I was going to preach on one thing and when I walked in, I kind of just

realized I needed to preach on something else, something that's very dear to me.

We may be here for a while,

but this is so necessary.

If you want to know what this congregation is about,

this is what you're going to learn today.

It's about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and you say:

?Oh, I know that!?

No, you don't and neither do I.

I know something about it; you know something about it,

but you do not know all that is to know.

Today in America, we're basically told that the Gospel is kind of the first thing you

learn and then you go on to something much greater. No.

As I said the other night,

the moment Jesus returns, you'll know all about the second coming

but you'll be an eternity of eternities in heaven and you still will not comprehend

all the glory of God revealed in His Gospel.

I'm going to talk about the Gospel and I'm going to share some things that maybe

you have never heard before.

I want us to begin actually in 2nd Corinthians.

Let's go there, 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 20 and 21.

"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us;

we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God."

That's my plea to you today, to be reconciled to God,

to be Christian, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

Now, here's the problem: there's so many people who say that today but then they begin

to lead you maybe through a little program,

a few questions, and if you say yes to every one of those questions, in the end they'll ask you

if you want to repeat a prayer after them. And if you do that, they'll say:

"You're saved! Welcome to the family of God!" And, I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that.

I will tell you about the Gospel

and I will plead with you to turn from your sin and to believe in Jesus Christ.

I will tell you how a person may have assurance; how they may know that they are saved,

but I cannot tell you: "you are saved", it is the work of the Holy Spirit.

And I will warn you with many Gospel warnings that no matter how often you cry out to God

to be saved or how much faith you think you have, if your life does not begin to change,

there is little evidence that you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ unto salvation.

This is the old way and as an ambassador I have to make that clear.

But also I have to make clear to you what is the Gospel and we're going to do that today.

Now, in verse 21 Paul is writing, speaking of God in Christ, it says that "He made Him,"

God made Jesus, "who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,

so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

I know that you've heard this verse before, but do you understand it?

Let's look at the first part: He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

You know, there are many things that Jesus did, that were quite amazing, weren?t they?

I mean absolutely astounding: He cast out demons, He walked across the water,

He calmed the seas, He the raised the dead.

He did so many things, but, you know, what I believe is the most astounding thing about Christ:

He was without sin.

I want you to think about that. You say, oh yes, He never violated the law of God.

That is true, but let's go deeper than that, I want you to think.

In all your life, in all your entire life and mind,

there has never been one moment, one moment

that you loved God as God deserves to be loved.

Do you realize that?

There's not one moment in your entire life that you have loved God as God deserves to be loved.

And yet, Christ loved the Father every moment of every day of His life exactly as the Father deserved to be loved.

There's never been one moment in your life or mine, when we have done what we've done

perfectly for the glory of God.

Not one time, but every action, every word, every thought that Christ ever did, that He ever

had, every one of those, He did them perfectly for the glory of God.

Do you want to be saved by your own good works? Then this is what you have to do:

you have to replicate, imitate

Jesus Christ in every way from the moment of birth to the moment of death.

I think you can see: you failed.

Think about that.

Someone asked me one time: "brother Paul, what's the greatest sin?"

and just kind of joking around with them, I said: "well, I suppose the greatest sin would be to

break the greatest command."

The greatest command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

You've never done that, and neither have I. But Christ always did that, think about that.

What a person He was, what a magnificent person that walked upon this earth.

But it says here: "He made Him, who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf."

Now, what does that mean?

If you know anything about

theology, you know this: we're getting into a very dangerous place right now.

What does it mean that the Father made Him to be sin on our behalf?

Some of the greatest theologians in the world have said: "be very, very careful

what you say now, don't say too much, don't say too little.

This is a very difficult text." See, you've read it many times but have you ever sat down and said:

"what is He saying?"

Does it mean that when Jesus Christ was on the cross, somehow

His perfect nature became defiled and corrupted, became sinful? That He somehow devolved from this magnificent being

that He was into something morally grotesque and defiled, like sin? Is that what it means?

Absolutely not!

There was never a moment on that cross when He was anything other than the spotless Lamb of God.

Absolutely perfect.

Then what does it mean that He was made sin?

Well, the answer is in the second part of this verse.

It says: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,

that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

Now, all we have to do is ask ourselves: How does a believer become righteous?

What does it mean that a believer becomes righteous? Well, this is what it means: the moment

that a person believes in Jesus Christ, it does not mean that at that moment they become

perfectly righteous and never sin again,

it doesn't mean they become a perfectly righteous creature incapable of sinning.

The term is a legal term, a forensic term. It means this:

that the moment you believe in Jesus Christ, before the Throne of God

you are legally declared to be right with Him.

And not only are you legally declared to be right with God now,

but God treats you as one who is right with Him. Isn't that a magnificent truth?

He's declared you right with Him legally, because of what Christ did for you.

And then He treats you as someone right with Him not based on how you lived

that particular day, but based upon the perfect finished work of Christ.

Let's take that over to what it means that God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin

on our behalf."

It does not mean that on the cross Christ became corrupted

or defiled in any way as to His person or His nature. It means this:

that the sin of God's people was imputed to Christ.

Our sin was put on Him.

