Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.30 – August 1998
Sin for Righteousness
A Sermon by Rev. R. Meischke on 2 Corinthians 5:21
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 53; 2 Corinthians 5:11-21
Suggested Hymns:
BoW 148; 171:1-3; 301; 456; 171:4-5
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
Introduction: Paul’s Ministry of Reconciliation
Paul wrote this letter in defence of his ministry. There were some rather unsavoury elements in the Corinthian Church who really wanted to reduce Paul’s reputation to nothing.
While he was faithfully going about his missionary work in other areas, some people in Corinth were calling him a wimp and a fool. The word was starting to spread that the so-called ‘apostle’ Paul wasn’t to be listened to, respected or trusted.
So Paul had to write this letter to reaffirm his integrity and his credibility with this Church that he planted and nurtured.
But, instead of sending them his résumé to prove his critics wrong, he sent them a letter of agreement. They said he was no good and he told them that they were absolutely right. In fact, he went a step further and called himself the worst of sinners.
His Reconciliation
Now, Paul didn’t just talk like that as a means of getting their attention, or as some sort of reverse psychology. He was genuinely saying that there was nothing special about Paul that made him the right man for the job. There was nothing special about Paul that made him worth listening to.
Paul’s authority and integrity rested on nothing else other than the fact that he, himself, was reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. Again and again, Paul makes the point in this letter that he has received, from the hand of God, a new life of hope and salvation. (Even his unique calling to be an apostle of Jesus was not because of his deserving or worthiness, but purely by the grace of God).
His Calling
Paul’s ultimate goal here is not to make a name for himself, but to bring these people to enjoy the same reconciliation and hope that he has received from God.
Here is the heart and the soul of the gospel. This is what our whole existence as the people of God rests on. We must be reconciled to God, be at peace with him. We need to know that God is with us now and that we will be with him in perfect harmony for all eternity. And this reconciliation can only happen in Jesus.
The heart and soul of all that we believe and hold dear as Christians rests in this one verse: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
He Who Knew No Sin
Sin
Now, we can look at this thing called sin from a few different angles. The easiest way to think of it is as when I do something that’s bad, or something that I’m not allowed to do. The reason that’s easy is because when I’m not actually doing something that’s bad, then I don’t think of myself as sinful. And when I don’t think of myself as sinful, then I don’t have to struggle with what that means before God. Of course, doing that doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope, because I know that I’m a lot worse than I like to think I am.
Or, sometimes we think of sin as just human nature. We’ve all got it and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the old saying that nobody’s perfect, so we shouldn’t get too uptight whenever we make a mistake. Again, because I’m left thinking that my sin is just a natural and normal part of who I am, I’m not challenged to do anything about it. We just accept it and cruise along. The problem with this is that just because I might be comfortable with my own sin doesn’t mean that God is satisfied. His justice still has to be dealt with.
Or, we can acknowledge sin for what it really is. Sin is that part of every single person which separates us from our God. It doesn’t matter if it’s something big like child abuse or mass murder. It doesn’t matter if it is something small like pinching five cents off your sister. It doesn’t matter if you do it or if you only think it. It doesn’t matter if you get caught or if you get away with it.
And it is not just what we do, it is what we are. We are born as sinners. There is no part of our lives that we could claim to be pure and holy or free from sin. It is always with us and cannot be denied.
Our sin, however we look at it, has broken the relationship between us and God. That’s why the emotion of guilt is so powerful. It reminds us that we cannot please or satisfy our God. It reminds us that our sin must be punished, and it can only be punished by death, without mercy.
So, if we want to be freed from this punishment, we must be reconciled to God. That broken relationship must be renewed.
Jesus’ Sinlessness
The fact that Jesus had no sin is deeper and wider than simply saying that Jesus never committed a sin. We know that. We know that Jesus led what we would call an exemplary life. It simply wasn’t possible to find fault in him. Even the Pharisees, who tried really hard to find fault in Jesus, couldn’t. The best they could come up with was accusing him of blasphemy because he claimed to be God, which was true anyway.
No, the sinlessness of Jesus cuts deeper than that. It means that he did not even have a single thought or inclination that could be called sinful. It means that he did not have a knowledge of sin like we do. We have a knowledge in which sin is always around, it is intimate, it is experienced, remembered, felt and built-in to our natures. Jesus didn’t have that. Sure, he knew what it was, but he didn’t have it.
In other words, Jesus was the righteousness of God, the total opposite of what we are. He had all, we have nothing. He is only inclined to perfection, we are only inclined to evil, whether we like to admit it or not. He is everything and the only one who satisfies and pleases God, we are not.
So, we have this picture which is something like Jesus standing on solid ground with and as God, while we are in a great pool of quicksand with no way of reaching the edge. In fact, the more we try, the deeper we get.
