I wonder what those words, how
they resonate in your heart that we read in verse 10 of the previous,
this same chapter. For we all must appear before
the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the
things done in his body according to that which he has done, whether
it be good or bad. My aim is a simple one this morning. I want to talk to you about a
saviour. I want to talk to you about how
it is that you sinners like us, sinners like
this man Paul who wrote these words under the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, a sinner, a man who was a violent man and a murderer. could he be brought to a place
where not only will he stand before God, wholly spotless and
blameless, but he spends his life looking forward to being
there. I can't look into people's hearts,
but I know from the scriptures and I know from something of
my own heart, my own heart, that there are so many times when
I am thankful that Paul says that he groans and that he's
burdened and that he's troubled on every side. And yet, in the Gospel, in the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus, we have this remarkable, remarkable
activity. As someone once said, there are
two words that govern the Gospel, aren't they? Substitution and
satisfaction. And of these words that are before
us in chapter 5 verse 21, words that Paul says that God is beseeching
people, God is beseeching His people in the church to take
hold of, then God's children, If these words, if they're going
to get heaven to be holy and spotless and blameless, if they're
going to that day of the judgment seat with confidence and boldness
and a looking forward, a looking forward to meeting the Lord Jesus
in His glory. Oh dear. Peace, what peace that
would bring. What liberty, what freedom. As the Lord says, your sins have
separated you from your God. But here we have God's method
laid out of reconciliation, reconciling that which was broken and joined
back together again. The issue always, isn't it, is
just you and God. I speak as someone who has a
message laid on his heart, that all of us must deal with God
individually. But in these words, we have the
most remarkable reason for those promises. Paul says, as we went
through those things, Paul says, we have, we have a building of
God. Paul talks about that he won't
be naked, that he has found real life. It's a gift, verse five,
it's given. And he's confident, verse six,
always confident. He talks about how he walks,
he walks by faith and not by sight. He's confident. And in verse nine, accepted of
him, accepted. a true relationship, not just
something that's external, but something that's in our hearts.
External things come and go and they fluctuate and they're like
the waves of the sea, they're tossed here and there and sometimes
quiet, but this is a heart issue that he's talking about. The
love of Christ, Christ's love for us and the love that He brings
from us to Him, it constrains us. Wouldn't it be wonderful,
it's verse 17, to know, just read it, if any man be in Christ,
not in religion, not in the church, not in moral reformation, any
man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things have passed
away. You look back on all of your
life and you think, oh dear, oh dear, all passed away. Wouldn't it be wonderful for
you if all things had become new and that you were reconciled,
verse 18, reconciled to God? God is beseeching us here. This
is just such a glorious verse, isn't it? And when I finish today,
you'll have very much more to meditate on and there are very
many more sermons to preach on it. But here our comforter, the
blessed God, the Holy Spirit, he gives us in the original in
15 simple words the very essence of the Gospel, that glorious,
remarkable, supreme act. of the Father and of His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. All of creation, all of history
centres on this one person and this one event. All of what happens
prior to it and all of what happens afterwards is centred here. Our eternal destinies are tied
up with this event. there is nothing more important. If you want to know how God so
loved the world, then you need to listen to these words. Let's
just look at them again. He, God the Father, has in holy justice
and mercy made, caused to become created is the word, made Him
the Lord Jesus Christ, His darling, only begotten, beloved Son, His
only Son, the one who is equal with Him as God, one with Him
in eternity in perfect love, wholly spotless and blameless,
made Him sin, sin. that appalling mess of sin and
iniquity, the evil of it, the guilt of it, the consequences
of it, the cancerous spread of the sin that permeates this world
as sinners sin with other sinners. against a holy God. We are rebels by nature and rebels
by practice. Sin is what we are, according
to the Scriptures, and because sin is what we are, sin is what
we do. Made sin, the Lord Jesus made
sin that we, we might be made Made new. Made new and continually
sustained in that state. Made the righteousness of God
in Him. In the original it's beautiful
the way the sentence begins and ends. It begins with a declaration
of the Lord Jesus and Paul just says, the Holy Spirit leads Paul
to say, He is the One. the One, the only One. And the sentence finishes, of
course, within, it means within Him. All that sinners need for
peace, all that sinners need to have consciences cleaned,
hearts purified by faith, Rest, comfort is here. Here in these precious few words. Abraham believed God. He had a word of promise from
God and he believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. May God the Holy Spirit move
our hearts today just to believe Him as we study these precious
words together. Let's look at them again in some
detail. I trust the Lord will cause us
to bear something of the import and the weight and the gravity
of these words, but also something of the tremendous comfort and
joy of the finished work of a glorious Saviour. He, God the Father,
God the Eternal Father, God the Almighty God. He describes himself,
