But looking at what we started
with in Psalm 32, where it says in the first couple of verses,
and is quoted in Romans 4, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will
not impute sin. If you remember from Romans 4,
the quotation runs like this. David describes the blessedness
of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works,
saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose
sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. We began, because of this quotation
from Psalm 32, to consider this word imputation. And last week
we saw that imputation is explained actually most clearly in Romans
chapter five, which we're going to get to eventually, but not
tonight. But it means that God thinks
about us or thinks about someone when he imputes. in a certain
way. So the general definition, if
you were to look in a dictionary, would be something like to regard
or to count as, to consider as, and it would be one person considering
or regarding or accounting or imputing to another either something
that's true about them or not true about them. And we looked
at several examples last week. Shimei, for example, who asked
King David not to impute his perverseness and sin against
David and his men when Shimei cast stones at David and cursed
him. And even though Shimei was guilty,
he asked King David as the sovereign then to judge in such a way that
would allow David not to impute that sin to him. A perfect example
of the non-imputation of our sins to us. And then we also
considered the Apostle Paul who gave the example in Philemon,
speaking to Philemon, slave owner, Onesimus was a believer, a runaway
slave, and Paul tells Philemon to receive Onesimus as himself,
as Paul, and not to lay it to his charge, not to lay it to
Onesimus' charge, but he said, if he has wronged thee or owes
you anything, then put that on my account. That's another clear
example of the concept of imputation, so that Philemon, if he were
to do so, would place the blame on Paul and require payment from
Paul for all that Onesimus did against him. I expect that there
was no such payment or blame laid on Paul by Philemon, because
Paul goes on to say to Philemon that he owed him even his own
life. So I'm sure that that's the case in history. And then
we also considered, we just made mention really of the imputation
of Adam's offense to us, so that we became sinners in that disobedience
of Adam, and that God has, according to 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans
5, has imputed the sins of his people to Christ, and there also
has imputed the righteousness of Christ to them. So this is
sort of a reminder of what we went over last time. And then
the other things I wanted to mention from last time to bring
you back into that frame of mind was that imputation, or the imputation
of our sins to Christ, or his righteousness to us, or Adam's
sin, his disobedience to us as our sin, all those acts by God
have a foundation. And that foundation is comprised
of three parts. First of all, God is sovereign. God does what's right. He's the
judge. So when he does it, it's because he did it, it's therefore
right. Right and justice and judgment are not things that
are outside of God that he adheres to, but the very fact that God
thinks or acts or views things in a certain way, that makes
it truth. So it's what God thinks that
matters. That's what truth is, is what
God thinks. And then secondly, the other
ground of imputation is not only that God is sovereign and does
what's right, as the sovereign and just God, acting out of His
character in everything that He does, but also the other ground
of imputation is our relationship, our relationship to the One who
is the representative for us. And Paul had a representative
role in Onesimus' life to Philemon. And so he was able to ask Philemon
to lay all of the wrong that Onesimus might have done or any
debt that Onesimus had on him for Onesimus. And he would repay
Philemon for that. It had to do with the relationship.
And our relationship to Adam is how God sovereignly and justly
charged us with that disobedience of Adam. And it is our relationship
to Christ that God uses as the basis for imputing the very righteousness
of Christ to us, having already imputed our sins to Him. So our
sins imputed to Christ and His righteousness to us stands on
that basis, which is the relationship we have to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what is that relationship? Well, the Bible speaks of it
in many ways. One way is the relationship of
a husband and his wife. We are members of his flesh,
of his body, of his bones. He stands for us. He's the head
of the church. And then there's the relationship
of that election union that God made. Remember, he says he has
chosen us in Christ. So we're in him. We're in Him
like Noah and his family were in the ark. We are in Christ.
