Transcript

Thank you, Chris, for such a kind and generous introduction.

It is always a delight and a privilege to participate in a Ligonier conference, even if you're the second string.

I apologize for John Piper not being here, but I was more than thrilled and more than happy to step into the huge gap that is left by his absence.

We’re trusting the Lord for His divine purposes to be accomplished with the sabbatical that he’s taking over these particular months.

I delight in being a part of this conference for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to hang out with R.C. for a little bit.

We don't get as much time as we did the last couple of days.

We went out on the golf course, and I am sufficiently humbled to be able to preach; I'll put it that way.

I'm glad that's not how I make my living.

He could make his living doing that; he's amazing, as is Dr. Lawson.

But we had a wonderful time of fellowship, just a great time to be together, and I celebrate with all my heart the ministry of R.C. Sproul and its extensiveness.

You look around today and see the fruitfulness of this man's life.

It is extended through the people that surround him in ministry.

It is extended beyond that to all of the supporters of the Ligonier Ministries and to all the people who are touched by it, including all of you and others around the world.

I'm thrilled to just be a little part of that and to be able to call him my friend, because we, as Chris said, stand together on so many critical issues I know the two of us would die for, and that finds our hearts together in a very, very unique way.

This is a wonderful theme to deal with because this is at the heart and soul of Reformed theology: the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness.

This is a great theme; in many ways, it has been covered again and again, but it is something that must be addressed over and over until we come to a full and rich understanding of it.

I don't intend, perhaps, to add anything to the things that you have heard, have already become familiar with, and grown to love and cherish as precious to you.

But perhaps we can look at it in a fresh way that will reignite the fires of your own gratitude and praise to God for the gift of righteousness granted to you through grace and the provision of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite events, as I look back over my life, happened a few years ago, and I've told this story a few times because it's the highlight of my life.

It's been a useful experience the Lord gave me.

I was flying from Los Angeles to El Paso, Texas, and I was going to El Paso because I had been invited to come to a men's conference at the Civic Center in El Paso, sponsored by Calvary Chapels, and to speak for a day there.

I sat down on Southwest Airlines in the middle seat—the dreaded middle seat—and there I was, in the middle seat on Southwest, progressing toward El Paso.

We were in the air about half an hour when I became very aware that the man by the window was a Muslim from the Middle East.

He was dressed that way and distinguished himself in that way by his presence, by his demeanor, in every way.

About a half an hour in, he looked over at me.

I had my New Testament out; I was writing a few notes.

He said, Excuse me, sir, may I ask you a question?

I said, Sure.

He said, Is that a Bible?

I said, It is a Bible.

Oh, he said, um, sir, can I ask you then another question?

I said, Of course.

And this was his question: Can you tell me, sir, the difference between a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Baptist?

That was his question.

So I knew the answer, so I told him the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant, and I put the Baptists where they belong—in the Protestant category, sort of.

And so this was perfect.

I said to him, Sir, may I ask you a question?

He said, Of course, of course.

I said, and I knew the answer, Do Muslims sin?

He said, Oh, we have many, many sins.

I said, Well, do you do them all the time?

All the time?

And then he got very honest.

He said, In fact, I'm flying to El Paso to do some sins.

I said, Really?

He said, Yes.

I'm a new immigrant.

I have just immigrated to the U.S. I came to the El Paso Immigration Center, I met a girl there, and we have arranged to meet this weekend to do some sins.

Wow, that's pretty honest stuff!

I said, May I ask you another question?

He said, Yes.

I said, How does Allah feel about your sins?

He replied, Oh, it's very bad.

I could go to hell forever.

I said, Really?

Why don't you stop doing those sins?

He said, I can't stop.

I asked, Do you have any hope that in spite of your sins, you might escape hell?

And I'll never forget what he said.

He said, I pray Allah will forgive me.

I said, Well, why would He do that?

He replied, I don't know.

I just pray He will.

I said, Well, let me tell you something: I know God personally, and I can promise you He won't. He looked at me like I was crazy.

You know God personally, and you're in the middle seat on Southwest?

You've got to be kidding me!

I said, I know Him personally.

