As I was reading this morning I came across another quote by J.C, Ryle on the Atonement; this time from Matthew 20:28. In this verse Jesus makes the statement, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Of this statement Bishop Ryle wrote:
Christ's death was an atonement for sin. What says the Scripture? "The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many."
This is the mightiest truth in the Bible. Let us take care that we grasp it firmly, and never let it go. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not die merely as a martyr, or as a splendid example of self-sacrifice and self-denial. Those who can see no more than that in His death, fall infinitely short of the truth. They lose sight of the very foundation-stone of Christianity, and miss the whole comfort of the Gospel. Christ died as a sacrifice for man's sin. He died to make reconciliation for man's iniquity. He died to purge our sins by the offering of Himself. He died to redeem us from the curse which we all deserved, and to make satisfaction to the justice of God, which must otherwise have condemned us. Never let us forget this!
We are all by nature debtors. We owe to our holy Maker ten thousand talents, and are not able to pay. We cannot atone for our own transgressions, for we are weak and frail, and only adding to our debts every day. But, blessed be God! What we could not do, Christ came into the world to do for us. What we could not pay, He undertook to pay for us. To pay it He died for us upon the cross. "He offered himself to God." (Heb. 9:14.) "He suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." (1 Peter 3:18.) Once more, never let us forget this!
J.C.RyleExpository Thoughts On The Gospels, Vol 1, Pg 258
We need to keep this in mind; this is the Gospel! Jesus came into the world to give His life as a ransom. He paid to God the debt we could not pay. His death was not to give us an example, it was to pay our debt; He was our sin offering, our propitiation.
Spend a few minutes today thanking Him for the price He paid so your sin could be forgiven.
