Fifteen Words of Hope
5: 21
Fifteen words of hope DIG: How can an absolutely and infinitely holy God be reconciled to sinners? Who is the only One who could make the first move in the process of reconciliation? On what basis is Yeshua guilty? Who benefits from this process? What is the benefit?
REFLECT: When you think of your life before being saved, what are you most grateful for now that you are a new creature in Messiah? How are you growing in your relationship with the Lord? Healthy things multiply. Who are you discipling? What gives you hope?
Yeshua gave up everything so you could have everything.
There have been many plagues in human history, but there is one plague that is more widespread and deadly than all the others combined. It is, as the Puritan writer Ralph Venning called it, “the plague of plagues.” It affects every person who ever lived – and is one-hundred percent fatal. Unlike other plagues, which cause only physical death, this plague causes spiritual and eternal death as well. It is the plague of sin.
But the Good News is that there is a cure for the sinner infected by the deadly sin epidemic. ADONAI, in His mercy and love, provided a remedy for sin – the sacrifice of His Son. And it is all from God, who through the Messiah has reconciled us to Himself and has given us the work of that reconciliation, which is that God in the Messiah was reconciling mankind to Himself, not counting their sins against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors of the Messiah; in effect, God is making his appeal through us. What we do is appeal on behalf of the Messiah, “Be reconciled to God” (5:18-21)! But this reconciliation raises some profound questions. How can an absolutely and infinitely holy God be reconciled to sinners? How can His just and holy character, which demands the condemnation and punishment of all who violate it, be satisfied? How can those who deserve no mercy receive it? How can God uphold true righteousness and at the same time give grace? How can the demands of both justice and love be met? How can God be righteous Himself and also the One who makes sinners righteous (Romans 3:26)?
As hard as those questions seem, one brief verse answers them all and resolves the seeming paradox of redemption. With a consciousness that is reflective of the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, this one brief sentence, fifteen Greek words, carefully balanced, almost chiastic, resolves the dilemma of reconciliation. It reveals the essence of the atonement, expresses the heart of the gospel, and articulates the most glorious truth in Scripture – how fallen mankind’s sin-surrendered relationship to ADONAI can be restored. Like a cache of rare jewels, each word deserving careful examination under the magnifying glass of Scripture, it yields truths about the benefactor, the substitute, the beneficiaries, and the benefit.
The benefactor: He made (5:21a). The end of 5:20 reveals the antecedent of “He” to be God the Father. Reconciliation is His plan, and it could not occur unless He initiated and sustained it. Sinners cannot devise their own religious approach to God, because they are dead in their trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). The damning lie of all false religions is that mankind can reconcile themselves to God by their own efforts. All attempts to do so are futile. The righteous deeds of sinners are like a filthy garment; and all of them wither like a leaf, and their iniquities like the wind, take them away (Isaiah 64:6). As a result, there is none righteous, not even one (Romans 3:10).
The only way reconciliation can take place is if ADONAI reaches out to sinners, as He did by the sacrifice of His Son. It flows out of God’s love; it was because He so loved the world that He gave His only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in Him may have eternal life (John 3:16). God demonstrates His own love for us, wrote Paul, in that while we were still sinners, Messiah died for us (Romans 5:8); though we were His enemies we were reconciled with God through the death of His Son (Romans 5:10). Because God is so rich in mercy and loves us with such intense love that, even when we were dead because of our acts of disobedience, He brought us to life along with the Messiah (Ephesians 2:4-5). It is this emphasis on a loving God reaching out to lost sinners that sets those who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob apart from all the false religions in the world.
Yeshua did not go to the cross because fickle people turned on Him, though they did. He did not go to the cross because demon-deceived false religious leaders plotted His death, though they did. Messiah did not go to the cross because Judas betrayed Him, though he did. He did not die because an angry, intimidated a Roman governor into sentencing Him to crucifixion, though they did. The Son of God went to the cross as the outworking of God’s plan to reconcile sinners to Himself. In Peter’s first sermon, he declared to the nation of Isra’el that Yeshua was delivered over [to death] by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23, 3:18, 13:27; Matthew 26:24; Luke 22:22; John 18:11; Hebrews 10: 5-7). Only God could author and execute the plan of redemption and reconcile sinners to Himself. That plan is so utterly beyond the comprehension of the lost that it seems like foolishness to them (see the commentary on First Corinthians to see link click An – The Foolishness of Worldly Wisdom). No religion of human design has seen anything like it.
The substitute: This sinless man be a sin offering (5:21b). This description points unmistakably to the only possible sacrifice for sin. It eliminates every human who ever lived for there is no man who does not sin (First Kings 8:46), since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Only one who was sinless could qualify to bear the full wrath of God for the sins of others. The perfect sacrifice for sin would have to be a human being, for only a man could die for other men and women. Yet, He would also have to be God, for only God is sinless. That narrows the field to one, the God-man, Yeshua Messiah.
After presenting Yeshua as the absolutely holy substitute for sinners, Paul, prompted by the Ruach Ha’Kodesh, makes the remarkable statement that God made Him a sin offering. That is an important phrase and requires a careful understanding. It does not mean that Yeshua became a sinner. As God in human flesh, He could not possibly have committed any sin or in any way violated the Torah of ADONAI. It is equally unthinkable that YHVH, whose eyes are too pure to approve of evil (Habakkuk 1:13; James 1:13), would make anyone a sinner, let alone His own holy Son. He was the unblemished Lamb while on the cross, personally guilty of no evil. Isaiah 53:4-6 describes the only sense in which Yeshua could have been made sin: In fact, it was our diseases He bore, our pains from which he suffered; yet we regarded Him as punished, stricken and afflicted by God. But He was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our sins; the disciplining that makes us whole fell on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, went astray; we turned, each one, to his own way; yet ADONAI laid on Him the guilt of all of us.