And He cannot overlook your sin, the true God.

But I said, I have some good news for you: there is forgiveness available.

There is reconciliation available with God.

I went on to present the Gospel to him and followed it up with a letter, sending him some material.

I never heard from him.

That's what I do; that's what all of us as believers do.

We tell people God will forgive their sins, don't we?

Isn't that what we do?

Sometimes I actually say that sitting next to somebody on a plane when they ask, What do you do?

I say, I tell people God will forgive all their sins.

Are you interested?

It's like cutting to the chase, right?

I had a guy on a flight one night from New York to California get up and leave the seat and never come back.

I knew he was in trouble because he was pierced everywhere you could possibly be pierced, and I knew he was a million miles from thinking about those kinds of things.

Turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I want to talk about this responsibility that we as believers have to proclaim the message of forgiveness, the word of reconciliation.

And that's the word we're going to look at as we consider this text: 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 18 to 21. I'm reading from the NAS, which is pretty similar to whatever one you happen to be looking at, and I want you to follow it closely, starting in verse 18. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.

We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Five times in the verses that I read, you see the word reconcile in some form.

The message of the Gospel is the message of reconciliation.

The alienated sinner can be reconciled to God.

Reconciliation with God is possible.

That's what we proclaim; that's what we preach.

That's what we teach; that's what we live for, and that perhaps is what some even die for.

It is the unparalleled message of reconciliation with God.

That's the message that I gave the Muslim on the plane that day: you can be reconciled to God.

And then I explained to him how that has been made possible through the work of Christ.

Now, you notice that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation at the end of verse 18. That defines what we do.

In a sense, that's simply a phrase to describe the Great Commission: going into all the world, preaching the Gospel to every creature, making disciples, baptizing, teaching them to observe all things that Christ has commanded.

Essentially, this is the ministry of reconciliation—that the sinner can be reconciled to God.

Now, in order to carry out the ministry of reconciliation, we have been given at the end of verse 19 the word of reconciliation.

The word logos as opposed to mythos—that's truth as opposed to myth.

That's the true word as opposed to the false.

So we have been given the logos concerning reconciliation in order to carry out the ministry of reconciliation.

This is the good news to the world.

From the human side, reconciliation would be impossible.

Man, left to himself, could never bring about a reconciliation.

Reconciliation has to be initiated by the offended party.

And as David makes clear in Psalm 51, when he looks at his sin, he sees it as a sin against God: Against You, only have I sinned.

All sin is an offense against God; that is its primary heinous characteristic.

Only if the offended party determines that reconciliation can be made possible will it occur.

From the human side, hell is inevitable; damnation will occur.

Men, as hopeless sinners, dead, unable, unwilling to awaken themselves from death, to strip off their blindness, to love what they naturally hate, to hate what they naturally love, will end inevitably in eternal punishment.

They have no powers within themselves, morally or religiously, to effect a reconciliation.

The good news is that the offended party, who is God, has determined that He desires to be reconciled to sinners, and He has made us the agents who proclaim the availability of that reconciliation.

The term we’re familiar with is ambassadors for Christ, dropping us down into verse 20. This term is actually connected to presbyteros, which we know as bishops or elders.

It refers to those who are the representatives, those who have the responsibility.

So here we are as ambassadors in the ministry of reconciliation, with the word of reconciliation to sinners—that they can be reconciled to God.

That sets up the text so that we can understand it.

Now, the question to be asked is: if we have this responsibility—and we do—and we’re going to carry this out as God would want us to carry it out, we need to understand the features of this message.

What, in fact, is involved in the word of reconciliation?

What are the elements?

What are the components?

What are the features?

What are the essentials that constitute the word of reconciliation?

One of the disappointments in my life and ministry, as I’ve been around and traveled through the decades past, is to see how few people who profess to be Christians could give a detailed, cogent presentation of the word concerning reconciliation.

Because this is the reason you’re here, and you understand that.

I think you do understand that, don’t you?

That the only reason we are left in the world is for evangelistic purposes to the glory of God.

Yes, we’re saved to worship, but God tolerates our imperfect worship to leave us here to do evangelism.

