Three Gospel Truths Experienced, Believed, And Confessed By All True Christians.

Isaiah 53:6

In this verse of Scripture the prophet Isaiah speaks as the representative of all God's elect. In this one verse he plainly states three gospel truths experienced, believed, and confessed by every person who is born again by God's almighty grace.

ORIGINAL SIN - "All we like sheep have gone astray." This is called the doctrine of original sin because this speaks of man's first sin and of the origin of sin in men. We all went astray from God in the sin and fall of our father Adam (Psa. 14:3; Rom. 5:12; I Cor. 15:21-22). In Adam we suffered a great fall and a great loss. We fell from God's favor into condemnation, from sinlessness into sinfulness, from life into death, from liberty into bondage, from light into darkness, and from peace into enmity. By the sin and fall of our father Adam we all lost all righteousness, fellowship with God, access to God, and spiritual life before God. In Adam we all died. By his sin being imputed to us, we all became sinners.

PERSONAL DEPRAVITY - "We have turned everyone to his own way." We are sinners by imputation, by birth, and by nature; but we are all sinners by choice too. Because the heart of man is evil and desperately wicked at birth, we were all estranged from the womb and went astray as soon as we were born, speaking lies (Gen. 6:5, 12; Jer. 17:9; Psa. 58:3). Like sheep, foolish and ignorant, we ever strayed from the Good Shepherd by nature. Until he looked us up, sought us out, and brought us back, we would not return unto him. We had neither the will nor the ability to do so. Instead, we "turned everyone to his own way." Some turned to the way of profligacy, some to the way of morality, and some to the way of self-righteous religion, but all "to his own way," and always away from Christ!

SUBSTITUTIONARY REDEMPTION - "And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Can you grasp this glorious truth? God the Father, against whom we have sinned, whose law we have broken, has laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ, his own dear Son, all the sins of all his elect! The Son of God was made to be sin for us, so that he might be justly punished for sin and we might be made the righteousness of God in him (II Cor. 5:21).

Don Fortner