Well, I've been asking you to turn to Exodus for the past several months, but we're gonna take a break this morning. Sometimes circumstances demand that other things are addressed, and so, as the nature of my week was precluding me from getting to Exodus, so we'll be in another text this morning. I invite you to turn with me to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5. We'll just zero in on one verse, but to get ourselves a running start, we'll begin in verse 16. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, in a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation." Let us bow in prayer. Father, we need your help to understand this text and we pray that by your Spirit, you would teach us and that we would receive what you desire us to receive. There'd be no impediment, Lord, to receiving the fullness of the truth of this passage. Oh Lord, we pray that you would teach and instruct us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. I think one of the saddest statements that you can hear from someone is something along these lines, where they're maybe describing a relationship that they had in the past, and then they say, but I haven't spoken to that person in 20 years. We had a falling out. There are those situations where there are such rifts in a relationship that two people can't even talk to each other anymore. You can't be in the same room, you can't pick up the phone and call. There is such a great obstacle in the way between you and another person that the relationship is effectively gone. Not only is it really gone as far as all the friendship and love that was once there, but really what's been put in its place is enmity and strife, so much so that you can't even talk to another person without it coming up, whatever the situation was, you may have those relationships that are coming to mind as I describe that. You may have somebody in your life that you are removed from because of some event, some falling out that happened, or you know people who are like that. They have people in their life that they haven't talked to 20, 30, 40 years. It's a sad thing to have those kinds of relationships. One of the mistakes that the world makes is to think that is the only kind of relationship that needs fixing or that there's been a falling out in. We, as human beings, were created to have a close relationship with our Maker, with our God. And there's been a falling out between the two of us. The falling out is not his fault. The falling out is entirely ours. And it is such a significant falling out that unless things get fixed, there will be a separation for all eternity, wherein we cannot have that close fellowship with our Maker, for all eternity. It's sin that's disrupted that. It's sin that's gotten in the way. Our sin is basically us telling God that we want nothing to do with Him. He's been good. He's been faithful. He's been loving. He's been a provider. But in our own stubborn selfishness, we have basically told God, we don't want anything to do with you any longer. Many people, maybe wouldn't put it in those terms, they would suggest, oh I've got a great relationship with God. He loves me just the way I am. He and I are buddies and we go along in this life all the time. He likes me. What they don't realize is that they've really made a God out of their own ideas, and they think that God likes them, and they don't know the real God. The real God is holy and cannot tolerate our sin. All of our sin is an abhorrence to Him, whether it be lying, or adultery, or lust, or bitterness, or anger, or rage, or selfishness, or pride. Whatever form of our sin there is, it all creates a rift with a holy God who cannot look with pleasure upon our sin. And so far more important than a rift between human relationships is the rift that exists between human and God. But there is this wonderful word that exists. Reconciliation. Reconciliation is taking two parties that are at war with each other and putting them into a harmonious relationship. Taking two entities that had a relationship formerly marked by enmity, strife, and now replacing it with that right relationship of fellowship and friendship. Paul says in this text that he has been given by God the ministry of reconciliation. Here in 2 Corinthians, Paul is dealing with a church that needs some sort of correction, some sort of rebuke and restoration. If you've read 1 Corinthians, you know that this is a church that's gone through a lot of different sin. In 2 Corinthians, they've improved to some degree, but there's still troublemakers among them. And Paul is now describing the character of his ministry, and the character of his ministry is one of reconciliation. The primary kind of reconciliation that he is given is a reconciliation to work between God and man. In verse 18 of chapter 5, he says that all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. In verse 20, he says, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. And then he goes on and says, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And then in chapter 6, verse 1, he says, working together with Him, that's referring to God, then we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. Paul has been given this ministry that is to reconcile God and man, and his job is to proclaim the reconciliation that's offered. Offered toward a people that were at enmity with God. And contained in this Wonderful text is a verse that has so much power, so much substance, that it encapsulates the whole of the reconciling gospel in just a few words. The verse that I'm referring to is verse 21. I'm sure you're aware of it. It is a verse that is so powerful that scholars cannot get enough of it. One pastor, John MacArthur, maybe in your own study, Bible says this, 2 Corinthians also presents the clearest, most concise summary