Good Friday - 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 - The Great Exchange

Good evening, beloved.

Good evening.

I want to invite you to take a Bible if you would turn over with me to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

For those of you that do not have a Bible, you can find one in front of you there.

And you can find 2 Corinthians, as soon as I can get to the page, I'll tell you exactly what page number, if that's helpful.

Be 1,025.

1,025 in our Pew Bible.

Well, this evening we're here to remember our Lord Jesus Christ, especially the day of his death on the cross.

And in all of our prayers, our songs and hymns, our scripture readings, this proclamation, and soon in our communion, we're celebrating the cross of Christ.

And so if anyone came in, maybe their first time tonight, a casual observer of us, they would see just how important that is to us.

And if they were to come and visit us on Sundays, they would see exactly the same thing.

They would discover that our focus is on Christ and that our focus and attraction to him is primarily about his death on the cross.

It's not primarily about his example, even though he was a great man, and we desire to follow his steps of faith and love and submission.

It's not primarily about his teaching, even though he was a great teacher, and we desire to obey him in everything that he commands.

And it's not primarily about his moral fortitude, even though he was a brave defender of justice and mercy.

And we too desire to bring justice where wrongs are committed and mercy where wrongs are confessed.

No, all those things are important.

But there's something greater that we see in Jesus Christ, and that's why we're here this evening.

Because what we are celebrating is wrapped up in what this weekend is about the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ.

In a couple days on Sunday, we're going to join with the apostles in proclaiming and celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tonight, however, we're going to focus and narrow our focus on the death of Christ and join with the apostles in glorying in his death.

Paul boasted about the cross of Christ.

If you were to read his writings in many different places, you could read how central it was to his person, how central it was to his ministry, how central it was to his proclamation.

He said in 1 Corinthians, we preach Christ crucified.

He said also in that same book, in another chapter, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

He spoke about the message of the cross, the offense of the cross, the triumph of the cross, and the wonder of the cross.

And in a culminating statement in his arguments to the Galatians, he said, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

You know, in Paul's day, that would have been a rather strange thing to take a boast in.

A boast in the cross of Christ.

Today we think of crosses as something beautiful, maybe something noble, perhaps even wear them as jewelry.

But that would have been completely unimaginable in Paul's day.

The cross was the ultimate humiliation.

The word crux in Latin was even unmentionable in polite Roman society.

So for the Romans, the cross was something degrading, disgusting, despicable, detestable, disgraceful, unable to be even mentioned.

In fact, when people were condemned to a death of crucifixion, the sentence that was put against them was done in an archaic sort of euphemistic way.

Let them hang on the unlucky tree.

They wouldn't even say crucify them.

It's hard for us to think of a contemporary equivalent of all of that.

Perhaps it might be if we if Paul was to say it in our vernacular, I boast in nothing but Christ and his electric chair.

Or I glory in nothing but Christ and his being guillotined.

It would be that abrasive.

See, the cross was an awfully strange thing to boast about.

According to the standards of the day, the cross should have been an embarrassment to the early church.

I mean, what would people think about this one that they're proclaiming as their Lord and finding out he had been executed like a low-life criminal?

But instead of denying it or covering it up, the Christians proclaimed it in that generation.

The very thing that seemed to people of that generation too obscene to whisper in polite company became the broadcast of the Christians in the streets.

Why?

Why were they so willing to make the death of Christ on the cross something so special and something so significant that they were willing to go past the shame of it all that their generation had put upon them to be able to proclaim it so loudly and so fully and freely to all who might hear it.

Well, that's why we're here tonight.

Because we too glory in the cross of Christ.

And yes, it may sound and be abrasive to our generation, but there's something to know here about what Christ did when he died on the cross that deserves our attention, that deserves our attachment, that deserves our love and our proclamation.

And so we're going to look at a passage tonight that traces out for us the reason for that devotion of Christ in him crucified and the substance of our proclamation to the world in our generation.

Let's take a look at this passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

The Apostle Paul begins in verse 17.

He said, If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature or new creation.

The old is passed away, and see the new is come.

Everything is from God who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And he's committed to us the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

We plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This passage of scripture lays out for us the storyline of why the cross is so glorious to us.

And the first thing that we'll notice in this passage of scripture is our dilemma.

It doesn't speak of it directly, it's underneath the surface, but not very far at all, actually.

