Good morning. Great to be here.
I love coming here on Sunday mornings, especially when
there's a lunch afterwards, OK. And there's a sort of positive
and I don't know about that because on the one hand, you
don't have to think about rushing home, OK, to to cook the
lunch. You don't have to think about
that. So, you know, about 2 1/2 hours
out. No.
But on the other hand, the, the waft, the smell of delicious
food is going to get increasingly strong as I'm
speaking this morning. You know, so I'm aware that
there's a, there's a positive and perhaps a negative to that.
Yeah. I'm going to bring the word this
morning and I want to focus on one particular verse.
And there it is, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21.
I've called this talk the great exchange.
It's one of my favourite verses and one of the reasons I'm
bringing that this morning because because I know that here
on Sunday mornings you've been going through various passages
from Paul's letter, the second book to the church in Corinth,
Second Corinthians. And a couple of weeks ago, I
know that Ben preached on quite a long passage, 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 verse 11 to chapter 6 verse 2.
And I listened to it the other day and I want to say it was
excellent, one of the best preachers I've heard in recent
times. It was it was wonderful.
It did stirred my soul about the gospel message and the wonderful
salvation that we have. And just as I was praying the
other day, after listening to it, I just felt the Lord put on
my heart to say to you guys, Christchurch, Blackpool, I hope
you realise how blessed you are. OK, by having a young man, or
he's young from where I stand anyway, Or said a young man who
is such a great preacher, don't want to dress it up any more
than that. Or shall I embarrass him some
more? OK.
But I hope you guys, Christchurch, Blackpool, realise
how blessed you are. And I want to encourage you as
you go on being part of the church here and reaching out
into this great town of Blackpool to make sure that you
honour Ben as he preaches and teaches.
That's a scriptural command, OK, That we should honour those who
teach us, who preach and teach us to honour him, to bless him
and to bless his family, OK. It's a, it's a biblical command
to us. Now there's lots of ways that we
can honour him and bless him. One of those ways, there's lots
of practical ways I'm sure you can think of.
One of the practical ways is probably to respond to that
notice I saw put up there on the screen earlier, which is about
there are lots of serving teams that make Sunday mornings
happen, OK. And if there are gaps in the
serving team, I've got a pretty good idea who fills them.
OK, It will be 1 of the leaders and probably him, OK, So you can
honour him and bless him and bless the family by responding
to that and making sure you're involved on a Sunday morning.
But another way that you can honour those who preach and
teach, and this is a biblical thing.
I'm not going to go into this in detail, but it's to give from
all that God gives you into the life of the church.
And through that, that enables the church to honour Ben and his
family by making sure that they are well cared for.
Now he's not going to suddenly have enough resources to go out
and buy a new Mercedes-Benz, OK, but hopefully he would have
enough resources to make sure the car that he just drives
stays on the road. I'm not going to go into this in
detail, but I hope the message is coming through to you, the
church, you the leaders, you the trustees of the church.
Please pray about this and make sure that you we honour Ben and
his family. Anyway, that's for free.
That's not what I'm preaching about this morning.
I'm preaching on this verse, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21.
It's a it's a wonderful verse. And if you ever get the
opportunity, and I hope that you do, to share the gospel, the
good news about Jesus Christ to someone and you're not sure
where to start or what words to use, how to say it.
If you think about this verse and you're able to put this
verse into your own words, you will be doing a great job of
explaining the good news. God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God. It's great to memorise and
remember Scripture, so let's have a go.
Let's read it out together after me.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we
might become the righteousness of Gods.
Now 2 weeks ago when Ben preached and he covered the
verses before and after this particular verse, he referred to
this verse and spoke about it as part of biggest preach.
But what I want to do this morning is to go deeper.
Are you ready to dig a bit deeper this morning?
It might be a bit stretching, OK, but hopefully it will it
will help you in this particular verse.
So I'm just going to focus on this verse and we're going to
break it down. It says God made him who had no
sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God. God made him.
The hymn that is referred to, I'm sure we're all aware, is
Jesus just just a little word? First of all, if I haven't got
this in my notes, but I'm just thinking about it where it says
God made him and we know what's coming up in the rest of the
verse. What it doesn't mean, what it
doesn't mean is that God forced Jesus to come and die on the
cross for us, OK? It doesn't mean that God made
him in the same way that I could make Ben stand up now by
dragging him up, OK? It doesn't mean he made him in
the sense of forcing him, compelling him.
What it means in terms of made is that God set up the
circumstances. God planned it.
God made Jesus in the sense of this is my plan for Jesus to do
this. God prepared it.
