Pray with me, please. Gracious and merciful Father, the most wonderful words, Lord,
that we have ever heard are that Christ was made sin for us. Oh, how I pray, dear Father,
that we all might be able to hear these words, believe these
words, trusting that Christ died for us. How I pray, Lord, that
today you might make these words powerful in our hearts, bringing
comfort to your people. Enable me to preach them in such
a way that you might draw sinners to Christ, that Christ in whose
name we have come to worship today, that name by which we
come to you in prayer. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Amen. Open your Bibles, please, to
2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21. And let me ask you a question.
I like to ask questions. Have you ever felt sin or guilt
to be a great burden I don't think that there's anything
in this world which torments people as much as guilt. I see the reactions, the words,
and hear the words of guilty people. Their reactions tell
me that they feel guilty. Their words tell me that they
feel guilty all the time. I also think that probably the
fires of hell, which can't be quenched, are fueled by an indescribable sense of guilt. Those that are in hell will have
an awakened conscience. Guilt torments the unsaved soul
in hell. The worm that never dies in the
pit of the damned and which forever gnaws on the fully awakened conscience
of the damned, it seems to me, must be guilt. But even this
world, in this world there is nothing more tormenting to a
man than a sense of his guilt before God. I'm really not talking
so much about the guilt that we have when we have done something
wrong to a brother or to another person, that's bad enough. But I'm talking about a consciousness
of guilt before the infinite, holy, eternal God. I'm talking
about guilt that we hide as much as we can, but which we know
that God sees very clearly. I suspect that this kind of guilt
is common to most people. I fear that some of you may struggle
with guilt. Some of you have told me that
you do. One lady that most of you do
not know told me that this week. You secretly, when you feel guilty,
you secretly question your salvation when you say, how could I be
a child of God when I sin so much? You know that you continue to
sin even when you don't really want to, and Satan in your sinning
condemns you for sinning so willingly. You've tried to silence your
conscience with prayer, Bible reading, religious activities. And probably you have promised
yourself more than once, and promised God as well, that you'd
stop doing these things that you hate to do. But you know
you won't stop. You won't stop the thing that
you so willingly do, but yet you hate. You hate yourself for your sin. Maybe Satan and your sin torments
you when you try to sleep. When you lay there tossing and
turning on your bed alone before God, sometimes you find it hard
to pray. Your bed is too short and your
covering is too narrow and so you can't rest, you can't sleep. Maybe the lies that you have
told to cover your sin all come rushing home to your mind as
you lay there tossing and turning before the bar of God's holiness
and justice and truth. In your very soul you cry and
you weep and you tremble and you quake with an overwhelming
sense of guilt. The real problem is a fear of
eternal damnation. You find day after day that there's
no rest for the wicked. But praise God, some of you who
are my brothers and sisters are true believers. Even though your
guilt may cause you to question it, you know that you believe
God and you trust Christ. I feel sure that some of you
are born of God in Christ and yet you struggle with a horrible
sense of guilt. Or maybe, actually, you don't
struggle as much as you think you should struggle. And so that just adds to your
guilt. You know that Christ paid your
sin debt, but you still carry the weight of guilt for your
sin. And oh, what an unbearable weight
it is. It takes away your joy in Christ. You know that the Lord Jesus
has redeemed you from the curse of the law, but you don't feel
free from the law. You still carry the weight of
condemnation in your soul. You know that Christ is the Lord,
your righteousness, and that you are made the righteousness
of God in Him, but your soul is still filled with guilt. Why? Because you're keenly aware of
your own inward lusts and sin. You still bear your own iniquities
in your own soul. There is nothing that makes the
life of a poor, tender soul so painfully bitter as an oppressive,
unbearable load of sin and guilt. Satan knows that. Satan knows
that there is no yoke so oppressive, no bondage so cruel to your soul
as the feeling of guilt. And so Satan constantly accuses
you and your flesh says amen to Satan's accusation. If what I've been saying about
you is true, then I have a message for your soul. It's a message from God. And
it's a message especially for those of you who carry the weight
of sin and guilt in your souls. my prayer is that it would bring
you comfort. If God the Holy Spirit will give
you ears to hear, eyes to see, and most of all, a heart to believe
what God declares to us in 2 Corinthians 5.21, then my prayer is that
you'll find that this is a message to you from God. And it's worth
more than a mountain of gold to your soul. But before we read it, let me
call your attention to a statement in this sweet text that has blessed
me more than I can tell you. It's the declaration of God the
Holy Spirit, which is so simple, so clear, that it's stated in
five short, one-syllable words. And yet in these five words,
God the Holy Spirit teaches us one of the most important one
of the most profound, most mysterious, and most soul-steering things
in the entire universe. Are you ready? It says, He hath made him sin. Have your Bibles open? 2 Corinthians