When you read this passage of scripture, you hear the word reconciliation, be reconciled.

There's a lot of terms there that talk about this, of God bringing about this reconciliation through Jesus Christ.

And what this tells us is that our dilemma is this that humanity is not in a harmonious relationship with God.

We are unreconciled.

The one striking commonality of us all, no matter how big or short or what size we are, where we grew up, with the color or shade of our skin, it doesn't matter a whit.

There's one striking commonality to us all, and all of us are estranged from God.

Since the time of Adam, every one of us had been aligned with that first man in disobedience.

And because Adam's fall plunged the human race under the consequences of sin, all of us are born sinners.

The scriptures tell us that just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all have sinned.

Even David, King David, lamented in Psalm 51, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

In Psalm 58, it said that people are estranged from God from the womb, and that we speak lies from birth.

And if any one of us might think that, well, maybe we could just get past that, maybe sort of pick up ourselves after our birth and do better than maybe anybody else could do.

The scriptures tell us, as Paul said in Romans, there is none righteous.

Not one of us.

Later in that chapter, he said, All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.

The Old Testament speaks of that way too.

There's no man who does not sin.

And Proverbs 20 says, No one can say, I have cleansed my heart.

I am pure from my sin.

This is our dilemma.

Because of who we are by birth and by action, we're estranged from God, and that problem continues from generation to generation.

We all as humans are in an unreconcilable position with God.

We're incapable of being the people that God created us to be, though he made us with the full intent of his goodness and greatness.

We have all turned aside, Roman says.

We have all together become worthless.

There's no one who does good.

The problem isn't with God.

The scriptures lay that blame not on him as though he were some cruel taskmaster, but upon us as humans who have rebelled.

Paul teaches us here that God is the aggrieved party, and that we're the one who caused the alienation.

And left to our devices, we would only continue to be at enmity with God.

And so it's in the context of this that we see that our dilemma is that we are estranged from He who made us.

Isaiah told the people, he said, Your iniquities have made a separation between you and God.

Your sins have hid his face from you, so that he does not hear.

It even puts it into terms that are emotional, that resonate with our emotional life.

God saw how great mankind's wickedness on earth had become, and his heart was filled with pain.

Why that personal emotional expression?

Because God created us.

We were made by God, for God, in the image of God, so that we might dwell and have communion with God.

But instead we chose rebellion.

God told Adam that if he were to go down that pathway, that there would not only be the dilemma of estrangement, but that there would be consequences.

Our doom.

He said, The day that you eat of that tree, you will surely die.

And he did.

And so do we.

Every single one of us.

Not one of us gets out of this world alive.

The consequences of sin reverberate all the way down to our generation and in our home.

Ezekiel 18 said, the soul that sins will surely die.

And in Genesis chapter 5, the genealogy of the human race talks about God making Adam in his own image.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

But then it shifts to Adam having a child, and that child being in Adam's image after the fall.

And then it talks about Adam living for a certain number of years and then dying.

And his son having children in that son's image and living and dying.

And as you go through Genesis chapter 5, the thing that speaks so much is not the length of years that these people lived, but the reality that no matter how long they lived, they died.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

And they died and they died and they died, and we still do.

The prognosis is not any better if we think about it in the spiritual realm.

Alienation from God in this life and alienation from God in the life to come.

Death does not end this estrangement that we have.

God, true to his nature and his holiness, exacts his standards of righteousness by bringing his wrath against ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men.

And we leave this world as hard and horrible as it might be into a worse death, an eternity apart from God in all of his love, and all of his mercy, and all of his grace, and all of his goodness, and all of his power toward people that he would give, and we would have none of it, and we will bear none of it.

Isaiah 59, your iniquities have made the separation between you and your God.

This passage begins here, but it doesn't end here wonderfully.

It doesn't just stop and leave us in our dilemma and our doom.

Take a look at this passage again because it reveals something about God.

It shows that He is a deliverer, which is a remarkable thing in light of what we've just examined Scripture to say about ourselves.

If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away and the new is come.

Why?

Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ.

God, in verse 19, was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And he's committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Amid our dilemma, amid our doom, there's good news in this passage.

There's good news that God is also a God of mercy and love and has provided a remedy for sin.

And he has come as a deliverer.

And he makes it clear that all the glory should go to him for that reconciliation.