we read some of it last week out of Isaiah. Isaiah 41, 45,
21 says, Who has declared this from ancient times? Who has told
it from that time? Have not I the Lord? There is
no God else beside me. There are no other gods. No one
else beside me, he describes himself, as a just God and a
saviour. There is none beside me. He is the God of infinite purity
and infinite holiness. His eyes are too pure to behold
sin. Holiness is who He is and what
He is, and all of His attributes are enshrouded, as it were, and
covered in holiness. That's why Paul says, knowing
therefore the terror of the Lord. This is serious business. Sin is a serious business. There
is a judgment seat. There is a judgment seat. For
God's children redeemed, they will find that judgment season,
a day of vindication, a day when the Lord Jesus will display the
trophies of His grace, and before wandering worlds, it will be
seen that God is just. God is holy, God is righteous
to save His people. His character demands their salvation
because of what He and His Son and the blessed Holy Spirit have
done. He, God the Father, had in holy
justice and in divine mercy and because of the demands of that
eternal covenant, because of what was arranged and sealed
in that eternal covenant before the foundation of the world,
where we were one with the Lord Jesus, a gift from God the Father,
a precious gift of a people. My people, he calls them. They were given to the Lord Jesus,
espoused to Him, engaged to be married to Him, one with Him. He has made. And here the word
made means to create, to create wonderfully, mysteriously, cause
to become. It's an act which an only infinitely
wise and powerful and knowledgeable God is able to perform. He made, He gathered as it were,
all of the sins of all of God's children, from Abel and Adam
and Eve, David and Noah and Abraham. You read the list of God's children
all through time, including people here. He gathered them, as it
were, as one together. Made. He made. He made them His. It is a remarkable
word, isn't it? He has made him, just read what
God says. God the Holy Spirit describes
this transaction, for he has made him sin. created this event where all
of that sin and all of its guilt and all of its consequences and
all of what it means for us to stand before God with that sin
on us, all of that was made him. He was made sin. How does he
describe it? his own self, in his own self
he bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead
to sins should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes we were healed. God must satisfy God for God
to take sinners to heaven. The critical transaction is a
transaction between God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit. He made him sin. As I said, to be is not in the
original. Our Lord Jesus, we must state
it again and again, the Lord Jesus had no sin. It says there, didn't it, He
knew no sin. He knew no sin. He was perfect,
perfect before the law of God. He knew no sin. He says to those
people after they had three years to examine him, can you accuse
me of any sin? There they were watching his
life, those Pharisees, like a hawk, watching every word he said,
testing him and testing him and testing him. And he says to them
in John 8, can you accuse me of any sin? Under your law, in
my words, anything that might have come out of my heart that
might have indicated the slightest, slightest sin. And at the end
they had Judas to help them examine him. Three and a half years Judas
had been with him and Judas had not one accusation to make. At his death everyone declares
him just. Pilate's wife, the centurion,
they all are forced to declare him just. He knew no sin, he
had no sin of his own, he had no possibility of sinning. And I love how he describes himself. Twice he's described in the Old
Testament. He says in Psalm 18, verse 23,
and in 2 Samuel 22, 24, he says, I was upright before him. I was upright before him. And
then he says something remarkable. He says, I kept myself from mine
iniquities." This is the remarkable transaction
that this verse is stating and many other places in the scriptures
are stating it. Sin is transferred. There are so many pictures of
it in the whole sacrificial system. Sin is transferred. and transferred, as in Leviticus
chapter 16, to that scapegoat. I'll just read. After the high
priest has gone into that holy place and he's sprinkled his
blood on it and cleanses it and hallows it from all the uncleanness
of the children of Israel, and when he has made verse 20 of
chapter 16 of Leviticus, when he has made an end of reconciling
the holy place and the tabernacle, the congregation, the altar,
he shall bring out the live goat and Aaron shall lay both his
hands upon the head of the goat and confess over him all the
iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transactions
in all their sins. putting them upon the head of
the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man
into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon
him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, and he
shall let go the goat in the wilderness." There is a transfer
in the sacrificial system again and again. There is a transfer
and it's described as a transfer of sin. A transfer of sin from
the people to a scapegoat. from us to Christ. It's the transfer of particular
sins of a particular people unto a chosen one. The sins of the
children of Israel, all of God's elect, were transferred. He's a just God and a Saviour. He has made Him seen as a just
God and a Saviour. He's made Him seen, and this
next word is beautiful, isn't it? He's made Him seen for us. I love what that word for, we
talked about it on Thursday night, it means on behalf of. One who does a thing for another. As one of the Greek lexicons
says, it's conceived of as standing over and bending over to defend
or shield for one's safety or advantage. Surely, Isaiah 53
says, surely he has borne our griefs. and carried our sorrows,
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."
