Today on Good Friday, Christians soberly remember the execution of Jesus Christ on the cross. We remember that his death was the result of our sin and mourn the part we played in his crucifixion. We also breathe a prayer of genuine relief and thanksgiving that it was he, and not we, who experienced the cross and all that it encompassed.

Unfortunately, his atoning death on the cross proves to be a hurdle for some unbelievers and a trip hazard for some of the faithful.

In my discussions with atheists, one of the objections sometimes raised is that it is unfair for someone to punished for someone else’s crimes. Not only is it unfair, but it violates true justice because the criminal himself doesn’t actually suffer any consequences for what he did wrong. Therefore, the idea that Jesus died for everyone’s sins is irrational and not truly just.

Usually their objection boils down to a question similar to this one: How is it possible for someone to be punished for someone else’s crimes, for which that person, and that person alone, is responsible?

To make it even more concise the question is, Why should I have to pay for what Adam did and why should Jesus have to pay for what I did?

To understand how this is possible, we need to first separate our local standard of justice from the biblical standard of justice. Trying to understand God’s justice through the world’s system of justice is exactly the wrong way to do it. We need to flip our approach 180 degrees and start with what the Bible says about sin, its consequences, and how Jesus assumes the consequences on our behalf.

THE ORIGIN OF SIN AND DEATH
Most atheists are familiar with the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis, even if they dismiss it as myth. But it is here that we start because we’re looking at what the Bible says about justice, not what we say about it.

After creating the world and stocking it with flora and fauna, God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, “to work it and take care of it.” But he also warned him, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (see Gen. 2:15-17).

Here we see a command to follow—don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—and the consequence of disobedience: if you do, you will die. What this meant was that, in addition to physically wearing out, Adam would be spiritually separated from God.

Adam, as we all know, takes that consequential bite of the forbidden fruit and “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

There are several options for interpreting this Pauline passage with various levels of support, but the one shared most widely by biblical scholars is that we were all “in” Adam when he sinned. The term “world” is a reference to humanity, the whole of which existed in Adam (whose name, after all, means “man” or “mankind”) at the fall. As the British theologian John Stott put it in his commentary on this passage, “All died because all sinned in and through Adam, the representative or federal head of the human race.”

Interestingly, this does not absolve us of individual acts of disobedience, “because all sinned.” While we cascaded from Adam under judgment spiritually and biologically, we are each responsible for the choices we make to sin. Writes Grant Osborne,

All people have inherited corruption from Adam and then have participated in that sin. Therefore, they are guilty from two directions—the sinful nature inherited from Adam (passive sin) and their personal participation in that via their own sins (active sin). In fact, this is the basic difference of Christianity from all other religions, the nature of total depravity and the universal guilt of all people under sin. It is this that necessitated the cross, for this guilt is so severe that no human effort could ever assuage it” (The IVP New Testament Commentary Series: Romans, 2004; emphasis added).

THE NECESSITY OF THE CROSS
Here’s the dilemma, then: mankind has sinned in Adam and is, therefore, subject to death, the penalty for that sin. What to do? How does one pay for sin without suffering death? “The wages of sin,” writes Paul, “is death” (Rom. 6:23). It’s what we earn for being sinners. We are utterly incapable of freeing ourselves from the consequences because the penalty must (literally) be paid.

Originally God instituted the sacrificial system found in the Old Testament as a temporary means of atonement, a substitutionary act which covers or satisfies payment for an offense. These sacrifices often required the death of an animal—a blood sacrifice—because “the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Leviticus 17:11).

As long as the Israelite community made regular sacrifices, they held God’s wrath at bay. But we’re told in Hebrews that such sacrifices were inadequate. “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11). In other words, it was not a permanent remedy for sin.

And that brings us back to what Paul wrote in Romans 5. “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all men, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (vv. 18-19).

In other words, just as Adam’s one act of disobedience was enough to condemn every one of his human descendants, so Jesus Christ’s one act of obedience—his death on a cross—was enough to absolve all of those who are “in Christ” of Adam’s sin.

And that is what the next verses in Hebrews 10 affirm: “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (12-14).

This is perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of all: Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world. That boat has sailed. Condemnation is where we start because being under condemnation is the world in its natural state.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:16-18).

We are, all of us, blithely drifting on a tide that terminates in permanent separation from God. Jesus’ death on the cross, which we remember today, is the only permanent solution to avoid that fate. By his substitutionary atonement, Jesus frees us from the penalty of universal and personal sin and graciously welcomes us back to where we belong—in relationship with God.

May we see it and rejoice.