Why Can't People Figure it Out
Tom Shrader examines Jesus' final night with His disciples from John 13-14, focusing on Judas's betrayal and Jesus' declaration that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He warns that religious activity without genuine faith leads to spiritual deception, emphasizing that salvation comes through trusting Christ alone, not through good works or religious performance.
“Any religion other than fundamental, orthodox, evangelical, born-again Christianity is wrong, and it's all religion that's based to one degree or another on what can I do.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2003)
Recorded: 2003
Duration: 45 min
Themes: betrayal, deception, faith, salvation, trust, truth, belief, gospel, doubting salvation, religious but lost, new believer, questioning faith, struggling with works, church member, seeking truth, young adult
Scripture: John 13:21, John 13:31, John 13:33, John 13:34-35, John 14:1, John 14:2-4, John 14:5-6, John 17:4, John 20:30-31, Matthew 7:13, 2 Corinthians 5:21
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by faith, justification, religious works, false assurance, genuine faith, spiritual deception, eternal life
Full Transcript
Now, let's take a look at this. If you have Bibles with you, open them to John chapter 13. We are in week 8, winding two-thirds of the way through this study.
I remind you of something absolutely imperative. While it may be repetitious, it's essential. John chapter 20, verse 30: "Many other signs, therefore, Jesus performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these have been written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you would have life in His name."
This book, and all the other Gospels to some degree, but obviously John tells us what he's trying to do here. He selected incidents from the life of Christ for a specific purpose: that you would read them, look at them, and in your mind there would be a confirmation of who Jesus is. You would believe in Him—and we'll talk more today about what that means—and the resulting factor of believing in Him is that you have eternal life.
The Heart of John's Message
It dawned on me the other morning that there's a certain repetitiveness to these twelve lessons. I think the reason is we chose a subset of what John had chosen to write. There's a repetitiveness in the sense that we're coming back again and again to the Gospel, because that's what's really at so much of the heart of what John is writing—the Gospel and the Gospel message.
I am certain that for many of you, you are hearing things that you have heard many times. Some of you have even put your faith and trust in these truths. I hope that as you hear this, it doesn't grow wearisome. I hope you don't say, "Come on, let's get on to the good stuff." I hope you're rejoicing in the Gospel itself and being reminded of where you were when God saved you.
For others of you, this is new stuff. It may be new in a different variety—it may just be brand new. You may come in and say, "I've never heard anything like this." For others of you, you've kind of heard it, been around it, and each time it's a little bit like a prism. Each time we just crank it a little bit and you get a little different insight into the topic.
But you'd be honest with yourself and with us and say, "You know, I've never really put my faith and trust in this. I'm not even really at the point where I'd check off mental assent and say I think it's true." That would be one point, but that's not what we're talking about by belief. We're talking about coming to a point where I'm trusting it. I'm believing it. I'm staking my life and indeed my afterlife on this truth.
Setting the Scene
We start our lesson in John chapter 13, verse 31, but it begins with a phrase that forces us to go back: "When therefore he had gone, Jesus said." We want to talk about who is the guy that left.
If you turn back to verse 21 of chapter 13, Jesus said this: "He became troubled in His spirit and He testified, 'Truly, truly, I say to you that one of you will betray Me.'" This is that scene we understand is the night before Jesus dies. The disciples are gathered together to dine together.
These guys would have spent an extraordinary amount of time in their life hanging out together—probably three years at this point, pretty much in some sense of a 24-7 time when they would be with one another. This is the culmination of Jesus' earthly ministry. When you think about a thousand days, that's a staggering thought when you start to get your arms around it. We're looking at Jesus' public ministry about the same amount of time that John Kennedy was president.
The Shocking Announcement
So often I plead with you every week: you know how this ends, you know where we're going with this, most of you probably all of you. Don't let it just be words on a page. Don't miss the humanity of this.
Here's this moment. Jesus is gathered together with them. It's the time that we identify as the Lord's Supper. Jesus washes their feet, giving them a picture of servant leadership and humility. And then He says, "I say to you, one of you will betray Me."
"The disciples began looking at one another, at a loss to know which of them He was speaking." Now in our mind, I think, we get some scenario like this: here are these guys sitting, there's 12 of them, Jesus says one of you are going to betray Me, and in our mind we visualize 11 pair of eyes going to Judas because we're just so ingrained with that thought. But that's not what occurred at all. They're confused. They're saying, "What?" And one of the Gospel writers tells us they began to say, "It's not me, it's not me, it's not me."
