ROMANS UNWRAPPED 127

"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh."   Romans 8v3

In contrast to "what the law could not do" we come now to what God did, this being the only alternative.   In considering a verse like this I am reminded of Gethsemane where the Lord Jesus in an agony, plumbed the depths of His Divine soul in saying "O My Father if it be possible let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not My will but Thine be done."   The truth is there was no other way.   We think of this in three ways: whom He sent; how He sent Him; why He sent Him.  

Whom He sent.

"God sending His own Son" a reading of the gospel of John will reveal time and time again that God sent His Son  into this world on a rescue mission.   "God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved."   John 3v17   This was a Divine act of greatest mercy.   Notice what Paul says here "sending His own Son."; in sending Him, He could send no greater.   In the words of the song writer  "No angel could our place have taken, Highest of the high though He; Nailed to the cross despised forsaken, was One of the Godhead three."   The One who was sent was no less than the Son of God.   The Jews understood Jesus claim to be the Son of God as "making Himself equal with God."   John 5v18   No less a person could have done this, God would accept nothing less than perfection.   The term "His own Son" or only begotten, occurs five times in the New Testament.   It conveys the idea of One who was precious to God, without a rival, without an equal, no-one to compare with Him   He was everything to God and in sending Him He gave to the world the One closest to His heart.   It was an act of pure, amazing, astonishing love.   At Infinite cost to Himself, God was prepared to give His most prized possession.   This is the ultimate expression of Divine love.

How He sent Him.

He sent Him by incarnation.   There are now recorded in scripture four different ways of coming into the world.   Adam came in by creation, a full grown man; Eve came in by formation; all the rest of us came in by generation,  and now Jesus Christ came in by incarnation.   God stepped into time the product not of a union between a man and a woman, but the product of the union of the Holy Spirit and a woman.   He took on real flesh, but it was not sinful flesh.   He says God sent Him "in the likeness of sinful flesh."    Scripture carefully guards the nature of Christ in coming into the world on a Divine mission.   In order to save us He must be God , He also must be human, and He must be sinless.   He was truly God, He was truly human.   He was real flesh but He was sinless flesh.   Fallen humanity is not now the only humanity.   Man, as God intended Him to be in the perfect image of God now lives and is seated on the throne of the universe. There is a real man today, seated at the very throne of the universe  Christ came in a real body of flesh and displayed the image of God in every aspect of His being.   His sinlessness is apparent in the narrative of the four gospels,   His sinless ness is preached in the New Testament epistles; phrases like  "He knew no sin"; "He did no sin"; "In Him was no sin."

Why He sent Him.

This is stated to be a two-fold reason; firstly " to condemn sin in the flesh" and secondly, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."

We will expand on this tomorrow d.v. enough to say for now that his verse is the very bedrock of the gospel message dealing with every possible aspect of our need and the Divine requirements as fulfilled in the One and only person who could fulfill them.   In short there is no other way, the world is shut up to salvation in Christ which was achieved on the Cross.   There is only one Son of God without a rival, there is only one Sacrifice that God has accepted, there is only one way of salvation and this is the way.    We must look further into what happened on that cross in order to understand the fact that we are all, for our eternal salvation utterly dependent on the gift of God.