We are going to be in second Corinthians 5 this morning. If you looked at your program, I have one verse, so we should be out of here in the usual 45 minutes. No, there is a lot to cover in this one verse, but before we get there, I think it is just worth noting that this season we're in, most people call it the Christmas season. Throughout generations of the church, it's not been called the Christmas season, but the Advent season. This word Advent is formed from a Latin word meaning coming or arrival. And we're actually kind of smack dab in between the first Advent, which is when Jesus came and was born as a baby, as the Savior of the world, in the second Advent, where we today are awaiting Jesus return. Right. So there should be this sense of, yes, celebration, Jesus has come. And a sense of eager anticipation. Jesus is coming. But if you're anything like me, it's actually much easier to do the celebrating and a lot harder to do the eager anticipating. But even as we celebrate Christmas, we have been impacted by the culture around us. Already talked about it a little bit. With this looming threat of consumerism where it's like, man, Christmas, it's not hard to lose the wonder of Christmas by just looking at everything that is 50% off. We were just talking with friends the other day. It's like the fact that I can not even try looking for something and I get an ad on social media that's like, Luca Twos, by the way, that's a sneaker are $50. I'm like, what? I wasn't even trying to find shoes, but now I'm discontent and I want shoes. It's not hard to be threatened by consumerism, but I would argue there's another great threat to the joy of Christmas, and it's not the cultural threat of consumerism, but rather the cultural threat of performance. And here's what I mean. It is hard to anxiously await Jesus return. If you think his coming looks anything like that of Santa Claus. All right, I'm not going to sing it for you, but you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout. I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town he's making his list, he's checking it twice he's going to find out who's naughty and nice Santa Claus is coming to town and perhaps the creepiest lyric of all he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake Whether you would connect this view of God to Santa Claus or not. Most of us struggle with this reality that we are not so certain that God would be pleased with us if he came back today. We know that God is holy, that he is set apart, that he has a holy standard for his people. And though we know that he forgives, our consciences struggle to truly believe this. We're haunted either by the shame of past sins that you just cannot forget, or maybe we're haunted by the circumstances of our current realities, brokenness, temptations, or despair of our current reality. And we begin to wonder, what does God think when he looks at my life? And I think we struggle with this question, if I can be fed up with me, how could God not be fed up with me? It's this frustrating process if you are in Christ called sanctification, right? The ongoing process of looking more and more like Jesus. And it's a process, right? It takes time. And I think for many Christians it is a frustrating process, one that we look at and we say, man, I wish I was farther along. I ought to be a better Christ follower by now. And we struggle with this sense of self despair. But this thought is not driven by truth. It's not driven by the Scriptures. And it has been robbing us of hope and joy in Jesus. And so my hope this morning is that we would be able to answer this question in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How does God look at us today? How does God look at us today? And the good news is it's way better than the quote, unquote mystery of Santa Claus. I'm not going to spoil it for any kids in this room this morning, but I will tell you there is a better mystery to behold in the Gospel of Christ. So 2 Corinthians 5, we're going to look at one verse today. But one commentator has unapologetically, unapologetically stated, there is no sentence more profound in the whole of scripture. Which I'm like, okay, tall task this morning, or maybe not. Maybe I just read the verse and say Amen and we go on singing, right? The most profound sentence in the whole of scripture. And it comes after last week's text where Paul gave us this incredible title and calling. We are ambassadors for Christ. We get to plead with others to be reconciled to God. And we do that because God has reconciled us to Himself. He was the first mover. He moved towards us. He reconciled us and then he gave us this message and ministry of reconciliation. But 2 Corinthians 5, 21 actually tells us more of what this reconciliation with God looks like. It's really two parts and I want to just look at them one at a time this morning. One sentence, kind of two realities for us to behold. So I'm going to look at the first half of verse 21. It will be up on the screen with us and we'll take this in stride. So here's what the word of God says this morning. For our sake, He, God made him to be sin who knew no sin. This is a profound reality when you would just stop and consider the simplicity yet profound reality that because of Jesus, we can stand before God as a people who have had the debt of our sin canceled. The debt of our sin canceled. Now you guys understand debt. We live in a culture that is driven in many ways by debt. And just imagine, every time you sinned, you had moral failure in your life. It was like swiping a credit card that you couldn't pay for and your account is racking up and racking up and racking up. Oh yeah, and by the way, there's that 20% interest fee too. But yet for our sake, because God so loved his creation, he sent Jesus, his one and only son, to live a perfect life. And in the crucifixion of Jesus, that God himself would cancel that debt. How is that possible? Well, it's