Like the children of Israel on that Passover night, we're in
the house, we're in Christ. And God sees the blood and passes
over us. And we could give many examples
like this, and we gave some last time. So it's our relationship
to Christ is the second basis of imputation. And then the third
basis of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us is his redeeming
work. So it is the righteousness of
accomplishing our redemption that God imputes to us. Christ
finished the work God gave him to do, and that work having been
fulfilled by Christ in obedience to God for his people, that very
substitutionary work of his is the righteousness that God imputes
to us. He credits us with what Christ
did. And so you can see those three
points there. God is sovereign. He established
the relationship. He gave that work to Christ to
do. Christ fulfilled it, that very righteousness. on the basis
of that relationship God made and God's sovereign character
in which he acts in every way to please himself and accomplish
his will. Those are the three things that give the ground and
the foundation and the reality to our imputation. Now, we're
looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and that's where I want to
focus right now. And I hope that we can follow
this through. There's many things that we could
consider here, but let me just read this verse of scripture
to us. Let's read it together. 2 Corinthians
5, 21. He says, for he hath made him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. I suspect or I expect that many
of you have memorized that text of scripture, maybe not even
deliberately or on purpose, but just because you've heard it
quoted so many times. God the Father made Christ, according
to this, sin for us. and the Lord Jesus knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. We could just
take this verse apart and look at the details of it until the
cows come home. I mean, we really could do this
week after week for a long time now. But I wanted to just point
out some highlights here. It was God who did this, God
the Father. And notice it says, he made him,
he has made him. It's something he did in the
past. The word hath made is a verb, and it's a verb referring to
something done in the past. It also says he made him to be
sin, and in the King James Version, those words to be are in italics,
so you could really just remove them for clarity. He made him
sin for us. So the next phrase almost should
precede the verse, I think, if I would have written it, I would
have said, he who knew no sin was made sin for us. But I'm
not a grammarian, and perhaps this is the best way to say it.
We understand that the one who knew no sin is the same one who
was made sin, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. God made Christ
sin, okay? We're gonna say that again, just
so that we don't lose the significance of that statement. God made Christ
sin, okay? And he knew no sin. Now, how
did he knew? What does it mean he knew no
sin? K-N-E-W. Well, it means that he never
committed sin. 1 Peter 2, verse 22 says he did
know sin. So we know he didn't do any sin,
therefore he knew no sin in the sense that he never acted sinfully,
he never did sin, and we know that sin is not just what we
do with our hands, it's what we say, it's what we think. So
he didn't think sin, he didn't speak anything that was a sin,
and he didn't do any sin. And then also we know that he
didn't know sin by approval. He didn't approve of any sin.
To approve of sin would be as much as to commit the sin. But
he didn't approve of sin. He, in fact, it says in Hebrews
chapter 10, I'm sorry, chapter one, Hebrews chapter one in verse
eight, it says, unto the son he saith, thy throne, O God,
is forever and ever. Thou hast loved righteousness
and hated iniquity. So he loved righteousness. He didn't know sin, he loved
righteousness. He hated iniquity. It's not that
he didn't just avoid committing sin, but his very nature, all
that he thought was a hatred of sin and a love for righteousness. So his nature was the very opposite
of sinful. And remember, he said with his
disciples in John chapter 14 and verse 30, that the prince
of this world cometh and findeth nothing in me. He finds nothing
in me because there was nothing, there was no sin to find in him.
He found something in Adam. It wasn't sin before he tempted
him, but when he tempted him, he found sin in Adam, but he
tempted Christ and he found nothing in him. He wrung him out, as
it were, and found nothing in him. And then Jesus, in John
8, in verse 46, he told his enemies, he said, which of you convinces
me of sin? So he knew no sin, and his most
fierce enemies, his most ardent enemies could not convince him
of sin, and found no sin in him. The devil couldn't, his enemies,
the Pharisees couldn't, and Pilate said, Why should I condemn him? Why should I crucify him? What
evil has he done? So even Pilate couldn't find
any sin in him. So we can see that because of
these things, it bears on this text where it says he knew no
sin. He did no sin. In His very nature, He loved
righteousness and hated iniquity. His enemies couldn't find sin
in Him. And when He came into the world, in Luke 1, verse 35,
it says that He was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy
Spirit of God. Does the Holy Spirit of God create
sin? Does He create sinful things?
No. He only creates what is holy.
And he says in that very verse that that holy thing, therefore
what is conceived in you, that holy thing shall be called, I
don't know, I'm misquoting it, but he refers to his conception
as a holy thing, what he was conceived of as a holy thing.