The Reality of Their Commitment
Now while this is not a main thrust of this lesson today, I want to give it a good chunk of time here. Remember what I just said to you: these guys had spent a thousand days together. They had walked away from their businesses, from their industry, from their job. You've read the Scripture—when Jesus comes in contact with one of these guys, He says, "Follow Me." And the Scripture will say, "Immediately they followed Him." They didn't transition out. They didn't go to halftime and then have a crisis and then move out. They didn't get a broker and sell the deal. They were gone. Immediately.
They've put everything into this Messiah. They don't fully understand who He is, though they're beginning to get a sense that He's something extraordinary. And they're following Him. They don't have much money, and when you don't have much money and you're going to put somebody in charge, you want to pick somebody you can trust. You want to pick the guy that
You've got the faith in the guy that's proven that you can trust him with the cash. And they know who that is because they spent this time together and they get together and the guy they give the money to, the guy they put in charge, the treasurer of the group is Judas. Here's what I want you to see about this Judas guy. They all early on trusted him enough to give him the dough.
On the night they're betrayed, He said, I'm wondering if you're going to betray me. They didn't know it was Judas. We do. We miss a lot, reading back. What's that tell you? I'll tell you what it says. It says, you can fool me and I can fool you.
Think about that. No one in that room saw a crack in the armor. When Jesus said, one of you are going to betray me, they didn't go, oh Judas, why would you do it? They just said, it isn't me. I don't know who it is, but it isn't me.
The Danger of Self-Deception
I beg you to look at your own life to see if perhaps you have fooled yourself and are fooling the people around you and you aren't a Christian at all. We had 30 baptisms the last two weekends at church and I'm telling you, we had these high school kids and they were great kids, but of the 15, I'm guessing a dozen of them started with, I was raised in a Christian home, I was a good kid, blah, blah, blah.
Those of you that are parents and grandparents, don't confuse godly obedience with human compliance. We rejoice because the kid will say, yes, Mr. Cleaver, no, Mr. Cleaver, and we think he's a good kid. That doesn't mean conversion.
I can't tell you, at the 15 adult baptisms, how many of them would say, you know, I was in young life, or I was in the church when I was five, or I was this, and everybody around me thought I was a Christian, but there wasn't any change in my life. Nothing changed. There was no growth.
I have a friend who when he went to tell his pastor I became a Christian over the weekend, the guy said, I thought you always were. Boy, come to grips with that, will you? Take a look at your life. And I guess the majority of you are just automatically going to go, yeah, I'm okay.
I'm just saying to you, you don't want to be a Judas guy. And by that, I don't mean a betrayer. I'm saying somebody who's just a deceiver. I'm guessing the guy thought he was okay.
Even at the end, after he betrays Jesus, what does he do? There's a certain sense of remorse there, isn't there? There's a certain sense of sorrow there, isn't there? But even then, he doesn't come to Christ. He goes and hangs himself. He doesn't move to repentance. He moves to despair.
If you can be around Jesus for 1,000 days and never be converted, and you can be around these 11 guys for 1,000 days and they never detect it, let me tell you, you can blow in and out of church and fool the whole lot of them. Don't do it. Watch out. Be on your guard.
And I understand it's got nothing to do with the lesson. I just think that's a great point. A great place to hide from God is right there in church, man. I'll tell you where you can hide and they'll never look is in the choir. They never look there.
The Glory of God Revealed
Here you go. Verse 31. We'll move quickly. Now is the Son of Man glorified and God glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself and He will glorify Him immediately.
What in the world is that? What He's talking about is the glory of God. He's making the connection here between He, Jesus, and the Father. They're connected. They're coming together. They're one and the same. Jesus is going to die on the cross. It's going to glorify the Father. And the Father's going to glorify the Son.
If you look at John 17, as Jesus is praying what is in fact the Lord's Prayer, He said, I have glorified You in all that I've done. In fact, Jesus says something in John 17 that's a pretty remarkable thing that might be a good thing for you to be able to say at the end of your life, John 17, verse 4, I glorified Thee on earth having accomplished the work which You gave Me to do.