When a believer believes in Jesus, not only are they pardoned,

but the righteousness of Christ is given to them. It's as though they're dressed in Christ?s righteousness.

On that tree our sin was put upon Christ. Do you see that?

It was imputed to Him, considered to be His. Even though He was the spotless,

undefiled, impeccable Lamb of God,

our sin was placed upon Him,

our guilt was placed upon Him and the Father treated Him as He should have treated us.

Do you see that? How should He have treated us?

The wrath of God,

the righteous anger of God should have been poured out on all humanity because of our

crimes, but our guilt was placed upon Christ and what we deserved was placed upon Him.

The guilt He bore was our guilt, it was an imputed guilt, but that does not lessen the pain of it.

It was real guilt.

Imagine a man who is born in sin, who lives in sin all of his life.

He is a man of unclean lips and he dwells among the people of unclean lips. He's accustomed

to sin and he's accustomed to judgment. He's accustomed to God's frown and yet the

bible says: when he dies and stands before God, it will be horrifying

for that sinful creature to stand before a holy God. The shame!

Even though this man's heart is as heart as stone, he will bear an unbelievable shame

because of his sin. Now imagine this:

the holy undefiled Son of God who knew nothing of sin, had never offended His Father, only

knew His Father smile and that is all. On that tree in one moment

He bore all your sin and all your guilt and He felt the Father's frown.

There's no way to describe what that is like.

Imagine for a moment that some of you ladies, who have never, never even hardly touched your toe to the pavement,

you've lived a sheltered life of all cleanliness and goodness.

And you go up, let's say to Chicago and you're witnessing on the streets

and you come amongst a group of prostitutes, hardened and defiled, corrupted.

And you begin to witness to them and all of a sudden the police show up and grab all

of you and throw you in the paddy wagon.

Now, the prostitutes have been through this a million times haven't they?

They're laughing, joking and cussing at the policemen

but you, you can hardly breath. Your shame is so great, you feel so soiled.

You've never experienced anything like that in your life. And then they take you down to

the precinct and they handle you roughly

and they fingerprint you and they make fun of you and they take your picture and then throw

you in jail. And while you're sitting there in that cell, all the other prostitutes are

just talking about who's going to come and bail them out and they're

filing their nails and telling jokes and having a good time and it doesn't bother them at all.

But you, you are eaten up inside, the shame of it...

Do you see? You're not accustomed to such things and you feel soiled.

Now, imagine the Christ, who knew no sin and yet on that tree

your guilt, your sin was imputed to Him and the Father treated the Son

as He should have treated you. Now that's an amazing, an amazing thing.

There's a text of Scripture, in the book of Galatians, chapter 3, that says this,

verse 10: "cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in

the book of the law, to perform them."

Now I want to talk about you and I prior to Christ and I'm going to say some very

very hard things but the reason I'm going to say them

is, so that in the end you get an idea of what Jesus did for you.

"Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law, so as to perform them."

That's you and I under a curse. One who has broken one commandment of the Law is guilty as though he has broken all of them.

And indeed we have broken all of the Law.

There isn't a commandment you can find that you and I have not violated in some way.

And the Bible says that because of that we are under a curse. Prior to Christ we are under a curse.

Now, to be under a curse is to be under the band, it's to be cut off from God and cut off from His people.

But I like to? I feel most effective when I describe it in this way:

to be under a curse means that before all of the holy heavens,

all those blessed creatures that dwell in the presence of God,

you and I, were so defiled, so dark, so disgusting,

so twisted, so loathsome before all of them,

that the last thing we would have heard when we took our first step into hell,

would have been all of Creation standing to its feet

and applauding and praising God because He has rid the earth of us.

That's how bad man is.

And if you don't like that then you can't like the Gospel.

This is the reality of our sin.

You say: "brother Paul, why do you say this?"

Because I want you to love God, I want you to appreciate the Gospel.

You see, a rich man would care nothing if I offered him a baloney sandwich.

A starving man would kiss my hand if I gave him such a meal.

You see, the more we realize how truly dark and twisted and bent and dislocated

and defiled and loathsome that we were prior to coming to Christ,

then we can rejoice in what Jesus has done for us,

especially because we know that He had to bear that in our place.

Christ bore the curse, He bore the curse.

He suffered the curse that was mine, He suffered the curse that was yours, do you see that?

What a price He paid! Once you understand that, then you never question again whether or not

He loves you.

If you'll do that, He'll do anything.

Now, in order to give you an idea of what it's like, what it was like for Christ to suffer under our curse,

I want us just to turn for a moment to Matthew 5 and the Beatitudes.

Let's take the Beatitudes and turn them around. Because the Beatitudes are all about God's blessings.

Let's turn them around a bit and see what we can learn about the cross from the Beatitudes.

It says the blessed are granted the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

The blessed are granted the kingdom of heaven, but the cursed are refused entrance.

You see, yours is the kingdom of heaven because Christ bore the curse and was refused entrance

when He cried out: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"

You see, every time someone asks you: "How are you doing?" and you go: "I'm blessed",

just realize this: the only reason you're blessed is because He was cursed.

It adds all new meaning to it, doesn't it? It cuts out all the superficiality.

The blessed are recipients of divine comfort; the cursed are objects of divine wrath.