Yes, we’re saved to be sanctified, but God tolerates our inadequate, incomplete sanctification to leave us here to do evangelism.

Yes, we are to have fellowship with Him, but He tolerates that interrupted fellowship to leave us here to do evangelism.

This is why we’re here—to be ambassadors with the word of reconciliation.

I just want to give you the four essentials that are in this text—four of them.

And they are critically important.

Number one: reconciliation is by the will of God.

Please notice, please notice verse 18: All these things are from whom?

God.

What things?

The things that accompany regeneration.

Verse 17 says, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

All that is new in regeneration, all that is new in the new birth, all that is new in conversion, all that is new in salvation comes from God.

All these things come from God.

That's not the only time this is stated.

Verse 19 says it is God in Christ reconciling.

Verse 20 says it is God making the appeal through us, begging people to be reconciled.

It's always God.

If you go to the Roman Catholic Church, as some of you have in the past, you’ll be familiar with this.

One of the interesting things that I’ve tried to do to help the people in our church—because in Los Angeles there’s such a massive amount of Hispanic people coming out of Roman Catholicism—is to understand the difference between that and the truth of the Gospel.

One of the things that distresses me no end is this notion that if you want to get anything done spiritually in your life, you really need to go to Mary.

Why do they advocate that?

Why do they press that issue?

Well, it basically comes down to this: maybe a bit of an oversimplification—God is kind of harsh.

God is tough, and God is distracted, and God is really transcendent, and He might not pay much attention to you, so you don't go to Him.

Now, you could go to Jesus, but Jesus can be pretty tough as well.

So really, the best thing to do is go to Mary, because Jesus can't resist His mother.

If you can get Mary on your side, Mary will go to Jesus, and Jesus will always cave into Mary, and now you're really on your way to God.

God is a tough guy; Jesus may be a little more compassionate but equally judgmental.

Mary is a soft sell—go to Mary.

That is why Mary dominates the Roman system.

That is a blasphemous attack on the very nature of God, who by nature is a Savior.

If you look at the religions of the world, if you study the history of religion, you do not find a Savior in any false religion.

Scripture even says that—that's not how they design gods.

When men design gods, it's not how they design gods.

When demons design gods, they go on a spectrum from indifference to severe hostility and everything in between.

If you were worshiping the gods who enamored the Israelites, you might first of all start with Baal, and your problem with Baal was he didn't pay attention to you.

So you could cut yourself up and scream and go through histrionics.

You remember that, don't you, with the priests of Baal in confrontation with Elijah?

And what did Elijah say about him?

Well, maybe he's asleep, or maybe he's on vacation.

This is a deity of demonic invention.

A God of absolute indifference who has to be awakened to the plight of His worshipers.

On the other hand, you had Moloch.

Moloch was anything but indifferent.

What did Moloch want?

Your baby on the fire.

Burn your baby to get my attention; burn your baby to get me off your back.

So you have all of these kinds of gods, this panoply of deities, none of which by nature is a Savior.

So distinct from that is the true and living God.

You could read just a little epistle of Titus a couple of times in chapter 1: God our Savior.

A couple of times in chapter 2: God our Savior.

A couple of times in chapter 3: God our Savior.

God is by nature a Savior.

That’s where all of this reconciliation starts.

We don't have to convince God to accept the sinner; we only have to beg the sinner to be reconciled to God.

God is a Savior by nature; He is not reluctant to save.

I think there’s a passage of Scripture, 1 Timothy 4:10, that says it as concisely as any: God, who is the Savior of all men, especially—that’s the little adverb melista—believers.

What does that mean?

God, who is the Savior of all men, especially believers.

In what sense is God the Savior of all men?

Some of my thoughts here will intersect with what R.C. helped us with in all your work on holiness.

Because when you look at the Old Testament, people—critics, skeptics, liberals—ask the question, What kind of God kills all those people?

And that’s not the question.

The question is not, Why does God send bears out of the woods to rip up a bunch of boys who yell 'bald head' at a prophet?

The question is not, Why does the ground open up and swallow people whole for violating Old Testament law?

The question is not, Why does God destroy the Canaanites?