only possible here because it says Jesus knew no sin for 33 years. I don't know that we talk about this enough. Right. We often talk about Jesus death, but we oftentimes don't talk about his life for 33 years. Even through the terrible twos, or I would argue the terrible threes or the terrible twelves or 14s or 18s, you name it. Jesus never wants sin. And when you understand his life, which was marked by incredible poverty and suffering, it's actually insane to stop and consider. Jesus, though fully God and yes, fully human, never once sinned, he never complained, he never sought the idol of comfort, he was never once self seeking. He never spoke a false or unfitting word and was never impatient and think about his friend group. That's pretty hard, right? Jesus was never, never guilty of sin. And yet this passage says for our sake, what did he do? He was treated as if our sin belonged to him. How did he do that? This passage doesn't necessarily lay it out for us if you just read it point blank, but there's several passages that are really clear. I want to look at a few of them together. Colossians 2, verses 13 and 14, it says, and you who were dead in your trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh. That would be all of us, God made alive, together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross, that there was this legal demand of you and I to live a morally perfect and sinless life, and it was a debt that we could not pay back. And so God sent Christ to pay the debt that we couldn't, to cancel the debt that we could never afford. Here's what Galatians 3:13 says. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. And when we think about the crucifixion that Jesus would take on the cross, which is the most gruesome form of death known to mankind even to this day, we oftentimes think about the physical suffering, right? The lashes that were given, the nails that were driven, right? The excruciating reality of every breath that Jesus took from the cross. He would have to push off from his feet up, sliding his back up against the wooden cross, driving splinters into his back just so he could take another breath, this slow form of suffocation. But what's actually most profound as you look at the cross of Jesus is that his physical suffering was not the most profound suffering he endured. There was the spiritual suffering he endured by becoming a curse for us, by being treated as if our sin were his. Romans 3 talks about him being the propitiation for our sins. Here's what Romans 3 says. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All of us, every single one of us. But we have to keep reading. It says and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. We looked at this word propitiation a few weeks ago, but I want to circle back to it. This word propitiation means to appease the wrath of an offended party and to be reconciled to appease the wrath, right? The reality of our sin, the wages of sin, is death. What you and I rightly deserve for sinning against a holy God is to have the wrath of God poured out on us. That is what we rightly deserve. And so oftentimes people would say, you know, the greatest problem for humanity is that we sin. And I would argue not only that our greatest problem is that we sin. It's that we sin against a holy and just God, a God who will rightly punish wrongdoing. And so when you consider the reality of the cross, you have one of two choices to say, okay, the wrath of God will fall on sin. The question is, will it fall on my head or has it already fallen on Christ's? And the good news of the front end of this passage is we can look back 2,000 years and say, the wrath of God has already fallen. The wrath of God has already been satisfied because there was a sufficient sacrifice, a perfect life in our place, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And what's profound here, I actually just learned this recently that the word propitiation was originally used by pagans, these polytheists who would serve multiple gods. And what they would do is they would try and bring gifts or sacrifices to bribe these false gods to change their mind, that these pagan gods would, for whatever reason, look at a gift that their worshipers would bring and say, rather than me being upset with you or angry with you, I guess I will show you favor. But those are false gods. And the good news is the real God, the God of heaven and earth, Yahweh, does not require us to bring a gift to change his mind. No, he provides the gift in himself. That is the good news of the gospel in Christ. The gift is not something we bring, but is Jesus himself. And Romans 3 uses this word justified. How many of you guys have heard that word before? Justified. Okay, I learned this trick like shortly after coming to know Jesus. You know, they're trying to define these terms justification and sanctification and glorification. They're big churchy words. And I was told that the word justification, you could remember it this way. Just as if I'd see what they did there. Just as if I'd. Just as if I'd never sinned. You guys heard that to be justified. Just as if I'd never sinned. And I would say that's not a bad definition, it's just a half hearted definition of what justification means. Because if you look at justification and say the answer is to be justified is to be looked at just as if I'd never sinned. This only brings us to a sense of moral neutral, right? At best, God would look at you and he would say, I tolerate you. And to go back to this credit card debt situation, imagine you've racked up tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. If the good news of the gospel is simply your debt has been paid. The good news is that your account is brought to $0. Does that sound good to you? Right? I mean, for someone who has been in a lot of debt, I'm like, that's better than I deserve. But the gospel is better news than that. And this is where I feel like I have