He Who Knows No Sin

He Who Knows No Sin
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
November 26, 2023

Giving thanks this week…

There’s a verse from the Bible;  2 Corinthians 5:21, and the reason I thanked God for this verse is because

• If it weren’t for the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:21, none of us would have our sins forgiven today.
• If it weren’t for the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:21, none of us would have eternal life today.
• If it weren’t for the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:21, none of us would be on our way to heaven when we leave this earth.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

v21 says God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This verse is made up of four separate phrases we are going to look at.

I. God made Him who knew no sin

The “Him” here is obviously the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible tells us that He knew no sin. The Lord Jesus was a sinless being who lived a sinless life and this truth is of monumental importance theologically. 

John 1:29,  The next day he *saw Jesus coming to him and *said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

The Passover lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, had to be as described in Hebrews 9; unblemished, perfect, without defect or fault or sin in any way.

The Bible also tells us that every human being born from the union of sperm and egg has a sin nature.

1 John 1:8, If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Psalm 51:5, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.

Now what David is talking about here is not that his mother conceived him as the result of some kind of sexual sin. That’s not what he’s talking about.

• He is referring to the fact that when he was conceived, in his mother’s womb righteously and beautifully by his father and his mother, he inherited this sin nature that Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God brought on the entire human race.

This is what the apostle Paul is talking about, that through the disobedience of one man, Adam, all of us were made sinners.

Romans 5:19, For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.

If the Lord Jesus Christ had possessed the sin nature, then He wouldn’t have been a sinless being and He wouldn’t have lived a sinless life which means He couldn’t have been the Lamb of God.

As many of you know this is what the virgin birth is all about. It made sure that the body of Jesus was not the result of human sperm and human egg meeting, which means that Jesus’ body did not have a sin nature.

Hebrews 4:15, For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus was able to meet the criteria and meet the conditions that the Passover Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, had to meet.

II. To be Sin on our Behalf

That happened on the cross in a divine transaction that you and I will never understand. 

The Bible says that as the Lord Jesus Christ hung on that cross, that God laid upon Him all the sins of the world.

Isaiah 53:6, All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.

The apostle Paul reverberates the same truth in the New Testament. He said Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, on the cross.

How did God do this? What was the precise mechanism that God did to transfer all the sin of the world on to Jesus as he hung on the cross?

I don’t know, but, 

• The Bible says that this transfer did take place.
• The Bible says that we don’t need to understand it.
• We need to do what the Bible says, to believe it and to embrace it and to appropriate it for our own lives.

III.    So that we might Become the Righteousness

That because of what Jesus did for you and me on the cross, shedding his blood to pay for our sin, you and I, as unholy as we are, can become righteous in God’s sight.

Romans 10:4, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

We should all love that for everyone we know who is not saved; you don’t have to clean yourself up, you don’t have to dress yourself up, you don’t have to wash yourself up, you don’t have to fix yourself up, all you have to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and repent of your sins.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been and what you’ve said. None of that matters to become righteous in God’s sight.

Romans 5:1, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Romans 5:19, For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.

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

Isn’t it correct that we’re not really righteous, we’re still sinners after we trust Christ?  That is a profound theological question.

Actually, I don’t think we’re meant to understand many biblical quarrels. If I had my own church, it would be called, The Main Thing!

Illustration – Superman

Exodus 12:12, For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord.

Now remember any Israelite out in the streets that night and not behind a blood stained door lost his first born son and any Egyptian, we don’t know that there were any, but any Egyptian who might have been behind a blood stained Israelite door had his first born spared.

Why? 

• Because the issue that night was not nationality.
• It was not religion.
• It was not fame or fortune or power.
• It was the blood.

This is still the issue today when we stand behind the blood of Jesus Christ the way these Israelites hid behind the blood of the Passover lamb. God agrees to pass over us in judgment just like he passed over them ~3500 years ago and why does God do this?

Because God no longer sees us and our unrighteousness. He only sees the Lord Jesus Christ and His blood as our Passover lamb shielding our sins from view behind his perfect righteousness.

God’s judgment, the blood of Christ, and people behind it are safe.

IV. Of God in Him

This is an awesome transaction in the history of the human race, but this transaction only takes place at one location in the universe and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ and what He did for us on the cross.

John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

The operative words, no one.

Jesus claimed that He was the only way to get into heaven over and over and over again.  I hope you’ll accept Him for what He’s really saying. That it’s only through Him.

Acts 4:12, And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

There is only one location in the universe where God’s judgment is blocked and doesn’t see through to us and that is in Jesus Christ!

This is what we celebrate when we celebrate communion. We celebrate the fact that we stand righteous in the sight of a holy God because of the blood covering that the sinless Messiah provided for us.

Testimony

Why do I recall all of this so vividly for you?  Because I am thankful for Jesus in my life and I want you to have that same thankfulness.  I want you to be able to recall the powerful experience in your life, the day or event or people who guided you to ask Jesus into your life.