Let me get the words right here. This is in Luke 135, he says, The angel answered, the Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee, Mary, and the power of the highest
shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall
be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. So he was conceived
as that Holy One, the Son of Man. There was no sin in him
as a man. He was holy, according to Hebrews,
chapter seven, verse 26, he was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate
from sinners. And so we can see in all these
quotations, there was no sin in Christ, 1 John 3, verse 5. He did no sin, 1 Peter 2, 22. And he knew no sin, 2 Corinthians
5, 21. He was so far from sinning that
he hated sin. And so this was necessary. Remember
in Leviticus 17, if it's not perfect, it cannot be accepted. Christ couldn't take our sin
unless he knew no sin. And he had no approval of it.
He had no commission of it. It wasn't in him, in his nature.
It wasn't in his mind. It was the furthest thing from
him. In fact, he said, I delight to do thy will, O God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. So this is proof, all these texts
of Scripture prove that the Lord Jesus Christ knew no sin. Not
only that, but He was filled with the Spirit of God without
measure. So all that the Spirit of God is, was in Him. Therefore,
and he was filled, there was no room for anything else, no
admixture of things, and so he did no sin, knew no sin, in him
was no sin, the Spirit of God conceived him, he was the Holy
One of God, conceived by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit
of God was upon him without measure. There's no possibility that he
ever sinned, not in thought, not in word, not in deed. Now,
this makes him the perfect man, the only one worthy who can bear
the debt, the crime debt of sinners. And so we see that he had to
be without sin in order to be accepted. And he had to offer
himself, as it says in 1 Peter 1, verse 18, he was, we were
redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without spot. who was offered to God, okay?
So without spot, there was no spot, therefore he was offered
as the lamb, our sins were laid on him. That's what he's talking
about here in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. God made him sin who knew
no sin in all the sense and probably even more than I can conceive
of. because we can't really understand what it means for us as sinners. We can't even conceive of what
it means to be without sin. We can understand it to believe
it. We can understand the testimony
of God, but to explain it, we fall short in all of our words.
Our very attempts to explain it feel sinful. My own do. Our
ignorance and our foolishness enters into our own attempts
to explain what this means, doesn't it? But suffice it to say that
God said it, and therefore God knows He is light, pure light,
and He searches the hearts and tries the reins, and He searched
Christ's heart, and He found no sin in Him. And so He could
say this, He was without sin, the Lamb offered without spot
to God. But God made Him sin. Now, since
the sin wasn't in him, it wasn't his own sin. It was the sin of
someone else. And that's the point here. That's
the big point here. And I wanna say a few words about
this because there's a lot of details here that people like
to focus on first. But let me mention some of those
details so that we can pull up, as it were, the nose of the airplane
and look at the big picture. If you look at this, it says
that God made him sin or has made him sin for us. There have
been attempts to understand this by diving into the meaning of
that word, that verb actually, which means made him, has made
him to be sin. So I say this for a couple of
reasons. I'm gonna go down this rabbit
trail for just a little bit for a couple of reasons. First of
all, to show you that whether you look at the big picture or
the most minute detail of God's Word, it's all perfect. You won't
find any fault in it. But our own sinful tendency is
to first, and I'm speaking from experience because I know myself,
and maybe you've experienced this too in your own studies,
our own tendency is to look at the details of a particular verse,
maybe by examining a word. What was that word in the Greek?
Or what is the tense of that word? What is the voice and mood
and all these other things that describe Greek grammar in that
particular verb? And we can do that. And I did
that. But I'm telling you from my experiences
that when we do that, we have to be on our guard because we
have a tendency to say, now I have academic knowledge about something
and I'm going to apply my academic knowledge to this. I'm going
to pull out my high-powered doctrine gun and I'm going to make sure
that I mow down anybody who disagrees with me because I've got this
handled. The other mistake that we make
in this is that we take a word like this and we say, well, look,
the word made here. Let's look up the Greek word.
Oh, I see it's number XYZ. Let's find everywhere in scripture
where number XYZ is used. Oh, wow. Look at that. It's used
all these places. And then we find places where
it's used in such a way that it fits the way we want to interpret
the verse. And we use that biased interpretation
to understand the verse. Now, let me give you some background
here on this word, hath made. It is a verb. It's used in the
King James Bible. It's translated in the King James
Bible. Actually, in the original Greek,
it's used 579 times. 579 times this word is used where
it says in the King James, hath made. Now of those 579 times,
376 of them, the word is translated do or done or did. which is about 62%. Now remember,
I'm doing this technical detail thing for a reason, and we're
going to pull up in a minute, and I'm going to try to bring
some benefit to this. But hang with me for a minute.
