The Only Way for a Holy God to Save Sinful Man
Tom Shrader expounds 2 Corinthians 5:21, unpacking the doctrines of imputation and substitution as the heart of the Christian gospel. He explains that Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin on behalf of His people so that they might receive His righteousness before God. Salvation is entirely God-given and God-originated, leaving no room for human negotiation, and carries with it a ministry of reconciliation to a world separated from God by sin.
“Every sin that's ever committed must be paid for, either by Christ and the cross, where it's stamped paid in full, or by the sinner who committed it, who spends eternity in hell and never pays the debt that he or she owes.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 2 Corinthians
Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: salvation, forgiveness, sin, reconciliation, righteousness, gospel, repentance, grace, feeling unworthy, struggling with guilt, seeking forgiveness, new believer, unbeliever searching for truth, young adult, questioning faith, carrying shame
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:15, 2 Corinthians 5:16, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 5:18, 2 Corinthians 5:19, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Acts 16, John 3:16, John 8, 1 Peter 2, Hebrews 4:15
Theological Themes: imputation, substitutionary atonement, justification, being made righteous, reconciliation, original sin, sola gratia, ministry of reconciliation
Full Transcript
Setting the Context
I need to look this morning at just verse 21, but I want to make sure that we have the context in mind, and just to briefly remind you of what we looked at previously. In verse 18, Paul wrote that "all these things are from God." He is talking about everything we have looked at, especially in the previous three verses: the love of Christ that controls us, the fact that we died with Him, we rose with Him. Verse 15 begins to tell us how we are supposed to live. We no longer think of, look out for, and live for ourselves. We begin to live for something greater than our own agenda.
Verse 16 says we look at everything and everybody differently. We no longer evaluate things on a worldly basis. It is no longer about the bottom line. The bottom line is not the bottom line for us. It is no longer about wins and losses, no longer about the externals. We begin to evaluate people and things in the world as God sees them. Verse 17 gives us that great news that we are new creatures, and the old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come, and we give testimony to that all the time when we are together.
All these things are from God. He is the source of that. Do not get excited about yourself, and do not take any credit for that. That is all of Him. Here is what He has done: He has reconciled us to Himself. He did that through Christ, and then He gives us a ministry of reconciliation.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Here is that ministry of reconciliation — that God was, in Christ, reconciling Himself to the world. He is not counting our sin against us as His people, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Notice those two phrases: at the end of verse 18, "the ministry of reconciliation," and at the close of verse 19, "the word of reconciliation." He has given us this ministry, this word, this message. It is the gospel. It is the very heart of the Christian faith.
Paul continues here logically. In verse 20 he says, "therefore" — because that is true — "therefore we are ambassadors for Christ." As though God were entreating through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. That is our message. We are beggars. If you are here this morning and did not take communion, perhaps you would say you are not a Christian. Here is the message we have for you: we beg you, we plead with you, to come to the only place where you will find relief and freedom from guilt in this world.
You may look at your life and think your problems are economic, or social, or political, or educational. But if you do not know Christ, your problem is spiritual — it is sin — and your sin has separated you from God. There is nothing you can do to appease that holy, righteous, and — to use a word that might surprise you — angry God. But come in repentance and faith. Come with an attitude of acceptance of the gospel. Repent from your sin. In Acts chapter 16, the Philippian jailer says to Paul, "What must I do to be saved?" And Paul says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." That is our message today. That is what we take to the world.
I remind you, if you are a Christian and you find yourself regularly talking with men, women, and students who are not Christians, I encourage you to stay out of discussions on predestination and election, and Mary and purgatory, and Joseph Smith, and all the rest — it is a waste of time. You do not need that. They need Christ. That is the message we take. That is the ministry of reconciliation. We come with that ministry, we beg — it is so simple. We come to Christ as a beggar. Blessed are the poor in spirit; we are spiritually bankrupt. And we continue to beg. We continue to take this message as ambassadors.
The Heart of the Gospel
Here is what motivates us, verse 21: "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." I will say this again, and this is not hyperbole: if you could only be here for one message, this is the most important message you could hear. This is the heart of the Christian faith. This is the gospel itself. This is the thing that separates us from every other religion in the world.
It is the idea that God became man, dwelt among us, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross. On that cross, the sin of His people was thrust upon Him, and He paid in full a debt that we could never repay ourselves. One author writes that this is one of the most magnificent verses in the whole Bible. It is describing that mysterious transaction that took place on the cross, when Jesus — the sinless one, the one whose life was lived righteously, without failure, without fault, without evil, who never did wrong — was made to suffer for all the sins of you and me.
This author said he does not fully understand it. Jesus took our place, and God agreed to it. It was something they had planned between them. God sent His Son into the world to do this very thing, and made Him on the cross to be sin for us. We will never fully understand it. We will never know how much agony of heart and mind and spirit pressed upon Jesus, how the horrors of hell came upon His soul there on the cross. It is the very truth expressed in the words you sang right before communion: "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon His cross."
Imputation and Substitution
We want to take the time we have and break this verse apart. John MacArthur, speaking of this verse, says this: "These 15 Greek words express the doctrines of imputation and substitution like no other single verse." Two thoughts — imputation and substitution. Rather than enter into a theological discussion right away, let me give you Webster's definition. To impute means to ascribe goodness or guilt to a person as coming from another — to credit or to ascribe something, goodness or evil, to a person as coming from another.
Imputation and Substitution
We see a key principle at work when we say that in Adam we all died. Frequently, when talking to people about the gospel and discussing how in Adam we all sinned, you will hear this response: "That's not fair. Just because Adam sinned, that doesn't mean we had to sin. I don't like that doctrine — that imputation thing. That doesn't seem right or fair." I would not throw that out too quickly, because if you throw that one out, you will be in real trouble when it comes to the truth that in Christ, His righteousness is credited to you. That's not fair either, is it?
Substitution means simply to take the place of another, to go and stand for another. In the Civil War, soldiers in the North could pay a fee — $400, if I remember correctly — and that person would go and be your substitute soldier, fighting in your place. When we look at this verse, we are talking about imputation: God made Him who knew no sin to become sin, so that He took our place on the cross and we could be righteous. His righteousness is imputed to us.
Atonement and Reconciliation
The other word we use to describe this whole concept is atonement. According to Webster, atonement means satisfaction given for wrongdoing, or an agreement of reconciliation. We have a ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation, and all of these things we have looked at are from God, who reconciles Himself to us.
That very idea of reconciliation implies a pre-existing hostile condition. If you and I are reconciled, we must have been at war. That is the message we take to the world — we need people to understand that they are sinners.
I was talking to a man this week whose friend is sharing the gospel with a student at ASU. The student said, "I don't think I have a problem, because God knows my heart." That is your problem, friend. He knows your heart. The problem is that you don't know your heart. God knows your heart, and He says it is deceitfully wicked. That is natural man. No one is good, no, not one.
You could walk over to that nursery right now and bring out a little twenty-four-month-old, and that child might not know much, but he knows two words: "mine" and "no" — and nobody taught him that. He just instinctively knows it. I do not understand how a simple observer of human nature cannot see that man is sinful. God knows your heart, and God sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross to satisfy wrongdoing and to establish an agreement of reconciliation.
The Scope of the Atonement
Dr. Grudem, in his Systematic Theology, writes this: "The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and in his death to earn our salvation. This definition indicates that we are using the word atonement in a broader sense than it is sometimes used. Sometimes it is used only to refer to Jesus dying and paying for sins on the cross, but since the saving benefits also come to us from Christ's life, we have included that in our definition as well."
What Grudem is pointing to is the full scope of Jesus Christ's life and death — we must not separate them. He lived a perfect, sinless life, making Him the spotless Lamb. He then died on the cross, and through that death He secured the salvation of His people. And it is not just about heaven — it is about life here as well.
God saves us and leaves us here for a purpose. You have a purpose, a meaning, and the ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation. God is working His purpose in this world, and you are part of it. Christ purchased that on the cross.
The Central Importance of the Gospel
I said at the beginning that if you could pick one Sunday to be here, this would be the most important one, because the gospel message is that important. That is not hype — that is simply the truth. Every week, but this week in particular, my inadequacies in communicating are very visible. I genuinely do not know how you begin to take things that are beyond all comprehension and bring them to a place where we can start to think about them.
Here is what the Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, says about the atonement: "The atonement is the brain and the spinal cord of Christianity. Take away the cleansing blood and what is left to the guilty? Deny the substitutionary work of Jesus, and you have denied all that is precious to the New Testament. Never, never let us endure one wavering, doubtful thought about this all-important doctrine."
I can promise you this: as long as I am here and can breathe, and they will let me stand here, we will never waver on this. We may change our minds about other things — there are matters that are essentially up for grabs — but not this. This is the gospel. This is what separates us from everyone else.
What Makes Someone a Christian
When someone says to me, "I know Bob, and Bob's a Christian," I will say, "Really? Tell me about Bob." Great dad? Great husband? Great worker? Let me help you out here — there are Hindus who are great dads. There are Buddhists who are
What Makes You a Christian
There are Mormons who are great workers and great husbands, but that is not what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is embracing this truth: the atoning death of Christ. Christ died on the cross, and He did it for a purpose — not merely to be an example, not simply to show sacrificial love, though clearly that is part of what He did. He specifically died for His people. He paid the price for your sin.
Scripture tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sin separates us from God, and we have a debt we can never repay. The wage of sin is death. Something has to die, and Christ died on your behalf. That is the gospel. That is what it means to be a Christian.
All the other things, all the change that follows — those come after. But they are not what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is understanding and embracing this truth, and this truth alone. There are not many ways to God. There is but one. It is through the cross.
God Saves Sinners: The Triangle Illustration
Over the years I have used this triangle illustration. I love it, and I think it is helpful in getting our arms around this idea of substitutionary atoning death. There are three participants: Jesus, God the Father, and the Christian — if you are a believer in Christ, you are welcome to put your name in there. To that triangle we add one simple sentence: God saves sinners.
When I had the students in here the other night — junior high and high school — I asked them whether they still diagram sentences. They said, "Huh," which I took as a no. So I walked them through it, because we used to do this in the old days. In the sentence "God saves sinners," God is the noun, the subject, the actor. Saves is the verb, the predicate, the action.
God saves — and if you are a Christian, put your own name there as the direct object. If you ever have a chance to be in a sentence, you want to be the direct object. You have no responsibilities; you just receive. Whatever comes, boom — that is you. God saves you. You did not do anything.
Redeemed: Loosed from Bondage
I know there are bookshelves full of volumes on this, and I know it is complex, but you can get this. It is not that hard to grasp. Jesus died on the cross and He redeemed you. To redeem means to loosen, to loose. You are no longer tied up. As a Christian, you are no longer in bondage to sin. You no longer have to sin — you are free to do good. You are no longer in the shackles of sin, and you are free for heaven. You have been redeemed.
I love this illustration, so I use it all the time. When I was a boy, my mom used to collect S&H Green Stamps. She would receive them in sheets — a sheet probably had about fifty stamps on it — and you had to lick those stamps. That glue was awful. I think it was the same glue that was on George Costanza's wedding invitations. I would lick them, feel unwell, and pass them along. Eventually the S&H Green Stamp company got smart and issued one stamp that represented fifty of the smaller ones.
You would collect these stamps in books and then receive a full-color catalog showing everything you could get. Looking through it was a waste of time, though, because we knew mom was going to get whatever she wanted. I remember one specific time she said she wanted a hairdryer — that box with the cord and the bag that sat over her head. We needed twelve books and had eleven. Then one day we had our twelfth book, and we drove down to Rockingham Road, pulled up to the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center, and we loosened that hairdryer from that corporate conglomerate. We redeemed them. We brought them back.
Jesus died on the cross and He freed you. You are free today. We miss that a lot in Christ, do we not? You are free in Him — not just from bondage and sin, but free to be who God made you. He made us all different, and that is perfectly fine.
Propitiation: Satisfying God's Wrath
The second word is propitiation. On the triangle, this is the movement from Jesus to the Father — it means to satisfy God's wrath. Is God a God of love? Absolutely. But is that the only characteristic God has? You would think so if you listened to the culture. God is also a God of wrath and a God of judgment. God hates sin, and because He hates sin, He will judge sin.
That is what the word propitiation captures. When Christ died, He satisfied God's wrath toward His people, and we are justified — declared righteous. In Christ, we are righteous. The very verse before us states it plainly: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf." Christ takes our place on the cross so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. God looks at us and sees righteousness — not because of anything we have done, but because of what Christ did on the cross. This is a magnificent truth.
I was reading USA Today online the other day and saw that they are trying to canonize one of the Catholic priests who was involved in 9/11. There is a process involving a required number of miracles and various other criteria. I will tell you what a saint actually is. A saint is anyone who knows Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Salvation Is Entirely of God
This room today is filled with legitimate saints who have understood the finished work of Christ on the cross, who embrace it, who understand they didn't do anything, and there's nothing they can do — no religion to join, no church to join. All those things come afterwards, and they're fine and they're important, but that is not what saves us.
We find five things in this verse. Number one: salvation is entirely of God. It begins with God and it ends with God. God the Father chooses those that He will save before the foundations of the earth. Jesus Christ goes to the cross, dies on the cross, and on that cross He redeems His people. He dies for His people, and at the appointed time the Holy Spirit invades those people's lives and causes them to be born again. In an instant, they move from sinner to saint.
We are saved by grace through faith, and that is not of ourselves. What is not of ourselves? Not just the grace — the faith is not of ourselves either. God gives us that faith. If you believe Jesus is who He said He was, you know why you believe that? Not because you figured it out, not because someone explained it well to you. You believe it because God opened your eyes and now you can see it.
That is why we ought to be the most thankful, grateful people on the planet. Even within the church, we should be the most grateful people, because we understand that truth crystal clear. One author writes this: "Please note, salvation is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, and God-originated." It is not a gift from man to God — it is a gift from God to man. Grace is created by God and given to man.
On the basis of this point alone, Christianity is set apart from every other religion in the world. Every other approach to God is a bartering system — if I do this, God will do that. In that system, I am either saved by what I do, by works, by what I experience, or by what I know. That is diametrically opposed to fundamental, orthodox Christianity, which says there is nothing I can do, nothing I can experience, and nothing I know that saves me. I am saved by God's grace through faith — and then there will be great things I will know, great things I will do, and extraordinary things I will experience, but not to initiate my salvation, rather because of my salvation.
Man Has No Grounds to Negotiate with God
By contrast, Christianity has no whiff of negotiation at all. Man is not the negotiator. Indeed, man has no grounds from which to negotiate. We love to negotiate. Susan and I just bought a house, and we went in and they had it listed at some ridiculous price. We made an offer, they said we were nuts, they came back with an offer, I said that was silly, we said here is where we are, they said no, we walked away — and then we decided we really would like to live there. We talked some more, and we ended up right in the middle from where we both started. We had what they call in real estate a meeting of the minds.
I was talking to a man last night about buying his first car. He said he went in with his dad and the seller wanted $2,200 and just would not budge. But this kid was buying the car on his own, and all he had was $1,827. Somehow, all of a sudden, the seller understood the situation. He said, "Wait — you're buying this yourself?" The kid said yes. The seller asked how much he had. The kid said $1,827. The seller said, "Selling price is $1,827." That is how we love it. We love to dicker, we love to negotiate, we love to work the deal.
Now we come to God. God says He requires perfection. We say we understand that, but we only have this much to offer. He says He wants perfection. We say we will go this far. There is no negotiation here. This is non-negotiable. There is no other way to approach a holy God — you either come on His terms, or you do not come at all.
Salvation is entirely of Him — so what do you have to do? Come. When this service is over, come right down here and ask these men what it means to know Christ as Lord and Savior. If you desire that, or want that, or are even interested in that, it is because God has opened your eyes and given you that desire. So come.
Atonement Demonstrates God's Love and His Justice
Here is the second thing: atonement demonstrates God's love and His justice. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." If you want a picture of love, look to the cross.
That would have sounded strange to people two thousand years ago. Today you turn on an awards show and everyone is wearing a cross — it has become an accessory that goes with an ensemble. But that betrays the image entirely. To the people of that day, the cross was an instrument of torture and death. To us it is a picture of love, because on the cross we see both God's love and God's justice together. He loved, so He gave — but His perfect justice must also be met.
What we learn from this is that Jesus remained sinless. Peter writes in 1 Peter 2, "He committed no sin, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth." Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet is without sin." And Jesus Himself asked in John 8, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" — and the answer is none.
The Agony of the Cross
Jesus remained sinless, but He was treated as though He had sinned. From that cross, He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is at that moment that, in this sacred transaction, the sin of all the people who would ever believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior was thrust onto Christ. That is the agony of the cross.
The agony of the cross is not the beating, it is not the torture, it is not the nails. Hundreds of people died that kind of death. The agony of the cross is that at that moment, this sinless, perfect God-man was treated as though He was a sinner. The very thing that He hates most was thrust upon Him. He remained sinless, but He took on your sin, your guilt.
He bore our sins, and now we are treated as though we earned righteousness. The verse before us says it plainly: God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God. He begins to look at us, and continues to look at us, as though we are holy and pure and righteous.
There Was No Other Way
There was no other way for a holy God to save a sinful man. I was in a small group one time that actually broke up over this issue. There was a group of guys who argued that since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, He can do whatever He wants — and therefore there had to be another way. They said God could have, if He wanted to, simply declared, "You are forgiven."
That was one side. The other side — the correct side — is this: No, because you have God's justice to contend with. God cannot simply say you are forgiven, because that denies His justice and denies His wrath. The wages of sin is death. There is no other way. There was no other way.
This point is critical. There was no other way for God to save you, so obviously there is no other way for you to be saved. He died on the cross — why? He had to, if He was going to save anybody. Once God determined that He was going to save sinful men, He had to have a sacrifice, and a perfect sacrifice. Jesus Christ is the only way. That was the only possible way a holy God could save a sinful man, and consequently, it is the only way a sinful man can come to a holy God.
The Freedom the Cross Offers
Perhaps you are here today and you have been trying to slug it out — trying to be good — and you have come to the realization that the standard required is perfection, and you cannot get there. Perhaps you are bogged down by sin. Perhaps it was everything you could do just to get here today, and you are barely hanging on. How great is it that God has brought you here to hear this message? You can be rid of all that guilt today. You can find freedom and forgiveness today.
Not only forgiveness for the sins you committed in the past and the sins you committed today, but for every sin you will ever commit. That is the beauty of the cross. That is why we return to this message again and again. Some of you have heard it many times, and I hope it is as exciting the hundredth time as it was the first, because it is what saves you, and it is what saved me.
The Only Path — and the Stakes
This is what we take into the marketplace of ideas. This is the truth. This is how God determined to save people. And if you come to Him any other way than this, you will spend eternity in a place called hell. Every sin that has ever been committed must be paid for — either by Christ on the cross, where it is stamped paid in full, or by the sinner who committed it, who spends eternity in hell and never fully pays the debt owed.
When this truth takes hold, life has meaning. It is not merely about getting to heaven. All of a sudden the colors are brighter and life is beautiful. Even the difficult things that come our way are met with the understanding that God is in control. God has given us a ministry of reconciliation and the word of reconciliation to take to the world.
If you do not know Christ, if you are not a Christian, some men will be at the front of the church after the worship service. They would love to meet with you, talk with you, and pray with you.
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Father, thank You for this. Thank You that salvation is entirely from You. What a great gift. Thank You for Your love and Your justice. Thank You for Jesus, who died on the cross so we would have eternal life. Father, thank You that salvation is God-given, God-driven, God-empowered, and God-originated. It is a gift from You to us. God, thank You for that gift. We praise You, we worship You, in Jesus' name. Amen.