Welcome to our program. Now today
I'd like for us to focus our attention on one verse of scripture,
one passage, that we find in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter
5. It's the last verse of this chapter. And it's a very important verse,
not that the other verses are not important, but this is one
that is so profound because it sets forth in one sentence the
heart of the gospel. And that's the title of the message
today, The Heart of the Gospel. Now, the Apostle Paul has been
describing in such glorious terms as he was inspired by the Holy
Spirit, the greatness, the glory, the nature, the truth, the work
of a gospel ministry. It's the gospel of God's grace
in Christ. It's not a gospel that leaves
men to save themselves. Because this is good news, that's
what the term gospel means for sinners. Now here in 2 Corinthians
5, after having talked about the judgment and the standard
of judgment and how each man will stand before God and be
judged according to his works in the sense that as his works
evidence whether or not he is in Christ, a believer in Christ,
or an unbeliever. You see, it's not judgment based
on our works, but it's the judgment of our works that evidence either
whether or not we are saved by His grace in Christ, and are
in Christ, washed in His blood, and clothed in His righteousness,
or whether our works evidence that we stand on our own, which
will mean condemnation, death, and hell for eternity. So Paul
had spoken of that. So here comes the glorious message
of grace then. How can any of us who are sinners,
and that includes all of us, for all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God, how can we who are sinners, whose
best deeds cannot make us righteous or save us, how can we be justified
before God? And the specific point that Paul
is going to make in this passage is how God is reconciled to his
people, to sinners. Now God must be reconciled. You
see, when Adam failed, the whole human race, including you and
me, in Adam as our representative, we declared war on God. We rebelled. That was an act of utter rebellion
against God. And ever since then, every descendant
of Adam who aligned with him by representation has been born
in trespasses and sins, alienated from God, and we'll see a passage
here in a moment that says, enemies of God in our minds by wicked
works. God and man at odds, at war,
and of course, On man's part, it's a losing battle. Nobody
is going to defeat or overthrow the sovereign, omnipotent, true
and living God. But God must be reconciled to
his people if they're to be saved. That's the same thing as saying
God must be just when he justifies the ungodly. And you've heard
me say it so many times on this program if you've watched it
in any length at all. You see, God must be both a righteous,
holy, truthful judge who judges according to truth, as well as
a loving, merciful, gracious Father, Savior. He must be both
a just God and a Savior. You see, God saves sinners, and
that's a glorious truth. That's good news. He's a merciful
God, but He will not show mercy at the expense of His justice. Now, that was taught all through
the Old Testament. The soul that sinneth must surely
die. You see, without the shedding
of blood, death, which is the wages of sin, the wages of sin
is death. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins. God must be just. His mercy is
not found, His grace is not found in His overlooking, ignoring,
or denying His justice. His mercy is found in the person
and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is mercy-seeking.
You see, in Christ, God's love and mercy and grace provided
what His justice demanded. And so we see that salvation
is based on and grounded upon and founded upon a legal exchange. Now, this legal exchange means
this. Here it is in 2 Corinthians 5
and verse 21. Now, and I know when I say that,
there are a lot of people, a red flag raises in their minds, and
they say, well, are you saying salvation is no more than a legal
matter? And I'm not saying that at all.
Now, you listen to my whole message. Listen to the whole Scripture.
Don't stop and just run off and say, well, he believes this or
that. Listen to the whole thing. But this is the ministry and
word of reconciliation here. How is God reconciled to a sinner,
to his elect, to his people, Christ's sheep? And that's what
this is talking about, a legal exchange. And I want you to see
this. It says in verse 21, 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. Now, if you have a King James
Bible, it reads exactly that way. But let me go back over
the verse and just give you some comments now. First of all, it
says, for he. Now, who is he there? That's
God the Father, the righteous judge. It's the same God, in
verse 18 up here, it says, and all things are of God, who hath
reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. So what is the subject
of 2 Corinthians 5? It's reconciliation. Now the
subject of 2 Corinthians 5 is not regeneration. Regeneration
is the new birth. Regeneration is the work of the
Holy Spirit within a sinner, a heart of a sinner. Regeneration
and conversion, the new birth, is necessary in salvation because
it is the fruit and result of the work of Christ for our salvation. But the subject here in 2 Corinthians
5 is clearly reconciliation. Read it again in verse 18. And
all things are of God. It's talking about in verse 17,
therefore if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things
are passed away. Behold, all things are become
new. And that's not speaking of regeneration there, because
even in regeneration, the new birth, old things are not all
passed away. We still have the flesh. When
you're born again by the Spirit of God, you enter into a warfare,
and that warfare is not passed away. The flesh is not gone.