The question is not, Why does God destroy the globe and leave only eight people alive?

That question is easy to answer.

The answer is because the wages of sin is death.

The harder question to answer is, Why are you here, and why am I here, and why does anybody live, and why does anybody survive?

Because God, by nature, is a Savior.

He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

The unregenerate fall in love, have a baby, have a home, go on vacation, eat wonderful food, and enjoy the blessings and the fullness of life when, in fact, they ought to be in hell.

Because God, by nature, is the Savior.

And that’s what essentially He’s saying in 1 Timothy 4:10—He’s the Savior of all men in this sense: physically and temporally, on a generic front, on a general level.

You see the saving nature of God manifest in the fact that sinners live, and sinners love, and sinners prosper, and sinners laugh, and sinners are fulfilled and satisfied with things in life.

It’s very much like Romans 2, where Paul says, This is the kindness and forbearance of God, which is intended to lead them to repentance.

God, by nature, is a Savior, and He even demonstrates His saving nature in a physical, temporal way to nonbelievers.

He’s done it through history; He does it now.

But that little adverb especially—if He is Savior to those who believe, not in a physical, temporal way, but in a spiritual and eternal way.

God is, by nature, the Savior.

The greatest New Testament parable, I think, is the parable of the prodigal.

Really, the hero of the parable is certainly not the prodigal, certainly not the pharisaical older brother.

The hero of the parable is the father.

And the most dramatic moment in that parable is when the father is looking off for that wretched, rotten prodigal son who has gone into the Gentile land, if you will, wasted his money on prostitutes—money which was the family estate garnered over generations and generations—now wasted by this young profligate.

The father keeps looking and looking for him to come back, and in the parable Jesus tells in Luke 15, he sees him afar off.

And what does the father do?

The father runs!

It’s a stunning reality, an absolutely amazing thing.

Middle Eastern gentlemen don’t run; they glide.

Even today, there is literature—Middle Eastern literature, even among the Jews—that says it’s a shame for a man to show his legs.

You don’t pull up your robe and run if you’re a Middle Eastern nobleman.

But this man pulls up his robe and runs, and the Greek word for run is sprint.

This is a man sprinting toward the prodigal.

That’s the nature of God.

And when he gets there, the Pharisees to whom Jesus is telling the story would expect—they would be shocked by him running because now he’s taking shame on himself.

It’s a shameful thing to do that; he’s taking shame on himself.

And when he gets to the son, they would have expected that he might ceremonially slap him across the face to indicate his disdain for what he had done, that he might refuse to give him a place in the house, that he might make him sit with ashes all over him for a week in the middle of the village and take the scorn that the village would heap on him for such an embarrassment.

That’s what the Pharisees would have expected.

That’s not what happened.

He threw his arms around him; you remember, kissed him all over his pig-stinking head, embraced him—full reconciliation, full restoration to sonship.

He put a ring on his finger, put his robe on him, sandals on his feet, and had a party.

That’s the joy of heaven over the repentance of one sinner, right?

Like the joy over the sheep found earlier in the chapter, the coin found.

God finds His joy in the reconciliation of sinners.

So I just want to start there because that’s where you have to start: reconciliation is by the will of God.

Secondly, it is by the act of forgiveness.

It is by the act of forgiveness.

The only way reconciliation can occur is if the one who has been offended is willing to forgive.

And that’s what verse 19 says: God was in Christ reconciling the world, meaning humanity, to Himself.

How?

By not counting their trespasses against them.

By not counting their trespasses against them.

That is the only way that reconciliation can take place—if the barrier, the offense, the sin is removed.

That’s it.

Reconciliation of the world—that’s not universalism; that simply means humanity without distinction.

Here we see that the only way that reconciliation can take place is by the forgiveness of sin.

That’s why Psalm 32:2 and Romans 4:8 repeat this great statement: How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.

And again, this is true to the nature of God.

Listen to Micah 7:18: Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity, passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession, delights in lovingkindness?

The only way reconciliation can happen is if God wipes out the sin issue, obliterates the offense.

That is the message that we preach in the word of reconciliation: God will forgive all your sins.