God Made Him to Be Sin for us
This is the broken, hopeless relationship that our God chose to renew by making Jesus to be sin in our place.
God Did it
And it is important for us to understand that God did this. If you look through this letter that Paul wrote to these Christians, you’ll notice that at no point does Paul claim to have the ability or the right to stand and be reconciled to God.
We need to understand that, in this event of reconciliation, God has come to us in the middle of our darkness. We, who had no hope, have been given a hope that we don’t deserve. This is the work of God, not of us.
And, like Paul, our ability to grow as Christians and to witness to those who don’t know Jesus, especially the ugly and the deviant and the miserable, depends on how much we admit that we’re no better than they are. We can only claim salvation on the foundation of God’s grace in Jesus, without that, we are no better than the worst child abuser or war criminal or mass-murderer. We are here only because God made it so.
Jesus Became Sin
And he did it by making Jesus to be sin. He who knew no sin, God made to be sin. God took Jesus from his position of absolute perfection and righteousness; God took Jesus from the perfect relationship that was his by birthright, and declared him to be everything that God himself despises.
It meant that, when God looked at Jesus on the cross, what he saw was sin. What he saw and punished was real sin and real evil. And he saw it and punished it in Jesus.
Now, the way that Paul writes this almost makes it sound as if Jesus became a sinner. It’s almost as if Jesus stopped being the perfect God whom we know he is and literally became a sinful human being, just like you and me
In Our Place
But that’s not quite the case. The text says that God made him to be sin for us. He didn’t become evil in himself, he became sin in our place. He didn’t become guilty in himself, but he did identify himself with our guilt so that he would be punished for it instead of us. When Jesus died, when he was hung on the cross and rejected by all people and forsaken by God, he got what we deserved.
Whatever we understand of our own shame, our own weakness, our own filth, our own evil, our own guilt before God, that is what Jesus became in the eyes of God.
It’s not pretty, when we think of how low we can get sometimes, that Jesus was made to be all of that and more. It’s a difficult thing to realise and a hard thing to admit and come to terms with that everything that’s wrong about me, God placed on the head of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t just throw us a rope to pull us out of the quicksand. God actually put him into the quicksand instead of us. And because of that, we have been lifted out, washed clean, and treated as if we were Christ himself, even though it was our sins that he was punished for.
So That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God
To Become the Righteousness of God
And the result of this swap that God did with us and Jesus, on top of Jesus becoming our sin, was the fact that we have become his righteousness. Jesus literally became everything that God hates just so that we might become everything that God loves and accepts as pure and holy.
This word, ‘become’ is very important. In the same way that Jesus became our sin in the sight of God, we have become God’s righteousness. Even while we know our own sin all too well, God sees us as righteous, as holy and blameless. If this fact is not real, then our hope for salvation is lost. Our hope depends on God’s justice being completely satisfied.
Our hope rests upon us being able to stand before God at judgment without even a hint of a blemish on our records. The only way that we can hope to stand in his presence is if he sees us as holy as he is. There is no other way.
And the only way that this is possible is if our sin is completely punished, satisfying the justice of God which demands death for sin. If that has been done, then we are released, free to be his people once again. If the sin has been completely punished and destroyed, then what’s left is the righteousness of God.
In other words, if we can accept that Jesus really did die our death, then we can have the absolute confidence of knowing that we now live his life. If you can accept that Jesus really was guilty before God of your sin, then you can rest assured that God sees you as perfect right now, even though you are reminded daily of your imperfection.
In Christ
This is a message of incredible hope. God did this for no other reason than to give us something that we could never hope to have on our own – his own righteousness. And in order for us to get that righteousness, Jesus had to get our guilt. And his being punished for that is the ground on which our hope is built.
If ever you feel like your life is just not good enough, if ever you feel like God would not be interested in you, then read this verse. If ever you think that there must be some truth to the accusations that you are no good and you’ve never been no good and you’ll never be no good, read this verse.
Or, if ever you think that somebody you meet is not worth witnessing to, if ever you think that some new member with a shady past is not worth welcoming, then read this verse. If ever you think that your brother or your sister is not worth encouraging, read this verse.
When you wake up in the morning and your weaknesses and your failings are still staring you in the face, know that your forgiveness and your righteousness before God is complete. Our hope, our confidence, our assurance is only in Jesus Christ.
In the same way that Jesus identified himself with us on the cross, we are identified with him through faith. And every day our own sinfulness reminds us how much we need his righteousness.
Conclusion: Reconciliation
This is all about reconciliation. It’s not about being able to demonstrate our strong points.
This is all about being able to admit our weak points, to admit our own need for Jesus. This verse is our reminder that the hope we need is completely satisfied in Jesus. If you want to enjoy being reconciled to God; if you want to feel like you belong to God, have a look at this verse and focus on Jesus. Know that in him your sin really is punished and that you stand before God with his righteousness.
