Some of you might have seen that title and are already wanting to click away. Please don't. Regardless of your beliefs, I hope you will listen to (or read, I guess) what I have to say.

Growing up in church, I heard the phrase "Jesus died on the cross for our sins" a lot of times. Chances are, you've heard something along those lines before too. It was always one of those things that I just kinda accepted. But truthfully—I didn't really know what it meant, or what the impact of it was.

And guys, the more I learned, the more it just blew my mind. So please—whatever you believe, whatever your thoughts on Jesus are, I ask you to read this with an open mind.

Jesus's death on the cross was in God's plan literally from before the beginning of time. All of the Old Testament points the way to it, and most of the New Testament shows how we are to respond to it. There are a lot of layers to it, and I'm going to try to get into some of them.

But first things first, before explaining what and how the cross works, I'm going to say why it happened:

Because God loves us.

This is a story. It's a beautiful story, and it's a true story. It's a story of brokenness and loss and punishment, but it's also a story of redemption. Of forgiveness. Of underserved grace. 

This a story about a God who loves his creation so much, even when it doesn't love him back. Even when it rejects and rebels against him. It's the story of a God who was willing to die so that he could be reunited with a creation that had separated itself from him.

Once upon a time, there was a Garden. You've probably heard this story before. God created a beautiful garden, and in that garden he placed two people: Adam and Eve. And he said that they were very good, and he loved them, and he was in perfect relationship with them. Unity. Because that's what God designed us for: relationship with him and with the people around us.

But it doesn't last. Because something comes into the Garden, something called sin. It's a choice that Adam and Eve make; they eat the fruit that God commanded them not to eat, trusting a random snake instead of the God who has done nothing but love them. They decide that they are the ones who know what is best, not God.

And although God is still perfect, they no longer are. And a perfect God can't be united to sin. So Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden, away from that relationship with their Creator. The story of love and unity becomes a story of brokenness, rebellion, and division.

Because that's the first result of sin. Division from God. And it doesn't take long to see another result. Adam and Eve have children; two of them are named Cain and Abel. Brothers. But Cain is jealous of Abel, and he murders his own brother in cold blood. More sin—this time causing division between people.

And it's the same today; I know I see it in my own life. I tell a little lie that comes back to haunt me later. I get unreasonably angry and lash out at a friend or a sibling. I use my words to hurt people. I cause division between people, and I divide myself from God.

God unites; sin divides. It separates us from God and from others. Sin isn't bad because God forbids it; God forbids it because it's bad for us. It destroys God's creation, what he loves so much—our bodies, our relationships, our souls, the world around us. God hates sin—because he loves us.

Romans 6:23 - The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you have a job, then whoever you work for gives you wages. That's what they pay you. If you are working for sin, then what it eventually pays you is death. God is the source of all life; with our sin dividing us from him, the only result of it can be death. We are separated from the source of life itself; even more with that, when we sin, we are choosing to turn away from God's will. We are rejecting the source of life and choosing to be separated from him, and we become God's enemies. We fall under punishment for what we've done.

Romans 3:23 - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We've all sinned. And because of that, we're all deserving of death.

And we're stuck. We can't stop sinning, we're divided from God, and we're doomed to die. What are we gonna do about it?

Essentially, nothing. We can't do anything about it. But luckily, we've got a God who doesn't give up on us. It instead becomes a question of what is God going to do?

God doesn't have to do anything. His creation rejected him; it would make sense to just give up on it. But God is faithful even when we aren't. And even though we've made ourselves his enemies...he still loves us so much.

So he makes a way. A way for someone else to die in place of the one who deserved it.

This is first shown in the Old Testament, before Jesus came. God sets up a sacrificial system for the Israelites, who are his chosen people. Essentially, a person would choose an innocent and flawless animal—often, a spotless lamb—and it would bear the guilt of the person's sins. It would take the punishment they deserved, and even though the animal was innocent and sinless, it would die in that person's place.

Except... that person would sin again. And again. That sacrifice of an innocent animal would have to be repeated at least every year throughout the person's life; its death would cover their sin but not erase it. It didn't take away the divide between man and God—something else was needed.

Enter Jesus.