Paul describes this: that we in our sin-severed relationship between us and a holy God can be restored, as we'll see in a moment, in and through Christ.

But by the will of God it has happened.

It flows out of his love.

Why is God the source of this?

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.

God demonstrated his love toward us, Paul said in Romans 5.8, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Though we were enemies, we've been reconciled to God through the death of his son, Romans 5.10.

Ephesians 2, God, who is rich in mercy, and because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, he's made us alive in Christ.

Hear this, because this is the good news.

The remedy of our broken life and our broken relationship that we have with God is not within ourselves.

It's only found in God.

Only God knows how to make sinners who deserve hell acceptable in his sight and welcome to be with him in eternity in his presence.

Only God could design a way for our sin to be dealt with and for that judgment to satisfy his demands of justice and turn away his wrath in such a way that is consistent with his love and his grace and his mercy.

Only God would know what it would take to take us who are under the dominion of darkness and to move us and to translate us into the kingdom of his son, where there's nothing but light.

Only God could be the author and the executor of this plan of redemption.

And his plan is to do it in Christ.

So we have a dilemma and a consequence of doom that God, the deliverer, brings through his Son, Jesus Christ.

So let's take a look now at this passage and see its deliverance that it offers to us.

The answer to many questions is found in this passage.

The answer to the question, how can an absolutely and infinitely holy God be reconciled to sinners like us?

How can God's just and holy law, which demands condemnation and punishment to those who violate it, be satisfied?

How can those who deserve no mercy receive mercy?

How can God uphold true righteousness and give us grace?

How can the demands of justice and mercy be met?

This passage tells us that God is both the just and the justifier of sinners.

How?

Through the satisfying, substitutionary sacrifice of the Son.

That's what this passage talks about.

And in fifteen Greek words, we find the answer to that in verse 21 of this chapter.

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

It is through the satisfying substitutionary sacrifice of the Son that we find our deliverance.

The scriptures speak about Christ's death with overtones and direct connections to the sacrificial system of the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

Those mapping out of their sacrificial system as finding its culmination and its conclusion in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Even the prophecies of Christ's coming speak in these terms.

Isaiah 53 talks about us going astray like sheep, turning every one to our own way, but it says the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And a little deeper in that chapter, it said, the Lord was pleased to crush him when he made him a guilt offering.

There's that sacrificial terminology.

And Peter pointing back for Jewish people to look back there and to see that and to tell them this you were redeemed from your empty way of life, inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like gold and silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

He draws the language of the sacrificial system and points it to Jesus Christ and says, This one who died on the cross died as a sacrifice there.

Hebrews 10.

Brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus.

He's inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

Hebrews 9.

Christ appeared as a high priest to the good things that have come, and in a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, he entered the most holy place once for all, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood.

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works?

Hebrews 7.

He doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as high priests do, first for their own sins and those of the people.

He did this once for all time when he offered himself.

The scriptures speak of the sacrificial nature of this death.

But it also speaks of him as a sinless one in sacrifice.

That unblemished lamb, that lamb without a spot, that one that had to be pure in every way possible, laid on the altar in the Old Testament, was a figure of Christ who is to come, the sinless one, made himself a sacrifice.

The one who did not know sin, our passage says.

Attested to by many other places, Peter, he committed no sin, neither was there found deceit in his mouth.

Hebrews 4, 15, he was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 7, this high priest that we need, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners.

1 John 3, you know he was revealed so that he might take away sins, and there's no sin in him.

Romans 8:3, taking the sinlessness of Christ and this offering of sacrifice, and puts it together.

Romans 8:3

What the law could not do, since it was weakened by the flesh, God did.

He condemns sin in the flesh by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering.

This is the significance of Christ being human.

But he's not just like us in the sense that he did not rebel against the Father like we had.

However, he did identify with us, and that brings us to our next point that not only was his death a death of sacrifice, but it was a death of substitution.

And this is where it gets glorious.

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, on our behalf.

Listen to some other places where Paul talks about it in the book of Galatians, chapter one.

He gave himself for our sins.

The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me in chapter two.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

There's all that terminology of doing it on our behalf, doing it in our place as a substitute.

Christ's death was taking what we deserved.

He didn't come merely to share the lot of humanity with us, to be a great example of how humans ought to live their lives.

He came for the purpose of giving up his life in place of ours.