It is destined to be gone. Every believer in Christ is going
to be glorified, and though he is free from the condemnation
of sin and the power of sin to keep him from running to Christ
and resting in Him, He's not free from the presence and the
influence and the contamination of sin. Paul wrote in Romans
7 and verse 14 on through verse 21, he says, sin contaminates
everything that I do. And he concluded it with this,
O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body
of this death? And he said, I thank God through
Jesus Christ my Lord. But then he went on in Romans
8, 1 and said, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ. You see, condemnation, there
is absolutely no condemnation to those who are in Christ, who
walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. But now the
warfare just began in regeneration. So now the Bible teaches the
necessity, the value, and the importance of regeneration, of
the new birth. Christ spoke to Nicodemus in
John 3, you must be born again. or you cannot see or understand
or know savingly the kingdom of heaven. You cannot enter the
kingdom of heaven unless you're born again by the Spirit. And
that's a powerful, necessary work of the Holy Spirit, sovereign
work of the Holy Spirit. But that's not Paul's subject
here in this verse. Paul is dealing with another
subject in this verse. He calls sinners to repentance,
and we'll see that. But here he's talking about how
God is reconciled to his people. So he says, for he, that is God
the Father, hath made him. Or literally, in the original
language, it says, for he made him. to be sin for us, literally
it would be made Him sin for us. Now who is the Him here?
That's God the Son incarnate. That's the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus, God our Savior, who shall save
His people from their sins. For God the Father hath made
Him, God the Son incarnate, sin for us. Now the for us has to
do with all whom God is reconciled to. It has to do with His elect
people. It has to do with His church.
It has to do with Christ's sheep. It has to do with all whom Christ
redeemed on the cross of Calvary. And it's for us. That means substitution. Now that's an important word
to understand this verse. Christ is the substitute, the
surety of His people. Back in the Old Covenant, it
was typified that in the high priest and the sacrifice in the
altar, the people had to have a representative to go into the
presence of God for them. That's the high priest. Well,
Christ is our high priest. And that high priest had to have
a sacrifice, a substitute, because without the shedding of blood.
Now that sacrifice, that animal sacrifice under the Old Covenant,
did not put away sin. For the blood of bulls and goats
cannot put away sin. They just taught a lesson. They
were symbols and types and pictures of the blood of Christ, the Lamb
of God, who did bear away all the sins of his people all over
the world, Jew and Gentile. That sacrifice is the substitute,
taking the place of the people. Well, Christ is the substitute
of his people. He took the place of his people
under the judgment of God for their sins. The question comes
up then, how was Christ made sin? Now I want you to listen
to me very carefully on this subject because today, and it's
happened in the past too, there's nothing new under the sun, but
today there are men who are speculating and extrapolating and going all
kinds of different directions on this subject which they cannot
back up with the Scriptures. And many of them, they want to
say, well, it's more than what it says. Now, let me tell you
how Christ was made sin. It was by a legal act of imputation. Now, that word imputation, you
may have heard me use it many times on this program, but what
it means is it's a charging to the account of. Now, you know
something about charging. Our generation ought to know
this very well. In other words, when you run up a debt and it's
charged to your account, such as if you owed a debt, you borrowed
money from a bank. On your account, there is a charge
for the amount of the money that you borrowed. It is imputed to
you. That's what imputation is. Well,
in Adam, and also because of our own sin, we have run up a
debt, a debt that we cannot pay, a legal debt of sin. What do
we owe God? We owe Him a debt to His law
and justice in Adam now. That's how we were when we fell
in Adam and in our own sins. And we didn't have one penny
to pay that debt. We are spiritually, by nature,
spiritually bankrupt. And that debt has to be paid. God cannot just say, well, forget
about the debt. You know why? Because he's just.