How would you like to be at the end of your life and say that? God, I glorified You. Here's how I did it. I did what You gave Me to do. I did the job. I finished the task.
God Has Given You Something to Do
Implied in that, and again, this is tangential, but implied in that is that you understand God's given you something to do. You've discovered what that is. You've pursued that. And you've accomplished that. You've done that.
Do you understand that you're different than everybody else on the earth? Yes. Do you understand that God uses you differently? That God brought you to Himself in repentance and faith for a purpose?
God gave you a gift. God gave you friends. Some of you, God gave you horrible things in your life. Divorce, heartache, pain, suffering, bankruptcies, failures, difficult things that you would have never chosen.
God either caused them or allowed them. Otherwise, He's not God, right? I mean, that's simple. He either caused them or allowed them.
Why would He do that? Well, so that you would learn. So that you would grow. So that you would become independent of yourself and dependent upon Him. And so you would have something to talk to other people about. Because there's a whole lot of hurting people out there, and God tends to use people who've been through similar experiences to say, you know what? I've been through that. I've had a kid that's died. Let me tell you, I didn't think I was ever going to make it. But I did. And I have. And God used it.
Jesus Prepares His Disciples
God's given you something to do. The Son is glorified in the Father. And the Father and the Son. Verse 33, Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me. And as I said to the Jews, I say to you now, where I'm going, you cannot come.
You're going to be looking after Me. You're going to want to go with Me. But you can't go where I'm going. Because you can't accomplish what I'm going to accomplish. I'm going to the cross. You can't go there.
And a new commandment I give
You, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, and that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another."
Here's what Jesus is talking about. There's something distinctive in the Christian life, distinctive from just human organizations, and that's this aspect of love. "I give you a new commandment. Love the Lord God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul. When you have done that, love your neighbor as yourself."
That is not, as a lot of the popular gurus have tried to say, Jesus saying, "Oh, you can't love others until you love yourself. You don't love yourself? You've got low self-esteem? Oh, you've got to get that fixed first." No. What Jesus is saying is, even low self-esteem is a great example.
You don't have low self-esteem. There's no such thing as low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is pride gone amok because you're concerned that people don't think highly enough of you as high as you think, so you think low of yourself. That's how silly and lost we are. That's how confused we are in this process. Low self-esteem is a matter of pride and most sin is. That's the core of most of your sin. "Well, my sin is greed." Well, you're greedy because you're a proud person. You're materialistic because you're proud.
The Special Love Among Believers
He's saying, "Listen, you've got to love." And that separates us. And He says, "You love one another." He's not talking here about loving just everyone that comes down the street. Do we love everyone? Yes, that's the call. But there's a special kind of love for those who are brothers and sisters in Christ.
Does God love everybody? I guess so in a generic sense. God loves everybody. But He has a special love for His kids. I've been around a lot of people who say, "I love to work with kids." But if you push them, they're going to tell you that they love their kids more than they just love a group of 100 little ones. Does God love everybody? In a sense, yes. But is there a special love that God has for His children? Absolutely, the Scripture teaches that.
And you and I are to love everyone? Yeah, but there's a special love. Here's the distinctiveness about the church. It's not like the Elks. It's not like the country club. It's not like the office. There's a difference there.
The Witness of Early Christian Love
You go back and you read early church history and the historians, secular historians, are baffled by what they see in the church. They're saying there's people that don't have food. There's others who are going without food to feed them. There's people who don't have money to bury the dead. And there's others who are sacrificing to feed them.
It's said that in the early church, as martyrdom would become more and more of a blight on that church, as they were locked up, being released to go out and fight the lions, that they were arguing in line over who was going to go first. That's how I know none of my family was in that den. Because I'd have been there saying, "Hey, I don't mind waiting. I like waiting. I go to Cheesecake Factory at 6:30. That's how good I feel about a wait. I don't mind waiting." There's a love there.
So when you look at a church that can't agree on whether they have a Christmas tree or not, and they end up fighting in the parking lot over it, or when you get a church where they're arguing with the pastor and the pastor's arguing with the music guy, or you get a church where they're having meetings and pounding the table and talking about, "These drums are of Satan," you understand the world looks at that and says, "That's no..." That's silliness.