And note the pronouns. They're all through the scripture.
The pronouns matter. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. for us, on our behalf. Again and again that word is
used in reference to the Lord Jesus and that special work,
that special work of redemption. for His people. Romans 8.32 says
He's delivered up, He's delivered Him up, God the Father delivered
Him up for us, on behalf of us all. He now is in heaven and
He makes intercession for us. Christ died for our sins, for
the sins of us. Christ at Passover was sacrificed
for us, on our behalf. Revelation 3 says He was made
a curse for us, on our behalf. He's given Himself for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God. He gave Himself for us that He
might redeem us from all iniquity. He's obtained eternal redemption
for us, on our behalf. He suffered in the flesh. for us, and hereby we perceive
the love of God because He laid down His life for us." There
was a real transaction, a real transfer of real sins. God, in a creative act that only
God Almighty could perform, has made him sin. for us. He's a just God and a Saviour. He will not punish and he cannot
punish unless there is a reason to punish. How does he describe
him? Describe those false judges. He that justifies the wicked,
Proverbs 17.15, and he that condemns the just, even they both are
abomination to the Lord. to justify the wicked and to
condemn the just is an abomination. God is not going to commit and
commit an abomination. He will not and He cannot punish
anyone with holy justice unless there is sin to be punished. He doesn't pretend that there
is sin where there is none found. Our Lord Jesus Christ was punished,
suffered, crushed by God, who drew His sword, as Zechariah
13 says, He drew His sword of infinite holy justice, and He
slayed He slayed His Son, a just God and a Saviour. And the Lord Jesus was punished
to the full satisfaction of divine justice. God the Father, as it
were, seeing sin on His Son, having made Him sin, turned away. And the Lord Jesus cried out
on the cross. He says, My God, My God, Why
has thou forsaken me?" All through the rest of his life he was my
father, Abba Father. On the cross having been made
sin, he's my God, my God. And then when that great transaction
is done and he cries out at the end, it is finished. It is finished. It is done. The price has been
paid in full. There is no debt left outstanding,
is what he is saying. Nothing more to pay. And then
he finishes, doesn't he, on that cross, and he's my father again. into my hands, I commit you at
my Spirit." Justice is now perfectly satisfied. Paul, that great sinner
like we are, can now say now, right now, there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. All of the sins of all of God's
elect are now forever, completely, and justly, and legally, and
openly put away. And they cannot be charged to
us, because God doesn't remember them anymore. They are gone. God doesn't play pretend games. with sin. God doesn't play pretend
games with his dear and darling son. He made his son sin. He punished those sins until
justice cries it is finished. And what's he done with them?