5.21. Look closely at these words.
These five little words. as I read the whole verse. In
2 Corinthians 5.21, Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
says, For He, for God, for He hath made Him sin for us who
knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in Him. Paul is talking about Jesus Christ,
of course. But did you notice that I left
out two little words in what you were reading? I left out the words, to be.
I didn't misquote the text. Don Fortner, I think it was here
in this church, but someplace Don Fortner pointed out to us
that these two little words, to be, in this verse are in the
italics. Are they in italics in your Bible?
That means that they were inserted by the translators to make the
text read more smoothly. That's what they always say. But there are no words corresponding
to these words to be in the text. In this case, the words to be
simply shouldn't be there. It should read, He hath made
him sin. It was the translators who added
these words to be to the text. So in my Bible, I've crossed
them out. In this passage, Paul is calling
us to faith in Christ with a message from God. And he urges us to
be reconciled to God on the basis of a reconciliation that was
already made by Jesus Christ at the cross. Promising righteousness,
the very righteousness of God to all who would trust Christ.
Paul is urging us to believe this message and to believe it
now because it's an important and an urgent message for us
to believe. It comes to us from the one who speaks as the very
ambassador of God. Indeed, it is God himself who
is speaking to us by Paul. And the message, if you can hear
it and believe it, brings tremendous comfort to our souls. I pray
you can hear what God is saying. The entire message of this passage,
2 Corinthians 5.17-6.2, and indeed, in fact, the entire message of
the whole Bible, is built on and it hangs on this one profound
glorious fact. He has made him sin. We can't
be made new creatures in Christ until He has made him sin. God can't reconcile us to Himself
until He had made Him sin. We can't be reconciled to God
until He had made Him sin. We can't be made the righteousness
of God in Christ until He had made Him sin. We can't receive
God's grace until He had made Him sin. What a profound truth. What a stupendous grace, what
wondrous mystery these words contain. Keep looking at them
and look at them closely. I can't tell you how important,
how significant they are. He, God the Father, hath in holy
justice and infinite mercy made him made the Lord Jesus Christ,
his infinite, well-beloved, only begotten, immaculate Son, sin. God made him an awful mass of
iniquity for us, who are helpless, condemned, and sinful rebels. You better believe it. This is
the greatest transaction that ever took place on the earth.
It's the most marvelous sight that any man ever saw and it's
the most stupendous wonder that heaven ever executed. Jesus Christ
was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Jesus Christ, the spotless Son
of God, was made sin for us. If we're ever going to find rest,
peace and joy in our souls. If a sinner is ever going to
be made to be of good cheer and having the blessed knowledge
of the forgiveness of sin, it must be from that which God has
declared to us in our text. He has made him sin for us. No sinner will ever find real
rest for his soul He'll never find a bed that He can stretch
Himself out on and a cover which is broad enough to wrap Himself
in, but this, He has made Him sin for us. If we're going to
understand 2 Corinthians 5.21 correctly, then we should be
very careful not to read anything into it. So let me state clearly
what this text does not say. This text doesn't say, as it's
commonly suggested that it says, but this text does not say that
God the Father made His Son a sin offering. The scriptures do declare,
Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin. Our all-glorious Christ
is our sin offering. We have no offering for sin except
Him, except Jesus Christ, but that's not what this text says.