The distinctive mark, or at least one of them, that Jesus says separates the church from every other organization, the distinctive mark that the world will look at and see in the church and go, "That's a magnet," is love. That's what He says. "By this all men will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another." Doesn't talk about doctrinal truth, and Lord knows, if you've been around us, we're going to drive that home. But what He's going to talk about is, is there love there? Even the truth, what's He say? Give the truth in love.
Peter's Bold Declaration
Peter's there, and Peter says, "Lord, where are You going?" Peter's right there, and he asks this question, and He said, "Where I go, you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me later." Where I'm going now to the cross, you can't go. You can't save yourself, Peter. There's nothing you can do. But I'm going to go. Now later, you're going to be able to follow Me. What's He talking about? I'm going to be in heaven. I'm going to be united with you forever.
So Peter said, "Lord, why can I not follow You now? I'll lay down my life for You." And Jesus answers and said, "Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a cock shall not crow until you deny Me three times."
Now we again have so sterilized this that we miss it. Peter's dead serious. You see what mistake Peter made? He made a fundamental error. At this moment, here's what Peter did. At this moment, Peter became religious. At this moment, Peter's not saying, "Christ, what are You going to do for me? What have You done for me? How can I find trust and faith in You?" At this moment, Peter said, "I'll handle this."
The Problem with Religion
All religion. And I mean every religion. I don't care what it is. I don't care the package. I don't care if they've got Jesus Christ in their title. I don't care if they're worldwide with millions of members. Billions of members. It doesn't matter.
Let me check time here. Because some of you are going to check out right here emotionally. And you're screwing yourself over if you do. Because I will come back to you, but if you're going to check out, there's nothing I can do. But you've got to get your arms around this.
Any religion other than fundamental, orthodox, evangelical, born-again Christianity—anything else is wrong. And it's all religion that's based to one degree or another
The Problem with Religious Effort
What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? I'll teach high school. I'll work with the junior hires. I'll hit First Fridays. I'll say rosaries. I'll go to this. I'll do that. I'll tell you what I'll do. This has got to work. I'll give you some dough. Folding kind. I'm not talking quarters and nickels. I'm talking fives and tens. That's got to win you over, doesn't it?
All of that. Every ounce of that that's done to try to appease God for your sin. And that's what's behind most of it. All of that's worthless religion. You're wasting your time. You ought to go shoot pool or something. Go to the ball game. Play a round of golf. Watch a movie. You're wasting your time.
You cannot appease a holy God on your own effort. That's the whole point. Peter says, I'll see your junior high teaching and I'll raise you a life. I'll die. I'll die! Peter, you're not getting this. I think you're a little cocky, Peter. And I think Peter means it. But we know that night, by the end of that night, there's going to be a little 80 pound servant girl that's going to say to him, weren't you with Him? And Peter's going to go, no, I was never with Him. No, I've never been around Him.
Two Forms of Religious Deception
That's religion. Do you see that? Even a religion that talks about Jesus died for our sin, Jesus died in our place, Jesus died over there. Even then, when you push them and you say, was that enough to save you? They're going to say, no. You've got to do something too. Right?
So all religion is either a process where they see me having to try to appease a holy God, or some sort of a joint venture project where Jesus is the general and He's certainly done a lot of it, but I've got to contribute my limited partnership assets to it. That's what it says. And Jesus says, no. You need to get that. That's religion. God hates religion. God thrives in relationship.
Don't Let Your Heart Be Troubled
Verse 14, now we get into the heart of it. Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me. Again, third time already today, will you see the humanity of this? Here are these guys gathered around. They sense something momentous is about to happen. They've just understood that Jesus has now been betrayed.
They've been told they can't go where He's going. They've been told that He's going away. They have invested everything into Him. There is an overwhelming sense, I would assume at this point, of loneliness, maybe even panic, certainly discouragement. And Jesus says, verse 14, it will be okay. Don't let your heart be troubled.
You know what I love about this? It's a great reminder to you and me. You know what I love about it? It doesn't say the circumstances are going to change. He doesn't say, oh, don't worry about it, because everything is going to work out right, because that won't happen, and that won't happen. No. This is all going to happen. Everything I told you is going to happen, happened.
The Reality of Suffering
Of these 11 guys that are left there, 10 of them that we know of die a martyr's death. The 11th was boiled in oil, as you know, and survived. He doesn't say, don't worry about it. It's going to be great. Daddy will take care of it all. He said, don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me.
