Tuesday May 7, 2024

Romans 8:3
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,
he condemned sin in the flesh.

God sent his Son. He is called in the text ‘his own Son’ to distinguish him from us who are only his sons by creation, or his sons by regeneration and adoption. He sent his own Son and he sent him in the flesh. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born into this world; he took upon himself our manhood: ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’, and the apostles declare that they ‘beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ The text uses very important words. It says that God sent his Son ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh,’ not in the likeness of flesh, for that would not be true, but in the same likeness as our sinful flesh. He was to all intents and purposes like ourselves, ‘in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’, with all our sinless infirmities, with all our tendencies to suffer, with everything human in him except that which comes to be human through human nature having fallen. He was perfectly man; he was like ourselves; and God sent him ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’. The joy of his coming is still in our hearts. He lived here his thirty two or thirty three years, but he was sent, the text tells us, for a reason which caused him to die. He was sent ‘for sin’. This may mean that he was sent to do battle with sin, or that he was sent because sin was in the world, or, best of all, that he was sent to be a sin-offering. He was sent that he might be the substitute for sinners. God’s great plan was this, that inasmuch as his justice could not overlook sin, and sin must be punished, Jesus Christ should come and take the sin of his people upon himself, and upon the accursed tree, the cross of ignominious note, should suffer what was due on our behalf, and that then through his sufferings the infinite love of God should stream forth without any contravention of his infinite justice. This is what God did.

C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 1) (Day One Publications, 1998)
Scripture for opening text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.