Amen.
Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.30 – August 1998
Sin for Righteousness
A Sermon by Rev R Meischke on 2Corinthians 5:21
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 53; 2Corinthians 5:11-21
Suggested Hymns:
BoW 148; 171:1-3; 301; 456; 171:4-5
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
Introduction: Paul’s Ministry of Reconciliation
Paul wrote this letter in defence of his ministry. There were some rather unsavoury elements in the Corinthian Church who really wanted to reduce Paul’s reputation to nothing.
While he was faithfully going about his missionary work in other areas, some people in Corinth were calling him a wimp and a fool. The word was starting to spread that the so-called ‘apostle’ Paul wasn’t to be listened to, respected or trusted.
So Paul had to write this letter to reaffirm his integrity and his credibility with this Church that he planted and nurtured.
But, instead of sending them his résumé to prove his critics wrong, he sent them a letter of agreement. They said he was no good and he told them that they were absolutely right. In fact, he went a step further and called himself the worst of sinners.
His Reconciliation
Now, Paul didn’t just talk like that as a means of getting their attention, or as some sort of reverse psychology. He was genuinely saying that there was nothing special about Paul that made him the right man for the job. There was nothing special about Paul that made him worth listening to.
Paul’s authority and integrity rested on nothing else other than the fact that he, himself, was reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. Again and again, Paul makes the point in this letter that he has received, from the hand of God, a new life of hope and salvation. (Even his unique calling to be an apostle of Jesus was not because of his deserving or worthiness, but purely by the grace of God).
His Calling
Paul’s ultimate goal here is not to make a name for himself, but to bring these people to enjoy the same reconciliation and hope that he has received from God.
Here is the heart and the soul of the gospel. This is what our whole existence as the people of God rests on. We must be reconciled to God, be at peace with him. We need to know that God is with us now and that we will be with him in perfect harmony for all eternity. And this reconciliation can only happen in Jesus.
The heart and soul of all that we believe and hold dear as Christians rests in this one verse: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
He Who Knew No Sin
Sin
Now, we can look at this thing called sin from a few different angles. The easiest way to think of it is as when I do something that’s bad, or something that I’m not allowed to do. The reason that’s easy is because when I’m not actually doing something that’s bad, then I don’t think of myself as sinful. And when I don’t think of myself as sinful, then I don’t have to struggle with what that means before God. Of course, doing that doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope, because I know that I’m a lot worse than I like to think I am.
Or, sometimes we think of sin as just human nature. We’ve all got it and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the old saying that nobody’s perfect, so we shouldn’t get too uptight whenever we make a mistake. Again, because I’m left thinking that my sin is just a natural and normal part of who I am, I’m not challenged to do anything about it. We just accept it and cruise along. The problem with this is that just because I might be comfortable with my own sin doesn’t mean that God is satisfied. His justice still has to be dealt with.
Or, we can acknowledge sin for what it really is. Sin is that part of every single person which separates us from our God. It doesn’t matter if it’s something big like child abuse or mass murder. It doesn’t matter if it is something small like pinching five cents off your sister. It doesn’t matter if you do it or if you only think it. It doesn’t matter if you get caught or if you get away with it.
And it is not just what we do, it is what we are. We are born as sinners. There is no part of our lives that we could claim to be pure and holy or free from sin. It is always with us and cannot be denied.
Our sin, however we look at it, has broken the relationship between us and God. That’s why the emotion of guilt is so powerful. It reminds us that we cannot please or satisfy our God. It reminds us that our sin must be punished, and it can only be punished by death, without mercy.
So, if we want to be freed from this punishment, we must be reconciled to God. That broken relationship must be renewed.
Jesus’ Sinlessness
The fact that Jesus had no sin is deeper and wider than simply saying that Jesus never committed a sin. We know that. We know that Jesus led what we would call an exemplary life. It simply wasn’t possible to find fault in him. Even the Pharisees, who tried really hard to find fault in Jesus, couldn’t. The best they could come up with was accusing him of blasphemy because he claimed to be God, which was true anyway.
No, the sinlessness of Jesus cuts deeper than that. It means that he did not even have a single thought or inclination that could be called sinful. It means that he did not have a knowledge of sin like we do. We have a knowledge in which sin is always around, it is intimate, it is experienced, remembered, felt and built-in to our natures. Jesus didn’t have that. Sure, he knew what it was, but he didn’t have it.
In other words, Jesus was the righteousness of God, the total opposite of what we are. He had all, we have nothing. He is only inclined to perfection, we are only inclined to evil, whether we like to admit it or not. He is everything and the only one who satisfies and pleases God, we are not.
So, we have this picture which is something like Jesus standing on solid ground with and as God, while we are in a great pool of quicksand with no way of reaching the edge. In fact, the more we try, the deeper we get.