God offers you reconciliation with Him through the forgiveness of all your sins.

That is the glorious Gospel message.

It’s about sin; it’s about forgiveness.

It’s not about being a better person.

It’s not about living your best life now.

It’s not about being a better father, having a better marriage, or getting bumped up a few notches on the success scale.

It’s about forgiveness.

Which means that you have to talk about sin.

Third point: reconciliation is by the will of God, it is by the act of forgiveness, and it is by the obedience of faith.

It is by the obedience of faith.

Where is that?

Well, it’s implied in verse 20: God making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Isn’t that fascinating?

This is all of God, all of God.

All these things are from God.

It is God doing the reconciling—that’s divine sovereignty.

And yet here we are, begging people to be reconciled to the God who is the reconciler.

Which is to say what we’re going to say a little later tonight: you can never disconnect faith from election.

We beg people to be reconciled to God.

God is actually the beggar; it says He makes the appeal through us.

The divine sovereign work of reconciliation is not apart from the faith of the sinner, and we are beggars.

I can’t get past this point, honestly.

I can’t, because my heart, I think, is stopping me, maybe more than my head.

Fifty years ago, I played football.

Fifty years ago, I had a coach that I man-to-man really cared for.

He was the best coach I ever had, high school or college days.

His name was Jim Brownfield.

He’s a legend in Southern California—an absolute legend.

He coached at every level of football: high school, junior college, small college.

He coached with John McKay at USC. Great coach, genius, ahead of his time.

I played for him 50 years ago.

We implemented the Chicago Bears offense; we were way ahead.

We were a West Coast pass offense, completely out of our time.

He was innovative; he was creative, and I cared about him.

I remember we were flying up to San Francisco to play football against the University of San Francisco, and I was sitting next to him on the plane.

I took that opportunity to communicate the Gospel with all my heart to him.

I was close to the coach because I was, you know, calling the plays and all that, and we had a great affection for each other.

But he rejected the Gospel.

That’s 50 years ago.

Through the years, I had the opportunity to be with him here and there, maybe at a golf tournament or some kind of function, and he watched my ministry; he watched my life.

He used to tell people that he coached me.

But every time I was with him, I tried to talk to him about the Lord.

He said, I respect that; I respect you.

I'm not interested.

I felt like I was always begging him, Coach, this is the most important thing you’ll ever do.

He never married because he wanted to live his life his way, and he did ingratiate himself to so many athletes and so many people as a coach.

Well, it was last summer—I take that back, last April—I got a phone call: You better go visit your coach; he’s dying in the hospital.

This is 50 years later.

He’s had heart problems; they’ve tried to do surgery to save him.

He wants to see you.

He wants to see me?

So I went to the hospital, stood in the hall.

He’s wired; he’s got 15 things going.

The nurse says to me, He hasn’t moved for three days.

We haven’t seen any motion, so I can’t promise anything.

I walk in the room, I reach out my hand, I take hold of his hand.

He’s got a board on it to hold all the needles.

I just took a hold of his hand and I said, Hey, Coach, it’s Johnny Mac.

He opened his eyes and smiled.

I said, Coach, one more time, one more time, can I beg you to be reconciled to God?

Coach, you are the thief on the cross; you have no future.

This has to be your time; it has to be your time.

Will you open your heart to Christ?

He went up and down, and he grabbed my hand, started squeezing, and he reached his other arm over and grabbed my other hand.

So he’s got me in a lock grip.

The nurse comes in and says, Sir, you’ll have to let go of him.

I said, I’m not holding on to him; he is holding on to me.

I was a beggar all those years, begging down to the last hour.

Well, while we were praying, while I was praying that the Lord would save him, the Lord saved him in a wonderful way.

The evidence was clear.

His brother walked in the room, was a Christian, broke into tears, and fell on his bed and embraced him.

I told him what happened, and he got better.

I came back to see him in a week.

He’s sitting in a wheelchair with a trach, and he’s got issues, but he writes me a note.

He’s got a little letter board, and he starts spelling out, What can I do for my Savior?

I said, Coach, you can’t do anything for Him; He’s done everything for you.