We mustn't think that God forced Jesus, OK?
That would not be biblical. That would not be scriptural.
Everything that Jesus did, he did willingly, OK, not because
he was made to do it, but it says God made him who had no
sin. God made him who had no sin.
It's important that we just pause a moment there.
God made Jesus who had no sin. One Peter 2 verse 22 says he
committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.
And that's actually quoting A prophecy made hundreds of years
previously in the Old Testament. We find in the Old Testament by
the prophet Isaiah 1 John. So this is the apostle John
writing chapter 3 verse 5 says this.
But you know that he, that's Jesus, He appeared so that he
might take away our sin, but in him is no sin.
So the Bible, the Scriptures are very clear that Jesus had no
sin. Jesus committed no sin, there
was no sin in him. The Scriptures make that
perfectly clear. And the sinlessness of Jesus,
the fact that Jesus had no sin committed, no sin, is a really
important, crucial part actually of what the Bible teaches us
about who he was, who he is, his identity, and the role that he
came to play. So his sinlessness is really,
really important. His perfection, the fact that in
Jesus was perfection was essential for him to take on the
role of the perfect sacrifice. And Scripture is very clear
about that. Jesus was able to pay for the
technical term in Scripture is to atone for our sin because of
his sinlessness. Yeah, It's his sinlessness that
made him able to carry out that role of the one who saves
humanity. He would take the punishment for
the sins of the world only because he was not guilty of any
sin himself. And it's really important as we
think about the build up, as, as Ben said, two, 2025.
I mean, I'm getting it wrong now. 2025 is coming to an end.
We're coming up to Christmas. Anybody got their decorations up
yet? We have a guy in our church who
starts putting his decorations up at the end of September.
OK. I've tried to excommunicate him,
but no, Christmas is not allowed in our house until after my
birthday, the 1st of December. But we're coming up to Christmas
and one of the accounts that we read of Christmas is that the
account of the virgin birth that Joseph and Mary did not come
together before the birth of Jesus.
And you could say, well, do do I have to believe that is, is that
an important part of, of, of Scripture?
Yeah, Yeah, it is. It it, it's actually very
important part of Scripture because the Scriptures say that
we are all born into sin because as the Bible says, we we're
under the line of Adam, the first man Adam, God made Adam
and Eve. Adam fell into sin, the first
human sin, and all of humankind fall into sin because we are in
the line of Adam. But Jesus was not in the line of
Adam. He had no earthly father.
In other words, that sin line from Adam did not continue to
Jesus. He was born of a new line, the
line of God. He was the scripture calls the
new Adam. So Jesus was born of an earthly
mother, Mary, but not of directly from an earthly father.
And it's important that we that we hold on to these doctrines
even as we come up to Christmas. It might not be the most obvious
point of conversation with those that you're trying to invite to
a travel service, but sometimes it can come up.
Yeah. And people say, well, how can
that happen? Well, because it's God.
And Luke, Luke clearly says, having interviewed Mary, we
believe and eyewitness that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and
the baby Jesus was conceived in her room.
What? Yeah.
It's amazing, it's miraculous, it's supernatural.
Yes it is. It's God.
And that's what's so wonderful about the Christmas that we're
going to be celebrating in a few weeks time.
Jesus was not of the line of Adam.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, so God made him.
Jesus who had no sin. Secondly, the next bit, he made
him to be sin for us. Yeah, God made Jesus, who had no
sin to be sin for us. Remember, it's not made
enforced, but the plan of God that Jesus came to fulfil was to
be sin for us, to be sin for us. Again, Peter writes in one Peter
2 verse 24. He himself, Jesus bore our sins
in his body on the cross. He himself bore our sins in his
body on the cross. Now going to go a bit deeper,
OK? What this does not mean is that
Jesus became a Sinner. OK, Jesus did not become a
Sinner. And even if we read that verse
in our English translations, some translations are are
different and slightly better actually than the one I'm using,
which is NIV where it says to be sin for us.
It doesn't mean that he became full of sin, OK?
It doesn't mean that he became a Sinner.
It doesn't mean that he himself became guilty of sin.
The scriptures say we've already had this one, one John 3/5.
He appeared so that he might take away our sins, but in Him
is no sin. So Jesus did not become a
Sinner. He remained sinless, but on the
cross what happens is that God looks on Jesus and treated him,
dealt with him as if he was a Sinner.
OK, now you may think this is a bit whatever, but it but it's
important. Jesus did not sin, but God dealt
with him and treated him as if he was a Sinner.
He was treated as if he was guilty of all the sins of the
world. Now the theological term.