Here in this verse, the Holy Spirit declares, He has made
Him sin for us. That's different than making
Him a sin offering. The Apostle does tell us here
that Christ was made a sacrifice for sin. He is our sacrifice
for sin, and we rejoice to declare that when our blessed Savior
died as our substitute, He offered Himself as the one sacrifice
for sins. And then he sat down on the right
hand of God. And because of Christ's one sacrifice,
there remaineth therefore no more sacrifice for sin. But here
in this verse that we're looking at, 2 Corinthians 5.21, the Holy
Spirit of God is saying, He hath made Him sin for us. Again, the Holy Spirit isn't
telling us here that Christ was reckoned to be sinned by His
Father. That's the way it would read
if we followed the implications of our translators in adding
those words, to be, to the text. Yes, He was reckoned to be sin. And He was punished as our substitute. But here in this text we read,
He hath made Him sin for us. Along that same line of thought,
I need to point out to you that our Lord Jesus is not said here
to have sin imputed to Him. Sin was indeed imputed to our
Substitute. Sin was laid to His charge, but
that's because He had made Him sin for us. Yet as far as the
words of the Holy Scripture are concerned, it is nowhere stated
in the book of God that sin was imputed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Don Fortner and others that I consulted agree, there is not a single
passage in the Bible that speaks of our sins being imputed to
our Savior. In Romans 4, the word imputation,
or its equivalent, accounting or reckoning, is used seven times,
just in that one verse, Romans 4. It's mentioned again in chapter
5, verse 13. But in those places, the Holy
Spirit of God speaks about sin as not being imputed to us and
about righteousness being imputed to us. Yes, our sins were imputed
to Christ when He was made sin for us. And because He hath made
Him sin for us, they were imputed. But the Word of God never uses
the word impute or any word like the word impute to speak of sin
being imputed to Christ. And He's not doing that here.
What God says is that our all-glorious Redeemer was made sin for us. John Gill wrote, He was made
sin itself. The sins of all of His people
were transferred unto Him, laid upon Him, and He sustained their
persons and bore their sins. And having their sin on Him and
being chargeable with and answerable for their sin, Christ our Savior
was treated by the justice of God as if he had been not only
a sinner, but a whole mass of sin. I added that word whole. I got a little carried away there.
Gail didn't put that word whole in, but that's okay. You know, I'm very much aware
of natural reasoning opposing this idea that Christ was made
a mass of sin. My own heart kind of recoiled
at the idea of Christ being a mass of sin. Does yours? Many people
have tried to make the Word of God say something else. We're
told that Christ had sin laid on Him and that He bore the guilt
of sin and He was charged with the debt of our sin, that He
became accountable for our sins and that He bore all of the effects
of our sins and that He was treated as if He were sin. But in the
text that we're looking at, this plain, straightforward, blessed
statement of Holy Scripture, that Christ became a mass of
sin, is almost universally denied. And yet there it stands. The
Holy Spirit of God says, He hath made him sin. How can this be? What can it
mean? As Psalm 118, verse 23 says,
this is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. According to the law and the
reasoning of men, we know that our guilt can't be transferred. Among the sons of men, a third
person may cancel my debts, but not my crimes. But the Spirit
of God is not revealing the things that men can do or may do. The Spirit of God is telling
us what our God has done. And in this great affair of salvation,
our great God stands infinitely alone. In this, God's most glorious
work, there is such a great display of justice, mercy, wisdom, and
power that we can't fully conceive or understand it. Consequently,
it can have no parallel in the actions of mortals. In Isaiah
45, verse 21, God asks, Who hath declared this from ancient time?
Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord? And there
is no God else beside me. A just God and a Savior, there
is none beside me. And in Micah 7, verse 18, God
asks, Who is a God like thee that pardoneth, that beareth
iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant
of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever,
because he delighteth in mercy. Let me ask you, were your sins
transferred to Christ and made to be His? Or was our Savior
only treated as if that were the case? Well, what does Scripture
say? We don't care much about what
men say, but what does Scripture say? Somebody said that in Sunday
school this morning. We only want to know this. What
does God say in His Word? Well, we've already read what
God says. This is what God says. He hath made him sin. The word
made is very significant. Don Fortner says that this word
made in the original language isn't a legal term, but it's
a word that carries the idea of create. It's a word that means
by one act to gather together and cause to be. Paul is telling
us that God the Father, by one great mysterious act, gathered
together all the sins of all His elect throughout all the
ages of time, and He caused His darling Son to be sin for us. In Isaiah 53, verse 6, the prophet
says that all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone
to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him, on Jesus Christ,
the iniquity of us all. And 1 Peter 2 verse 24 says about
Christ, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the
tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness
by whose stripes we were healed. The Word of God plainly teaches
that Christ, our blessed surety, was made sin for us, that he
bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and that the Lord
God laid upon him our iniquities, and that He hath made him sin. God the Father made Jesus Christ
the Son one mess of sin. Why was the Son of God brought
to such sorrow and grief? We'll look back at it again.
2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21. And I pray that you can see the
answer for yourself. It says, He hath made Him sin
for us who knew no sin. Why? that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. Indeed, Christ Jesus could never
have suffered the painful, shameful, ignominious death of the cross
as our substitute if He hadn't been made sin for us. God's justice
would never have allowed it. In Proverbs 17, verse 15, the
Lord God declares, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth
the just, Even they both are an abomination to the Lord. And
in Exodus 23, God says, Keep thee far from a false matter.
And the innocent and righteous slay thou not. For I will not
justify the wicked, God says. Now turn please to Psalm 40 and
verse 12. And if you would keep your finger
in Psalm 40 for a few minutes, we'll look at a couple of verses
there. I pray you can not only read
these words, these words of Christ, but you can hear them. Hear them
in your heart and as a result, you'll worship Christ who was
made sin for us. In Psalm 40, verse 12, we see
the words of Christ. He says, For innumerable evils
have compassed me about on the cross Jesus Christ, our Savior,
was beset on every side with evil. Countless woes compassed
our great substitute and sin-bearer. Charles Spurgeon said, our sins
were innumerable and so were Christ's griefs. From every quarter,
all of the accumulated sin of all of His people for all time
in all parts of the world were made to be His, and He was made
to be sin. The blessed One of God who knew
no sin, who did no sin, was made sin. Keep reading in Romans 40,
verse 12. Our Savior says, My iniquities
have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up. Christ Jesus had no sin, but
sins were laid on Him, and He took them as His own. He was
made sin for us. The transfer of sin to the Savior
was real. Spurgeon says, and sin produced
in Him as man, the horror which forbade Him to look into the
face of God, bowing Him down with crushing anguish and woe
intolerable." Think about this for a minute. What would our
sins have done to us eternally if the friend of sinners had
not condescended to take them on himself? Oh, what a wonderful
scripture. He had made him sin for us. Oh, how marvelous the depth of
God's love was that made the perfectly immaculate Lamb of
God to stand in the sinner's place and bear the horror of
great trembling which sin must always bring on those who are
forever keenly conscious of it in hell. As we continue to read
in Psalm 40, verse 12, Jesus said about the sin that was laid
on Him, They are more than the hairs
of mine head, therefore my heart faileth me." The pains of God's
holy fury against sin, His unbending justice and unmitigated wrath
were beyond calculation. And the Savior's soul was so
crushed with Him that He was sore amazed and very heavy, and
even unto a sweat of blood was He brought. Christ's strength
was gone. His spirit sank. He was in agony. And he cried out in Psalm 22,
verses 14 and 15, I am poured out like water, Jesus says, and
all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted
in the midst of my bowels and my strength is dried up like
a pot shard, like a broken piece of a clay pot. and my tongue
cleaveth to my jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust
of death." It was the thought, it was the anticipation of being
made sin for us, not of simply paying the debt that was due
to our sins, but of being made sin that caused our Savior's
bloody sweat in Gethsemane. It was this fact, the fact that
He was made sin for us, which caused Him to be forsaken by
His Father as He hung on that cursed tree on Golgotha's Hill. In Psalm 22, verse 1 to 3, we
hear Christ calling out, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me? Why art Thou so far from helping
Me and from the words of My roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime,
but Thou hearest not, and in the night season, and am not
silent. But Thou art holy, O Thou that
inhabits the praises of Israel." Are you still in Psalm 40? Look at verse 5, please. I'm
sure that David understood what he wrote in these Psalms, and
David must have been utterly overwhelmed by what he had written.