Psalm 103.12 says, as far as the east is from the west, so
far as he removed our transgressions from us. How far is the East
from the West? You can get at the South Pole
and you go North and you get to the North Pole and you go
South. But you go East, how far can you go East? You go East
forever. You go West forever. They're
gone. They're taken by the scapegoat
into a wilderness never to be seen again, never to be raised
up by God. His justice won't let it, His
holiness won't let those sins be raised up again. Satan will
accuse us and our consciences accuse us again and again. And
we have reason, like Luther said to Satan, you tell me what I've
done. And when Satan had given him
a great big list, he said, well, tell me some more. And Satan
dredged up more of the sewer of Luther's life. And then he
says, will you go and talk to my Savior about all of that?
He's dealt with those. They're his. They're his to deal
with. As far as he is from this. Taken
by a scapegoat, Isaiah 43, 25, it says, I, even I am he that
blotteth out thy transgressions. for mine own sake, and I will
not remember thy sins." Jeremiah 50 verse 20, he says, in those
days, on that great day when all things will be revealed,
and in that time, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall
be sought for, sought by anyone. even God Himself, and there shall
be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found."
Jeremiah was speaking to a rebellious nation who were about to suffer
70 years of exile for their sin and their open rebellion against
God. What a Saviour! What a Gospel! for I will pardon them whom I
reserve. Even Balaam, that wicked false
prophet who led Israel into terrible sin, was caused by God to say,
he has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has he seen perverseness
in Israel, in his chosen. Why? Because Christ stood as
our surety. He took in that eternal covenant
before the world began, He took full responsibility for His sheep. He will save His people from
their sins. The debt is His. Surely, we've
just read in Isaiah 53, surely He has borne our griefs and carried
our sorrow. He who is sinless and spotless
and holy and harmless, unblameable and undefiled. He took them and
He bore them. He bore them. It means to receive,
to accept, to carry them. As I said, the sin offering,
that habitual sinfulness of the offender, it's put on to a bullock
and put on to a stake and it's called sin itself and it's taken
away. See, Christ, as I read earlier
out of Psalm 18, He says, mine iniquities. I have kept myself
from mine iniquities. He kept himself from being defiled
by them in all that holy spotless life until God made him sin. Made him sin. Christ speaking
in Hebrews, he says, Hebrews, quote Psalm 40 and Verse 11 and
12 and says, for innumerable evils have compassed me about,
all the sins of all of his people have compassed him about. And
then he says, mine iniquity, mine iniquities have taken hold
of me that I'm not able to look up. Spurgeon said, the transfer
of sin to the Saviour was real and 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. He says, they are more than the
hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth me. His heart, crushed and broken,
is his sweat of blood in Gethsemane, in agony he was as he was contemplating
being made sin. Again and again, if you read
the Psalms in light of this verse, you'll see more and more again
how there is this glorious substitution. Sin laid on Him, Him claiming
responsibility for it. He says, My sin, Psalm 69, is
not hid from you. His resurrection is proof. that
the sins of his elect are gone. How does Hebrews 9.26 say that
he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. So Christ was offered
to bear the sins of many. Under them that look to him he
shall appear a second time without sin. He appears a second time
without sin because the sins of his people are gone, they're
taken away. They have been perfectly, perfectly
punished and perfectly, perfectly by a holy God put away. Oh brothers and sisters, what
a wonder it is to contemplate as God's children are made to
see and to feel their sins in ways that the rest of this world
are completely oblivious to. The only people who have a conscience
of sin and a conscience of sin separating them from God and
a consciousness of sin in the offence it brings to our Lord
Jesus are believers. Only believers. For the rest
of the world, sin just rolls off them like water off a duck's
back. For God's children, it's a deep thing. It's a significant
thing. And what a wonderful Saviour. God's children need a special
Saviour. A common salvation is not good
enough because we're not common sinners. Not only is sin taken
away, that's just half this glorious equation, isn't it? It's half
this glorious transaction that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. As I said earlier, the word made
in the first part of the verse is a word that signifies to create
and it implies a creative activity of God the Father and a creative
activity in which the Lord Jesus was personally involved. It wasn't
something outside of his knowledge or doing. But here we have another
word made and it's a completely different word. It's a glorious
word. It means to continually cause
to become. That we might continually be
caused to become the righteousness of God in him. It implies total passiveness
on our part. The triune God acts, He works. He who shall not fail nor be
discouraged will have this great transaction done. Paul is telling
us that those for whom Christ died Him having been made their
sin, are continually caused by God to become the righteousness
of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, without us doing a thing. What a gospel. What a glorious
gospel. It won't leave us. Unchanged
and unimpacted. Righteous. Righteous. We're righteous God's children.
