Sermon Tone Analysis

*15 Words of Hope*

*2 Corinthians 5:21*

\\ \\ \\      The verse that we're going to look at is 2 Corinthians 5:21, 2 Corinthians 5:21.

It says this, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

The Bible makes it clear, first of all, that all people are sinners by nature and by action.

In fact, all people are sinners from birth.

And thus all people are born alienated from God who is holy, cannot look upon sin, cannot fellowship with sinners.

That alienation because of sin prevents us from knowing God.

He is too perfectly holy to have anything to do with sinners, except to reject them.

Now the result of that rejection, the result of that alienation in time is Godlessness.

The result of it in eternity is hell.

So this alienation in to which every human being is born is indeed a serious issue.

It means that everybody lives their life without God and if they die in that condition, will spend their eternity without God in torment.

Now that kind of reality proves that the most deadly virus in the world is not the HIV virus, it is the SIN virus.

Like the HIV virus, it kills everyone it infects, only unlike the HIV virus it infects everyone.

It kills not just in time but in eternity, it kills not just physically but spiritually.

There is no cure for the HIV virus, but thankfully there is a cure for the SIN virus.

In fact, God has made it possible for sinners to be cured so thoroughly and completely that they can be reconciled to God and have eternal fellowship in His presence.

And that is the good news, that is what Christianity preaches, that's the gospel.

There is a cure for the SIN virus so that the hostility between people and God can end now and forever and sinners can be reconciled to holy God.

In fact, if you look back at verses 18, 19 and 20 you see several times the word "reconciled" in one form or another.

Verse 18 says, "God who reconciled us to Himself."

Verse 19, "That God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself."

And at the end of verse 20 we call on sinners to be reconciled to God.

This is the good news, friends.

This is the great news that you don't have to live godlessly in time and you don't have to live godlessly in eternity.

You don't need to suffer through this life without God and to suffer eternal torment without God in the life to come.

Reconciliation is possible.

But that brings up the question...How?

The Apostle Paul has been talking about the ministry of reconciliation.

We have been reconciled to God and now we preach reconciliation.

He mentions the ministry or reconciliation in verses 18 and 19 and then in verse 20 he mentions it by saying, "We are ambassadors for Christ, we go out and we preach to sinners that they can be reconciled to God."  That's our ministry.

That is the good news.

But the question then comes up...how can that be?

How can such a reconciliation take place?

How can an absolutely and utterly holy God who is infinitely pure and perfect ever be reconciled to sinners?

How can He do that who is too pure to look on sin or to fellowship with transgressors?

How can God satisfy His just and holy law with a condemnation of sinners by full and deserved punishment and still show them mercy who deserve no mercy?

How can God end the hostility and how can He take sinners into His holy heaven to live with Him forever in intimate communion?

How?

How can both justice and grace be satisfied?

How can love toward sinners and righteousness come together?

To put it in Paul's words, how can God be just and a justifier of sinners?

The one verse I just read you explains how.

Fifteen Greek words and these 15 Greek words translated into English carefully define and perfectly balance the mystery of reconciliation.

They show us the essence of the atonement.

In fact, in the one verse that I read you is the heart of the good news.

In that one verse is the most powerful truth in Scripture because it embraces and explains how sinners can be reconciled to God.

Here is where the paradox of redemption is resolved.

Here is where the mystery is solved.

Here is where the riddle is answered.

Here is where we find how holy justice and perfect love can both be satisfied, how righteousness and mercy can embrace each other.

And the truth of this one brief sentence solves the most profound dilemma of how God can reconcile with sinners.

Well needless to say, having said that you are aware that there's a lot in this verse.

We have to search carefully through this cache of rare jewels and stop to examine each one of them with a magnifying glass in order to understand the richness.

Now as we look at this verse together I want to point your attention to four elements, four features of the text that unfolded significance...the benefactor, the substitute, the beneficiaries and the benefits.

That really sums up how God can reconcile sinners.

Let's start at the beginning, the benefactor.

The verse begins, "He made..." stop there.

Now if you're a Bible student the first question you're going to ask is to whom does "He" refer?

The answer comes quickly, look one word back at the end of verse 20...God.

God is the antecedent.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

The point is it's God's plan, He's the benefactor.

God is behind the whole reconciliation plan.

He designed it.

He worked it out.

He brings it to fruition.

It is His plan.

This is a very crucial perspective and you'll see why as I comment on it.

There could be no reconciliation unless God initiated it.

There could be no reconciliation unless God activated it.

There could be no reconciliation unless God applied it.

He had to design it and He has to execute it.

It cannot come from any human source.

Nothing man could do, nothing man could not do could produce reconciliation with God.

It isn't anything we do or don't do.

In fact all of our efforts in the religious realm amount to filthy rags, the Bible says.

The world is literally filled with religion and all of that religion apart from Christianity is man producing a plan with the aid of Satan in which he can initiate reconciliation with God.

That is the fatal flaw of all world religions no matter what name they come under.

Romans chapter 3 says, verse 10, "There is none that does good, there is none righteous, no not one, there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God."  Nobody, absolutely nobody.

Now you would think if there was anyone who could have devised the plan most aptly and pull it off it would have been the Jews, since after all, the Jews were the people of the true God, Yahweh, Jehovah.

And God gave to them the law and the prophets and the covenants and the adoption and all of the things that Romans 9 mention.

They had the revelation.

They had the Old Testament and to them even salvation was given...salvation is of the Jews, of them and to them came the Messiah.

If anyone could have devised a system by which they could have achieved reconciliation, it would have been the Jews.

But they failed.

And in Romans chapter 10 Paul comments on the failure by saying, "My heart's desire and prayer to God is for Israel for their salvation," they have not achieved it, they haven't achieved reconciliation with all their religiosity, with all that they received by way of divine revelation from God because they believed that somehow this reconciliation depended on them and therefore they're not saved, I bear them witness Paul says in verse 2, they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge so not knowing about God's righteousness they seek to establish their own.

That's what false religion is, in a word, it's the religion of human achievement.

But they never can accomplish it because the only way that reconciliation could ever occur is if God reached out to sinners.

And He did.

It was God who made Him who knew no sin to be sin.

It was God's plan.

He designed it.

He initiated it.

And He executed it.

So that Jesus went to the cross not because men turned on Him, though they did, Jesus went to the cross not because seducing spirits orchestrated the minds of the religious leaders of Judaism to plot His death, though they did.

Jesus went to the cross not because an angry mob screamed for His blood, though they did.

Jesus went to the cross because God planned it.

God purposed it.