In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the offensive nature of the gospel and the justice of God in condemning sinners. He highlights the unity of the Scriptures by drawing parallels between the story of Abraham and John 3:16. The preacher discusses the concept of substitutionary atonement, where Jesus bears the sin of the world. He also addresses the question of how God can be both righteous and forgiving, emphasizing the need for justice and consistency in God's character.

Well, it is a tremendous privilege for me to be with you this morning. And I also praise God. I see the facility that the Lord has given you. Very, very adequate. I also want to thank God for the worship service and the way that you conduct yourself in the household of God. It was a beautiful worship experience this morning and I thank you for it. Let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20. Therefore we are ambassadors of Christ as though God were making an appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. We see here that Paul refers to himself in a royal order. He refers to himself as an ambassador. An ambassador is one who represents another who has great authority. This is Jesus Christ. And Paul preaches the gospel. But he doesn't just preach the gospel for the sake of lost men. He says that he appeals to men for the sake of Christ, for the honor of Christ. Because Paul was literally captivated by what Jesus Christ had done for him. And I've seen this as I've studied church history. There have been many, many scholars, many brilliant and cultured men that God has saved. But there has also been a great number of wild men, uncouth and uncultured that God has saved. And how did he save them? He captured them. Not with religion, not with rules. But with what Christ had done for them. They were tamed by the fact that Jesus Christ shed his blood for them. Now whether you're cultured or uncouthed, I hope you can say the same thing. That your heart has been tamed, has been brought to God. Not because you like necessarily an orderly life or you delight in religious forms. But that your heart has been captivated by the one who shed his blood for you. There have been many times throughout my life that honestly I fall into the uncouthed and uncultured category. And there are many times that I would have walked away from all of this thing called Christianity. But the reason that I haven't is because of the crucified one standing in the door. I can make an excuse to leave almost everything I see. But him, with him, there is no excuse. For he has shed his own blood for my soul. I hope that it's the cross of Christ that captivates you. I hope that you witness to men as an ambassador. Not only because you love men and care about their souls. But because of what Christ has done for you, you cannot be silent. You cannot be silent. Now, we're going to have to take this passage. I realize it's only two verses, but there are probably at least a week's worth of lectures here. So we'll just have to gaze through some of it. It says, He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. He is a reference to God. Him is a reference to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He made him who knew no sin. You and I have known nothing but sin all our life. We were born in iniquity. And prior to our conversion, we drank down iniquity like it was water. It is so hard. I remember years ago living in Peru and working on the Marino and the Amazon. And I would see children that lived all their life in poverty. That never had a toy. That suffered with disease and insects and all sorts of maladies. But to realize that they never knew any other kind of life. They were happy in a sense because they never knew that anything could be different. That anything could be higher. That's kind of us. We've never known an existence apart from sin. We know sin well. Sin is all around us. It mars everything. Our relationships. Everything. Every thought. Every word. Every deed. Every act of government has to do with sin. Yet he knew no sin. No experience of sin. Now, if we follow the Westminster, we know what that means. That he was perfectly conformed to the law of God. Never deviated from the will of God. Not once did he deviate from the will of God. Now I want to show you a little bit more about what that means. One time I was witnessing to a fellow and he told me he was part of a religious group that believed they could live a sinless life. And he told me that he hadn't sinned in 11 years. So I asked him this question. I said, what do you think the greatest sin could be? He said, well, I don't know. I said, well, then I'll tell you. The greatest sin would possibly be breaking the greatest command. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. To be sinless. You must have loved for the last 11 years God to the degree that He deserves to be loved. And if you tell me you've done that, then you've blasphemed. You see, when it says that Jesus was sinless, I want you to think about something. There has never in the history of mankind and the countless billions of people that have lived on this planet, there has never been one moment in the life of one person in which they loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. Think about that. Never once in the billions of people who have walked this planet has anyone ever loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength for even one fraction of a second. But Jesus, there was never one moment in His life that He did not love the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, mind and strength. Now do you see what this means? He was amazing. He was amazing. I know that sounds as just one word, amazing. But after all these years, I'm sorry, there's no language that I know of that even comes close to explaining who He is. He's amazing, astounding, worthy. No one like Him. In the next several decades, or just a few decades, if things continue, you will see the great majority of those who call themselves evangelical becoming inclusivist, that Jesus is not the only way to God. It's already happening. It will continue to happen as a flood. And those of you who make your stand and say Jesus is the only way will be persecuted for that one truth and even persecuted by evangelicals. That's true. But to say that there is an equal to Christ is absolutely absurd. Not even His competitors make the same claims that the Scriptures make about Him. Now let's go on. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. There is absolutely no way to comprehend what's going on here. And even if we could comprehend it, we couldn't explain it. So many times as I've read over the years Spurgeon, when he takes a text like this, he will always begin, almost always with a disclaimer, that if I had the tongues, if I had the wisdom and the tongue of seraphs, I would still not be able to communicate to you what this text is saying. Let me give you a pitiful, pitiful, pitiful illustration. And it is pitiful. It doesn't even come close. But imagine that you took the young lady or the woman here, most pristine, that had most been protected by her father and by her husband. And she's hardly ever even put her foot, you know, on the earth. She's not been soiled by the things of media and been running among ruffians. She's always been protected. The purest of pure heart among women in your church. And one day though, she decides that she will go to either Washington or to New York or to Chicago, and she will witness the prostitutes. And as she's down there witnessing to the prostitutes, a paddy wagon pulls up, grabs the prostitutes and the police throw them into the paddy wagon. And this woman is grabbed as a common prostitute and thrown in that paddy wagon. And then she's taken downtown. And the other ladies, they're processed by the law, fingerprinted and everything. And while they're going through this, they're laughing and telling jokes and giggling and making remarks to the police and cussing and saying all kinds of vile things. But it's nothing to them. They've been through this a thousand times. This doesn't bother them in the least. But that woman, it's a different story. She feels as though she'll die. As her heart will literally break in two as she sits in the cell with those other women, treated as those other women. She can hardly breathe. Like I said, pitiful illustration. But this one who knew no sin, sin was thrown upon him. It was imputed to him. It was considered to be his act, his guilt. Now here's a question that's very, very important. What does it mean that God made him who knew no sin to be sin? What does it mean? In my opinion, the greatest commentary writer who ever lived with regard to the totality of Scripture is John Calvin. And even John Calvin takes a look at this passage and says we must be careful. We can say too little about this and not bring proper glory to Christ. We can say too much about it and we can blaspheme His name. What does it mean? Well, let's look. Does it mean this? When Christ was on the tree, when sin, whether it was in the garden, was imputed to Him. What does that mean? Does it mean that when He hung on that cross, He somehow became corrupted and evil and contaminated and twisted and deformed? Was His nature brought to the sewer? Is that what it means? Absolutely not. To say such a thing would be blasphemous. Even as He hung on the tree, bearing the sin of His people, He was pure. He was spotless. He's never been anything other than that. He cannot be corrupted. He is incorruptible. Well, then what does it mean? Well, the answer is actually found in our text. Look at verse 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. Now, how did Christ become sin? What does it mean? Well, what does it mean that we're the righteousness of God in Him? Now, think about this. There has been a long-standing heresy that the moment a person believes in Jesus, they are infused with a personal righteousness and they become a righteous person who does righteous deeds. And that's not what the Reformation teaches us. It's not what the Scriptures teach us. What does it mean to be justified? The moment a person believes in Jesus, at that moment, do they become a perfectly righteous person who never sins again? Is that what happens? Absolutely not. What happens? The moment a person believes in Christ, God declares that person to be legally or forensically right with Him. Do you see that? Now, here's a word that's often left out, but