The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he offered up to God once, through the eternal Spirit, has fully satisfied the justice of his Father and has purchased not only reconciliation but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father has given to him.
(WCF 8.5)
Statistically things are grim, one in every one of us will die. Now much of the thinking of the western world is that like with anything that dies it just ceases to exist. That just simply isn’t true when it comes to the reality as revealed by our Creator. No, we are beings that were created with a plan and a purpose (Gen 1:26-28, Ps 8:4-6) and every single man, woman and child will have to give an account to the God (of whose image we bear) with how we lived in His world (Ez 18:4, Rom 14:8, 1 Cor 6:19, c.f. Rev 20:11-13).
Now this is where things become grim. Human beings were created to love and serve our creator in perfect relationship, which we had (Gen 1:28a, 31), yet the root of all humanity and our representative - Adam - well he rejected God’s instruction and thus bought the curse of sin into the world, and with sin, spiritual death on us all (Gen 3:6-19, Rom 5:12-21 c.f. Rom 6:23a) and thus each and every single person that comes from the line of Adam is totally corrupted with sin in every area of our being (Ps 51:5, 109:14). Sin isn’t something we occasionally do or think about, but something that leads and guides us from the very core of our being (Jer 14:12, Matt 15:19-20, Jam 3:6) and thus each and ever single person is under the death penalty and will be met with eternal consequences (Heb 2:2, 10:29, Rev 20:13, 21:8).
Now if that was all there was to the story, this indeed wouldn’t just be bad news, it would be terribly horrendous news. It would mean that we were created, our first parent blew it and now all we - like sheep have gone astray - and have nothing to look forward to but the eternal consequences of our very real rebellion! Well this is where there is wonderfully hopeful good news! If sin’s penalty is death, then what if there was someone like Adam that didn’t come by totally natural means, that was another representative of the human race? And what if this second Adam perfectly obeyed everything that our Creator gave us to do in every which way and then like Adam credited His perfect standing to us? Well this is exactly what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about.
You see because of Adam, there is no amount of good works, religious jargon, or neat living that could wash the stain of sin from our account (Isa 1:10-15, 64:6) and thus there was or is NOTHING that we can do to make ourselves guiltless before our Creator. Enter Jesus Christ. You see it’s as the confession sums up here in chapter 8, all human beings are under a curse and deserve death and hell, yet because of the mercy and grace of God, He sent His only begotten Son Jesus who - as the second Adam - lived a perfect life on behalf of His people and thus when He was crucified, God accepted His very life as an atoning sacrifice (Jn 3:16, 2 Cor 5:21, Gal 3:13). To put that as simply as I can, Jesus acted like a substitute for you and me, He played the part we never could (sinless perfection), and thus when He went to the cross and His life was bought before the judge of the living and the dead, the curse of death couldn’t be lawfully dished out. That’s why death couldn’t hold Jesus in the grave, it couldn’t be His final verdict because He never once sinned (Rom 3:23-26, 1 Jn 2:2, 4:10 c.f. Heb 4:15, 1 Pet 2:22)
Now this is where things get AWESOME. The bible clearly says that if anyone calls upon the name of the Lord they will be saved (Rom 10:13) - How does this happen? Well like Adam’s sin was credited to us, by the gift of faith Jesus’ perfect standing is credited to us and thus the stain of sin is completely washed away and we are eternally clothed in the righteousness of Jesus (Rom 5:12-21). Yes, all we like sheep have gone astray, but it was the pleasure of our Creator to lay on His Son the savage iniquity of us all, and because of His substitutionary atonement, we are reconciled to our Creator, to our Father in Heaven, never to be snatched away again (Isa 53:6, Rom 8:15, 35-39). May we live in the light and hope of the gospel.