John 1:29 - Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!

Jesus is the Lamb of God! He was the completely and utterly perfect sacrifice, a spotless lamb, and he takes away the sins of the world. His death doesn't just cover our sins temporarily like the Old Testament sacrifices—it completely removes them!

Colossians 2:14 - Jesus destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He destroyed it by nailing it to the cross.

The visual of this verse always hits me so hard. All my sin, this debt I could never pay back, is nailed to the cross. Jesus died to take it away. The guilt that should be on me for all the divisions I've created by my sin—it fell on him instead. He suffered a brutal and horrible death on the cross, in my place. It should have been me on that cross; it should've been you. But Jesus went there so we wouldn't have to.

Romans 5:7-8 - It isn't often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus didn't wait for us to have it all together. He didn't wait for us to figure it out on our own. I know that sometimes it feels that way. I've had those times when it felt like my life was a mess, and I feel like if I could just do this or fix that, then everything would be okay. But we're never gonna have it all figured out—not now, not in twenty years, not on the day we die.

But Jesus didn't wait for us to get our lives together—to "fix" ourselves. No, Jesus died for you when you were at your lowest point. When you were at your most broken and alone, when you wondered how anyone could ever love you. He died for you when you thought that no one cared, that no one saw.

But I promise you this: He sees you. He loves you. He died for you.

1 John 4:10 - This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

And so the story of brokenness becomes one of healing and redemption. We've all sinned, and the punishment for that sin is death and separation from God. But Jesus took that punishment onto himself and died in our place. As a result, our sins haven't just been covered up like with the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament; instead, they've been taken away.

Isaiah 1:18 - Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

Sin is like a stain—a red stain that covers us head to toe, marking us as unclean. And then Jesus comes in, better than the best stain remover, and completely gets rid of that red. It's gone without a trace; you can't even see it was there to begin with. Our sins have been taken away.

This doesn't mean we just magically stop sinning and become perfect. I kind of think of it as there's a separation between us and our sin. It's still there, but it doesn't have power over us anymore. What Jesus did isn't designed to be a free pass for us to keep sinning; when we love God, we want to honor him with our lives. And when we know what Jesus went through to save us from our sin, to rescue us from it and its consequences...why would we want to keep doing it?

We shouldn't continue in our sins, and God doesn't want us to. He gives us the strength and power to overcome and stop doing them. What it boils down to is this: we will still sin, but that sin isn't who we are.

Instead, we are the opposite—when we put our faith in Jesus, we are righteous. Being righteous means that you obey and follow God; it means you don't sin. Except, like I just said... we all sin, even after receiving Jesus. So how are we righteous?

The answer is that we can be righteous because Jesus was (and is!) righteous. He bore the guilt of our sins on the cross and had our sins placed on him, even though he didn't deserve it. As a result of that, though, we get to have Jesus's righteousness placed on us, even though we don't deserve it.

2 Corinthians 5:21 - God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

That can sound a little confusing. Basically—Jesus was the only man who had never sinned. But God made him to be sin. Not literally; Jesus had still never sinned. But Jesus was treated as if he had sinned, even though he hadn't. God did this so that we could be treated as if we were righteous, even though we're not.

In the Old Testament, the temple was where the Israelites would go to worship God and make sacrifices. It and the ground around it was all considered holy. But this wasn't because of the building itself; the building itself didn't do or have anything to be holy on its own. The temple was holy because God lived inside of it. And the Bible tells us that if you have placed your faith in Jesus, then God lives in you! And that makes you holy and righteous!

I still sin. I still screw up. But when God looks at me, he doesn't see my sin separating me from him anymore. Instead, he sees me as washed white as snow, clean because of what Jesus did on the cross. He sees me as completely covered in the righteousness of Jesus.

The last few years, I've struggled a lot with feeling like I need to be "good enough." In school, in my relationships, in the different activities I do...I would feel like I have to be perfect, and every time I messed up, I would beat myself up endlessly. And I've felt that way in my faith before—like I'm not good enough for God. Like I'm gonna mess up and then he's gonna get rid of me somehow. Maybe some of you can relate to those kinds of feelings.

