Tony Campolo - Jesus Took Our Sins on Himself

While spending a few days as the religious-emphasis-week speaker on the campus of a Christian college, I talked with a senior who seemed quite casual about the sins in his life. He told me about having an affair with a married woman. Then he said, “Whenever I commit sin, I remember that Jesus took the punishment for that sin back there on the cross.” In response, I said, “The next time you’re in bed having sex with your lover, I hope you can hear the screams of Jesus from the cross; because at that very moment Jesus is reaching across time and absorbing into His own body the very sin that you are committing there and then. The Jesus who hates sin becomes the sinner that you are. The innocent Jesus becomes everything about you that He hates.” (Tony Campolo, “Speaking My Mind,” page 109)