Some of the translations, does somebody have an NIV with them? What does the NIV say? The NIV uses the word trust. Eighty times in the Gospel of John, you will see in the noun or verb form the word trust or believe. Isn't this what we've talked about for eight weeks? This Gospel is all about believe. Sometimes, those words are used interchangeably.
The Problem with Trusting
Now, when somebody comes to me and says, hey, listen, don't worry about it, just trust me. We've had a lot of situations like that with breaks before. And I believe, trust me, we can do this break job for $99. We'll have you out the door by 5. It's now three days later and you have $488. And the car doesn't stop. We hear trust me, and the minute we hear it, we're going, nah, that doesn't sound right.
I promise you. I promise you. I watched the Democratic presidential debate the other day. It wasn't even a divisive forum. And they had however many guys, because a couple of them weren't there, and they had six, seven, eight of them. All of them said, I promise you if I'm elected president, I will have universal health care for every person in this country. Every child will have a college education. I promise you.
Look, a promise is only as good, I hope you understand this, as the person who makes it. And even if their heart is sincere, there's a secondary thing. Or their ability to perform what they said they're going to do. Right? I got Ginsu knives that have a lifetime warranty on them, but I can't find Ginsu anywhere. And I guarantee you, when he gave me the knife, they were dead serious. You see that?
Sincerity Isn't Enough
So it may be even a person sincere. Trust me, they may even be sincere when they say that. It's not even sincerity. Do they have the ability to do it? A limited lifetime warranty. That's my favorite one the other day. A limited lifetime. What is that? I don't even know. See that? Trust me.
Now, you've got to make a decision. You've got to figure it out. When Jesus says, trust Me, number one, is He sincere? Does He really mean it? And number two, can He do what you're trusting Him to do? Because if He can't, it isn't worth a lick, is it?
Jesus's Promise of Preparation
In My Father's house are many dwelling places. If it weren't so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. And I'll go prepare a place for you, and if I do, I'm going to tell you again and receive you to Myself that where I'm going, there you will be also.
Verse 4, John 14, and you know where I'm going. Now, Jesus had just told them where I'm going you can't go because He was speaking of the cross. And now He says, I'm telling you where I am going. I'm going to go and I'm going to prepare a place for you. Then I'm going to come back and get you. And then you're going to be with Me. And then Jesus says, you know where I'm
And Thomas says—and what a great moment, and this is what we're building to today—Thomas said, "Lord, we don't know where You're going. How do we know the way?" Thomas is saying, "I guess maybe the other guys get it. I haven't got a clue. I don't know what You're saying here. I don't know what You're talking about. I don't know when You say, 'You can't come. You can come. I'm going to go. I'll come back and get you. I'm going to tear it down in three days, raise it.' I don't know. I don't know what You're talking about."
Now there's no question, is there, that He's talking about this Father's house. There's no question that He's talking about paradise or heaven or whatever that real tangible place is. I almost said whatever that concept is, but that wouldn't be fair because some people just see it as a state of mind. I had a guy not long ago tell me this is heaven. I'm saying, "You have got to be kidding me." That's a tough sell right there. I don't even think this is hell because there's too much enjoyment here for that. It's hung in between.
The Definitive Answer
So Jesus says, "Look, here you go. This is pretty clear. I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life and no one comes to the Father but through Me." Jesus is very, very clear here. The translation is accurate and the definite article is purposeful. Jesus does not say—and you know this—Jesus does not say, "I am a way" or "I am a truth" or "I am a life." Jesus uses the definite article which eliminates all other possibilities and He says, "I am THE way. There is no other way. I am THE truth. There is no other truth. I am THE life. There is no other life."
And again, I have these conversations and I presume you do. And you watch them all the time. You watch that last thing with Larry King and MacArthur was on there and Deepak Chopra and all those guys, and the minute they started talking about the Scripture, "Well, that's your interpretation, that's your interpretation, that's your interpretation." Well, sure it is. Could it be wrong? I guess. But if Jesus wanted to clarify, here you go. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and life." "We're not really sure what you mean." Well, He didn't leave it foggy. "No one can come to the Father but through Me."