We have to be righteous. We are the righteousness of God. Not a righteousness of man. We
are made and caused to be the righteousness of God. That's
one of those blessings, isn't it? That we were given before
the foundation of the world. all of the blessings of God.
You can read about it in Ephesians 1, 3-6. He blessed us. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings. What a spiritual blessing. Sin
taken away and God doesn't remember it anymore. What a spiritual
blessing. The righteousness of God made
ours. blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He has
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy, made holy. righteous God, the righteousness
of God, and without blame, no sin charged to our account before
Him in love, having predestinated us under the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace. This is grace writ
large, brothers and sisters, isn't it? To the praise of the
glory of His grace wherein He has made us accepted, accepted
in the blood, in whom we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. Blessed, blessed eternally. Blessed, as I said earlier, legally. The Lord Jesus Christ died under
the law. The wages of sin is death. Divine justice is satisfied when
he died. Righteous, righteous before God,
eternally, legally, justly, personally. Partakers of the divine nature
is how 1 Peter 1.4 describes God's people. Christ in you,
the hope of glory. He can live in us because there
is no sin to be seen in us. He can dwell with peace and comfort
in His people because there is no sin in them. What a place
of safety, what a place of security. Not only that, but He that's
in us, that Holy Thing that is in us is born of God, 1 John
3, and cannot sin. They've all been taken away,
the past, the present, the future. God doesn't remember. We're now accepted in the beloved.
We have access to the courts of heaven and we come there with
confidence. We come with boldness to the
throne of grace. Personally, legally, eternally,
completely, perfectly, forever. as we saw in 1 Corinthians, 2
Corinthians 5, 17, a new creature, a new creature. All things are
passed away, all things become new. We're made, we are qualified
to be fit and proper partakers of the saints in life. And all
of this is in Him. The sentence begins, as I said,
The One. Look at The One and look at what
this activity is, that all of this is in Him, in Him. It's all in our Lord Jesus Christ. What a saying. What a glorious
Redeemer. What an extraordinary thing for
Him to be made sin to people. What an amazing activity of God. As I said, our words can't describe
it properly, can they? And isn't it remarkable that
here in this letter written 20 or 30 years after the death of
the Lord Jesus, God is beseeching. God is beseeching by his people. You wandering sheep, you straying
sheep, be reconciled to God. Be reconciled. Can you rest where
God rests? God is perfectly rested, perfectly
satisfied with his son's sacrifice. If we find our peace where God
the Father finds His peace and His rest, we will be still and
know that I am God. We are saved by faith. in Him, Christ crucified, Christ
risen, saved by Christ alone. Don't look anywhere else. Don't
look to your feelings. People make a saviour out of
their feelings. People make a saviour out of
their experience. All you need, all that is needed
is to feel your need of Him. Don't think you have to experience
this or that. Come as you are, as you have
received Him. How do you receive Christ Jesus,
Lord? As a helpless, hopeless sinner. With nothing in my hand I bring
simply to the cross I cling. Christ wants no preparations
from us. is simply casting ourselves down
on Christ, down with our doings, down with our righteousness,
resting in Him alone, believing Him. And we might so often say,
my sins are many, but His Atonement, as we've just seen, is glorious
and wondrous, and He's called the friend of sinners. He might say, my heart is hard,
but the Lord Jesus can soften the hardest heart. You might
say I'm so unworthy, but our Lord Jesus loves the unworthy. You might say that I am so vile,
and I have turned away from Him in so much and so often, and
I've treated His sacrifice with contempt. How did that publican
go to the temple? He said, Lord have mercy on me,
the sinner. And he went home declared by
God to be righteous. Sins taken away. May our great
God turn our eyes away from ourselves and turn to Him, to Him alone. to find ourselves just sweetly
trusting in Him, safe and secure now, safe and secure when the
floods of time come upon us, safe and secure at the judgement
seat of God. He has suffered once for sins,
the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. Let's pray.