The issue that lay at the heart of this debate between Paul and these synagogue leaders was the question of how God deals with sin. Paul was trying to convince them that God requires a payment to be made for our sins, one that goes far deeper than anything we humans could even provide. But most of those elders appear to have believed that God can simply ignore our sins if He chooses to. And that difference of opinion likely determined whether or not any elder believed what Paul was telling them: that God’s Messiah had to die. They were asking themselves: Is sin really a problem, or is it something God can dismiss with a wave of His hand? Probably everyone in that room believed that God would someday send the Messiah to save them, but they differed greatly on what they thought He would do when He arrived. Most had been raised to believe the Messiah would be an extraordinarily gifted human being who would rise up to lead Israel to world dominance. To support their position they could point to an abundance of promises in the Bible which picture the Messiah arriving in glory to destroy enemy armies, re-gather the people of Israel into their land, prosper them, and bring peace to the whole world. Paul, on the other hand, was showing them in passage after passage that sin always produces death, and unless that sin is transferred to someone else there can be no forgiveness. Then he would have shown them that God had appointed the Messiah to die for our sins, and also had promised that He would raise Him from the dead. Paul was trying to convince them that God cannot simply ignore human sin. His justice demands that our sins be paid for, not ignored. And if it isn’t, we stand condemned before God, and instead of blessing us, when the Messiah arrives in glory, He will have to condemn us.