“Christ’s death is the Christian’s life” by J.C. Ryle

Posted at Tolle Lege:

“These verses show us the peculiar plan by which the love of God has provided salvation for sinners. That plan is the atoning death of Christ on the cross. 

Our Lord says to Nicodemus, ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ 

By being ‘lifted up,’ our Lord meant nothing less than His own death upon the cross. That death, He would have us know, was appointed by God to be ‘the life of the world.’ (John 6:51.) It was ordained from all eternity to be the great propitiation and satisfaction for man’s sin. 

It was the payment, by an Almighty Substitute and Representative, of man’s enormous debt to God. When Christ died upon the cross, our many sins were laid upon Him.

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