I glory that He tasted death for me by lifting the wrath of God, so that these things, my sin, my guilt, my curse, my wrath can never come upon me again because they were really removed, really removed, really removed at the death of Jesus.

Not just possibly removed, that I may happen later.

What does it personally mean to you to have your sins, your guilt, your curse, truly removed from you through the death of Christ?

John Piper answers that critical question in this episode of Light and Truth, and the answer from Hebrews 2 is profoundly encouraging.

The sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on May 26, 1996.

As I worked on this, I just kept putting myself in the shoes of this good-hearted, expansive, non-sectarian, non-elitist, non-narrow, evangelistically-minded, mission-oriented, mistaken person.

And here's an analogy I believe that that person whom I used to be, and perhaps most of you still are, I don't know, an analogy that I would have used and you might use.

Perhaps someone will say, it's like a ticket. It's like a ticket. It costs a lot, and the ticket gets you to heaven.

And God, by the death of his son, bought the ticket, and he extends it to you.

If you don't take the ticket, you don't get on a train. Good analogy? Good Sunday school material?

And the ticket is the death of Jesus. The price of the ticket is the death of Jesus, but it doesn't get you to heaven.

You got to take the ticket, and hand it to the conductor, and then get on the train, and then the death of Christ covers all your sins.

Now that's partly right. Most analogies are partly right.

Nobody gets on the train without the ticket of the shed blood of Jesus, and you have to take the ticket. You got to take the ticket. You have to believe.

But there's a problem with this analogy. It's this. You have to think through, what is the purchase of this ticket?

And the purchase of this ticket is the cancelling of the sins of unbelievers.

That's the only thing that's keeping you out of heaven. Sin.

Therefore, the purchase of the ticket is the cancelling of the sins.

But what we've seen is that the people who go to hell suffer for their sins, and therefore they weren't cancelling, and the analogy fails.

No ticket was there. If the ticket is the cancelling of their sins, which is what a ticket would have to be, their sins are going to bring them to destruction and keep them from heaven.

So their sins were not cancelled in the cross, and the ticket was not purchased for them.

Now the ticket for heaven, which Jesus obtained for you and me by His blood, is the wiping out of our sins.

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