He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God. Romans 4:25

Suppose you saw an ad for a laundry detergent that admitted that their product doesn’t get your clothes very clean and suggested the solution is for you not to get your clothes so dirty. However honest the commercial might be, how likely are you to buy that product?

What if instead of improving their product, they gave you a list of things you could do to prevent dirty clothes, like wearing a disposable bib when eating, using better antiperspirants. Wearing dark colors or keeping your children inside, etc.

Yet when it comes to dealing with the problem of sin and falling short of God’s glory, that is how some Christian teachings come across. It’s an example of what is called “blaming the victim”. As today’s verse tells us, that instead of blaming the victim, Jesus became our victim. Clearly, Jesus isn’t blaming the victim.

The Bible tells us that “there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ” (Rom 8:1). And we must take seriously the truth that our sin debt has been paid by Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice on the cross (Heb. 10:13). And that God, “has cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” (Col 2:15). In Jesus, we are new creations (2 Cor. 5:21).

The fact is, Jesus shattered our sentence of guilt by becoming the victim in our place. That’s good news. Jesus’ good news is really works, unlike the laundry detergent in our illustration. He’s the good news. He doesn’t need to blame you for your soiled clothes. He’s already taken the blame and provided a purification that is beyond anything we could ever soil. (Heb 9:14, 1 Jn 1:7)