of the substitutionary atonement of Christ to be found anywhere in Scripture. John Calvin said, here, if anywhere in Paul's writings, we have a quite remarkably important passage. Charles Hodge said, there is probably no passage in the scriptures in which the doctrine of justification is more concisely or clearly stated than this one. Philip Hughes says, in these few direct words, the Apostle sets forth the gospel of reconciliation in all its mystery and all its wonder. There is no sentence more profound in the whole of Scripture, for this verse embraces the whole ground of the sinner's reconciliation to God. Perhaps no other verse excels in importance this one. There are others that encapsulate the gospel as well. You know John 3.16. But this has its own particular contribution to our understanding of the gospel. And as we look at verse 21, we want to look at this so that we will be refreshed in our knowledge of what God has done so that you may be reconciled with him. We'll do this by seeing three things. We'll see God's role in reconciliation, Christ's role in reconciliation, and our role in reconciliation. Chapter 5, verse 20 has the very simple command, be reconciled to God. be reconciled to God. The most obvious audience for that would be those who are not reconciled to Him. Those who have outstanding sins that are keeping them from a true and full relationship with Him. For those who may be in that position, You may feel, or perhaps in the past you felt the weight and the guilt of your sin. You've come to a point in your life where you know, really without anybody telling you anymore, that you're a sinner. that you have done so much awful things in your life. You have spent yourself not on living for God, but on living for yourself. And you feel in yourself a corruption, a disdain for who you are. You know that you've really had no love for God, no love for His word, no submission and obedience to what He said, only a life lived for your own fleshly lusts. And you might wonder, when that command is given, be reconciled to God, you could ask yourself, how in the world could I do that? I'm told to be reconciled to God, but I've done so much that has put me at odds with Him. How can I go back? That relationship is broken. You know that you're not good, and you know you can't be good enough. So how do you fulfill that command? Maybe you've gone through that already, and you know that you are reconciled with God, and you think that you're at peace, and you call yourself a Christian, and you live your life knowing that God loves you and cares for you, but you still know that you stumble in many ways. You've failed Him this week. You lost your temper. You lost your tongue. You gave in to that grudge or into that lust. And you hear this command, be reconciled to God. And you think, well, I've messed it up again. How am I to do that? I've failed again this week, not just this week, but every week this year. How am I to do that? Paul's writing to believers. He's writing to the saints at Corinth, and yet he tells them, be reconciled to God. Some of you are walking with a clean conscience. You know you're not perfect, you know that you did fail this week, but in general, your life is on a path of obedience and in the direction that God wants you. You might have the temptation to think, I've been doing great. And really, some of the sins I used to struggle with, they're not there anymore. I'm full of faith, I'm obeying God, I feel that I'm walking in the way that He wants me to walk. And yet this command is there, be reconciled to God. Lest you get too puffed up in your own obedience, we still take heed to this, be reconciled to God, and wonder what is the grounds of our reconciliation. Certainly it's not the amount of songs that we sing, it's not the prayers that we offer, it's not the shoes and the suits that we wear. There is a reconciliation that is deeper than all of those things. And the reconciliation is available to anyone along each of those paths. The reconciliation is summed up in chapter five, verse 21. This is the whole grounds of any human being's reconciliation with God. Whether you've been walking with God for 50 years or you've never taken one step toward Him in your life, this is the only grounds anyone has for reconciliation with God. It's verse 21, for our sake. He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That's the whole ground of our reconciliation. It begins with God's role in reconciliation. We might be tempted to think, first and foremost, with that command, be reconciled to God, you think, well, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to take the first step in restoring this relationship that's broken? And yet, really, this whole reconciliation doesn't start with the offender. It starts with the offended. It starts with God. And God's role in reconciliation can be summed up in one word. He's the reconciler. God is the reconciler. He's the main actor in this. He's the subject of that verb. He made him to be sin. When it tells you, be reconciled to God, it doesn't give you a list of things that you need to do. It immediately goes into something God has done. Be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sin, who knew no sin. God is the main actor. He is the one who is the subject of the reconciliation, the one who does it. Verse 18 says, all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19 says that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Do you ever pause and think, God delights in saving sinners? He likes it. He wants to do it. He's taking it on his own shoulders, not to give us a list of laws that we have to keep in order to be right with him, but he takes it on his shoulders to do the action that will make us right with him. He delights to rescue sinners from their sin and bring