Incarnation - He Came To Live For Us

Introduction

Peace. Today I want to talk about peace. Not peace that the world gives, but true peace, godly peace.

Now, when I say peace, many of you come with preconceived notions of what that is. Perhaps you think of peace in terms of what is happening out in the world today. There is the threat of World War 3 looming around the corner and for many people, they believe that the party currently in office was pushing us toward that conflict and with the new administration coming in, that threat will now subside.

I personally don’t think it’s that simple and believe that the world is much more complicated a place than that. But either way, the peace that you may have felt about Trump being elected, let me warn you, that is a false peace.

True peace can only come from God. True peace isn’t dependent on mankind to do the right thing, but true peace comes from God doing what man cannot. So today, I want to look at peace through this lens of a theological word called “imputation”.

Good morning and thank you for joining us, today we are in our Christmas Sermon Series called “Incarnation”. This is the theological word that means God put on flesh. God became a man and we believe that man to be Christ Jesus. He was 100% God and 100% man.

Last week I asked a question, that I didn’t answer. I asked this, if Jesus was born as a baby and the whole point was for him to die for us, then why didn’t God just allow Herod to kill him when he had a chance?

He sent dreams and spoke to the Wise Men and Mary and Joseph so that baby Jesus would be protected. But, I thought the whole point was for him to die for us? Why didn’t God just let it end right then and there?

I actually think there are a lot of reasons, but the main one I want to focus on today is, “He came to live FOR us.” His life, all 33 years, were lived FOR us. He lived a righteous life and he lived it for us, he lived it to give it away or to credit it to us. That’s the basic idea behind imputation.

So if you have your bibles, let’s read together. The notes are loaded on the app and words will be on the screen.

Romans 5:19 NIV

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Now I’m going to look at this verse today, but I do want you to know this is part of an argument that the apostle Paul is making in his letter to the church in Rome. He is essentially saying that because Sin came into the world through Adam, and death came from that sin, death spread to all men because of the sin of the first man.

But he says grace works the same way. Grace and righteousness is being spread throughout the world because of the work of one man, Jesus. He leads up to this passage by saying that because one sin led to all men being condemned, one act of righteousness (aka Jesus on the cross) leads to the justification and life for all men.

We pick this up with our verse today, which says that through the disobedience of Adam, the many was made sinners and through the obedience of Christ, many will be made righteous.

We are going to really focus in on the latter part of this verse when it comes to answering our big question today. Why did Jesus have to live a full life before dying? It was because he was living a righteous life for us, or in our place.

By him doing this, it brought us peace with God.

In a sense, this is Paul’s entire argument in Chapter 5 and it starts in verse 1.

Romans 5:1 ESV

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says we are justified by our faith in Jesus Christ and that is why we have peace with God. We have true peace with God because we are putting our faith in Jesus and what he did.

And that includes everything he did, not just death on the cross, but his entire life lived as a vessel surrendered to God. His life, a life lived under the law, perfectly living up to the law is what brings us peace with God.

It’s deeper than just that, but let’s hit that main point…

His Life Brought Us Peace

This is the point of the Incarnation, this is the point of Christmas. Jesus, the second member of the godhead, put on flesh and dwelt among us. He lived a perfect life and he imputed, he credited that life to us.

He credits us his righteousness. He lived a perfectly righteous life, a life that we could not live and he put that perfection, that righteousness into our account. That’s what imputation truly means.

If we are to define imputation, it means that an action or work of one person is reckoned or credited to another. In other words, in Scripture we see three imputations take place.

We first see that Adam’s sin is imputed to his offspring (that’s us). That means we are considered guilty because Adam’s sinful actions were imputed to the rest of mankind because we are born from his seed.

The next thing we see is that Adam’s sin, our sin, is imputed to Jesus on the cross. In other words, on the cross, Jesus took our sins on himself. It was as if he had done these very acts. Our sins were imputed to Him on the cross.

Finally, and this is my point today, we see that his righteous life, the perfect life that he lived on this earth for 33 years, as an obedient son who was obedient even unto death, his perfect life was imputed to us. It was as if we lived a perfect life because his righteousness was credited to our account.

The point is that there is a double transfer. Not only is the sin of man imputed to Christ, but the righteousness of Christ is imputed to man. So when God declares me just he is not lying.

R. C. Sproul

Sproul here is saying that on the cross, there is a double imputation happening. We are receiving the righteousness of Christ and He is being reckoned with our sin.

This is the definition of grace. We are getting what we don’t deserve, the righteousness of Christ, while simultaneously giving away that which we do deserve, the sin we committed.

