Made Righteousness Before God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

…that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

“That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Oh, this weighty text! No man living can exhaust it. No theologian lived, even in the palmiest day of theology, who could ever get to the bottom of this statement.

Every man that believes in Jesus is, through Christ having taken his sin, made to be righteousness before God. We are righteous through faith in Christ Jesus, “justified by faith.” More than this, we are made not only to have the character of “righteous,” but to become the substance called “righteousness.” I cannot explain this, but it is no small matter. It means no inconsiderable thing when we are said to be “made righteousness.” What is more, we are not only made righteousness, but we are made “the righteousness of God. “Herein is a great mystery. The righteousness which Adam had in the garden was perfect, but it was the righteousness of man: ours is the righteousness of God. Human righteousness failed; but the believer has a divine righteousness which can never fail. He not only has it, but he is it: he is “made the righteousness of God in Christ.” We can now sing,

“With my Saviour’s vesture on,
Holy as the Holy One.”

How acceptable with God must those be who are made by God Himself to be “the righteousness of God in Him”! I cannot conceive of anything more complete. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

Herein is Infinite Love!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin… – 2 Corinthians 5:21

Admire in the substitutionary sacrifice the great grace of God. Never forget that He whom God made to be sin for us was His Own Son; yes, I go further, it was in some sense His Own Self; for the Son is one with the Father. You may not confound the persons, but you cannot divide the Son of God from the Father as to forget that God was in Him reconciling the world unto Himself. It is the Father’s other Self who on the cross in human form does bleed and die. “Light of light, very God of very God”: it is this Light that was eclipsed, that Godhead which purchased the Church with His own blood. Herein is infinite love! You tell me that God might have pardoned without atonement. I answer, that finite and fallible love might have done so, and thus have wounded itself by killing justice; but the love which both required and provided the atonement is indeed infinite. God Himself provided the atonement by freely and fully giving up Himself in the person of His Son to suffer in consequence of human sin.

What I want you to notice here is this; if ever your mind should be troubled about the propriety or rightness of a substitutionary sacrifice, you may at once settle the matter by remembering that God Himself “hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin.” If God did it, it is well done. I am not careful to defend an act of God: let the man who dares accuse His Maker think what he is at. If God Himself provided the sacrifice, be sure that He has accepted it. There can be no question ever raised about it, since JEHOVAH made to meet on Him our iniquities. He that made Christ to be sin for us, knew what He did, and it is not for us to begin to say, “Is this right, or is this not right?” The thrice holy God hath done this, and it must be right. That which satisfies God may well satisfy us. If God is pleased with the sacrifice of Christ, shall not we be much more pleased? Shall we not be delighted, entranced, emparadised, to be saved by such a sacrifice as God Himself appoints, provides, and accepts? “He hath made Him to be sin for us.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

A Display of His Divine Sovereignty

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

In the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made sin for us, there was first of all a display of the Divine Sovereignty. God here did what none but He could have done. It would not have been possible for all of us together to have laid sin upon Christ; but it was possible for the great Judge of all, who giveth no account of His matters, to determine that so it should be. He is the fountain of rectitude, and the exercise of His divine prerogative is always unquestionable righteousness. That the Lord Jesus, who offered Himself as a willing surety and substitute, should be accepted as surety and substitute for guilty man was in the power of the great Supreme. In His Divine Sovereignty He accepted Him, and before that sovereignty we bow. If any question it, our only answer is, “No but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” …They say that this is not a God of love. I answer, it is a God of love, pre-eminently so. If you had upon the bench today a judge whose nature was kindness itself, it would behove him as a judge to execute justice, and if he did not, he would make his kindness ridiculous; indeed, his kindness to the criminal would be unkindness to society at large. Whatever the judge may be personally, he is officially compelled to do justice. And “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? ” You speak of the Fatherhood of God. Enlarge as you please upon that theme, even till you make a heresy of it; but still God is the great moral Governor of the universe, and it behoves Him to deal with sin in such a way that it is seen to be an evil and a bitter thing. God cannot wink at wickedness. I bless His holy name and adore Him that He is not unjust in order to be merciful, that He does not spare the guilty in order to indulge His gentleness. Every transgression and disobedience has its just recompense of reward. But through the sacrifice of Christ He is able justly to pardon. I bless His holy name that to vindicate His justice He determined that, while a free pardon should be provided for believers, it should be grounded upon an atonement which satisfied all requirements of the law. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

He Felt the Weight of Our Sin

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

…nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done. – Luke 22:42

Sin pressed our great Substitute very sorely. He felt the weight of it in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He “sweat as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.” The full pressure of it came upon Him when He was nailed to the accursed tree. There in the hours of darkness He bore infinitely more than we can tell. We know that He bore condemnation from the mouth of a man, so that is written, “He was numbered with the transgressors.” We know that He bore shame for our sakes. We know that He bore pains innumerable of body and mind: He thirsted, He cried out in the agony of desertion, He bled, He died. We know that He poured out His soul unto death and yielded up the ghost. But there was at the back, and beyond all this, an immeasurable abyss of sufferings”: probably to us they are unknowable sufferings. He was God as well as man, and the Godhead lent an omnipotent power to the manhood, so that there was compressed within His soul, and endured by it, an amount of anguish of which we can form no conception. 