The word was translated do, done, or did 62% of the time. OK, so how else was it translated? Well, in a variety of ways. Sometimes
it's used of a man doing something. For example, Jesus said, don't
you know what David did when he took the showbread when he
was hungry and his men were hungry? The word here is the same word
as made. So sometimes it's used by what a man did. It's also
used of what the woman did who came behind Jesus and poured
out her tears on his feet and anointed his feet with ointment. And Jesus said, she did this
for my burial, the burial of my body. She anointed his head
with the ointment. And so that was an action that
she did, a woman. The action was pouring out this
ointment on Jesus for his burial. David took the bread, the woman
poured out the ointment. And there's several different
other examples of this that people have done. And the word is translated
do, did, or done, hath done, or something like that. It's
most commonly translated that way. There are some cases where
God is the one who's doing the action. It's a verb, so someone
has to be doing something. The one who acts is God. And
what God does is create something. It's used in John chapter 4,
where it refers to Jesus turning the water into wine. So Jesus
actually made wine. He had to create it, because
all that was in the jugs was water. And he produced wine,
so there was a creation involved. So in that case, God acted in
Christ, and he created wine. And God made all men on the earth
and it's used in that way too. So what you see when you look
at the details here of how this verb is used, and I'm talking
about specifically how this verb is used, Because in the Greek
language, it's just not like the word made. Each word has
with it letters and notation that indicate several parts of
how it's to be used as a verb. And I'm talking about those that
precisely, exactly match the way it's used here, which there
are 75 cases of. If you look at all of them, you
can see that there's a mixture of the way that this word is
used, and it commonly just means it's a verb that expresses an
action that's done by someone to accomplish something. And
so it's used in such a variety of ways, most commonly in the
simple way of do, done, or did, that you see that you can't take
that word and interpret the doctrine of this verse from the meaning
of that word. So that's an important observation
here. The word is so commonly used
and has such a variety of uses that you can't make the word,
the word provides very little insight into the doctrine of
what is said here. because it's so general. So I
can give you all of the cases. I wrote them all down and followed
them up and looked at them and summarized them, but I didn't
send it out because I didn't want to overwhelm you with these
details. But now I want to pull up. I want to pull up because
this is where I think we need to pull up to in order to understand
this. There's a common phrase that
we often use in the English language where it says, he can't see the
forest for the trees. Have you ever heard that? I'm
sure you have. What it means is that we get
so fixated on the details of a particular tree that we miss
the big concept, the big picture that's standing in front of us,
which is we're standing in the middle of a forest. Okay, well
at times it's helpful to look at a single tree, but it's a
commentary, it's a reflection on how we analyze things. We get caught up in the details
and we stumble over the picture, the big part, okay? And that's
what I wanna look at now. We have to be careful when we
undertake technical details in analysis of scripture. There's
nothing wrong with the details, but our natural tendency is to
miss the larger and more obvious lesson that's in the details. And so we are prone to miss,
as I say, the forest for the trees and to miss the important
lesson. Like the Pharisees, they focused
on tithing mint, anise, and cumin. Or Jesus said, mint and rue and
all manner of herbs, but they missed the weightier matters
of the law, which he said was judgment, mercy and faith. OK, so in another place, he said,
and the love of God. So at the outset, I don't want
you to miss this. Don't miss this. I'm trying to
give you the big picture. We don't want to miss this. When
you read this verse, notice, If you were to drive a stake
in the middle of a tent, that stake upholds the tent, and the
tent drapes on that one stake. Get the picture of like a circus
tent, where there's one pole in the middle, and the whole
thing drapes down on it, over it. That's the important point
here. And notice it's right in the
middle here. Him. Him. God made him. to be sin
for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. Okay. Do you see that? Him. The tent here is Christ. And so it's Christ who is the
end of the law for righteousness. It's Christ who did this. God
made him. Yet that we understand from the
rest of scripture that this action of God that made Christ sin was
an action that Christ voluntarily, willingly took on. It says in Hebrews chapter 10,
when he prepared a body for him, he said, Lo, I come in the volume
of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will,
O God. God's will was what he came to
do. That's what he did. He did it. Him. The one who has made sin. He's the one we need to see here.