I mean, how else are you going to interpret that? Where else are you going to go with that? I'll tell you what. You can't go anywhere else with it. What you start to do is try to go, "Well, to go through Jesus really means..."
The Modern Problem with Exclusive Truth
In a world that you live in—and there are some issues in the world you live in, and I'm talking about spiritually—in the world you live in, the problem, a problem that we have is this: we are convinced that there are lots of ways to God. And we are convinced that everyone's belief is equally valid. Now, we live in a country where we die for the right for every religion to exist. I'm not proposing to you a national religion. That's not my deal. Let the Buddhists do it.
That's why we had a kid—one of the kids out of our high school class was a valedictorian at one of the high schools here. And when he got up to do his valedictorian address, he just basically did the gospel. And they went nuts. "What if we had a Muslim?" Let him do it. I'm not a bigot. Let the Muslim do his deal. Let the Buddhist... I don't care. What do I care? I'm not afraid of the truth.
We live in a place where everybody can say whatever they want. And you can say this, or this, or this. Go ahead. Think about it. They're not all right. They may all be wrong, but they're not all right.
Two Gates, One Destination
Jesus didn't stutter and stammer in Matthew 7, verse 13: "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter on it. For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few that find it."
Here's the picture that Jesus gives us. Two gates. And for years, here's what I thought. There's a gate marked heaven and a gate marked hell. That's not what He says. There's two gates marked heaven. One's a broad, easy gate. Wide. Many people on it. There's another gate that's narrow, difficult, and few people on it.
This picture over here is the majority of humanity. This picture over here is a remnant of people that God has chosen to save through His Son Jesus Christ. That's just the way it is. And your argument isn't with me if you don't believe that. Your argument isn't with me. I didn't cook this up. That's what Jesus says.
Didn't you discover that the way we came into this world physically was fairly narrow and hard? Wasn't that birth canal? I have very clear memories of it. I'm kidding about that part. But I mean, none of you... That's how you arrived, my friend. None of you were beamed down. And it's a beautiful physical picture of spiritual birth. It's narrow and it's difficult and hard. And it's not universal.
The Question Everyone Asks
And again, rather than have you come up afterwards and ask me a whole bunch of questions, "Are you saying to me that if somebody doesn't believe in Jesus Christ the way you believe it, that they're going to hell?" Let me make sure we understand what I'm saying. I'm saying to you, if somebody doesn't believe what the Bible says about Jesus Christ, they're going to hell. Otherwise, this thing isn't true.
Do you see a subset of this? We don't have time to develop it. But let your mind think. Just think for a second. If that statement's not true, then we can just can this book. See, you're down to the whole point of authority. What's the authority in life? Who's the final authority? What tells the truth?
Clarence Thomas hearings. Those were important times for me. There was one senator that says, "Clearly here, we have two very credible witnesses. Clearly we have two witnesses who have two different versions of the truth." Do you get it? No! One of them is lying big. One of those two was lying bigger than Dallas. What a man to be! Because they're saying two different things. She's saying he did this. He's saying I didn't do that. We can't even grapple with this.
with that as a society. It just kills us to think somebody's lying or wrong. Somebody's lying, right? One of them's telling the truth, right?
So you've got somebody coming to you and saying, "Listen, Jesus was a good man. Jesus died on the cross. You know why? To demonstrate love. To show us how we're supposed to care for one another. To show us that we're being willing to die for one another, even if we have to. It's a beautiful picture, isn't it?"
You missed the whole point, pal. He didn't die. Is there a picture of love? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did He die?
The Truth About Why Christ Died
Go to 2 Corinthians. We've got, I don't know, five minutes or so. 2 Corinthians 5. Look at verse 21. And what you have here is the whole picture of Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He, that's God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin."
Now, Jesus lives the perfect life. I had a long argument with a guy the other day about this. And the argument went was, he said, could Jesus have sinned? And I hate to introduce this at this late hour because it will just tie you in your shorts. But could Jesus have sinned? Why, absolutely not. How could He sin? There's no way Jesus could sin. How's Jesus going to sin? Can God sin? No. Well, how hard was that to figure out? Why are we arguing about that?
"He made Him who knew no sin." Jesus was perfect, right? "To be sin on our behalf." What does that mean? It does not mean that Jesus sinned on the cross. It means at that moment, at the epicenter in the history of mankind, at that moment, Jesus was treated as though He was guilty of every sin that every believer who had ever lived had committed. That's what He meant. "He became sin on our behalf that we might become righteous."
