It’s All About Jesus
- Esau sold his birthright (Gen. 25:32)
- Adam sold his birthright as a “son of God” (Luke 3:38b)
- Therefore Satan “owned” the human race (Mt. 13:38, Jn. 8:44, 1 Jn. 5:19)
- Jesus bought back the birthright of the human race (Lk. 1:68, Gal. 3:13-14, 1 Pet. 1:18, Rev. 5:9)
- So now we can be adopted as “sons of God” again, but we ourselves don’t own the birthright (Jn. 1:12, Rom. 8:16-21, 9:8, 1 Jn. 3:1-10)
- Jesus offers it to us as a gift, freely requested and freely given (2 Cor. 9:15, Gal. 1:9, Eph. 2:8, 1 Thes. 2:13)
That’s what JUDGMENT is all about. People understandably get confused when we say Jesus paid for all sin yet we still will be judged, because they haven’t been told all Jesus really did and why. But when we see that Jesus’ sacrifice bought us back our right of inheritance, then we can see that judgment is for individual committed sins. And this is not at all for determining eternal existence in either heaven or hell, but degree of reward or punishment.
Romans 3:23 uses “sin” as a verb (“all have sinned”), not a trait or quality but an action. Yes, Jesus did pay for these committed sins as well (Rom. 4:25), but that only makes forgiveness possible and “legal”. Since his sacrifice gave him ownership of the birthright, he has the right to offer forgiveness and “sonship” or family name to all who ask in faith.
I wrote much more about sin and salvation elsewhere. But it is important to see the “birthright” element of all this, to give a fuller understanding of all Jesus did in his redemption of mankind, the “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45).
[Please also see the excellent article at Christian Thinktank that explains all this from the angle of the “eternal sonship” belief. In addition, it points out the absurdity of anyone claiming to have a “lock” on comprehending the nature of the Trinity, demanding precision in terminology that no scholar or theologian would presume to think possible.]
The bottom line: Jesus is fully God and fully Human, not sub-this or sub-that. As such he was uniquely qualified to redeem the human race and give everyone equal access to heaven, by faith instead of performance or privilege. He was not “eternally subordinate” to the Father in his divine essence, such that there is no “essential” right of any human over any other human. You might say Jesus is an equal-opportunity Savior.