Let's not get wrapped around the axle of our own tendency
to look at the smallest details without seeing here what God
is saying. What he's saying here in short
is, look at Christ. Do you see him? Do you see him? He was made sin for us. He knew no sin. He worked out
righteousness in our redemption. We're made the righteousness
of God in him. Do you see him? Okay, so that's
the obvious lesson here. And why is it so important? Because
2 Corinthians 5, 21 is designed by God and given by God to his
elect to accomplish this purpose of grace. This purpose of grace. To give every believer such a
view of the Lord Jesus Christ as to find our all in him. Okay, so the verse is about him. He is the substitute, the sinless
one who bore the sins of his people before God. What does
that mean? That's what I'm trying to untangle
the meaning of this verb made has been used as an attempt to
figure out. What does it mean? Well, the
word made here won't give you the answer. you have to look
at the rest of scripture. And that's what I want to do.
I want you to see a couple of things in scripture to help support
what I'm trying to get across here. Look at John chapter 11.
In John chapter 11, it says, you know the setting there. Lazarus
had fallen sick. Mary and Martha, his sisters,
sent word to Jesus. Jesus got that word. He waited
where he was for, I think, four days. The disciples told Jesus,
he whom thou lovest is sick. And he told them the sickness
was not to death, but it was for the glory of God. that the
Son of God might be glorified thereby. Here we have it, right?
Here's a classic case in scripture where we see it explicitly stated
that the purpose for all that was happening and all that was
about to unfold here was to the glory of the Son of God, okay? Now it also says in John 11 that
Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So there's no doubt
that Christ had a love for these three. And when he heard this,
it says he remained two days, not four, but two days in the
same place where he was. And so, Lazarus then died. And Jesus said to him, said to
his disciples, let's see, in verse, this is 11, where Jesus
said, our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him
out of his sleep. So his disciples said, Lord,
if he sleeps, he'll do well. because they thought he just
meant falling asleep, but not in death. But Jesus told him
plainly in verse 14, Lazarus is dead. And I'm glad for your
sakes that I was not there to the intent you may believe nevertheless. Let us go to him. Now then what
happens is Martha comes, in verse 20. It says Martha, as soon as
she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary sat
still in the house. And Martha said to Jesus, in
verse 21, Lord, if you had been here, my brother had not died. That's true, perhaps. But he
didn't come, and she didn't perhaps know why at this point. Jesus said, and then Martha said
in verse 22, but I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt
ask of God, God will give it thee. Okay, so Martha is telling Jesus,
and out of her grief, she's very grief-stricken here, she's appealing
to him, and at first it's almost like she's trying to correct
him, but then she backs off and says, but I know whatever you
ask God, he'll give it to you. And then in verse 23, Jesus said
to her, thy brother shall rise again. In verse 24, Martha said,
I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last
day. What's Martha doing here? She's pulling from her knowledge
of the truth of the resurrection occurring at the last day, meaning
the end of time, that all of God's people, their bodies will
be raised up on that day. She's drawing from that truth
that she knows, and it's true. And so she's stating the truth. He will raise up on the last
day, his body. But she doesn't find any comfort in that truth,
even though she knows it academically or intellectually, and she believes
it. Okay, so you see that? So Jesus'
response to her at this point is in the context of her understanding
the meaning of the doctrine. But something is significantly
missing in Martha. And it's going to come in the
next verse, or the next two verses. And this is what we need to see
in 2 Corinthians 5.21. Something is significantly missing
if we only understand it as an answer or an explanation of things
that happen or are done. We need to understand it in this
light. In verse 24, Martha, I'm sorry,
verse 25, Jesus said to her, Martha had just said, I know
he's gonna rise again at the last day. And it doesn't say
this, but perhaps we could add this given the fact of knowing
that Martha was terribly grief stricken and was also knowledgeable
of the truth of the resurrection of the bodies of the saints on
the last day. And she expresses it to Jesus. She believed it.