The Lord made the perfectly innocent one to be sin for us: that means more humiliation, darkness, agony, and death than you can conceive. It brought a kind of distraction and well-nigh a destruction to the tender and gentle spirit of our Lord. I do not say that our substitute endured a hell, that were unwarrantable. I will not say that He endured either the exact punishment for sin, or an equivalent for it; but I do say that what He endured rendered to the justice of God a vindication of His law more clear and more effectual than would have been rendered to it by the damnation of the sinners for whom He died. The cross is under many aspects a more full revelation of the wrath of God against human sin than even Tophet, and the smoke of torment which goeth up for ever and ever. Who would know God’s hate of sin must see the Only Begotten bleeding in body and bleeding in soul even unto death…Oh, depth of terror, and yet height of love! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

Asleep and yet Awake -A Riddle 

Sherry sermon Leave a comment

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

A Fact is the Best of Arguments

Sherry Christian Life, salvation, Character of Jesus, Attributes of God, promises, The Holy Spirit, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

What was done with Him who knew no sin? He was “made sin.” It is a wonderful expression: the more you weigh it the more you will marvel at its singular strength. Only the Holy Ghost might originate such language. It was wise for the divine Teacher to use very strong expressions, for else the thought might not have entered human minds. Even now, despite the emphasis, clearness, and distinctness of the language used here and elsewhere in Scripture there are found men daring enough to deny that substitution is taught in Scripture. With such subtle wits it is useless to argue. It is clear that language has no meaning for them. To read the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, and to accept it as relating to the Messiah, and then to deny His substitutionary sacrifice is simply wickedness. It would be vain to reason with such beings; they are so blind that if they were transported to the sun they could not see. In the church and out of the church there is a deadly animosity to this truth. Modern thought labours to get away from what is obviously the meaning of the Holy Spirit, that sin was lifted from the guilty and laid upon the innocent. It is written, “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” This is as plain language as can be used; but if any plainer was required, here it is—”He hath made Him to be sin for us.”

The Lord God laid upon Jesus, who voluntarily undertook it, all the weight of human sin. Instead of its resting on the sinner, who did commit it, it was made to rest upon Christ, who did not commit it; while the righteousness which Jesus wrought out was placed to the account of the guilty and they are treated as righteous. Those who by nature are guilty, are regarded as righteous, while He who by nature knew no sin whatever, was treated as guilty…The atonement is a miracle, and miracles are rather to be accepted by faith than measured by calculation. A fact is the best of arguments. It is a fact that the Lord has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. God’s revelation proves the fact, and our faith defies human questioning! God saith it, and I believe it; and believing it, I find life and comfort in it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Heart of the Gospel

Oh, how I admire Him!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

Oh, how I admire Him, that being such as He was, spotless and thrice holy, so that even the heavens were not pure in His sight, and He charged His angels with folly, yet He condescended to be made sin for us! How could He endure to be numbered with the transgressors and bear the sin of many? It may be no misery for a sinful man to live with sinful men; but it would be a heavy sorrow for the pure-minded to dwell with a company of abandoned and licentious wretches. What an overwhelming sorrow it must have been to the pure and perfect Christ to tabernacle among the hypocritical, the selfish, and the profane! How much worse that He Himself should have to take upon Himself the sins of those guilty men. His sensitive and delicate nature must have shrunk from even the shadow of sin and yet read the words and be astonished: “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” Our perfect Lord and Master bare our sins in His own body on the tree. He, before whom the sun itself is dim and the pure azure of heaven is defilement, was made sin. I need not put this in fine words: the fact is itself too grand to need any magnifying by human language. To gild refined gold, or paint the lily, were absurd; but much more absurd would it be to try to overlay with flowers of speech the matchless beauties of the cross. It suffices in simple rhyme to say—

“Oh, hear that piercing cry!
What can its meaning be?
‘My God! My God! oh! why hast Thou
In wrath forsaken Me?’

“Oh ’twas because our sins
On Him by God were laid;
He who Himself had never sinn’d,
For sinners, sin was made.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1910.cfm