to be Billy Mays. The late Billy Mays, right? Selling you guys oxiclean. Where it's like, but wait, there's. But wait, there's more, right? There's got to be more than this, okay? Jesus canceled my debt because of Jesus. God looks at me and says, okay, I guess I'll tolerate you or put up with you. Come into heaven. There's got to be more. And the good news is there is more. Here's what the entirety of verse 21 says. For our sake, he made him. God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And this is where I would say that commentator is right, that there is no verse in the entirety of the scriptures that is more profound than this sentence. And John Calvin would call this verse the wondrous exchange. The good news of reconciliation is so much better than just our debt being canceled, but also God crediting us with the very righteousness of Jesus, that our account is not just brought to zero, but rather we are lavished upon us the riches of righteousness in Christ. This wondrous exchange that in the cross of Christ Jesus, though sinless, was treated as sin, and we, though having no righteousness of our own right. Romans 3. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We have no reason to boast in ourselves. We are regarded as righteous. That is insane. Absolutely insane. And what's perhaps more insane is that God predicted this would happen. This is all a part of his wondrous plan from the very beginning. And this scripture here proves to be one of the greatest fulfillments of a prophecy stated more than 700 years before Jesus was born. In Isaiah 53. I'm not going to read all of it for you. We'd love for you guys to go back and read Isaiah 53 at some point this week. But I would love to read one verse for you from Isaiah 53. It's verse 11. It says, out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, who is that church Jesus. Make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. More than 700 years before Jesus was born. Isaiah wrote this prophecy that the servant of God, the righteous one, Jesus Christ, would come. He would live the perfect life, and he would make many to be accounted or credited or viewed as righteous. And he shall bear our iniquities. I love the way that the author of Hebrews says it. Hebrews 10, verse 14. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. I want to leave that verse up on the screen and I want you guys to look at some, like, verb tenses here. What's going on? This is profound. For by a single offering, the author here is looking back at who, Christ, right? He's not like the other priests of the Old Testament who would come and would offer up these animal sacrifices time and time again. No, he is our great high priest who came and offered up a single offering himself, one time for all. So the author here looks back now for us. We look back over 2000 years and we say, okay, by a single offering, he, God has perfected. What tense is that? Anybody past tense. He has perfected. That is an identity statement for those who are in Jesus, that he would say, hey, because of what Christ did 2,000 years ago. Those of you who have placed your faith in the finished work of Jesus, he has made this statement perfect. Perfect. He has perfected for how long though? For all time. Now we're looking into the future, like forever. This perfection statement has been made and will not falter. God is not surprised at your sin or your shortcoming, even after you've placed your faith in Jesus. I think about Peter, right, who was out on a boat and Jesus had, hey, come follow me. I will make you fishers of men. Three years later, what does Peter do? He denies Jesus. Not just once, not just twice, three times. And yet what does Jesus do? He moves back towards Peter. Post denial. John 21. This chapter that I'm like, should that even be in the Gospel of John? John 20 comes to a pretty clear end, but it's obvious. John 21 belongs to show that those who are in Christ, even in their sin and shortcoming, Jesus still moves towards you. He still says, you belong to me. And Hebrews 10 would say, Jesus still looks at you and says, perfect, perfect. Now what's fascinating is he has perfected for all time. Those who are being present tense, sanctified are being sanctified. This should be a precious promise for you to behold, Christian, that God is not caught off guard by the fact that you are in process, right? This sanctification, I Brought up on the front end can actually be so frustrating because we look at our lives and say, man, I ought to be farther along than I am right now. We become disgusted with our sin, and we begin to think, maybe God is disgusted with my sin. And hear me when I say he is. That's exactly why he poured out his wrath on Jesus 2000 years ago. He did not sweep your sin under the rug. He poured out his wrath on his perfect son so that now he can look at you and say, perfect. Perfect. I love the way that Martin Luther kind of captures this reality of the wondrous exchange. He uses marriage as this imagery in his work called the Freedom of a Christian. I'm going to edit the language a little bit because I know there's young ears in the room. But here's what Luther wrote. He said, this wondrous exchange is rather like the story of a great king marrying a harlot. This harlot cannot make herself the great king's wife by anything she does or her performance. But rather by his wedding vow, she becomes his. And he says to her, all that I am, I give to you. And all that I have, I share with you. And so he gives to her the status of royalty and all that is his. And she turns to him and says, all that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. And so the poor sinner shares with King Jesus all her sin, all her death, all her condemnation. Therefore, the sinner consider her sins in the face of death and hell, and say, if I have sinned, yet my Christ, who is mine, has not sinned, and all his is mine. And all mine, my sins, my death, my