He doesn’t need your help; He’ll be okay.

This is your time for Him to do for you.

Well, Friday I’m going to do his funeral.

He had one request: he wanted all the coaches and all the athletes who ever played for him to come to Brookside Golf Course in L.A. He wants them all to get together in the ballroom, and he wants me to come and tell the testimony that he could never give of what Christ did in his life and to make sure everybody gets the Gospel.

You know, look, I’m so glad I went that day down to the hospital.

I’m so glad one last time I begged him.

And don’t ever let your theology of the sovereignty of God move you away from the fact that the sinner has the responsibility to respond, and we need to beg sinners.

It’s by the obedience of faith, and that’s hard for sinners, right?

It’s hard to believe.

I think I wrote a book about that.

I’ve written so many I don’t remember, but I think I did.

It’s hard to believe.

Why?

Hate yourself, hate your mother, hate your father, hate your own life, right?

Take up your cross, follow Me, refuse to associate with a person you’ve been turned from your sin.

That’s hard.

I’m not surprised that when Jesus went to Nazareth in Luke 4 and preached one sermon—one sermon—to His own community of people that He grew up with and went to the synagogue with every Sabbath and went to Sabbath school, right?

In Nazareth, which was a small, dinky town, He went back one time in that synagogue, one Sabbath, preached one sermon, and they tried to throw Him off a cliff.

What?

That’s a hard message!

He essentially said to them, You’re the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed, and you don’t know it.

And you’re never going to be reconciled to God unless you see yourself as the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed and repent.

You’re no better than your forefathers.

The Lord couldn’t heal a widow here or provide for a widow here because of unbelief.

He couldn’t heal a leper here, so He had to go over to the town where they worship Baal and had to heal a border terrorist because of your unbelief.

And when they were exposed as self-righteous, they tried to kill Him.

Well, we have to understand that reconciliation then is by the will of God, by the act of forgiveness, and by the obedience of faith.

Now here’s the key question: you say, When are you going to get to the question?

Right now.

How can God do this?

How can God justify the ungodly and be just?

Romans 4:5 says, God justifies the ungodly.

That may be as important as any statement in the book of Romans: God justifies the ungodly, not the godly.

How can He be just and the justifier of sinners who have faith in Jesus?

Let me give you a simple little analogy.

If you’re the judge and the guy comes into your court and he has been indicted for all kinds of crimes to which he has confessed, and he says to you, I’m guilty, Your Honor.

I’ve done them all.

I’m a mass murderer; I’ve killed 25 people.

I’ve chopped them up; I’ve eaten a few of them, buried the rest in my yard.

I’m guilty of all of it, but I feel really bad now, and I’m so sorry I did that, and I do want to repent.

Would you please forgive me and let me go?

If the judge said, Sure, I’m a nice guy; I’ve got a lot of mercy in my heart.

You’re free to go, he wouldn’t be a judge anymore.

What’s a judge’s responsibility?

Uphold what?

The law.

That’s his responsibility.

You can’t do that; you can’t just let that man go.

That would be unjust.

So how can God say, Okay, you’re forgiven.

Okay, I no longer impute your sins to you.

Okay, they are removed as far as the east is from the west, buried in the depths of the sea, and I remember them no more?

How can He do that and be just?

The answer comes in the 15 Greek words in verse 21. Here we get to the heart of the matter: How could He do this?

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

That, my dear friends, is a series—not just a point in a message.

There’s so much there.

Let’s break it down: fifteen Greek words.

He, God, made Him who knew no sin.

Who’s that?

Who’s that?

Short list—one name: He made Him who knew no sin, as the writer of Hebrews says, the holy, harmless, undefiled one.

The one of whom even men said, I find no fault in Him.

The one of whom the Father said, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

The sinless one, the spotless one.

How is God going to be just and the justifier of sinners?

He made Him who knew no sin, meaning Christ sinned.

What does that mean?

Kenneth Copeland and the other Word of Faith teachers say it means that Jesus became a sinner.

I heard it again just a few weeks ago: He became a sinner on the cross.