You'll probably all forget this, and I wouldn't blame you if you
do. OK for this is imputation OK?
Imputation. It means imputation if you look
it up in an English Dictionary. Not a religious one, but
imputation. It's the action of giving
something to someone and treating them accordingly.
It's the action of giving something to someone and
treating them accordingly. OK, so when Paul says God made
him who had no sin to be sin for us, he's saying that God
ascribed to Jesus, technically imputed to Jesus, gave to Jesus.
If you like all of our sin, he put it on Jesus.
All our sin, all the sins of the world, God put upon Jesus the
guilt of all our sin. OK, so let me show you very
simply what I mean by that. Ben, would you stand up please?
I want you to imagine I've already honoured this man this
morning. I want you to imagine now that
this man is Jesus. OK, bit difficult to, you know,
stretch of the imagination, OK, and I'm just Steve, OK, a sinful
man, OK. And I want you to just imagine
that all of my sin, all the guilt is on me is represented by
this this hat. OK, this is my gardening hat.
Bit sweaty Ben, but Are you ready for this mate?
This is this is my sinner's hat, OK?
All my sin, everything, all the guilt, everything is represented
in this hat. What was happening on the cross
for all those who believe in Jesus, when I believe in Jesus
is that God lifts all of that on me and puts it on Jesus.
OK. So that when God looks at me, he
doesn't see that anymore. But when he looks on Jesus,
that's what he says. You may sit down.
Thank You, Beautiful assistant. What happened to Jesus is on the
cross when Jesus was crucified. It happened because of my sin
and the sin of us all. The guilt for that was imputed,
put upon, placed upon Jesus, and he was treated accordingly.
Everything, all my sin, all of our sin, all the sin of the
world in that little cap placed upon Jesus, and Jesus was
treated accordingly according to that.
Just just let that sink in for a moment or two.
Just just ponder upon that. On the cross, even before he was
crucified. Think of Jesus in the garden
where it says that he sweated drops of blood.
He sweated drops of blood. Now I've heard some people
preach that that's just a a picture.
It's just to say he was deeply traumatised.
He was seriously affected by what was going on.
But actually sweating blood is a known medical condition.
It's very rare. I'm don't know if I'm going to
be able to pronounce this. It's called hematotidrosis.
Anyway, Hema, which is blood something or other, OK, but it's
sweating blood. It's very rare, but it occurs
when someone is in extreme distress, extreme awareness of
something that is happening to them and in the garden.
Jesus was aware of what was coming His way because He was
feeling the weight of that, of the sin of the world, of my sin
and your sin on His shoulders. Just let that sink in.
Jesus on the cross paid the price for my sin, for your sin.
Now that's not the end, OK? That is not the end.
And often when we try to share the gospel or even when we live
our lives as Christians, it's almost as if we stop in our
verse right there. God made him who had no sin to
be sin for us, which which is which is wonderful that God
would would do that for me. But that's not the end.
That's not the full gospel. Paul goes on to say so that so
that there's a reason why God made, prepared, planned Jesus to
do this, so that in him Jesus, we might become the
righteousness of God. Now just let me pause in the
same way as I pause for the word made.
It doesn't mean God force Jesus to do this when it says in our
English translation in there, so that in him we might.
It doesn't mean we might in in the sense that well, yeah, we
might, but we might not. You know, it's not in the sense
that we might on a good day and not on a bad day, or it's not in
the sense that we might if God smiles upon us or whatever it it
doesn't mean that. It means that God made it and
had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we can, we, we might
in that way. It's something that is available
to everybody who puts their trust in Jesus.
So if you've put your trust in Jesus and you've committed your
life to him, then it's not an A might.
It might be the case. It's a definite case.
Yeah. He died so that you can.
Can what? Become the righteousness of God?
What does that mean? Become the righteousness of God?
Well, when we trust in Christ for our salvation, we take part
in this wonderful exchange, what I've called there, the great
exchange. And that exchange is my sin for
his righteousness, my sin for his righteousness.
Yeah. Jesus bears the punishment for
my sin. God poured out all his wrath,
all the punishment that was due to me.
God pours it out on Jesus at his crucifixion on the cross, but
God pours all his righteousness into me at my conversions.
So on the 20th of October 1989 at 10 minutes to 10, OK, when I
trusted in Jesus and put my faith in Jesus, when I, if you
like, became a Christian, Yeah. It was not just that God had
made Jesus my sacrifice for sin. At that point of conversion, God
gave me all of Jesus's righteousness, my sin for his
righteousness. Ben, I need you to be Jesus once
again. This time you get your own
heart. Mate.