He died that we might live.

And thus the scriptures tell us that Christ's death was substitutionary.

In this salvation, it is this one point that the death of Christ is a death that we deserved.

Our punishment is borne by Him.

He voluntarily took upon Himself a doom he did not deserve.

He was sinless in order to die on the behalf who deserved everything that the wrath of God could pour out.

This is why there's no room for boasting.

We can only boast in the cross of Christ.

This is what Paul meant by that.

There was nothing we could add to this.

And while we stand and gaze at Christ, we stand and gaze at him, not simply a man dying as an example of how committed we need to be to God.

No.

He's a man doing a service by being a substitute for sinners, taking our place, dying our death, giving himself for us, becoming a curse from us, so that that curse might be lifted off of us.

And then this passage of scripture tells us something else.

Not only is his death a sacrifice, his death is a substitution, but his death is satisfactory to God.

It tells us here that everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself in verse 18, through Christ.

Verse 19, in Christ God was reconciling in the world to himself.

How is that reconciliation made?

Not counting their trespasses against them.

Well, where did those trespasses go?

Verse 21 says, They went on him who knew no sin, so that we might know the righteousness of God in Christ.

You see, there is the darkness of our sin, that dilemma that we're in, but there is also this righteousness of Christ, which is given to us.

All of our sins credited to Christ, and all of Christ's righteousness credited to us.

What a remarkable thing this is.

That God the Father would count our sins against his own Son, so that we might become his children.

What a remarkable thing.

That all of God's anger against sin and all of that separation from God and all the consequences that we deserve sits on Christ.

And God accepted his death on our behalf.

And you might ask, how do we know?

Come Sunday, you'll find out.

Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph over his foes.

How do we know that the death of Christ was satisfactory?

Because death could not hold him in the grave.

That's why.

Was there a price to be paid for our sin?

He paid it.

Is there a penalty to be born for our sin?

He bore it.

Is there a judgment to be faced for our sin?

He faced it.

Is there a victory that needs to be won?

He won it.

This is our Savior.

And this is why picking up Isaiah, Peter says this: He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, because by his wounds we are healed.

We're delivered.

He is the remover of wrath.

And that leads us to another part of this passage.

Not only is there a dilemma and doom underneath the surface here, there is the statement full and free of God as a deliverer and the deliverance coming through the sacrificial, substitutionary, satisfactory death of the Son.

What does this bring us?

A delight.

A delight.

You can feel the reverberations of joy in this passage of Scripture.

If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old is gone, the new is come.

You can almost feel Paul yelling these words.

The triumphant glory of a new creation.

This old one that was full of death and destruction and disobedience and all of that is gone.

There's a new one here.

And if you're in Christ, you're part of that new creation.

You can feel him singing these words.

And you can see him not speaking about himself, but speaking about the glory of God's grace.

All of this is from God who has reconciled us to himself in Christ.

That's our delight.

How rich is it?

Take a look at verse 21 again.

In him we might become the righteousness of God.

We started out this talk talking about our dilemma and our doom.

But we're not going to end it there.

We're going to end it with these words.

That the righteousness of God might be seen in us.

That when God looks on us, he sees the sinlessness of Christ.

That he no longer deems us guilty, but he actually sees us as righteous in his eyes.

Wow.

Now that is good news.

There's no way we could earn this favor.

There's no way that we could gain it.

It's granted to us on the basis of Christ Himself.

This is why Paul in Colossians said this for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile everything to himself by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

And he turns it back to his hearers and back to us.

And he says, Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds, as expressed by your evil deeds, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through his death to do what?

To present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him.

That is amazing.

To present, yes, disobedient, Doug.

Yes, in a dilemma, Doug.

Yes, a doom to an eternal separation from God, Doug.

And to turn anyone who believes on Christ, to be presented before a holy God as holy, to be presented before a holy God is unblamable, to be presented before a holy God is unreprovable in Christ.

We have no perfections of our own to offer him.

The only thing we can offer him is to be behind Christ.

And when he sees Christ, he sees those who are in Christ.

And he sees us as Christ, righteous in our union with him, because he took our place.

In the imagery of Colossians is some large Colosseum being brought before a king or an emperor, and that those are brought into the presence of this king or emperor are presented and guaranteed an acceptance only by right of their life without blemish, free from accusation.

