A summary of Platt on God’s remedy for our sin:
How can a holy God look at a guilty sinner and say: “Innocent”? We rightly expect God to justify the innocent and condemn the guilty. And none are innocent. So how can God call the guilty innocent?
Jesus’ death is the payment for sin. All the suffering of Jesus is for our sin. Isaiah shows that Jesus stood in the place of sinners, in our place, to bear the penalty for sin: Isaiah 52:13 – 53: 12.
Is it true that “God hates the sin but loves the sinner”? In one sense, certainly. God loves sinners. But when we see God’s holy wrath against sin, we need to understand that it’s not as though sin is something outside us. Sin is at the core of who we really are. So when Jesus went to the cross, he wasn’t just enduring the penalty of sin as though it is something outside us. He was doing this in our place — taking the full wrath of God due to us as sinners.
Here’s the deal: We are sinners. All of us by nature went our own way. God has both wrath and love towards sinners. How can God’s judgment and love toward sinners be reconciled? That’s the cross. God takes away all of the judgment due us. The beauty of the gospel is that God takes away all our sins and does not count any of them against us.
“Think of it: Of the God of the universe looking at us and saying ‘I have no record of anything going wrong in your life.’ Because God cancelled the debt at the cross. In fact, because of Christ’s righteous obedience, he looks at us and says ‘I only have a record of you doing right.'”