Instead of Punishment, Let's Get Ice Cream
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
Have you ever been caught red-handed? You know, like your mom told you that you couldn’t have a snack before dinner and about 15 minutes later she walks in the kitchen and there you are sneaking some Oreo’s from the pantry. Well, it happens to all of us, doesn’t it? We often get caught in the act of disobeying.
One day I caught my son deliberately disobeying something that his mother had told him not to do. He was busted and he knew it. The punishment was surely coming his way. And while he certainly deserved it, I thought it might be a good opportunity to teach him about grace.
I said, “You know that you deliberately disobeyed Mom, right?” He hung his head low, “Yes.” “And you know that you deserve to be punished for what you did, right?” A tear was starting to slowly swell in his left eye. “Yes,” he barely managed to squeak out. “Well, get your shoes on because we’re going to get ice cream instead!”
He looked at me like I was a little crazy, and of course he was also afraid to be excited because he thought it might be a trap! “Sam, do you know what grace is?” I asked. “Not really.” “Well, grace is getting the opposite of what we actually deserve. Today you disobeyed and you deserve to be punished, but I’m actually giving you the opposite of what you deserve today…ice cream instead of punishment. Do you know why I’m doing that? Because all of us have deliberately disobeyed God, and we all deserve eternal punishment, but do you know what he offers us instead?”
He was starting to smile, “Grace?” “That’s right. Because Jesus took our punishment for us, we actually get the opposite of what we deserve! We deserve death, but we get eternal life…we deserve God’s wrath but instead we get his eternal delight and love.”
Listen, today the good news is not that you are better than you thought you were. It’s not even that God is going to give you some time to work things out. The Bible is very real and tells us that the good news starts with the fact that you’ve been caught…you are guilty. The truth is that you are actually worse than you think you are!
Obviously if we just stopped there it would be pretty depressing, but the Bible doesn’t stop there. It says that God loves you so much that he decided to punish his own son in your place. And when Jesus died for our sins, do you know what he cried out on the cross? He said, “It is finished!” What is finished? Since God is holy and just he couldn’t just forget about your sin, he had to deal with it…and when Jesus cried out “It is finished!” what he meant is that God has fully dealt with your sin. Jesus took all of your punishment.
You see, grace is getting the opposite of what you deserve. And today because God punished his own Son, he is able to look down on you and say, “I am well pleased with you!”