You Are Righteous in God's Eyes
Can you imagine that? Think about that. In God's eyes, positionally, you're righteous. That's sad, isn't it? When you think about it. Because you know what a little puke derelict you really are. You know how sinful you are. Don't you? Every one of you do. You know that.
You know your flinch is to lie, and you know your flinch is to steal. You know your flinch—Guys! You know your flinch is to steal that second look and third look. You know what it's like to go on the road and be by yourself in a temptation, even the godliest of you? You know what it's like. You know how sinful your heart is.
God sees you as righteous. Why? Because you have been bathed, clothed, covered in Christ.
You Are a New Creature
Now, does that make a difference? Yeah. Let's look at it real quick. Because I want you to enjoy—Because this sounds like a downer, I guess, maybe for some. I don't know. It seems that way.
"If any man's in Christ, he's a new creature and all things have passed away." You're a new creature. We're talking about—Listen. Now I'm a Christian. I'm a new creature.
I had a gal who came to one of the studies. She was a tough chick. You could just tell it. She was tough. She was—I put her on that list. I have a list in my mind of women that can beat me up. So I put her on that list. Okay? Might be the captain. She might be a captain of the team. But she was a tough gal.
So, God saved her. God saved her during the week. And she came back the next week. She said, "This is incredible. She said, you know, I'm reading this thing. You know, I don't know who you read when you read Scripture. I don't know who you identify with. You know who she identified with? Mary Magdalene. And somebody introduced her to that.
And she said, "You know what? In that study that you have at noon, she said, I've slept with probably half a dozen guys in that study. She said, I bet I've slept with 200, 250, 300 guys in this town. She said, you know what I've just discovered the other day? While physically I can never get this back, do you know that in God's eyes and spiritually, emotionally, I'm a virgin again?" That's a new creature.
Where True Healing Comes From
Some of you are walking around with a load of guilt. Where am I going to get this? And you've got some guy you're paying $150 an hour to sit there. And you put, "Uh-huh, uh-huh. How do you feel when she does that? Oh, our time is up. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Your insurance is up." And you're gone. Are you healed? No.
You can't be healed. Because the person—look it, you're only going to get forgiveness from the person you've sinned against. Who'd you sin against? God. He's the only one that can forgive you. How does He forgive you? In Christ.
The Choice Before You
So here you go. Long, long, long story short here. You're either one of God's kids or you aren't. To be one of God's kids, I have to believe or trust in Him. What does that mean? It means to acknowledge my sinfulness, to acknowledge my sin separated me from God, to acknowledge that there's nothing I can do to appease a holy God. Nothing I can do to reconcile myself to Him. But Christ died.
And if I believe, trust—Not just mental assent. Not just check off the facts. That means I'm staking my life and my death on that truth. In the simplest form. I put my money where my mouth is.
If that's the case, you're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. And you're a brand new creature. And life has changed. And everything is different. And you can have joy and all the stuff the world's looking for. You're going to have it. Not can have it. You will have it. Your life will be transformed.
Not Sweet By and By, But Right Here, Right Now
Doesn't that sound great? It's not about the sweet by and by. I wrote something the other day. Something like they're singing hymns of the sweet by and by. They're thinking thoughts. Thinking thoughts lofty and high. Dreaming dreams up into the sky. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. We're thinking about this kind of stuff all the time.
It's not sweet by and by. It's right here, right now. This is shoe
This transforms your life. Boom. Immediately. You know Christ? Are you religious? What an awful place. You're way better off just acknowledging. Come clean. Just say you're religious and you're not a Christian. And you'll find some refreshment. I find it intellectually honest. God begins to open your heart. Your life will change.
We'll pick up right there next week. Father, thank You for this truth. Thank You for this wonderful, magnificent truth. It's so hard for us because culturally, we're pretty broad in our thinking. Pretty open-minded. And this is pretty narrow. But whether it's narrow or not isn't the issue. Or whether I'm even sincere or not, that's not the issue. The issue is, is it true?
Father, we know it is because Your Bible cannot and does not lie. So I pray that Your Spirit would apply this truth to every life in this room. Father, we ask it of You in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week.