Sent For Sin
Notes
Transcript
As we begin our study this morning, I want to remind you that we are looking at the first of six great arguments which Paul has provided to prove beyond doubt the truth of his great statement in Romans 8:1, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And I trust you recall that this first argument is found succinctly in Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death”, and that he has been working that out for us in this enormously rich sentence spanning Romans 8:3–4,
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
And as you may have noticed, we have been looking at this tremendous statement more or less phrase by phrase, starting with “what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh”. There, we discovered that the Law, as strong and as powerful and as good as it is, rather than leading to life, instead led only to death for us, for though the Law serves as a perfect and holy witness to the righteousness of God, it is entirely unable to grant to us the life it promises, for it is entirely unable to empower us to keep its demands. In Leviticus 18:5 Yahweh declares, “So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does them, he shall live by them; I am Yahweh.” We fail because we are entirely unable to keep the statutes and judgements of the Law. Not only that, but Romans 7:11, “For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” Sin leveraged the holy, righteous, and good Law of God to work yet further sin in us. The Law is weak through the flesh, in that it must work through us, it must use us to achieve its ends, and so “through the commandment, sin would become utterly sinful” (7:13).
And then last time, we considered the importance of how God did what He did in that next statement, “sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Our Lord, though He came in the flesh, did not come in sinful flesh; no, He was not born in Adam as we are, but rather He came, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:47, as “the second man”. He was God’s own Son; very God of very God, begotten, not created. A Holy Son unlike any other, the “only begotten from the Father” (John 1:14).
Adam was the “type of Him who was to come”, but our Lord was “Him who was to come” from Romans 5:14, so this is Paul’s method to explain that when Christ came, He came entirely outside of the reign and rule of sin. As Adam was “formed of the dust from the ground and [Yahweh God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7), made according to the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27), “when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son” (Gal 4:4) “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3).
He came, entirely holy, and the angels knew that He unlike all other babes was holy. Why? Because He came, He was not created. He did not fall under the condemnation of all who are in Adam. You remember, we read in Luke 1:35, “The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.” Not called “the Son of God” because Mary was holy, but because “the power of the Most High will overshadow you”, Mary’s sin was overshadowed by God Himself! The angel speaking to her husband Joseph, after she was found to be with child before they came together, in Matthew 1:20 tells him “the One who has been conceived in her, is of the Holy Spirit.” Saying the same thing!
And so, conceived like no other, yet fully man and with the weaknesses common to all men, such as in things like feeling weary and having to learn and grow, feeling sorrow and anguish, He was yet “without sin” (Heb 4:15).
And so today, having now considered how God did what He did, we now turn our attention in to a consideration of just what it was that He did!
Let’s pray before we begin!
O Lord our God, Father of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and sent your holy Son into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh, show each one of us this morning the enormity of our own guilt, by the crown of thorns thrust upon His head, by His pierced hands and feet, His bruised and wounded body. O Lord God, the precious blood of our Lord is of infinite worth, value beyond all thoughts of our finite minds. And infinite, too must be the guilt and condemnation which demands such a costly price. Let us walk humbly in the depths of Your mercy and grace, that You would allow men and women such as we to bring honor and glory to the name of Your blessed Son. Amen!
So let’s focus in on precisely what the apostle Paul writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, here:
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
Now, you will notice, that the words “as an offering” are in italics, they have been added for our understanding. And indeed, if you are using the King James or grew up memorizing this verse from the Authorized Version, you will note that that translation says “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”. And that has led a great many people to think that the apostle is just meaning to say that Christ came regarding or concerning sin, in connection to sin. The idea of “as an offering for sin”, seems to add a great deal.
Now, I could simply say that throughout the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, generally referred to as a Septuagint, we see this same Greek phrase, “περὶ ἁμαρτίας”, overwhelmingly used to translate the Hebrew words meaning “for a sin offering”. We could simply say that and move on, but there is a great and eternally significant teaching that we would miss if we were to simply do so, because the coming if our Lord “for sin”, “as an offering for sin”, is such an enormously important point of theology that Paul is reminding his readers of, that we short-change ourselves and our thinking if we do not ponder this meaning in detail, especially in how it relates to our general theme in Romans chapter 8, that Romans 8:1, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Because, although it is true to say in a general sense that our Lord came “regarding sin”, or “in relation to sin”, such a statement is only true in the most general of senses. 1 John 3:5, for example, states “And you know that He was manifested in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.” And down in 1 John 3:8 we read, “The one who does sin is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning. The Son of God was manifested for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” There, John is saying much the same thing as what we read here in Romans 8.
But even that is an inadequate view of the matter presented to us here in Romans 8:3–4, for our context is that of being set free from the Law of sin and of death, our context is that “therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
And why that is the case, we can see in a similar statement Paul made in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”; His death and His resurrection were no accident or happy coincidence, but rather were planned and certain before the foundation of the world, before God had formed Adam’s body from the dust of the earth.
Look at the promise God made to the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan (Rev 20:2), which He pronounced in the Curse of Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
We see this promise later, in words recorded by the prophet Isaiah, so please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 53, and then turn back a page to the last part of chapter 52.
Behold, My Servant will prosper; He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were appalled at you, My people, So His appearance was marred more than any man And His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations, Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; For what had not been told them they will see, And what they had not heard they will understand.
Although the ultimate Servant of Yahweh will prosper, although God Himself promises that the work of the Servant shall accomplish it’s purpose, that it cannot fail, it will not fall short of full and complete success.
But just as the people surrounding Israel were appalled and horrified at the wasteland of the people of God, even so the people observing the Servant of God would be appalled.