So what did God do with the debt of his people? You know what
he did? He charged it, imputed it, accounted
it to Christ. Now Christ did not commit those
sins. He didn't fall. Adam fell. He
didn't sin. Look at 2 Corinthians 5.21. It says, For he hath made him
sin for us who knew no sin. Now the who knew no sin goes
back not to us, but to him, to Christ. Christ did no sin. He knew no sin. He was not contaminated
in His nature with sin, neither in nature. You know, Christ has
two natures, deity and humanity, without sin. The Bible says He
was tempted, like as we are, yet without sin. Everything that
He did was perfect. Everything that He experienced
in Himself was perfection. He was not a sinner. And listen,
let me tell you something. He was never, never, never made
to be a sinner. And that's what some men are
saying today, and I'm going to tell you something, they're playing
with fire on that issue. There are people who say that
just charging it to him is not enough. He had to really experience
it. Now listen, let me tell you something.
It is true that the charge of sin to Christ demanded that he
experience in his soul. Isaiah called it the suffering
of his soul. He had to experience within himself the full punishment,
the full pain and sorrow of the punishment and death and hell
of sin. He cried on the cross, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He suffered in agony like
no person has ever suffered. And so, yes, his experience on
the cross was more than just a legal transfer of sin to him
on the account books. Yes, he had to suffer. He had
to bleed. He had to die. He really died. It wasn't a fake death. He really
died. Everything that death is, he
experienced. But he was never in his mind,
in his affections, in his will, in his heart, in his thoughts,
in his attitude, he was never contaminated with sin or made
a sinner. His nature was never made corrupt. He was not infused with sin or
imparted with sin. He was never contaminated or
corrupted in his nature with sin. He remained sinless. Now, the whole Testament teaches
that truth. When the priest brought a lamb
or a ram or a bullock, when the people laid their hands, when
he laid his hands upon the head of that lamb, That was a type
or a picture of this legal imputation, showing that he identified with
the lamb and the lamb identified with him in his sin. There was
no infusion or impartation of sin to that animal. That animal
remained innocent. And it was a spotless lamb. It
was a lamb of the first year. God said, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. Christ's blood was without corruption. It's called the incorruptible
blood of Christ. That means, you know what that
means? It means it cannot be corrupted. So, no, he was never
made a sinner. And when you hear preachers say
that, I'm going to tell you something, you better get away from it.
That is, that's heresy. That is anti-gospel. That's going
too far. Now, the reason men say that
is because they say, well, if he didn't become exactly what
I am, then it's not real. Now, let me tell you something
about that. When God charges sin to any person, it's real.
David said, O Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities,
charge me with my sin, who would stand? When sin is imputed in
the books of God's law and justice, it's real. It's no legal fiction. That's what the Catholic Church
used to call the doctrine of imputation, a legal fiction.
And they would say, well, it's not real until it's infused into
you or it's imparted into you. And that's heresy. You see, Christ
was never made a sinner. Back up here in verse 19. Well, let's read verse 18. It
shows you plainly what he's talking about in the context of God being
reconciled to his people. He says, "...and all things are
of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and
hath given unto us the ministry of reconciliation," verse 19,
"...to wit, that God was in Christ," what does that mean? God's purpose
was in Christ, God's glory was in Christ, and listen to me,
in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It pleased
God that in Him should all fullness dwell. In the person of Christ,
the God-man, as the substitute and redeemer and surety of his
people, we see the glory of the Father, the glory of the Son,
and the glory of the Holy Spirit. And listen to what it says, "...to
wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." Now
that's not, the world there is not every individual without
exception. And the reason to say that is
because, look at this, it says, "...not imputing their trespasses
unto them." In other words, God didn't charge these people with
their sins. And if God didn't charge them
with their sins, you know what that means? They're going to
be saved. Christ's going to die for them. He's going to satisfy
justice, and He's going to send His Holy Spirit to regenerate
them and bring them to Himself. There is going to be a work within
them. But the work within them does
not make what Christ did on the cross real. It's already real. It was real from the foundation
of the world when God, in the everlasting covenant of grace,
determined to save a people and gave them to His Son. It was
real then. It's been real all the time.
You may not have known it, I may not have known it until God saved
me, until God brought me to himself in the new birth. But what happened
in me didn't make it real. And let me tell you this too.
What happened in me in the new birth did not complete or finish
the work that Christ started and did not complete and finish.