it shouldn't be. Let me state the case again. The moment you believed in Jesus, savingly, God declared you to be legally or forensically right with Him. You are right with Him. You'll never be more right with Him than you are the moment you believe. He declares you to be legally right with Him and He treats you as right with Him. His wrath will never be manifested against you. Even in His discipline of you when you are wayward, it is not the result of wrath, but the result of the love of a Father. When Jesus bore our sin, He was legally or forensically declared to be guilty. And God treated Him as guilty. Do you see that? He treated Him as guilty. By pulling away from Him His favorable presence and by throwing down upon Him His just wrath. Do you understand? This is very, very important. Now, what else happened? What does the Scripture say happened to Christ as a result of Him bearing sin? Well, if you go to Galatians chapter 3, just quickly, you'll see. Galatians chapter 3, verse 10. Here is a description of you, of every man before God without Christ. For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to perform them. If you're here today, it doesn't matter if your parents are Christian. It doesn't matter if you can recite the entire Westminster. It doesn't matter if you've memorized copious amounts of Scripture. If you have yet to believe savingly in Christ, this is how God sees you. You are cursed. Because you have not abided in every word of the book of the law. You haven't. You have failed in every measure, and you are under a curse. Now, when we think of curse, we think maybe of, you know, the work of a witch or some gypsy or something that's going to place a curse upon you, and therefore things go bad. But that's not what the Scriptures mean when it talks about a curse. It means that someone, at that point, is beyond the saving work of God and is under the wrath of God. God sees that person as loathsome. God separates Himself from that person, and God's anger is kindled against that person because of their evil. Let me give you an example. Now, you listen to me. Especially you young people. If you die outside of Christ, on the day of judgment, when you stand before God, not only God, but every holy creature in heaven, angels and saints, will declare you cursed. The Bible says that even creation will rise up against you and declare God is just in condemning you. Let me put it this way. The last thing you will hear when you take your first step into hell will be all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God because God has rid the earth of you. Do you see why the gospel is so offensive to men? This is what every mother's son deserves. And I've heard people say, you know, on the day of judgment parents will be weeping over their children. No, they won't. Because at that moment, on the day of judgment, all the grace that is upon you right now, common grace, even though you're not a Christian, all the common grace that's upon you and makes you act correctly to be something other than a vile animal that would make Hitler look like a choir boy, that common grace will be removed from you. And what we will see, what your parents will see, is a monster. And when God condemns your soul to hell, even your parents will rise up and worship God saying, the God of all the earth has done right. This is one of the things that we have forgotten in Christianity. We've made it so domesticated, so clean, so pretty. It is dangerous. And it brings a message that although comforting is absolutely terrifying for those who will not receive comfort through Christ, it is terrifying. You're under a curse. But look what the Scriptures say in verse 13. And this, if you reject Christ, this will make your judgment far the worse. Because in verse 13 we see that God provided even a remedy for the curse that was upon you. And how did He do it? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. One of the things that we must do, although we study each book of the Bible separately to a degree, we consider the author and everything else, we look at the context, we must never neglect the fact that the Bible is a unity. A perfect unity inspired by the Holy Spirit. So that when in the law we see that the curse are hung on a tree, we know there is a purpose for that. And what is that purpose? Calvary. Christ being hung on a tree was a physical declaration by God that at this moment, bearing our sin, He also bears our curse. The wrath of God that should be laid upon men for all of eternity is now laid upon the substitute. He has become a curse. Now, I'm going to skip through a lot of lecture right now to get to the heart of this, so I don't go beyond time. I want you to take a look for a moment of what it truly means in the Scriptures for Christ to have borne the curse of man. Now, we don't have time to turn there, but I just want you to realize something. If you go to Deuteronomy chapter 27, chapter 28, you find something very important. You find that the people of God are divided into two camps and they're placed on two different mountains. Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. Now, in Mount Gerizim the people stand up, half of the tribes of Israel, they stand up and they declare all the blessings that are to fall upon the head of the covenant keeper, the one who obeys God. These are the blessings that are to fall upon His head. But in Mount Ebal, the people proclaim all the curses of God that would fall upon the covenant breaker. Now, I think you probably know, you've had very good teaching here, what mountain you belong to. Outside of Christ, your mountain is Mount Ebal. It is the mountain of curse. And every one of those curses, in a fashion, are to fall upon you throughout all of eternity. But on Calvary, Christ bore the sin of His people and all those curses fell upon Him. To some degree, from the very beginning of His life until His death, it was one long continuation of suffering the curse. You say, hold it, Christ bore our sin on Calvary. Yes, but most of your old theologians and the Puritans and others say that sin fell upon Christ in Gethsemane and He did not bear sin on the cross, He bore sin up to the cross and upon it. Another thing you need to realize is that although He was the sinless Son of God, He came in the likeness of sinful flesh. That doesn't mean that He was born impure or that He was sinful, but that He was born in a body that was not like we see in the movies. He wasn't some sort of superhero. He wasn't some sort of untainted, in a sense, of the consequences of sin as Adam. What was He? He was absolutely pure and without sin, yet the body that He took was a body that could and did suffer all the consequences of sin. From His very birth, He suffered something of the curse. He should have never bled. He was sinless. His circumcision even was a sign. He was chased out of His own country into Egypt to live among Gentiles. And that was to happen only to the covenant breaker. He lived in poverty. He lived by the work of His hands. All the things of the life of Christ was one long continuation of sorrow. It is for this reason He was called a man of sorrow. As David was a man of war, his life was characterized by war. So Jesus was a man of sorrow. Why? Well, imagine Lot for a moment. Lot is called righteous, and yet when we study his life, we see a Lot that wasn't righteous. It says literally in the epistles, in the general epistles, that Lot was literally ground down by the sin of Sodom. Now, Lot was a sinful man himself, and yet living in Sodom, he was literally ground down by the evil that he saw. Well, just think about this for a moment. Christ, He's not Lot. He's perfect. The tiny white lie would have been like someone raping a child before Him. He was ground down by evil. And it is for this reason that many theologians believe that they said of Christ, how could you have been alive with Abraham? You're not yet 50 years old. He was a man who literally was ground down by the sin around Him and by the consequences of sin that He bore in His body even though He was sinless. It's one of the reasons why when the Pharisees and the rulers looked at Him, they said, how can this be the Messiah? This despised one that we don't even want to look at. He's worn down. How can this one be? He suffered all His life, but when He bore our sin on Calvary, it was horrific. Now, what I want to do is I want to take these curses that are found in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 and I'm going to apply them to the cross so that you get an idea of what we're talking about. Now, I'm going to begin with a quote from Dr. Sproul because it is very radical what he says here and what I'm going to say and so I want you to know it is validated by more than me. When Jesus raised His eyes to heaven to find God's countenance on Calvary, His Father turned away. When He cried out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? His Father replied, The Lord, the Lord your God damns you. The Lord sends upon you curses and confusion and rebuke until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly. The Lord smites you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart and you will grope at noon as a blind man gropes in darkness with none to save you. The Lord delights over you to make you perish and destroy you and you will be torn from the land. Curse shall you be in the city and curse shall you be in the field. Curse shall you be when you come in and curse shall you be when you go out. The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze and the earth which is under you iron. You shall be a horror, a proverb and a taunt among all the people. Let all these curses come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you." Remember? What does it mean that he was made sin? It means that God legally declared him to be guilty and God treated him as guilty. This is what you should hear. That's what's so amazing. I see these modern day, I don't know, pop theologian guys writing books like, you know, why do bad things happen to good people? No, the question is, why does anything good happen at all? There should be nothing good. There should be no marriage with joy. There should be no children laughing. There should be no beauty green and plants and trees. The whole world should be like the stage of Beckett's Waiting for Godot where there's just nothing but gray, dark, horrid, every movement pain and every, every moment God screaming to our