He's writing by the inspiration of God, and these are God's words,
but I'm sure that David understood what he wrote. Because in Psalm
40, verse 5, David wrote, Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful
works, which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to
usward. They cannot be reckoned up in
order unto thee. If I would declare and speak
of them, they are more than can be numbered. O gracious Spirit
of God, let me never cease to be overwhelmed by the love of
God in Christ which constrained my all-glorious Redeemer to be
made sin for me. In Psalm 69, verses 1-5, we again
hear Emmanuel, God with us, calling our sins His own as He hangs
on that cursed tree, suffering the wrath of God for us. Our
Savior says, Save me, O God, for the waters are come unto
my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I
am come unto deep waters where the floods, the floods of sin,
overflow me. I am weary of my crime. My throat
is dried. My eyes fail while I wait for
my God. They that hate me without cause
are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy
me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that
which I took not away. O God, thou knowest my foolishness,
and my sins are not hid from me." How could our Savior restore
that which He had not taken away? And how could they be His sins
except by this act of wondrous wisdom, justice, and grace? He
hath made Him sin for us. Just debts, are transferred to
the surety. Our sins were transferred to
our Savior. Thus it is written, and thus
it behooved Christ to suffer, as it says in Luke 24, verse
46. And since Christ Jesus became
voluntarily responsible, ought not Christ to have suffered these
things and to enter into His glory? This great transfer of
sin from God's elect to Christ their surety. is fully attested
to in the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament. All of
the expressions of the inspired writers in relation to this subject
seem to have a reference to the legal sacrifices. As the animal
offered in sacrifice was called sin because it typically bore
transgression, so Christ who knew no sin was made sin for
us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
In Galatians 3.13 it tells us that when Christ was made sin,
He was made a curse for us. Because as Hebrews 9 verse 28
says, Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. This
one offering was not typical. It wasn't like the sacrifices
of the law were. But it was a real expiation or
a real satisfaction of iniquity. The imputation of sin to our
blessed Savior was not figurative, but it was real. It was an imputation
which was connected with the real transfer of our iniquities
to Christ. If there is anything in the book
of God which we should want to be thoroughly acquainted with,
it would be this, on which our salvation and our everlasting
consolation depend. He has made Him sin. for us. If we would know Christ and the
fellowship of His sufferings, if we would look on Him whom
we have pierced and mourned, if we would die unto sin and
bring forth fruit unto God, we must have the gift of God the
Holy Spirit to reveal to us this great mystery. God the Father
has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all and that He hath made
Him sin for us. Why did our Holy Redeemer go
to the grave mourning and crying out to His Father? Why did divine
justice pursue Him? It was only because He bore the
sin of many. It was from this fountain of
mercy that the streams of our free salvation flow. We die unto
sin and we live unto righteousness only because Christ Himself bore
our sins in His own body on the tree. O wondrous grace! O magnificent justice! O mysterious
transfer! O amazing mystery! We can only
praise God for His love and His mercy to us in Christ because
He was made sin for us. I want so much for you all to
see the importance of this fact. He hath made Him sin for us. I hope I have more reverence
for our God and His Word and more respect for you than to
just make a lot of noise out of nothing. But what I'm talking
about isn't nothing. It is both a matter of great
importance and of great consolation. It is a clearly revealed point
of Gospel truth which sets before us the mysterious wonder of redemption
and the wisdom and the glory of God in accomplishing our redemption. Either the Lord Jesus was made
sin for us and our sins were transferred to him or he didn't. And if Christ did bear our sins
in his body on the tree, as the book of God says that he did,
that only Christ can suffer the consequences and the effects
of them. The prophet of God says, he shall bear their iniquities. And that word, bear, means to
carry, as a man carries a burden. Turn please to Micah chapter
7 and verse 18. Micah 7, verse 18, right there
at the end of the Old Testament. The Old Testament saints were
well acquainted with God our Savior as a sin-bearing Redeemer. And they considered this to be
the glory of God's character. In Micah 7, verse 18, the prophet
asks, Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth, that beareth
iniquity, and that passes over the transgression of the remnant
of His heritage? Either the Lord Jesus was made
sin for us and our sins were transferred to Him, or He didn't.