Messiah was not made a sinner, nor was He punished for any sin of His own. Instead, the Father treated Him as if He were a sinner by charging to His account the sins of everyone who would ever believe. All those sins were charged against Him as if He had personally committed them. It was at that moment when Yeshua cried out in a loud voice, saying: My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me (Matthew 27:46)? It is crucial, therefore, to understand that this was the only sense in which Yeshua was made sin. He was personally pure, yet officially guilty; personally holy, yet criminally responsible. But by dying on the cross, Messiah did not become evil like we are, nor do redeemed sinners become inherently as holy as He is. ADONAI credits believer’s sins to Messiah’s account, and His righteousness to our spiritual bank account. Were it not for this fact, no one could be reconciled to God.
The beneficiaries: on our behalf (5:21c). The word our refers back to the phrase ambassadors for Messiah in 5:20; to those to whom the message of reconciliation was given (5:19), who have been reconciled to God (5:18), and are new creations (5:17). Although Messiah died for the whole world, His substitutionary death was only effective (resulting in eternal life), for those who would believe in Him (Jn 1:12, 3:16-18; Rom 10:9-10), all those whom the Father gives Him and draws to Him (John 6:37 and 65). The fact that ADONAI raised Yeshua from the dead is proof that God accepted His sacrifice in order to make us righteous (see the commentary on Romans, to see link click Bf – The Means of Justification).
The benefit: So that in union with Messiah we might fully share in His righteousness (5:21d). When we believe that Messiah died for our sins, in accordance with what the TaNaKh says, and that He was buried, and He was raised on the third day (First Corinthians 15:3b-4a), then all the righteousness of Messiah is transferred to our spiritual bank account. At that moment we are just as righteous as Messiah, minus His deity. The very righteousness that God requires before He can accept us, is the very righteousness that Messiah provides.
Because Yeshua paid the full penalty for the sin of the world on the cross, the wrath of God was fully satisfied so that He was free to act positively on behalf of sinners. The psalmist declared: O LORD, if you kept a record of sins, who, ADONAI, could stand? But with You there is forgiveness so that You will be feared (Psalm 130:3-4). In metaphorical pictures of forgiveness, God is said to have removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12); threw all our sins behind His back (Isaiah 38:17); promised never to remember them (Isaiah 43:25); hidden them from His sight behind a thick cloud (Isaiah 44:22); and threw them into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19).
On the cross Ha’Shem treated Yeshua as if He had lived our lives with all our sin, so that God could then treat us as if we lived Messiah’s life of pure holiness. Our sinful life was legally charged to Him on the cross, as if He had lived it, so that His righteous life could be credited to us, as if we lived it. This is the doctrine of imputation, where Messiah imputed, or transferred, His righteousness to us at the moment of faith (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Bw – What God does for Us at the Moment of Faith). That truth, expressed so concisely and powerfully in these fifteen words of hope, is the only cure for the plague of sin.146
Remember what God has already done for you. If ADONAI never did anything else for you, He would still deserve your continual praise for the rest of your life because of what Yeshua did for you on the cross. God’s Son died for you! This is the greatest reason for worship. Unfortunately, we forget the cruel details of the agonizing sacrifice God made on our behalf. Familiarity breeds complacency. Even before His crucifixion, the Son of God was stripped naked, mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit on contemptuously. Abused and ridiculed by heartless men, He was treated worse than an animal.
Then, nearly unconscious from blood loss, He was forced to drag a heavy and cumbersome crossbeam, weighing from 75 to 125 pounds, up a hill to the waiting vertical post. It was placed across the nape of Messiah’s neck and balanced along the shoulders. Its splinters quickly found their way to open wounds on His shoulders. Then He was nailed to it and was left to die a slow, agonizing death. While His lifeblood drained out of Him, hecklers stood by and shouted insults, making fun of His pain and challenging His claim to be God.
Next, as the Lamb of God took all of mankind’s sin and guilt on Himself, God the Father looked away from that ugly sight, and Yeshua cried out: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Messiah could have saved Himself – but then He couldn’t have saved you.
Words cannot describe the darkness of that moment. Why did God allow and endure such ghastly, evil treatment? Why? So you could be spared an eternity in hell, and so you could share in His glory forever. Forever is a long time. The Bible says: Messiah was without sin, but for our sake God made Him share our sin in order that in union with Him we might share the righteousness of God (5:21 TEV). Yeshua gave up everything so you could have everything. He died so you could live forever. That alone is worthy of your continual thanks and praise. Never again should you wonder what you have to be thankful for.147
Dear Heavenly Father and Savior, Praise Your great love that offered the wonderful gift of Yeshua’s righteousness to all who love and follow Yeshua as Lord and Savior (Romans 10:9-10). Some are laughed at, mocked or beaten, but soon they will be with you in your eternal home of joy and peace. Life’s trials will be over – replaced by an eternal life in heaven filled with great joy and perfect contentment. For I consider the sufferings of this present time not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18).
It will be worth it all, when we see Yeshua! Life’s trials are gone forever – instead life will be so wonderful, far exceeding anything we have ever known! He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Nor shall there be mourning or crying or pain any longer, for the former things have passed away (Rev 21:4). I worship You now and love to put You first in my life in everything I do, say and think. I love You dear Father and I look forward to worshiping and praising You thru all eternity! In Yeshua’s holy name and power of His resurrection. Amen.
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