but she didn't draw any comfort from it. And so Jesus' answer
is given to her as if, Martha, is your knowledge of that truth
comforting you? And of course it wasn't. And
so take the answer here. And Jesus said to her, I am the
resurrection and the life. Now, when he says these words
and when we read them, I can't help but that my hair tingles
because the very truth that she knew that was not comforting
to her was revealed to her in the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the
resurrection and the life. Is your knowledge of the scriptures
Not comforting you? Is it not comforting me? It's
because we don't see who it's talking about. We don't see him. And this, you know, he goes on
to say, the he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live. He's talking about the resurrection
of the saints. And whoever lives and believes
in me shall never die. He's talking about our eternal
life. Even though we die in body, we're never going to die in our
soul, because the spirit of Christ is in us. And he'll raise us
from the dead on the last day. But the point here is that All
of the truth was found in the one standing before her that
she loved, and she knew that he loved her, and he had come
to comfort her. And how did he comfort her? By
making himself known. By making himself known to her
that everything, all of life, even life from the dead, was
in him, okay? Look at Luke, chapter 24. A similar
text of scripture is given to us there. Remember, we're trying
to understand 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, but we want to get
the big picture. We want to get the real, the
truth that hits us like a lightning bolt from it, that it's Christ. Chapter 24. And he says in verse 36 of Luke
24, as they thus spake, the disciples were speaking to one another,
they were eating, they were in a room, Jesus himself stood in
the midst of them. And he said to them, peace be
unto you. They were terrified and afraid. Obviously he just
appeared evidently out of nowhere. And they supposed that they had
seen a spirit. I would have too. I've never
seen a spirit and I don't care to see a spirit. But notice verse
38. And he said to them, why are
you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in
your hearts? Notice verse 39. Behold my hands
and my feet. What's he asking them to do?
Look here. at the evidence of my accomplishments,
that it is, notice how it's worded here, it is I myself, handle
me, and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as you see me have." What is he telling them? Look at me.
Look at my wounds. It is I, myself. Now the disciples, no doubt,
having been with Jesus and talked with him and hearing him pray
and seeing his compassion and his tender patience with them
and all that they had learned from him and seen him do, understanding
that his wounds in his hands and his feet and his side and
on his head, they were wounds for them. Look, it's I, myself. Look at me, handle me. I've really
risen. It's accomplished. God has been
satisfied and you are now justified. Everything promised has been
accomplished. Now look at 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter
2. Unfortunately, this is taking
longer than I had hoped it would, because I wanted to get to a
lot more stuff here. In 1 Peter 2, I want to look
at one verse in verse 24, because this overlaps with 2 Corinthians
5.21, which overlaps with Romans 4 and Psalm 32. In 1 Peter 2.24,
notice the way this is worded. Notice how the Spirit of God
puts the grammar here. because he did this. He chose
the words and the way they're connected. Who, that's a pronoun,
right? His, that's another pronoun,
own self, there's a third pronoun, who his own self bear our sins
in his own body. His own, there's another pronoun,
on the tree that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness
by whose stripes you were healed. Do you see how full the Apostle
Peter was and by the Spirit of God moved in his love for the
Lord Jesus Christ? When he wants to tell the saints
who were scattered abroad throughout Asia, Cappadocia, and all these
places in 1 Peter, And they were Jews, no doubt. No doubt they
had grown up in Judaism. He's telling them, you used to
have, he doesn't say this in so much, but in chapter one,
verse 18, he does. He implies that you were not
redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your
vain conversation, but with the precious blood of Christ. And
now he's telling them, you don't need those sacrifices. you have the one who sacrificed
himself. But I want to point out the peculiarity,
the unique peculiarity, the way that this is worded in this,
because it adds emphasis on purpose in this way. And there's a literary term for this. And you may not have heard it,
but I'm going to give you a definition of it. It's called anaphora,
A-N-A-P-H-O-R-A, anaphora. It's a literary term, and one
of the most famous uses of it is in The Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens, when he opens up this way. Notice, it was the
best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it
was the season of darkness, and so on. What's he doing? He's
repeating a word or a phrase which was time or season, or
epoch, or epic, how you ever say that? E-P-O-C-H. And he does
that with a literary intent of drawing the reader in and focusing
them on what he's trying to make a point of here. And this is
exactly what's happening in 1 Peter 2 and verse 24. It's an anaphora. Only the writer is the spirit
of God through the apostle Peter. Peter's not acting like a robot
here. He's doing this with full intent. But the beauty of it. is to add,
