Having established that all of humanity - Greek, Jewish, Pagan or otherwise

- has at its heart the brokenness of sin. Paul then depicts the glorious

act of God righting what was wrong. Sin is a cosmic, societal, but also

particularly personal problem and it is far more than simply moral

performance. In Jesus God becomes the lightening rod of all human sin, and

in his body, he gives it what it deserves - annihilation. Jesus’ death is

not a just death at the hands of God, it is an unjust death at the hands of

sinful humanity. Jesus is what humanity was always supposed to be -

innocent and perfect. And in his sinlessness he takes on humanity’s sin in

his body to destroy it on the cross forever. God’s justice is then

gloriously displayed in raising the innocent Jesus from the dead. Death

cannot hold the guiltless God-Man. God makes a spectacle of all the powers

of evil - personal, religious, societal, national and supernatural -

exposing them for what they are and robbing them on the cross of their

power. What this means to us is that God is not angry - he never was. God

is love. And it means all our attempts to appease him through moral or

religious performance are futile. None of us will be good enough, but he

is. We can simply receive the gift of sin destroyed. And it means we can be

changed. Jesus’ death is the defining emancipation of the whole universe.

It sets us free from all the power of sin, death and the devil, and

restores to us his image-bearing vocation - to be his people and do his

work.