And not a one of us could say we deserve to be there.

But if we're in Christ, we are.

We are.

We are there because of Jesus.

He made him to be sinned for us who knew no sin.

So that what we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The good news is that sin which separated us from God has been removed, and he accepts us as we had never sinned at all.

He declares us innocent, he acquits us, he drops all charges against us, and he grants to us the gift of righteousness.

One sixteenth-century German theologian said this God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned or had ever been a sinner.

As if I had been perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me.

What a wonderful thing.

That's something to sing about, isn't it?

And that leads us to a last point that we're going to make here.

We've started with a dilemma in our doom to hear the shocking, surprising, glorious word that God is also a deliverer, who's given us deliverance in his Son, Jesus Christ, and that we might receive with delight the good news that we are received without blemish in his presence.

And that leads us, last of all, to our declaration.

Why was the early church willing to step in front of people who were unwilling to even say the word cross in polite society and speak from the street corners and speak in the homes and to speak in the synagogues and to speak wherever they might get a hearing?

To speak about, have you heard of the death of Christ?

Have you heard about him being crucified on the cross?

And to do so with joy, and to do so with gladness, and to say, like Paul said, to glory even in that.

Why is this our declaration?

Because this is how sinful people can be reconciled with a holy God.

There's no other way.

But it's wonderfully a way God has made that his holy displeasure against alienated sinners is appeased, that his hostility can be removed, that a harmonious relationship might be established, to be reconciled with God, that God designed a way for everything that estranged us from him is done away with.

That our sins might be removed from us as far as the east is from the west, cast into the depths of the sea, thrown behind his back into the ocean of forgetfulness.

What is our declaration?

It's exactly what Paul says here in verse 20.

We're ambassadors for Christ.

Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf.

Be reconciled to God.

How do you do that?

In Christ.

That's the only way.

Be reconciled to God.

Yes, God could reverberate this message from the heavens, but He's desired to take people who've experienced the reconciliation and made them messengers of the reconciliation.

So that people might be able to understand the transformation that's happened in a life that once was doomed, but now is welcomed.

Be reconciled to God.

Nothing else will get us there but the deliverer, God, in his means of reconciliation, the deliverance that's found in the sacrifice of Christ, that is a substitute for us and satisfactory for us.

And the scriptures tell us that all who call upon the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.

That if we acknowledge our rebellion, if we acknowledge our need of forgiveness, and we don't try to play games with God by trying to turn over a new leaf or trying to be better than what we were, or trying to look around and see if perhaps maybe there's somebody we could, you know, one up against, you know, those guys in jail or whatever.

But we honestly come before God and say, I have nothing to bring.

The only thing I can do is throw myself on Christ.

The scriptures say, There you will be reconciled.

To acknowledge your rebellion and your need of forgiveness is to repent and to believe on Christ.

You see, this reconciliation is not something you do, it's something you receive.

This is reconciliation, it's not something you accomplish, it's something you can embrace.

This reconciliation is not something you decide to have happen, it's something God has decided to do and to awaken people to their need so that they might flee to the Son.

The scriptures tell us be reconciled, be reconciled to God in Christ.

We're going to close with these words that Paul wrote to the Ephesians.

He said, In Christ, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace.

So that in himself he might make the two into one new man, and thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both, Jew and Gentile, in one body to God through his cross, so that by it he's put to death the enity.

The judgment and the wrath and the separation are gone in Christ.

And the question is: are you in Christ?

And if you're not, I can only plead with you the very words that Paul says here, be reconciled to God.

It's your only hope, it's your only means of life.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful message, a message that's worth singing and shouting, this message that's worth savoring, a message that's worth turning to you with song of delight, because it is our only hope.

And it is wonderfully by your design the means by which we are brought back into relationship with you.

And so, Father, if any inquisitive observer might walk into our midst and wonder what it is about Jesus that we love, certainly we'll talk about his example, his faith, his love, his submission to the Father and all things.

Certainly we'll talk about his teaching, how wondrous it is, and our desire to obey it.

Certainly we'll talk about his moral stance and fortitude, a defender of justice and mercy, yes, but there's something much, much broader and grander and greater that we would speak about first.

And that is all wrapped up in this that Christ has died for sinners.

While we were ungodly, Christ died for us, and that through him we are reconciled to you.

And so tonight, as your people, we say, May we never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen.