“Christ, the Cross, and Communion’”
(2 Corinthians 5:18-21)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
- Take your Bibles and join me this morning in 2 Corinthians (page 778; YouVersion). In a couple weeks we’ll begin our new series of messages in 1 Corinthians. This morning, 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. We’ll be looking at verses 18-21 and then, as we prepare to observe the Lord’s Supper, we’ll focus our attention on the last verse, verse 21.
The context of this passage is the Christian’s reconciliation with God. To reconcile is to bring together something that has been separated, to “bring back” so that there is agreement. A son or daughter is separated from his or her parents, for example, and through forgiveness is then reconciled with mom and dad. Think, for example, of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, once separated and then reconciled–brought back–to his father and now in agreement.
In accounting terms reconciliation is the process of ensuring two records are in agreement, that they balance. If one account is out of balance, work is performed so that it is “brought back,” reconciled, to the other account.
The word “reconcile” or “reconciliation” occurs five times in these four verses. Listen for the word as I read the passage.
- Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing
their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
- Pray.
Introduction:
When I was in high school, the church I attended observed the Lord’s Supper once a month. At the time I didn’t care much for it because it was observed at the exclusion of the regular preaching of the Bible and it just seemed to be this thing we all did that had very little meaning to me. Little Chiclet-sized pieces of chewy bread and a small, shot-glass of grape juice, that’s the way I saw it and I just never got it.
Later, when I attended another church, it was much the same. The Supper was observed less frequently and there was a sermon preached, but it was just seemed that the Lord’s Supper was something we did to “get out of the way” so that we could get on with the sermon. So there remained this symbolism that was largely without meaning.
So we gather this morning to observe the Lord’s Supper and we want to feel that we are worshiping Christ and we want to avoid thinking of the Supper as something we do to just “get out of the way.”
The Lord’s Supper is about worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. It is specifically, as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 11, a time to remember Him. Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of Me (1 Corinthians 11:24-25).”
Remembering Christ leads to worshiping Christ. So in a moment we will focus like a laser beam upon verse 21, and note some reasons why Christians praise and worship Jesus, remembering Him in the Supper, but before we do that, let’s be sure we are “rightly dividing the Word,” rightly interpreting the Bible, by considering the biblical context of this passage.
So back up to verse 18 and the first part there where Paul writes, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ.”
The words “all things” there in verse 18. Do you see that? Verse 18, “Now all things are of God.” What does Paul mean by “all things.” What are the “all things?” so we back up to verse 17 and we read a concluding statement about the Christian’s salvation, something Paul has been writing about throughout the chapter. Specifically, in verse 17 Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” All things have become new. Old things–the Christian’s former life, old things–the Christian’s former alienation and separation from a holy God because of our sin–all these old things have become new.
Because we are sinners by nature and by choice we are in a state of alienation and separation from a holy God. We have rebelled against the Creator of the universe. Our sin separates us from this holy God. But through Christ, the Christian is reconciled–brought back to a state of favor and agreement, brought back to balance–with a holy God. All things have become new.
Then Paul writes in verse 18, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ,” All things are of God. That is, God alone has made the old new. God alone has brought sinful people back to a state of agreement with Himself. God alone has accomplished the Christian’s regeneration, justification, in a word salvation. God alone has done this, reconciling us to Himself. “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ.”
And the application of this work of reconciliation for the Christian is to be used of God in the reconciling of others to God, our friends and co-workers. So Paul writes in the second part of verse 18 that God, “has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” He adds in verse 19 and following that:
19 …God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing
their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
And that is our message this week as “ambassadors for Christ.” God has “committed to us the word of reconciliation.” God has entrusted to us the stewardship of the Gospel.
We share the Good News of the Gospel this week to our next-door neighbor and to our friends and to our family and to the waiter and the grocer. God is “pleading through us.” That is, we share the Good News of the Gospel from the Word and it is as though God Himself pleads through us to our friends and neighbors. By the way, that is very liberating, very freeing, isn’t it? We don’t do the work. God does the work through us, pleading through us.
And the message we share is summed up in the last four words of verse 20, “Be reconciled to God.” God desires sinners be “brought back” to Himself. God desires that sinful people be brought up close and personal to a holy God. How is that possible? How is it possible that sinful people may be brought back–reconciled–to a holy God? The answer is found in verse 21:
Verse 21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
This truth is encapsulated in the chorus from a hymn we often sing here:
This the power of the cross
Christ became sin for us
Took the blame, bore the wrath
We stand forgiven at the cross
So let’s focus-in on this one verse, verse 21, and consider three reasons we praise Jesus as we observe the Lord’s Supper. First:
- Praise Him for His Sinlessness as the Christ
Praise Him for His sinlessness as the Christ. Remember that, “Christ” is not the last name of Jesus, it is a title. It is a Greek word that translates the Hebrew Word, “Messiah.” It means the, “Anointed One,” the promised coming One who would be our Deliverer; Jesus, the Christ; Jesus the Messiah; Jesus our Deliverer.
Now Paul describes Jesus in the first part of verse 21 as one who, “knew no sin.” The first pronoun in verse 21 refers to God the Father. “He–God the Father–made Him–Jesus Christ–who knew no sin, to be sin for us.” He made Him who knew no sin.
The sinlessness of Christ. Jesus Christ never once sinned. Never once in the Gospels do we read of Christ’s having sinned. Some people believe when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple that He sinned. But this is not sin. This is holy anger. While anger may lead to sinful actions, anger itself is not sin. The Bible says in Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry and do not sin.” Jesus never once sinned. The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:15, “He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Why does this matter? Well, God comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ. And God lives the perfect sinless life we ourselves could not live. Christ fulfills all the commands of the Bible perfectly. He’s the only one who has ever kept the Old Testament Law perfectly. So He keeps the Law perfectly. He lives a life we could not live. He lives a life of perfect righteousness so that we may receive credit for it.
Praise Him for His Sinlessness as the Christ. Related to this first point is number two:
- Praise Him for His Suffering on the Cross
Verse 21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.”
On the cross Christ did not become a sinner, He became sin. And He became sin “for us.” That is, on the cross, God the Father thought of our sins as belonging to Christ.
God sacrificed His Son on the cross to take upon Himself the punishment we deserved. He suffered in our place. He suffered “for us.”
So Christ is without sin, but when He died on Calvary’s Cross, God regarded and treated Christ “as sin.” Christ did not become a sinner. You must never say that. Christ did not become a sinner. Christ became sin. He was regarded and treated as sin. He took our sins upon Himself. He died for our sins. He took our place. As our substitute, He took our place and took our punishment by dying for our sins.
This, the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.
So praise Him for His Sinlessness as the Christ, Praise Him for His Suffering on the Cross, and thirdly:
3) Praise Him for His Salvation for the Christian
Verse 21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Here is the other half of what is often referred to as “The Great Exchange.” The great exchange is a way to describe the effects of Christ’s death on the cross. Theologically, exactly what happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross for us as our substitute?
Well, what happened is, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Put another way, God transferred our sin to Christ and transferred Christ’s righteousness to us. Put another way, God credited Christ with our sin and credited us with His righteousness. Put another way, God imputed our sins to Christ and imputed Christ’s righteousness to us.
That’s the word Paul uses in this context. Remember back in verse 19? Paul says that, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.” Because of the cross, God does not impute our sins and trespasses to ourselves, but rather He imputes our trespasses and sins to Jesus Christ. This is the essence of our salvation.
God thinks of our sins as belonging to Christ and He thinks of Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us. He was covered in shame so that we may be covered in glory.
That’s why the biblical idea of sacrifice is so important.
In the Old Testament, in Leviticus, we read of God’s people approaching God through the sacrifices. God initiated this worshiping through the sacrifices so that sinful men may approach a holy God. Apart from the sacrifices men and women of the Old Testament are separated from God because of sin. They are sinful and He is holy. At the same time, this holy and loving God seeks reconciliation with sinful humanity. So worship through the sacrifices is how such reconciliation was accomplished. Men and women of the Old Testament trusted in the sacrifices as those things which were necessary to bring reconciliation.
It’s not that the sacrifices themselves made men holy but that, as the New Testament clarifies, these sacrifices pointed forward to the coming of the great and final sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So people of the Old Testament were saved the same way believers in the New Testament are saved today, by faith–by trusting–trusting in the sacrifices of God which are ultimately fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
So if you can imagine in the Old Testament days a small child talking with his father who returned from worshiping God in the tabernacle. The conversation would have gone something like this: What were you doing today father? I was worshiping the holy God at the tabernacle. Was God there at the temple? Well, in one sense, yes, but you see because I am a sinner I approached this holy God by trusting in the sacrifices. So the sacrifices make it possible for you to approach this holy God? Yes, that’s right. And how do you know that this holy God accepts you? Because I was trusting in the sacrifices which make reconciliation with God possible. He accepts me because I was trusting in the sacrifices.
And the conversation today in the New Testament days is similar. A child talks to his father after worshiping one Sunday morning. What is all this about, the church? It is about worshiping this holy God. Is God there at the church building? Well, in one sense, yes, but you see because we are sinners we approach this holy God by trusting in the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. So the sacrifice of God’s Son makes it possible for you to approach this holy God? Yes, that’s right. And how do you know that this holy God accepts you? Because I was trusting in the sacrifice which makes reconciliation with God possible. He accepts me because I was trusting in the sacrifice, the sacrifice of His Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
People of the Old Testament days were saved by grace through faith, looking forward to the Christ who would come; people of the New Testament days are also saved by grace through faith, looking back to the Christ who has come.
It is the sacrifice of God’s Son that makes possible our sins being “taken away.” God the Father looks upon His righteous Son and His wrath is appeased, averted, turned away. And because God’s wrath is turned away, our sins are taken away, taken away because of the sacrifice of God’s Son on the cross, the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Some of you may have read about action taken recently by the Presbyterian Church (USA) regarding the popular Getty hymn, “In Christ Alone.” We sing this hymn frequently here and, in fact, because the hymn is so popular many Presbyterians wanted the hymn to be included in the Presbyterian hymnal. Unfortunately, however, a hymn-selection committee within the church voted to exclude the hymn from the hymnal specifically because of the verse that talks about the wrath of God. Specifically, the committee did not like the verse that reads, “‘Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” The committee even asked the Getty’s if they might consider re-writing that verse. They refused and so the committee voted to keep the popular hymn out of the hymnal.
I think it goes without saying that another popular Getty hymn would be excluded on the same basis:
This the power of the cross
Christ became sin for us
Took the blame, bore the wrath
We stand forgiven at the cross
In an op-ed appearing in Tuesday’s Washington Post, Russell Moore, who has preached in this pulpit, asks, “Whatever happened to the wrath of God?” In one point in the article he argues why evangelicals delight to sing about God’s wrath. He writes:
There’s a reason why evangelical congregations reach a kind of crescendo when they sing out that line in the Gettys’ song. It’s not because, per the caricature, we see ourselves as a “moral majority” affirming our righteousness over and against the “sinners” on the other side of the culture war.
Instead, it’s just the reverse. When Christians sing about the wrath of God, we are singing about ourselves. Our consciences point us to the truth that, left to ourselves, we are undone. We’re not smarter or more moral than anyone else. And God would be just to turn us over to the path we would want to go—a path that leads to death. It is only because Jesus lived a life for us, and underwent the curse we deserve, that we stand before God. The grace of God we sing about is amazing precisely because God is just, and won’t, like a renegade judge, simply overlook evil.
So we praise Him for the salvation He provides the Christian. His sacrifice that we remember in the Lord’s Supper is the remembering of a substitionary death, a death and resurrection that leads to the death and resurrection of ourselves. That is, God gave His life to us that He might take our lives from us and live His life through us. He is our Substitute.
Ernest Gordon wrote a book about World War II called, Miracle on the River Kwai. Perhaps some of you have read it. In the book, Gordon writes about something that happened to a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway:
At the end of each day the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die!” he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently [at] attention. When [the men] returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing.
Out of love one man steps forward to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others. One dies that others may live.
This, the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.
- Pray.
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