condemnation is his. It's beautiful, this covenant vow. All that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. But Luther wasn't the first one to come up with this idea of the gospel being a wedding, right? Genesis 3 was to break the sin of the world. But what came right before that? You look at Adam and Eve, the first marriage in the Bible, Adam and Eve were not yet in sin, it says. They were naked and unashamed, right? Living out this covenant of marriage in the Garden of Eden. Beautiful. When you get to Ephesians 5, you see that husbands are given this great charge to love their wives. How as Christ loved the church, he goes on to quote Paul does in Ephesians 5, to quote Genesis 2. Therefore, man shall leave his father and mother and cling to or cleave to his wife. The two shall become one. Flesh. And he says, this mystery is profound. I am saying that it. Marriage refers to Christ in the church. This beautiful reality that we have made a covenant vow with Christ because he first made a covenant vow with us. All that I am, I give to you. All that I have, I share with you. And I'm reminded of a verse I stumbled across last year in the fall, I think it was in September of last year that just blew me away. And it's in the book of Song of Solomon. And before you, like, send your kids out of the room, I promise you, it's pg, right? Song of Solomon, this profound, poetic book that most of us skip over because we just don't get it. It's uncomfortable. Not a good place to look for pickup lines, by the way. But it is this love story that's set in a garden between a man and a woman in Israel. And they are professing their love to each other. They're savoring this idea of the intimacy of marriage. And I came across this verse in song of Solomon 4, 7. I'll put it up on the screen for you. It says this. You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. And when you think about the wedding imagery of the Bible, specifically in my mind, I think of Ephesians 5, right? Christ and the church. There's the bride and the bridegroom. The bride is the church, the bridegroom is Jesus. And when I look at a verse like this, I begin to ask the question, who is saying that to who? You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. You see, it would make a ton of sense if in Song of Solomon, this was the bride saying it to her bridegroom. That we, the church, would look at Jesus and we would say, you are altogether beautiful, Jesus. There is no flaw in you. Because that is a true statement. But what's profound about song of Solomon 4, 7 is it is not the bride saying it to the bridegroom, it is the bridegroom saying it to the bride. That God would look at you if you are in Christ, and he would not just tolerate you. He would not just cancel your debt and bring you back to zero, but he would look at you, he would credit you with the very righteousness of Jesus. And he would say, you are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. That is how God would view you in light of the Gospel. And therefore, justification is not simply just as if I had never sinned. It is also just as if I'd always obeyed, just as If I'd always obeyed that God would not simply tolerate you, but would enjoy you. You. And our account is not simply brought to zero, but is filled with the riches of God in Christ. I don't know if you guys have ever heard this before. I heard it within the last week. Grace. And it's not actually an acronym. The word grace means unmerited favor to be given that which you do not deserve. But someone much smarter than me long ago turned grace into an acronym and it is this. God's riches at Christ's expense. God's riches at Christ's expense. That's the grace that we would receive in the personal work of Jesus. Yes, mercy. That we would not get what we do deserve. That we would not get the wrath that we deserve because Jesus took it on his head. But much more than that, that we would get grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. That God would look at you and make a definitive identity statement over your life. That we might become the righteousness of God. So let's circle back to the cultural thread of performance and just see how does this verse flip it on its head completely undoes a performance mindset. We're set free from shame because our sin has been canceled. You don't have to self pity and wallow because when you consider the reality of your shortcomings, the reality is the debt has already been paid. But also beyond that, we are set free from striving that constant exhausting treadmill of just saying, man, I want to just try harder. Be better. Hope that the good outweighs the bad. You're set free from that striving because now when God looks at you, he's not looking for a righteousness that is your own, but a righteousness that has already been secured because of Jesus. And so you could sum up this verse by saying, in Christ, God does not see your sin, but sees Jesus perfection. In Christ, God does not see your sin, but sees Jesus perfection. It's a lot different than the Santa Claus narrative, isn't it? Much better news. Then you better watch out. You better not cry. You better watch out. I'm telling you why. Because when Jesus comes back, which we ought to be eagerly waiting for, here's who he's coming back for. His blood bought bride, who he already sees as perfect and who he will actually perfect in his return. But he's not coming back pointing a finger at you, Christian. He's coming back to embrace you. Say, you are my beloved. There is no flaw in you. That is how God would See you in Christ. And so when it comes to how do we apply this message today, it almost feels strange to even tell you how to apply it, because the reality is the only thing you really need to do to apply it is to receive it. This is good news. And when you get into this Christmas or Advent season, we oftentimes would say that it is good news of great joy for all people. And this is good