conscience, damned, damned, damned. The fact that there's anything good like this is a testimony to God's mercy and the power of Calvary. I want to read something that I wrote here. As Christ bore our sins on Calvary, He was cursed as a man who makes an idol and sets it up in secret. He was cursed as one who dishonors his father or mother, who moves his neighbor's boundary mark or misleads a blind person on the road. He was cursed as one who distorts the justice due an alien orphan and widow. He was cursed as one who is guilty of every manner of immorality and perversion, who wounds his neighbor in secret or accepts a bribe to strike down the innocent. He was cursed as one who does not conform to the words of the law by doing them. There's a passage in Proverbs that says, Like a sparrow in its flitting and like a swallow in its flying, so a curse without cause does not alight. Well then, if that's true, how did the curse alight upon God's righteous branch? It is because on Calvary He bore our sin. Our brother was mentioning, and it is literally astounding, how hated the doctrine of substitution is, how hated the doctrine of Christ suffering the wrath of God is among so-called Christian theologians. For the last hundred years or so, I would have to say it's the most despised doctrine among what's called liberal Christianity. It is hated. I remember preaching in British Columbia years ago, and right next to the church where I was preaching was somewhat of a very liberal Methodist church, and the woman who was the pastor there knew something of the messages I was preaching, and on Sunday, which was Easter, I was to conclude my messages, and she had put up on their big church sign, Jesus Christ did not shed His blood for anyone. It's hated. And what's astounding to me, it is the doctrine most precious to me. You can take away from me every other doctrine. You can take away from me the doctrine on the family, the doctrine on conduct, the doctrine on everything, but oh, please leave me this one doctrine. Christ was crushed under the wrath of God that I deserve, therefore satisfying justice and appeasing wrath. It's everything. It's everything. It's what Christianity is. Christianity is not primarily a moral or ethical religion, even though it has a morality and an ethic to it. Christianity is about redemption, and it's about... Do you really want to know what Christianity is about? It's about the attributes of God. We're always talking about reconciling God to man. Well, Christianity is really about reconciling the attributes of God. And you say, well, what do you mean? Romans 3, that's the whole argument there. If God is just, then how could He have shown such mercy throughout history? How can God be just and merciful at the same time? It's impossible. See, we don't understand that, do we? Because, well, modern day philosophy has so twisted the mind of man that there's no sense of justice. I mean, you hear preachers say this. They'll go, instead of being just with you, God was loving. I said, does anyone study classical logic anymore? If that's true, then God's love is unjust. The great question, the whole Bible answers one question. How can God be the God He says He is, righteous and holy, and yet forgive, tolerate, even fellowship with wicked men? It's impossible. It's just like if you tell me that you hate slavery in the colonial period in early Americans, but you hang out with slave traders. I got a real problem with that. You tell me you love Jews, but hang around with Nazis. I got a real problem with that. Tell me you love children, and yet you're pro-abortion. I got a real problem with that. It's inconsistent. The same thing. How can God be tolerant? How could He not kill David? How could He not kill Abraham? Noah should have died. The answer is this. His Son bled and died for them all. Calvary reconciles to us. How can God be just and yet forgive wicked men? Now, I'm just going to cut through the chase here, and I'm going to close with an illustration that's from one of my favorite writers in all of history. It's John Flavel. He's a Puritan, and you get a chance to read the first volume of his works. It's about the meditatorial glories of Christ. He wrote something that I hope he doesn't get angry with me or have harsh words for me in heaven, but I entitle it, The Father's Bargain. And it's a dialogue between the Father and the Son in eternity with regard to the elect. This is what it says. The Father speaks, My Son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lie open to My justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them. What shall be done for these souls? Christ responds, O My Father, such is My love to and pity for them, that rather that they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their surety. Bring in all Thy bills, that I may see what they owe Thee. You know, a lot of times after I counsel a young man, and he's all about marriage, he just can't wait to be married. He gets married, and six months later sometimes he comes back to my office, and he just goes, What have I done? I had no idea. It was so much... He says, I didn't know what I was getting into. Christ knew what he was getting into. Bring in all Thy bills, that I may see what they owe Thee. What it's