But here's the truth: with God, I don't have to feel anxious about whether I'm enough, because Jesus was enough for me. And Jesus is enough for you, too.

So what does this mean? What's the impact of being made righteous by Christ? Well, thank you for asking, because this part of it is literally so so cool to me.

I talked about how sin divided us from God; how in the Garden of Eden, man was in perfect relationship with God, but sin cut us off from him. But God didn't give up on humans, and we can see his plan to restore our relationship with him back in the Old Testament.

In the middle of the Jewish temple, there was a room. This room was called the "holy of holies," and it was where the presence of God lived. His glory and power and might was concentrated in that space. Surrounding this room was a veil, a curtain that cut it off from the rest of the temple. Only the high priest was allowed to enter this room, and even that he only did once a year, to make offerings for the sins of the Israelite people. The priest had to go through all of these rituals and steps before entering the temple, and if he didn't do it—or if anyone else tried to enter—they would die. Because it was impossible to stand in the glory of God, while in their sin, and survive.

All of this was to prove our separation from God.

Isaiah 59:2 - But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

But this wasn't the end of the story, because all along, this was meant to point the way to Jesus. 

Because as Jesus hung there on the cross, after he'd been brutally beaten and mocked and humiliated, as he hung there in shame and suffering—

Mark 15:37-38 - And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed his last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

Y'ALL. The veil was literally torn in two! It's literal but it's also symbolic and it's just so incredible to me! The veil was a divide between us and God—but with Jesus's death, by taking all the sins of the world onto himself, he took away that divide. He made a way for us to be with God—He is the way.

We don't have to be separated from God anymore! We get to freely enter into a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe, the relationship that he designed us for, regardless of our sins and mistakes and screw-ups. Because Jesus took the guilt for that; because he literally took away all of our sins. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, because we have his righteousness, his goodness, covering us, we get to enter into God's presence without fear!

Hebrews 10:19-20 - Brothers and sisters, we can have confidence that we can enter the holy of holies by means of Jesus' blood, through a new and living way that he opened up for us through the curtain, which is his body.

Our sin doesn't have to make us enemies to God; we don't have to be rebels against him. Instead, we can have peace with him! Sin no longer divides us from God; instead, the blood of Jesus unites us with him. Unity with God, like there was in the Garden.

So basically, to sum up the main points of what Jesus did on the cross:

He was the perfect sacrifice who died in our place.

He makes us righteous and blameless in God's eyes.

He tore the veil and removed our separation from God.

(that's not even all of it; there's more I could get into, but this is already really long haha)

The end result of all of that? Because of what Jesus did, we get to have a relationship with him here on earth, and we get to have eternal life with him in heaven.

None of this was something we did. We aren't the hero of this story; God is. It was God, working from the very beginning to redeem us. It was God who willingly gave up his life for a creation that constantly rejects him. It was God who, in the midst of our brokenness and rebellion, still saw us as being of infinite value—so valuable that he paid the ultimate price so we could be with him.

The world tries to tell you what your worth is. Some things say it's in how pretty or stylish you are. Some things say it's how smart you are. How gifted you are. How funny, organized, or how "good" you are.

But remember this: absolutely nothing decides your worth except God. And He decided that you were worth dying for.

If you've read this far—thank you. I am honestly so grateful that you stuck through this to the end, because I know I can be long-winded, but it's because I'm so passionate about this. I just want you to know how much God loves you, how much he did for you to be with him.

Maybe you've read this, and you think it's cool, but you're not sure if you believe in any of it. Maybe there's something making you hesitate. Please reach out to me—I'm going offline, but my email is [email protected]—if you have any questions or thoughts on this. I'm not a Biblical expert by any means, but I love God and his Word and I will do my best to help.

God is pursuing you. Out of his love, out of his grace and forgiveness, he is pursing you. He would leave ninety-nine safe sheep to find the one lost, because his love is that great. The KING OF THE UNIVERSE, the one who created you and who knows you better than you know yourself, wants a relationship with you. He wants you to know him.

Turn to him; turn away from your sin, turn from your old ways. Believe in Jesus as your Savior, as the one who paid the price for your sins and made a way for you to be with God! He is waiting for you with open arms.