news of great joy for all people. That you cannot out sin the grace of God. That God has already made a statement more than 2,000 years ago that he has freely offered to you at the expense of his one and only son, Jesus, that your sin can be canceled because Jesus took your place. And not only that, but that a perfection, a righteous statement can be made over your life not because of something you have to earn or strive for, but because of something Jesus has already done for you. And I would ask you, would you simply receive this identity statement over your life? Simply receive it to put that stamp and say, my faith is not in myself, but my faith is solely and fully in the finished work of Jesus. That it has been settled for more than 2,000 years and that it will never be undone because by a single sacrifice, Jesus has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. But I would say there's one way that I need to apply this and maybe I'll invite you in. And it's not just to receive this new identity, it's to remember your new identity. Because I think what's really hard is in the thick of life, in the pace of your week, to just lose sight of this identity statement. I mean, the Bible calls us sheep, which means we're prone to wander, prone to forget, right? We're prone to just leave behind this identity statement. What we need to do is remember this identity statement. I've been memorizing 1 Peter 2:24 with my boys. It's a long one. And by the way, my five year old's got it down. So for any of us who say, hey, we can't memorize, we'll call it the Beat Blaze challenge, right? See if you can beat my 5 year old. Where 1 Peter 2:24 says that Christ took our sin in his body on the tree so that in him we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, right? You look at the reality of that front part of that verse, that Christ took our sins in his body on the tree. Why? So that we might die to sin and live to righteousness that we would now live in light of this new identity that Christ has purchased for us to say, I'm no longer a slave to my sin, I am a slave of Jesus Christ. He is my master now. I want to live in light of it. But also I think it's perhaps hardest to remember your new identity when you sin. When you fail yet again this week, when you almost stumble back into a performance mindset on the tail end of your sin and say I cannot believe I did that again and you start to think I am fed up with me and maybe God is fed up with me and you have forgotten the reality of this verse that he has already made a perfection and identity statement over your life righteous. And if we would remember our identity, we would not stiff arm God on the tail end of sin. We would not wallow in self pity. Here's what we would do. We would run to Jesus First John 1:9 that we would confess freely, knowing that Jesus is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And so maybe you, like me, just need help remembering your identity. This week pastor and author Sam Storms has said feelings of guilt, shame and self contempt pose the greatest threat to a robust and joyful Christian experience. Can anybody say Amen to that? Feelings of guilt, shame and self contempt pose the greatest threat to a robust and joyful Christian experience. And the Christian experience is meant to be one of joy, right? Not just for the Christmas or Advent season, but one that is meant to mark our lives every moment of every day. And if we would cling to Second Corinthians 5:21, if we would understand who Jesus is and what he has done, if we would actually believe who we are in light of his finished work on the cross, we would be set free from all of these things that rob us of joy. We would be set free from guilt, set free from shame, set free from self contempt. And we would no longer look at sanctification as a frustrating process, but a beautiful reality that God embraces us while we are in process. And his identity statement is not primarily sinner, but son or daughter, righteous, perfect. And that that would actually fuel us to be a people who abide in Jesus love, that we would be so blown away by the very love of Jesus. And I cannot help but think of Jesus words in John 15 in that abide language, abide in my love, abide in my love. And here's how he finishes that passage. He says, I have said these things so that my joy would be in you, in your joy would be full. We need the reality of the gospel, which is not just a canceled debt, but a crediting of righteousness for fullness of joy to be ours. But the promise is it's free to us at Christ's expense. That's grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. Amen. Pray together. God, I thank you for this beautiful verse in Scripture. But it is so much more than words on a page. It is the reality of a story that has unfolded and is unfolding. That Jesus, who knew no sin, willingly, joyfully took our place. That the very wrath of God, the feelings of shame and condemnation that we should have felt in its fullest effect fell on Christ more than 2,000 years ago. And Jesus, because you did not stay dead, but you rose again victorious to prove yourself Savior of the world, you have freely offered to us righteousness, perfection, this identity statement over our lives that we might become the righteousness of God. And I pray for every person in this room that we would not wait another day, that we would not wait another moment to let this identity statement ring true over our lives today. That we would be set free from sin and shame and self contempt, that we would abide in the very love of Jesus, and that our joy would be made full. And God help us this week as sheep who are prone to wander, prone to forget, when we find ourselves yet again struggling in sin, stumbling forward in grace, help us remember that you do not simply tolerate us, but you behold us as your bride. We love you Jesus. Thank you that you loved us first. It's in your name we pray. Amen.