going to take to redeem them. Then he says this, Flavel does, and I love this. Oh, this is a thousand sermons right here. He says this, Lord, bring them all in. Bring in all the bills. Now listen, that there may be no after reckonings with them. Do you understand that? Bring in every bill, because when I pay it, I want to make sure there's no other bill to be paid. You know, Christians, I don't know you, but I know so many even good and hearty Christians, who still live as though they had bills to pay. That they had to earn something from God. You know, we talk about the revival in China, and I spend a great deal of time teaching the Chinese, every two months. And a couple of months ago, a group of Chinese came who were new. And I said something to them after the sermon, and one lady broke down crying almost hysterically, and grabbed the other woman and told her, and she started crying hysterically. And I was like, with their broken English, I'm trying to figure out what on earth is going on. What did I say? And you know what I had said? Well, let me tell you what they'd been taught. That Christ died for their sins up to the point of their conversion. And that they were on their own with regard to the Christian life. Can you imagine living under such terror? Such terror? And when they heard, no, no, no, no. Past, present, and future sin. All sin. They were free. Now, probably none of you believe what they believe, but sometimes we live like it. Now, he goes in, and he goes on, and he says, At my hand thou shalt require it. I would rather choose to suffer the wrath due them, than they should suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt. The Father then says, But son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite. Expect no abatements. No diminishing of the punishment. If I spare them, I will not spare you. Do you want to know why I'm still a Christian? Of course, I know you know the answer, the providence of God and all kinds of things. But on the human side, do you want to know why I'm still a Christian? Why I haven't walked away? If I spare Paul, this Paul, I will not spare you. He took it all. All. And like I said, before coming to Christ and even after, I really don't belong in the couth and cultured category. The Son responds, Content, Father, let it be so. Charge it all upon me. I am able to discharge it. Now, who can say that? Talk about a mighty Christ. When I first became a Christian, I did power lifting and all sorts of things. You get old, but I did. And I wasn't too wise as a Christian, but I always wore this shirt after I became a Christian. And it had Christ with a cross on His back, pushing up off the ground. I know it's not very theologically correct, but it said, Bench press this. And my friends would go, What's that about? I go, see if you can bench press the sins of the world. You see? No one can discharge it. This is a mighty Christ. This is a broad shouldered Christ. This deep chested Christ bears the sin of the world. He goes on. He said, Though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, yet I am content to undertake it. Our brother shared us the story of Abraham, and that's where we'll end. Abraham is told to go to a mountain and to take his son. And you don't think the Scriptures are a unity? Take your son, your only son, whom you love. Kind of reminds you of John 3.16, doesn't it? The old man takes him there in obedience. The son doesn't struggle, but willingly gives himself to this. And as the old man draws back his knife, when his hand and his will are given in, God says, Stop. He turns around and there's a ram in the thicket caught by its horns. We look at that and we go, Wow, what a beautiful ending to the story. It was kind of touch and go there for a while. Wow. What a beautiful ending. It wasn't the ending. It was the intermission. Curtain closes. Centuries later, they open again. And the Son of God is hanging on a cross. And God takes the knife out of Abraham's hand and runs it through the heart of his son. Ram in the thicket. In that thorny thicket. The patriarch said that's why He bore the crown of thorns. It wasn't just the curse of Genesis 3, but it was the fact He was the ram that took Abraham's place. Offer up the sacrifice. Deity sends forth the call. Offer up the sacrifice. One life worthy to pay for them all. Offer up the sacrifice. The innocent one must be slain. Offer up the sacrifice and bring man back to God again. That is the reason I am a Christian. I was born to live in the woods and hunt. I would feel more at home in an MMA cage than I do in a church. This is the reason I'm a Christian. Uncouthed. Uncultured. Worthy to be killed. I am a Christian because the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for a very, very sinful man. Let's pray. Father, thank You. Thank You. Because it was not just the love of the Son, but Your love that gave the Son. As I cannot fathom the depths of my guilt and the judgment that should come against me, I cannot fathom the depths of Your grace that saved a wretch like me. Oh God, I pray that You would awaken hearts, minds to see this great thing that You have done. And that men would repent and believe for the sake of Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.