He didn't really bear the consequences and effects of them. Oh, I pray
you can hear this. Let me say it again. Either Christ
was made sin for us and our sins were transferred to Him, or He
didn't bear the penalty of them at all. The shame and spitting,
the beating and buffeting, the meanness and the mockery that
our Holy Savior endured at the hands of the Jews and Roman soldiers,
the cross, the nails and the thorns, were a very small part
of the reward of our transgressions. The principal part of the punishment
of sin consists in a sense of guilt and of divine wrath. But Emmanuel, God with us, could
not have endured either of these things unless he was made sin
and unless he bore our sins themselves. Either the Lord Jesus was made
sin for us and our sins were transferred to him, or else our
sins are still our sins and justice finds them still on us. Let me
say it again. If Christ was not made sin for
us, then the infinite justice of God must still find our guilt
on us and on the saints in glory too. And He must find them on
us forever, for all eternity. If that's the case, then justice
will still require satisfaction and mercy, which can only be
bestowed at the expense of righteousness. But thank God, that's not the
case. Here is the great glory of God
revealed in the salvation of His elect as it sets forth in
God's Word. The guilt of our sins and our
sin themselves were forever put away by the
sacrifice of His darling Son. They were washed away, and they
were washed away completely by His blood, by the blood of the
Lamb. All of them, not some, but all
of them were taken away. Here's the glory of Christ's
righteousness. Not only did He remove the curse,
but He removed the cause of the curse, too. Because, as Psalm
103, verse 12 says, as far as the east is from the west, so
far hath He removed our transgressions from us. Turn to Hebrews 9, verse
26, please. Our Savior was made sin for us,
and our sins were so completely transferred to Him that if He
hadn't conquered, if He hadn't destroyed them, then they would
have destroyed Him. And so Christ's resurrection
is proof that sin is no longer on Him. In Hebrews 9.26, after
showing us that all of our glorious Redeemer has, by the merit of
His blood, obtained eternal redemption for us, and that He is our ever-living
High Priest who appears in the presence of God for us, the Apostle
Paul declares that He bore our sins and He put them away by
the sacrifice of Himself. And in Hebrews 9 verse 28 we
read, So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and
unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, the
second time without sin unto salvation. Did you catch Paul's
words? I tried to emphasize them. He
tells us that Christ bore the sin of many. And then he says,
unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without
sin unto salvation." Christ will appear the second time without
sin. Have I emphasized it enough?
Margaret Well, Tobias Crift said, there was a time that Christ
did not appear without sin. He bore the sins of many. But
there is a second time when He shall appear, and then He shall
be without sin. So we see that believers have
no sins on them, and Christ has none on Him either. What a glorious
truth. It is truly worth more to our
souls than a mountain of gold. He hath made Him sin for us who
knew no sin. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Either the Lord Jesus Christ
was made sin for us and our sins were transferred to Him, or His
sufferings were not penal sufferings and the justice of God wasn't
satisfied by them. Justice requires that iniquity
be punished, but the sufferings of Christ were not punishment
unless our sins were transferred to Him and unless he was made
sin for us. An innocent person might suffer,
but an innocent person can't be justly punished. And justice
will not, indeed justice can't allow an innocent person or one
who is considered to be innocent to suffer punishment in the place
of the guilty, any more than it can reward a guilty, sinful,
corrupt one with life eternal. but blessed be His name forever.