to stack these pronouns on top of each other in order to focus
our attention on the repetition, in order to draw us into the
meaning, the heart, the big picture, the forest. The lesson we cannot
miss here is that what's important in this verse is the one he's
talking about here. who his own self bear our sins. He did this in his own body on
the tree. OK, that's exactly what Second
Corinthians 521 is trying to draw our attention to. Look at
the Lord Jesus Christ. He knew no sin, yet he was made
sin for us. And the way he was made sin is
kind of explained, not kind of, it is explained here. He bore
our sins in his own body. Now, we know from Romans chapter
eight and verse four and three and four, the law couldn't help
us. And when the law couldn't help
us, God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and
for sin condemned sin in the flesh. Remember? In the likeness of sinful flesh,
Jesus came, God's own son, and in that flesh, God condemned
sin in the flesh. His flesh wasn't sinful. In him
was no sin. But God condemned sin in his
flesh because God had to first put that sin on him. He bore it in his own body. And in Isaiah 53, 12 it says,
his soul was made an offering for sin. Soul and body. Soul and body. He bore our sins
in his own body. He did it. And this is what's
said in Luke 24, 39. Can't you see? It is I myself. It's this anaphora, the stacking
up of these pronouns in order to show by repetition and emphasis,
look at the Lord Jesus Christ and see what He has done. He
did this. Now, in all of the New Testament,
there's many things that He is to us. Everything that we need
is in Him. Our salvation, He's our wisdom,
our righteousness, our redemption, all grace comes from Him, is
in Him. Life, truth, peace, joy, comfort,
worship, and I've got lots of references. I can give these
to you later. In short, Christ is all to us. And we are to have this view
of Him that Martha and Mary and that His disciples had when they
walked with Him, that made Him so dear to them that they wanted
to be with Him, they would ask Him things, they would listen
to His answers, and they were always surprised to find that
the very thing they were searching for, the thing they most needed,
was He Himself. He was made sin. He's the truth.
He's the way. He's the life. He is our peace. He says to his disciples that
my joy I give to you, my peace I give to you. And he says, I
will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. I am the
resurrection. I am the life. In Isaiah 45,
he says, in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel say, in the
Lord have I righteousness and strength. And in the Lord shall
all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory. It's in the
Lord. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So when we go through our life, and I'm gonna have to close for
now, and we'll pick this up next time, but when we go through
our life, what happens? We pick up a lot of information. And
we add that information on top of information, and we try to
organize it, and we try to build on it, we try to learn things
from it. But at the end of the day, what
happens? You go to school, you go to college, you go to work,
you apply the knowledge. And when I went to work, you
know what? I forgot almost 90% of what I learned in college. I've studied the Bible. And I've
forgotten much of what I've learned. And at the end of my life, unless
the Lord is merciful to me, I expect I'm going to forget a lot more
of the details. But I observed my father-in-law
in the end of his life when he lost his memory. And this had
a big impact on me in watching him go through that loss of his
memory. that in all of that, even though
he didn't remember the details, if you asked him, could you tell
me where it says in the Bible that Jesus died for us? He couldn't
tell you. He would open his Bible, he couldn't
find anything. But if I said something to him
like this, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
you know what he would do? His shoulders would relax, He
would sit back in his chair, he would close his eyes, and
he would utter a moan of satisfaction. Yes, that's it. When we spoke
together of the Lord Jesus Christ, he knew then that was his savior,
you see. When we read 2 Corinthians 5.21,
we may not understand it fully, But do you understand who it
is that we're trusting to take our sins and answer God for them
all and to give us his righteousness? Isn't that the essence of what
he's saying here? Let us never lose sight of the
centrality and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in
all of our doctrine. Let us never forget that it's
he himself and when we see him, then we'll be satisfied. So we'll
have to pick up this up next time and go through these texts
of scripture. about this. I'll probably look at Romans
chapter five next time with you so that you can see this also.
And I'll get this in a written form eventually and send it out. It might be a little bit lengthy,
but you can look at it in your own time then. All right, let's
pray. Father, thank you for the Lord
Jesus Christ. We ask above all things that
you would give us this one request to be found in him not having
our own righteousness. that we may know Him in all the
fellowship of His sufferings, that we might be able to enter
into all of His obedience and see there is our Savior. Look
at Him gaining the victory for us, taking away our sins, establishing
our righteousness, overcoming our enemies, bringing us to God,
presenting us to Himself, and doing it in the greatest love
and delight that we cannot even speak about because of His greatness.
Lord help us, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.