Welcome to The Journey, a collection of short videos to help you on your journey to Jesus. Please follow our page. We're going to upload two or three of these segments each week, and we hope they'll be a blessing to you as you seek to follow after our Lord. I have a question for you as we begin this segment, and that is this. Can God forgive sin without punishing it? Can God forgive sin without punishing it? Some big religions teach that if you just go to God and say, God, I'm sorry, please forgive me, that God somehow has a magic ability just to Mark that out as if that was okay. But let's think about it in a human court. Would it be just at a trial if your loved one had been harmed and the judge is there and the criminal that did the harm, who is guilty, is sitting there in that defendant's chair. If the judge just listened to them as they said to the judge, judge, I am really sorry. Will you please forgive me? And the judge just said, okay, I forgive you. If a judge did that, that judge would be guilty of the crime that that person had committed because they looked at what they had done and they said, it's okay. And in saying it was okay, they had broken that law in a sense themselves. That's not justice. You know, God has provided a way, praise God, of justice and mercy or forgiveness. The Bible says in Isaiah 53, five, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. Jesus Christ on the cross was whipped. Jesus Christ on the cross was crucified, the Bible says, because of our sin. It says in Isaiah 53 10, He had it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. If you were on trial today before God, it would be like this. God would call the law to give record against you. And the law would say guilty of, and a very long list of crimes would follow. The Bible says that even every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. And so that list is incredibly long where we have broken God's law. And the Bible says that if we've broken God's law in one point, that we're guilty of all. And so God would look at us and he'd say, uh, guilty. And, uh, we could, we could plead and we'd say something like, well, uh, judge, I, I, I understand what the law has said, and I, I am guilty, uh, but I'll do community service. You know, as if I could somehow work off that and the judge looks at me and says, you know, it's a death penalty. Or you say, well, I've got a good attorney. I think I can get my way out of this and plead ignorance. Or I don't believe that you have the authority to cast me into prison or the punishment that you intend. And yes, we think about this with God's judgment seat. Somebody could say, well, I'll do good works. And God would say, you know, good works aren't gonna get rid of the fact of your crime. I'll get a good attorney. You know, people think that somehow they'll talk their way out of it when they stand before God. And yet God has the law there to testify against them. Somebody could say, but I don't believe in you, God. I don't believe that you have the authority. And yet God does not disappear just because somebody is an atheist. But as God looks at you, in this fictional courtroom and he says, guilty and worthy of death in the lake of fire. At that point, imagine the judge's son stands up in silent obedience to his father and exits the courtroom to be punished for your crime. And you hear the sounds of the crucifixion. You hear the mocking of the soldiers. You hear this spitting upon him and the buffeting of him and punching him. You hear that whip lacerating the body of the Lord Jesus Christ and whipping the flesh off of his body. You hear as the nails are hammered into his hands and into his feet, and he is put upon that cross of shame naked to die as a thief for you. And there on that cross, Jesus Christ dies and pays the complete price for your sin. The Bible says that's exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ did. It says it this way in Colossians 2.14, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. What Jesus Christ did is provide a way of justice and mercy, justice because he died for our sins. Again on the cross, he said those words, it is finished. It means paid in full. It means there's nothing else to be done. It's not us saying to judge, judge your son died for me, but I'd also like to do something to try to merit my own salvation or to pay for my own crimes. And the judge would say to me, there's nothing you could do, but spend eternity in the lake of fire to pay for your sin. But I offer you as a free gift a judicial pardon because of what my son, Jesus Christ in this case, did on the cross for your sin. And I can justly forgive you. Praise God, where those religions teach that God will just blindly forgive one sin, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ paid the complete price for all our sins. And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and the Bible says, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God is willing to do that good work in your life today, friend, if you've never been forgiven judicially by God, pardoned for your sin, your sin that is worthy of condemnation and judgment eternally. in the lake of fire. Jesus Christ paid it all. There's nothing for you to do but to receive God's gift of everlasting life. Praise God. He provided a way of justice and mercy.