Our substitute has fully satisfied His own infinite justice for
us by suffering in our room instead as one made sin for us, bearing
in His own body all of the iniquities, transgressions, and sins of all
His people. When our Lord Jesus turned the
water into wine in John chapter 2, He didn't just make the water
look like wine, He didn't make it just taste like wine. He made
the water wine. And when He was made sin for
us by His Father's laying on Him the iniquity of all of His
elect, He wasn't made to look like sin, or made merely to be
considered as sin, or even to only be treated as sin. He was
made sin. Now let me briefly set before
you some of the blessed, sweet consequences of this blessed
revelation of the Gospel. He had made Him sin for us. Because
Christ was made sin for us, because He bore our sins in His own body
on the tree and He bore them away, the Lord God Almighty declares
that all who trust Him have no sin. And so there is no basis
for their guilt. In Psalm 103, verse 12, it says
that as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed
our transgressions from us. And in Micah 7, verse 18 and
19, the prophet asked, Who is God like unto thee that pardoneth
iniquity and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?
He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy.
He will turn again. He will have compassion upon
us. He will subdue our iniquities and thou will cast all their
sins under the depths of the sea. And in 1 John 3, 5, the
apostle says, and you know that he was manifested to take away
our sins and in him is no sin. And so because he hath made him
sin for us, All who believe on the Son of God are made the righteousness
of God in Him, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5.21. Paul is telling
us that God the Father, by one great mysterious act, gathered
together all the sins of all of His elect through all of the
ages of time, and He made His darling Son sin for us. But when he tells us that we
are made the righteousness of God in Him, Another word is used
for the word made. When he speaks of us being made,
the righteousness of God in him, the word Paul uses for made is
another word altogether. Don Fortner says that it is a
present tense passive verb implying total passiveness on our part
and this word made in the original language means continually caused
to become. Paul is telling us, as I read
it, that those for whom Christ was made sin, God continually
causes them to become the righteousness of God in Him without them doing
a thing. Tobias Crisp explained it this
way. He said, Mark it well. Christ Himself is not more righteous
than we are because in Christ we are just as righteous as He
is. Nor are we so completely sinful
that Christ being made sin for us was as completely sinful as
we are. Nay more, we have the same righteousness
that Christ has with the Father, for we are made the righteousness
of God. That very sinfulness that we
were, Christ is made before God. So that there is a direct change,
Christ takes our persons and condition and stands in our stead. We take His person and condition
and stand in His stead. What the Lord beheld Christ to
be, that He beholds His members to be. What He beholds them to
be in themselves, that He beheld Christ Himself to be. So because
the Lord Jesus Christ, Jehovah's righteous servant, has fully
obeyed His Father's will in putting away our sins by the sacrifice
of Himself, because He was made sin for us, and because He bore
our sins in His own body on the tree, and because He paid all
the debt that we owed for our sins and put them away completely
and forever, Christ now assures sinners everywhere of this glorious
truth of the gospel. In John 6.37, Jesus said, Him
that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out. Why won't you
be cast out? Because you have been made to
be the righteousness of Christ. You can come to Christ no matter
who you are, no matter how vile your transgressions are, and
your Savior promises that He will receive you just as you
are, and that He will never cast you out, and that He will give
you eternal life that you shall never perish. Come then to Christ
without any preparation making you fit to come. Come to Christ
without attempting to change yourself and make yourself qualified
to come to Him. Come to Christ without delay
because in Christ you have been made by God completely righteous
in Jesus Christ. Sinners, if you will come to
Christ, you're welcome. Why? Because God has made you
righteous with the righteousness of Christ your Savior. In Matthew
11, verses 28 to 30, the Savior calls Come unto Me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon
you, and learn of Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart,
and you shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy,
and My burden is light. And I say to each of you, as
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 1, we then as workers together
with Him, workers together with Christ, beseech you also that
you receive not the grace of God in vain. For he saith, I
have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have
I succored thee. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation."
And so my prayer for each of you is that you would look to
Christ, that you would rest in Christ, trusting in Christ, There's
no reason for guilt if you're in Christ. As Romans 8.34 asks,
Who is he that condemneth? It's Christ that died. Yea, rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. Amen.