I read an article by a preacher and he entitled it, The Blood
is Not Enough. And I thought, my soul, what
is he talking about? Well, what he was talking about
was that it's necessary that we be born again. In other words,
the work of Christ on the cross is not the only thing in salvation. The work of the Spirit in us
in the new birth is also included, and that's true. But let me tell
you something. All of salvation, from eternity
past to eternity future, centers upon, is grounded upon, and founded
upon the work of Christ on the cross. And you cannot overemphasize
that. You see, the reason that God's
people must be born again by the Spirit is because Christ's
work on the cross was finished. It was enough. The blood is enough. And that's why we must be born
again. So he says here, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Well
now, who did he impute them to? Well, God made him sin for us,
Christ who knew no sin. And he says, and hath committed
unto us the word of reconciliation. Now we have the gospel, which
we preach to every creature, to anyone who wants to hear it.
So Christ was made sin by a legal act of imputation. There's a
beautiful illustration of that over in the book of Philemon.
Philemon was a man in Colossae. He was apparently a wealthy man.
He had a servant who stole from him and ran away and by God's
providence ended up in the presence of the Apostle Paul in Rome.
And Paul took him in and preached the gospel to him and God converted
him. He was born again. His name was
Onesimus. And so Paul wrote back to Philemon a letter telling
about that experience and how Onesimus is now our brother in
Christ. So you receive him as you would
receive me. He's repented of his sins, and
he's fallen at the feet of Christ. And then Paul makes this statement
in verse 18. He says to Philemon, if Onesimus
hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account,
I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it. Paul said, put it on my account,
I'll repay it. That's what this means. Now back
here in 2 Corinthians 5, look at verse 21. Now here's the other
side of the equation. For he hath made him sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. As Christ was legally accounted
with our sin, in exchange all for whom he died, and was buried
and rose again the third day, are legally accounted with his
righteousness. So that Christ went to the cross
for sins that he had no part in committing, but for sins imputed
to him, accounted, charged to him, His sheep, His church, God's
elect, are saved, justified, and will be glorified based on
a righteousness that we have no part in producing. It's totally
the obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ. My only righteousness
before God is Christ's righteousness imputed to me. It's not infused
in me. It's not imparted to me. It's
legally accounted to me. Now, as a result of that, As
a result of that, God sends His Holy Spirit to impart spiritual
life to me. As God is reconciled to His people,
His people must be, because of what Christ did on the cross,
must be reconciled to Him. And Paul says in verse 20, Now
then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you
by us. We pray you in Christ's stead
be ye reconciled to God. You see, God's reconciled to
us on the basis of this legal exchange. Our sins imputed to
Christ, His righteousness imputed to us. Somebody says, well, how
can I know that I'm one of those? Be ye reconciled to God. How
are you going to be reconciled to God? When the Holy Spirit
comes. and imparts life and knowledge and all the graces of the Spirit,
when He gives you a new heart and changes that heart to look
towards Christ, to repent of your sins. You see, that's when
sinners are reconciled to God. Both are necessary in salvation.
One, the work of Christ on the cross, is the ground, the heart
of the salvation. The other, the work of the Holy
Spirit in us, is the fruit and the result of salvation. Now,
some people call the work of the Holy Spirit in us imparted
righteousness. And I usually don't argue with
people like that. That's just a bad term for a truth in Scripture. That's not what it's called.
It's called the new birth. It's called regeneration and
conversion. It's called many things in Scripture. But let
me tell you something. Don't ever, don't ever be found
being one of those or with them who diminish the work of Christ
on the cross in order to elevate the work of the Holy Spirit.
You don't have to do that. You see, the main work of the
Holy Spirit in us is to show us the glory and the value and
the power and the completeness of the work of Christ for us.
That's the issue of the gospel. That's the heart of the gospel,
what Christ did for us. What He does in us by His Spirit
is the fruit, the necessary fruit and result of what he accomplished
on Calvary as the payment of our sins. He was made sin for
us. Christ, who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Not in ourselves. We're not righteous in ourselves
yet, but we're righteous in Him. Every believing sinner one day
will be perfectly like Him. But that's in the future. That's
final glory when Christ comes back to gather His church and
we'll all be changed in the twinkling of an eye and He will judge this
world for sin. Now at the judgment, how do you
want to stand before God? In your own righteousness or
in the righteousness of His Son? Well, think about that. I want
to stand before God in the righteousness of His Son. Well, I hope you've
enjoyed this message. And if you'd like to receive
a copy of this message, listen to the announcer and he'll give
you the details. The title of this message is The Heart of
the Gospel. And I hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word.