I need this one back. This is my special Tilly hat.
OK, so stick that on. So what I showed you earlier was
actually incomplete and only half of the story.
You see, it's not just that all my sin is removed from me and
placed on Jesus, but Jesus's righteousness is actually placed
on me. It's a great exchange.
Yeah. My sin for his righteousness.
Thank you, Ben, My sin for his righteousness.
This is the great exchange, the divine exchange.
Now, some of you may be thinking, wow, we're going to go
a little bit deeper, OK? A little bit deeper, OK.
Because actually what I've just shown you with the hats, it's
not the whole picture. It's not actually the whole
picture. He took what I deserved on the
cross, so I receive His righteousness.
But Scripture, and I'm not going to show you all the verses,
you're going to have to trust me on this.
But you do a Google word search in the Bible for righteousness,
and you see this comes out, that Scripture makes it clear that
righteousness. Do you remember I said that my
sin was placed upon Jesus? The technical term, the
theological term being imputed. Yeah, placed upon.
So it was attributed. My sin was attributed to Jesus,
and Jesus was dealt with accordingly.
Scripture makes it clear that his righteousness is not placed
upon me. It's not imputed theological
term, it's actually imparted. Now to impute something is to
attribute something, IE my sin was attributed to Jesus and
Jesus was dealt with accordingly.
But if you look up imparted to impart something in the Bible,
it's the act of giving or conveying or bestowing something
such as information or knowledge or equality.
In other words, what happened is that Jesus didn't just put it,
God didn't just put Jesus's righteous on me, He changed me
inside and he imparted righteousness to me.
And Ben explained this a couple of weeks ago when he was
preaching from the wider passage in Two Corinthians 5 about how
we are born again when we become Christians.
We are new creations. I'm changed from the inside.
So righteousness is not just something that that God sees
from above. Righteousness is within me.
I'm, I'm, I'm righteous at my very core, the very core of my
being. God has made me a righteous one
just like Jesus. And this is going to shock you
even more. If you are a Christian, you are
as righteous as Jesus ever was and is it is amazing, isn't it?
You are as righteous. This will really get you.
If I don't get someone coming up to me and saying hang on a
minute, I have to have a lunch, some of you have not got it.
You are as if you're a Christian.
You are as righteous as God because God has imparted his
righteousness into you. He's changed your very being.
You're not of Adam anymore. You are of Jesus.
You are a new creation. Sometimes I think as Christians
we live our lives as if we've got a, you know, the yeah, we're
righteous. And it's like we've got Jesus as
as the hat sitting down on our head.
So God looks down on us. Yeah.
And he sees this shield of righteousness above us so that
we're we're safe. We're saved.
Yeah. And we're saved because I've
preached this at, at sometimes over the years that when God
looks at us, he doesn't see us. He sees Jesus.
He sees this shield of Jesus, what the Scriptures teach is he
sees me as Jesus. He sees me as righteous.
I'm full of God's righteousness. I meet lots of Christians and I
say to them, oh, how you doing? How's, how's it going?
How's your walk with God? Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm struggling.
I'm, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with that.
I'm struggling with the other and they may not use the phrase,
but they're really saying, you know, and you may have heard
people say this, I'm just a Sinner.
I'm a Sinner, but I'm saved by grace.
And, and yeah, you were a Sinner, saved by grace, but
you're not any longer. You're the righteousness of God
so that we might become the righteousness of God.
Some of you are not looking very convinced about this.
You are the righteousness of God.
What's righteousness? It means I'm right with God.
It means right standing. It means I can stand before God.
I don't need to cower. I don't need to grovel on my
knees. I don't need to, you know, sort
of be on, you know, a face in the ground.
Yeah, God is holy, and there's a time when we should have our
faces on the ground. But that's not my position
before God. I'm the righteousness of God.
I'm made remade in his image, the very substance of God's
righteousness. He's in me.
We, we glory in the grace of God.
But sometimes I'm not sure we we've got the half of it.
God's made us righteous. You're the righteousness of God.
He had to do that. He had to do that.
I looked in my garage this morning.
Here's a tin of high gloss brilliant white paint.
OK, it's totally white. Brilliant white.
Super white. It, it's pure perfect white.
If I were to put a single drop, just a single drop of grey paint
or black paint in here, this would no longer be super white,
Brilliant white. Well, it might look the same
when I paint it on the walls, but it wouldn't be at its very
nature. It's not perfect white anymore,
might look like it is, but it's not at its core and it's very
substance. God is perfect, perfect in all,
all of his ways, in everything that he does, his character, his
ways, He's perfect, totally perfect.