For though His work is promised to succeed, will it include suffering? Yes, it will. Will it include disfigurement? Yes, it will. Will it make many people be appalled at Him? Yes, it will. But in the end, the authorities who once opposed Him will have nothing left to say, they will at last understand and recognize Him and what He has done.
Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
Belief in the action and what Yahweh has accomplished does not come out of man in his rational thinking, but solely by it being revealed to him by Yahweh Himself.
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Just as the nation of Israel had once been admonished that God doesn’t look at the outside, as they had done in the case of Saul, whose physically imposing presence being a head taller than everyone else caused them to favor him, yet found him to be woefully lacking in the purpose of a king; God instead is interested in the heart of the man as He showed them in the case of David, who God anointed to lead his people in place of Saul.
And yet, men even today do the same thing, we fall into the same trap, despising those who we should pay the most attention to.
He didn’t come as the bright and shining Lord of Glory, clothed in majesty, but rather He came “in the likeness of sinful flesh.”
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our peace fell upon Him, And by His wounds we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
The Servant who was to suffer, came with certain and sure intentionality. He knew His purpose here, He knew that He was sent as a substitute for suffering which should have been ours by rights. And yet still, centuries before He drew His first breath as a babe in a Bethlehem feed-trough, His mission and purpose for coming was entirely clear.
In this, it is right to recall that He came “for sin”, His coming was entirely connected with the presence and authority of Sin, but again, to simply stop there is entirely inadequate, we must go on lest we have an entirely insufficient understanding.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, That for the transgression of my people, striking was due to Him? So His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
Yes, He was oppressed. Yes, He was afflicted. Yes, He was led to slaughter. What was done to Him was done through oppression, it was a judgement of condemnation done in oppression. Why? Because He was entirely innocent in everything that occurred.
The Messiah stood in the presence of the very people He came to save, the very people He loved, the very people who had been entrusted with the oracles of God declaring who He was and why He came, and even in His act of utmost love, they yet still called for His execution at the hands of the ungodly Romans who did not have the oracles of God.
He voluntarily submitted to His suffering, not only being sure to do nothing to warrant suffering in Himself, but also not objecting that He bore in His suffering for the sin of those very people who were in the act of causing and enacting His suffering! No, his own generation never contemplated that as they demanded He suffer and die at the hands of ungodly men!
But Yahweh was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If You would place His soul as a guilt offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in His hand.
The willing, voluntary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ was complete, in that Jesus Christ, the Righteous, was crushed and put to grief as a guilt offering for the unrighteous (1 Pet 3:18), “not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood”, Hebrews 9:11 reminds us.
But there was an intensity and depth of the Servant’s suffering that we can easily miss in our rush toward exalting in what it accomplished.
God the Father purposed to crush Him. God the Father was actively, desiringly pleased that His Anointed One should suffer and die. The suffering of the Servant was necessary, His own soul was offered as a guilt offering – a sin offering.
Or in the words of Paul, “what the Law could not do, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin”.
This was purposed in the Father from before the foundation of the world. Before Adam was given the breath of life. Before Jesus Christ came in the flesh, God planned and purposed that He suffer and die at the hands of ungodly men.
The Father sent the Son, and the Son for His part willingly came.
Why? For the sake of His people.
As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide for Him a portion with the many, And He will divide the spoil with the strong; Because He poured out His soul to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors.
The sufferings of the Servant, beyond what any mere man can truly imagine, was vindicated by what He accomplished. Through His own suffering in His flesh, the judgement demanded for sin was satisfied in the flesh of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:21) “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Instead of ending only in death, the Servant will see the result of His anguish, His sacrifice will “justify the many”, Romans 5:19 reminding us “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be appointed righteous.” Who is this “many”?? Romans 4:24 reminds us of who it is who will be counted as righteousness, not just Abraham, “but for our sake also, to whom it will be counted, as those who believe upon Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead”!
Jesus, who “suffered under Pontius Pilate” as the Apostle’s Creed states it, was sent for this purposes.
And it’s not like He didn’t know it.
When confronted by Nicodemus at night, he proclaimed
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
He wasn’t comparing Himself to Moses, but the serpent of bronze on the staff which, if the snake-bitten Israelite turned their gaze upon it, would be healed.
Once His disciples knew that He was the Christ, Luke 9:21 “But He warned them and directed them not to tell this to anyone,”
saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.”
And as the very hour approached, when “the hour [had] come for the Son of Man to be glorified”, he declared to the gathered onlookers just before His last passover,
“Now My soul has become dismayed; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.
In other words, He had a clarity of purpose; He knew why He was sent, and He knew how He must accomplish His task. So much so, that though he prayed to His Father in the garden, (Luke 22:42) “saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me, yet not My will, but Yours be done.””
This purpose, of course is witnessed elsewhere in Scripture! Conside just a few more…
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
And again in Hebrews 2:17
Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
And even later in this same chapter, we will read in verse 32,
He who indeed did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
No… when we read in Romans 8:3
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
…there can be no doubt that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was sent into the world to be the propitiation for sin, the atoning sacrifice which Hebrews 9:24-26 rejoices to tell us,
For Christ did not enter holy places made with hands, mere copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy places year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
Indeed, when we consider the context of this phrase in Romans 8:3, that God’s sending of His own Son was both “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, but it was also “for sin”, and that as a result of His being sent “for sin”, περὶ ἁμαρτίας, that sin is condemned in the flesh, it becomes even more clear that His being sent is “as an offering for sin”. Our translators are undoubtedly right to translate it this way, and we are right to prefer such a translation.
So let us glory in this, then: that through the excruciating suffering of Jesus, God’s wrath was satisfied for all who are “in Christ Jesus”, (Romans 8:1) “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Let us Pray!
