Say I asked you to remember the first time you experienced something that was unfair. If you thought hard enough, you could probably still recall it. Maybe you got punished for something your sister did. Or maybe it was the time in your life when you loved dogs, but it was your brother who got a puppy for Christmas. You got underwear.

We hate it when things aren’t fair. We all have this instinctive sense of justice, and we never want to be on the wrong side when things are stacked unevenly. I saw a fascinating study last week by some psychologists who went to seven different countries across the globe to see how kids respond when things are unfair. They took this little contraption with them: Imagine you’re a kid in this experiment. You’re sitting on the right side, and another kid is sitting on the left side. They put one skittle in your tray, and four skittles in the other kid’s tray. If you pull the green handle, then the trays dump into your bowls. You get 1 skittle and the other kid gets 4 skittles. But if you pull the red handle, then the trays dump into the middle. Nobody gets anything.

So … which handle are you going to pull? The red one, right? You’re saying something like, “If I’m going to get less than somebody, then I don’t want anybody to get anything. That’s unfair!” And you know what? In all seven countries, the majority of kids pulled the red handle. It’s universal. We hate getting the raw end of the deal.

That’s why the gospel is such good news. That’s why we celebrate Christmas. Because Jesus came to earth and he chose to sit on the right side with only one skittle on the tray, even though he deserves all the skittles that have ever existed in the history of humanity. He chose to pull the green handle, taking nothing for himself and giving everything to you.

That’s the only way to understand Jesus. He was our substitute, taking the penalty for our sins to satisfy the justice of God. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God didn’t punish us for our sins, but he didn’t just wave a magic wand and make our sins disappear. He punished Jesus for our sins. And Jesus willingly volunteered every step of the way. “For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross” (Heb 12:2).

That’s what kept Jesus on the cross. It wasn’t the nails and the rope — Jesus turned water into wine and made a storm be still with a word. There’s no physical object that’s not under his control. It wasn’t the soldiers — he could have called down legions of angels to take down the soldiers and rescue him. The only thing that kept him there, suffering in your place, was love. Love for his father, and love for you.

The gospel is all about unfairness, and that’s why it’s such good news for us.