God Made Him to Be Sin for us
This is the broken, hopeless relationship that our God chose to renew by making Jesus to be sin in our place.
God Did it
And it is important for us to understand that God did this. If you look through this letter that Paul wrote to these Christians, you’ll notice that at no point does Paul claim to have the ability or the right to stand and be reconciled to God.
We need to understand that, in this event of reconciliation, God has come to us in the middle of our darkness. We, who had no hope, have been given a hope that we don’t deserve. This is the work of God, not of us.
And, like Paul, our ability to grow as Christians and to witness to those who don’t know Jesus, especially the ugly and the deviant and the miserable, depends on how much we admit that we’re no better than they are. We can only claim salvation on the foundation of God’s grace in Jesus, without that, we are no better than the worst child abuser or war criminal or mass-murderer. We are here only because God made it so.
Jesus Became Sin
And he did it by making Jesus to be sin. He who knew no sin, God made to be sin. God took Jesus from his position of absolute perfection and righteousness; God took Jesus from the perfect relationship that was his by birthright, and declared him to be everything that God himself despises.
It meant that, when God looked at Jesus on the cross, what he saw was sin. What he saw and punished was real sin and real evil. And he saw it and punished it in Jesus.
Now, the way that Paul writes this almost makes it sound as if Jesus became a sinner. It’s almost as if Jesus stopped being the perfect God whom we know he is and literally became a sinful human being, just like you and me
In Our Place
But that’s not quite the case. The text says that God made him to be sin for us. He didn’t become evil in himself, he became sin in our place. He didn’t become guilty in himself, but he did identify himself with our guilt so that he would be punished for it instead of us. When Jesus died, when he was hung on the cross and rejected by all people and forsaken by God, he got what we deserved.
Whatever we understand of our own shame, our own weakness, our own filth, our own evil, our own guilt before God, that is what Jesus became in the eyes of God.
It’s not pretty, when we think of how low we can get sometimes, that Jesus was made to be all of that and more. It’s a difficult thing to realise and a hard thing to admit and come to terms with that everything that’s wrong about me, God placed on the head of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t just throw us a rope to pull us out of the quicksand. God actually put him into the quicksand instead of us. And because of that, we have been lifted out, washed clean, and treated as if we were Christ himself, even though it was our sins that he was punished for.
So That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God
To Become the Righteousness of God
And the result of this swap that God did with us and Jesus, on top of Jesus becoming our sin, was the fact that we have become his righteousness. Jesus literally became everything that God hates just so that we might become everything that God loves and accepts as pure and holy.
This word, ‘become’ is very important. In the same way that Jesus became our sin in the sight of God, we have become God’s righteousness. Even while we know our own sin all too well, God sees us as righteous, as holy and blameless. If this fact is not real, then our hope for salvation is lost. Our hope depends on God’s justice being completely satisfied.
Our hope rests upon us being able to stand before God at judgment without even a hint of a blemish on our records. The only way that we can hope to stand in his presence is if he sees us as holy as he is. There is no other way.
And the only way that this is possible is if our sin is completely punished, satisfying the justice of God which demands death for sin. If that has been done, then we are released, free to be his people once again. If the sin has been completely punished and destroyed, then what’s left is the righteousness of God.
In other words, if we can accept that Jesus really did die our death, then we can have the absolute confidence of knowing that we now live his life. If you can accept that Jesus really was guilty before God of your sin, then you can rest assured that God sees you as perfect right now, even though you are reminded daily of your imperfection.
In Christ
This is a message of incredible hope. God did this for no other reason than to give us something that we could never hope to have on our own – his own righteousness. And in order for us to get that righteousness, Jesus had to get our guilt. And his being punished for that is the ground on which our hope is built.
If ever you feel like your life is just not good enough, if ever you feel like God would not be interested in you, then read this verse. If ever you think that there must be some truth to the accusations that you are no good and you’ve never been no good and you’ll never be no good, read this verse.
Or, if ever you think that somebody you meet is not worth witnessing to, if ever you think that some new member with a shady past is not worth welcoming, then read this verse. If ever you think that your brother or your sister is not worth encouraging, read this verse.
When you wake up in the morning and your weaknesses and your failings are still staring you in the face, know that your forgiveness and your righteousness before God is complete. Our hope, our confidence, our assurance is only in Jesus Christ.
In the same way that Jesus identified himself with us on the cross, we are identified with him through faith. And every day our own sinfulness reminds us how much we need his righteousness.
Conclusion: Reconciliation
This is all about reconciliation. It’s not about being able to demonstrate our strong points.
This is all about being able to admit our weak points, to admit our own need for Jesus. This verse is our reminder that the hope we need is completely satisfied in Jesus. If you want to enjoy being reconciled to God; if you want to feel like you belong to God, have a look at this verse and focus on Jesus. Know that in him your sin really is punished and that you stand before God with his righteousness.
Amen.