“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”
— 1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)
There is a lot packed into one short sentence: “the righteous for the unrighteous.”
Most of life teaches us that people are responsible for what they do. There is something right about that. Actions have consequences, and responsibility matters.
Then we come to the cross.
Jesus was the righteous one, yet He willingly suffered for people who were not. Peter doesn’t describe us somehow working our way back to God or finally becoming worthy enough to approach Him. He says Christ suffered “to bring you to God.”
That is what I find so remarkable about this verse. The distance between us and God wasn’t overcome because we became good enough. Christ crossed that distance for us.
The more I think about the cross, the less ordinary those few words become: the righteous for the unrighteous.