If I have any sin in me at all, I can't stand in the presence of
God, because if I'm in a relationship with God as a
Sinner, then God is tainted by my and God cannot be tainted by
my sin. The only way that I can have a
relationship with God to be to stand in God's presence is as if
I am made perfect, because if I'm not perfect, then God ceases
to be because He's in contact with me.
He's in relationship with me. God had to make me righteous,
and that's what our verse says. Jesus died on the cross for our
sin, and he was treated and dealt with according to my sin
and your sin, so that not only that you would be free of sin,
but you would be the righteousness of God, unable to
stand right in his presence. So you're not a Sinner saved by
grace anymore. That's what you were.
If you're a Christian, you're not a Sinner.
You're a St, You're a St who's been made righteous.
Now you may say, but Steve, you don't know me and I don't know
most of you. And you may say, you don't know
the things that I struggle with and that I'm still mess up and
that I sin. And then you may be thinking,
and I'm never going to tell you the ways that I mess up and I
sin. But we all do.
The thing is, before I was a Christian, I sinned because I
was in the line of Adam and sin was in me.
I was. I was born in into sin.
And sin was something that that's just happened and I
couldn't stop it. I couldn't control it.
But now I am the righteousness of God.
But I still sin. Yeah, but sin is now a result of
me giving into temptation because of the world I live in.
And the Bible tells us that Satan is a real and present
enemy that roams the world looking to draw Christians away
from their relationship with God.
So yeah, I, I mess up now and I sin because I give in to
temptation. I give in, but it doesn't change
my righteousness. It doesn't change my
righteousness. What God does is not only that
he makes us righteous. He sends the power of the Holy
Spirit to enable me increasingly as I go on through my Christian
life, to resist temptation, to resist the the devil, and to
start to live as a righteous one.
That's the process of sanctification.
So I am righteous, but I do give in to sin.
But the Holy Spirit helps me to become more and more like a
righteous 1 and to live like that.
But I'm never not righteous. I'm never not righteous.
If you're a Christian here this morning, you are the
righteousness of God. Is that amazing?
One or two of you think it's amazing.
Listen, if I've left you behind somewhere this morning at level
one or two and I've gone a bit deeper than that, don't worry
about that. Don't worry.
All you need to know is that Jesus died for your sin.
He took the punishment and the guilt so that you don't need to,
and therefore you can stand before God without that sin
keeping you away from Him. For those of us who have been
around in the Christian life for a few months or years or
decades, OK, let's dig deeper and be aware of the enormity of
His grace that he did, that he went to the cross so that we
might become the righteousness of God.
You're the righteousness of God. Sorry.
It's wonderful. It's wonderful.
And whether you're at level 1 and this is all new to you, you
may be here this morning. You may not be a Christian or
only become a Christian relatively recently.
Yeah, the Scripture says, yeah, that, that that's wonderful.
But we can never stop learning because the grace of God is
something that we'll never get our heads around.
Totally. It's wonderful.
It's beyond our understanding. And there were deeper and deeper
levels. And no matter how long you've
been a Christian, can I encourage you to keep digging,
keep digging into the Scripture because it transforms and
changes us. Let's pray and then we're going
to finish and we're going to eat.
Thank you, Lord, let's just pray together.
Father, thank you for the word. Thank you for the Scriptures,
Thank you. That in here is everything that
we need to know for our salvation, everything we need to
know about how to live our lives, and everything we need to
know about you, Holy Spirit. And I pray Holy Spirit, you
would just come right now. And for every person here, every
brother and sister here this morning, you would just bring
clarity and revelation from your word, in particular about these
doctrines of salvation and grace and righteousness.
And I pray, Lord God, your word would strengthen us and would
encourage us and would cause faith to rise in US, not only
for our salvation and our righteousness, but for the
salvation of many, many, many others in this town.
And beyond that, many, many, many others would hear about
your grace and your goodness. And I pray for Christchurch,
Blackpool, I pray increasingly for that to be the case.
And I pray. For this coming season, as Ben
reminded us of, Christmas is coming, Lord, that there would
be people who do not know you sat in these chairs in this hall
of the Christmas season, who would just hear something and
experience something of this wonderful grace that we're
talking about. And I pray, Lord God, for the
next time when I come along here, Lord God, some of those
people will be sat here as those who've been saved by grace.
And we pray for that and I believe for that.
I have faith for that, Lords, that even over this Christmas
season, many would hear and in subsequent weeks respond to your
glorious gospel in Jesus name. In Jesus name, Amen.