Sin is a heavy burden that none of us can hide or carry forever. Sin, as a natural disposition and habit, hardens our hearts, chokes our souls, enslaves our wills, tortures our minds, and makes our consciences callous.
When unconfessed, acts of sin can cause all kinds of body pains and illnesses (Ps. 32:3-4) and they can bring untold misery to us and to those near us.
As an affront to the greatness and goodness of the eternal God, sin must be paid for by the sinner with eternal conscious suffering and punishment. This agonizing consequence of sin will be experienced and endured under the full justice of the righteous God in the lake of fire, which is the second death (Rev. 20:11-15).
But God, in His mercy, has provided for us a substitute Sin-bearer and Redeemer. He is the God-man who is able to sympathize with us and One who, 'by the power of his divinity' is able to 'bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.'
This Sin-bearing Savior is our perfect high priest who suffered for our sake and made a once-for-all sacrifice for our sin. Our great high priest carried all our sin upon His shoulder and nailed them at the cross canceling all our debts, all our sins, and reconciled us back to God.
This great high priest offered Himself in our place at the cross to save us sinners who deserve the wrath and just condemnation of God. By His grace we are saved, all according to God's good pleasure and for the praise of His wonderful grace!
Now, as a sinner would lay his hand on a sacrificial animal, everyone who has laid his hands on Him, every person who has come to trust in Jesus, the Christ, God provided for his redemption from sin. He who has embraced Him by faith, he has the promise of eternal life and have received God's mercy.
Everyone who trust Jesus has received forgiveness, peace, joy, and access to God's gracious presence as a child of God. He will 'taste and see that the Lord is good' and he will be called 'blessed' (Ps. 34:8), for he takes refuge in God and he fears the Lord with a godly fear.
However, those who remain and continue in their sin, those who 'suppress the truth of God in their unrighteousness,' who 'exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator,' who 'exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones' (see Rom. 1:18-32), they shall surely get what they deserve. And 'those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus' (Thess. 1:8), God will surely punish them in His perfect justice.
"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in us holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed" (2 Thess. 1:9-10).
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