On the cross, He became a sinner, and He had to go to hell for three days to suffer for His sins, and after He had suffered for those sins, He was released in the resurrection.

That’s blasphemous!

He was a Lamb without what?

Spot?

He was a Lamb without blemish.

Do you hear His words?

My God, my God, what’s the next word?

Why?

If He’s a sinner, there’s no why.

My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me? This is alien to everything He has eternally known.

It doesn’t mean that He became a sinner.

Understand it this way: it means that God treated Him as if He was a sinner, though He wasn’t. I’ll say it another way: on the cross, God poured out the full fury of His wrath against all the sins of all the people who would ever believe.

Did you get that?

On the cross, God poured out on His Son all the wrath for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe.

All the judgment for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe was poured out on Christ.

You say, Wait a minute!

As I analyze the cross, there really were only three hours when this took place.

All of that took place in three hours.

How is it possible that the sinners of human history will go to hell and be in hell forever and ever, and all of them in hell forever will never pay the price for their sins, but Christ can pay the price in full for all the sins of all who would ever believe in three hours?

And the only answer I can give you is because He is an infinite person.

He has an infinite capacity to absorb that judgment.

That’s our message: He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities.

By His stripes, we are healed.

He was offered to bear the sins of many (Hebrews 9; 1 Peter 2), and He Himself bore our sins in His body (Galatians 3). He was made a curse for us.

God treated Jesus as if He had personally committed every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe, though in reality, He committed none of them.

He is a substitute.

When you go out and preach the word of reconciliation—which is why you’re left here in the world—this is what you want to tell people: On our behalf, please!

I wish I had more time on this.

He became sin on our behalf; that’s all who believe.

It is a real atonement, not a potential atonement.

It is an actual atonement.

It is a particular redemption.

He paid in full for all who would ever believe.

There are people who think that He paid for the sins of the whole world of everybody.

Really?

So He did the same thing for all the people in hell that He did for all the people in heaven?

I don’t think so.

It’s not a potential atonement actualized by the sinner; it’s an actual atonement provided by the Savior and embraced by the sinner.

Some people say, Oh, you’re talking about an unlimited atonement.

Well, yeah, I think maybe you need to think that through carefully because if you’ve got Jesus dying for the whole world and most of them going to hell, then you’ve got a limited atonement.

You’ve got a limited atonement.

You’ve limited it in its power; you’ve limited it in its nature; you’ve limited it in its essence; you’ve limited it in its intent.

That’s not where you want to limit it.

Yes, the atonement is limited; we understand that.

Not everybody that ever lives is going to go to heaven; we know that.

It is limited in its extent by God, but it is not limited in its intent, in its power, in its nature, as if it’s some potential but not actual provision.

That’s another subject.

Now I’m not finished.

Here’s the good part: end of verse 21—so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Look, on the cross, Jesus wasn’t a sinner; God treated Him as if He was.

And now He grants to us the righteousness of God in Him.

Think of it this way: on the cross, God treated Jesus as a sinner, though He wasn’t. Now He treats us as righteous, though we’re not.

Our sins are imputed to Him; His righteousness is imputed to us.

Let me tell you another way to look at it: you ever ask yourself why Jesus had to live a life of 33 years?

You know, if I’d have been God, I might have said, Here’s the plan: I want you to go down on a Friday, and you can die, and you’ll be back by Sunday.

Oh yeah, just go down on Friday; we’ll arrange to get you on the cross, you’ll be there, and you’ll rise, and redemption will be accomplished.

What’s the 33 years about?

What’s that about?

What’s 30 years of obscurity about?

What’s that about?

I think the writer of Hebrews says it so well: He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without what?

At all points, chronologically, at all points through His entire life, He is without sin.

Without sin, He lived a complete sinless life.

That is credited to your account.

On the cross, God looked at Christ and saw you; now He looks at you and sees Christ.

Your sin is imputed to Him; His righteousness is imputed to you.

That is the message of reconciliation.

Preach it!

Father, thank You for our time.

We trust these thoughts from this great text will find a place in our hearts and in our behavior.

May we love them enough to live according to them and to proclaim them to the glory of our Savior, in whose name we pray.

Amen.