in time either has given or will give them His Spirit, to make alive Spiritually (Titus 3:5) indwell (Romans 8:9) and REVEAL in them this Blessed, Glorious, Sinless Substitute. Christ indwells the believing sinner through Spirit-given-Faith: (Ephesians 3:17). This is the Truth of the Gospel of Christ, as the Justifying Sacrifice FOR SIN, on which the believing sinner rests ALL his hope.

K. Wimer