This whole idea brings us back to that first verse, we now have peace with God through faith in Christ Jesus. And combine that with verse 19, which says we are not called, credited, considered, reckoned righteous because of his obedience, his perfect life.

With all of this in mind, this leads me to ask…

Why Is This Important?

Because I think many of us are searching for peace in our lives and we are looking for it in the wrong places, while at the same time, ignoring the precious gift of peace that God has given to us.

Where do we wrongly look for peace?

Our Spouse/Marriage

Family

Co-Workers/Job/Career

Friends

Now, I don’t think it’s too much to expect to find some peace in these relationships. We should try to be at peace with others. In fact, I think that’s part of the point - we have a longing to see peace not only come to us, but to those we love.

But there is a problem here, when we try to find peace with others, without first making peace with God, I don’t think we will find peace anywhere.

We see this in the famous saying…

Know Jesus know peace, No Jesus no peace

Knowing God is the basis for true peace in our lives. We cannot know true peace, unless we know Jesus. There is no true peace without him.

This is a peace that passes understanding.

I was talking with Laurence on Friday and he put it this way, once you know that peace, it’s hard to explain it to other people. It just is.

This peace is the peace from which all other peace flows. If you want peace in your heart, you must have peace with God. If you want peace in your family, friends, some situation at work, you first have to be at peace with God.

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

Thomas Merton

This is the peace that was won for us because of what Jesus did for us. He lived FOR us and gave us his righteousness as a free gift. It was imputed, credited, reckoned to us and that is something worth shouting about.

Now, I want to be clear, Jesus didn’t just live FOR us in order to give us his righteousness. Yes, He did that, but that wasn’t the only reason for the incarnation that I want to touch on today. All of us not only want peace with God and peace with others, but we want inner peace.

We spent most of this year in a series called, “Like Jesus”, where we looked at Jesus’ invitation to be a true disciple by modeling our lives after Him. So I asked, what was Jesus modeling in the Incarnation?

Jesus Modeled Surrender

I believe that Jesus, in the entirety of his life, was modeling surrender. He was in constant submission to the will of God. He said things like, I only do what I see the father doing. John 5:19. He also said he only speaks what he hears the father saying, John 12:49.

Jesus’ entire life was a life of surrender to God. He lived FOR us by modeling a life of surrender. He lived his life in surrender so that we would have someone to look at and model our lives after.

Philippians 2:5–8 MSG

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Jesus led an obedient life and he surrendered to the will of God so that we would have an example to go by. And we should have that same mind in us. We should think the same way as he does.

In fact, I’ll go a step further, I believe the reason most of us do not have peace in this room right now, because I know a lot of you claim to be Christian, you claim to be born again. You have peace with God, but you don’t have inner peace. There reason you don’t have inner peace, is because you haven’t fully surrendered to God.

You are still living your life like you can keep on foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom. You are living a lie believing that you can be all in on two different things. You cannot be both in love with God and in love with the world.

It doesn’t work that way.

I spoke earlier this year at an event and the main point I made was this…

True Peace Comes From Full Surrender

If you want true peace in your life, it only comes from fully surrendering to God and His will for you. Most of us will not bend our knee to Jesus. We will acknowledge him as Savior, but we don’t really like the idea of him being Lord.

We are a rebellious bunch, just like the Israelites in the desert. We love being rescued, but we don’t want to actually serve Him. We would rather serve our idols, ourselves, something else, but not Jesus!

But we will never find peace, we will never find rest, until we are in a place of full surrender to God. That is one of the reasons why Jesus could sleep during the storm. That is why he could still have joy even going to the cross, that is why he could walk on water while the waves came crashing.

Jesus was fully at peace with God. He was fully surrendered to God and the vision we get of him through the Scriptures is that he had inner peace. Peace produced by the Holy Spirit, peace that passes understanding, peace that comes from being in the perfect will of God doing exactly what God is asking of him.

The service of the Lord does not only include implicit obedience, but also a willingness to put aside our sinful desires, and to surrender completely to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

John Calvin

Conclusion

Now, I don’t know where you are today. I know some of you here, maybe this is the first time you’ve ever heard this message of peace. Maybe you are here and you want that. You want peace with God. You want to be saved.

I’m going to urge you to come forward right now and receive that peace. It’s there for the taking. It’s yours. Jesus lived a righteous life and he wants you to receive that and be with him forever.

For others of you, you are looking for that peace with your surroundings. You want a peaceful family, home life, work environment. If you want to pray with someone on that, we have people here that will pray with you. I will pray with you.

And finally, some of you are looking for inner peace. True peace comes from full surrender. Are you ready to surrender your life to Him today? Are you ready to bow your knee to King Jesus, then come forward. Let’s do business with the Lord.