them into a right relationship with himself. The whole of the Bible is leading to this decisive action of God working in Christ to reconcile the world to himself. The Old Testament, all 39 books are leading to this moment. The Gospels, all four of those books describe this moment. All the epistles are looking back to what he has done. Revelation is built on the fact that blood of the lamb was spilled by the father. The whole Bible leads to this decisive action. Because God did this, because God is the one who took the first step and the final step, really, in reconciliation. As soon as you start looking outside of the truth of verse 21 for the means of your reconciliation with God, you're walking on ground that will give way. It will not hold you up. There is no other action done that can bring reconciliation between you and God. Any other attempt at reconciling with God other than what's contained in this verse will fail you. You can search to the ends of the earth for some means, some instrument, some incantation, some prayer to offer to the Holy God in order to be made right with Him. But it will not solve the problem of your sin that separates you from Him. We don't reconcile ourselves to God. He reconciles us to Himself, even though we are the offending party. What would you do if God had not acted? What could you bring that would satisfy him to say, I welcome you now into my presence? What could you do? Oh, humanity has no end of incredible things that it will try to... do in order to appease God and bring about reconciliation. We do the silliest things. We burn candles and think that's good enough for God. We offer incense and think that's good enough for God. We bring meals and we think That's good enough for God. We perform great acts of devotion, of our own righteousness, and we think our own righteousness is good enough for God. We make up silly laws and try to keep them, and we think that's good enough for God. Some cultures have even sacrificed their own children and think that will appease our God and make us right with Him. None of these come close to what needs to be done. in order to bring about reconciliation with God. Praise be to our God who is the actor in reconciliation. It does not depend on what we do, it depends on what He has done. God's role is that He is the reconciler. Christ's role is that He is the sinless substitute. Christ's role in reconciliation is that He is the sinless substitute. If you try to leave Christ out of reconciliation between you and God, you're like the man who is trying to raise capital from a room full of people who have filed bankruptcy. You have no hope. You can't start something with nothing. In reconciliation, in order for it to happen, there needs to be something that brings reconciliation between the parties. What do you have that you can bring to the holy, infinite God who owns and possesses everything? What can you do to show that you can be right with Him? You have nothing. But God is not without capital. He has the most valuable thing in the universe. And the most valuable thing in the universe is His beloved Son. And in Him, in Christ, is all that is lovely, all that is valuable, all that is good, all that is righteous. And so God the Father possesses all capital in the universe and all the perfect righteousness that exists in His beloved Son. And so, when we need reconciliation with the infinite God, we don't dig into our empty pockets to try to pull out some lint and offer it to Him. But we look to the capital that God has, that He has invested in His Son. And Christ comes into this world with infinite value. And the Son, who existed in eternity past, came into this world by taking on flesh. He took on humanity. And the capital that He possesses in His humanity is His sinlessness. It says, the very first thing about Christ, is that He is the One who knew no sin. He comes into the world with infinite value because He knew no sin. Of course, Jesus knew what sin was. It's not saying that He was unaware of what was wrong. He knew what sin was better than we did. He knew everything that was sinful. That's how He was able to avoid it. many attestations of his sinlessness in scripture. John 8, 46 has Jesus himself proclaiming his sinlessness when he says to those who are accusing him, which of you convicts me of sin? Now, if you were to ask that question, every hand in the room could go up. But when Jesus asks that question, not a hand can go up in the whole universe. In Luke, chapter 23, as Jesus is on trial before Pilate, three times this governor declares the innocence of Jesus. Luke 23.4, I find no guilt in him. Luke 23, 14 and 15, after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him. It goes on to say that even Herod didn't find him guilty. And then Luke 23, 22, in response to wondering why the Jews want to crucify him, he says, why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no guilt deserving death. Even when Jesus is examined, no guilt can be found in Him. Peter in Acts 3.14 describes Jesus as the Holy and Righteous One. He says in 1 Peter 2.22-23, He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. In Hebrews, chapter four, verse 15, it says, in every respect, he was tempted as we are, yet without sin. In chapter seven, verse 26 and 27 of Hebrews, it says that we have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He's absolutely without sin. When we think of that, we usually think of all the things that Jesus didn't do. We think, when we think, if we were to be without sin, we just think of all the things we wouldn't do, all the bad things that should be absent from our life. But to be truly without sin is not only to have the absence of bad things, but to have the presence of everything good, because the greatest commandments that God issues to us are positive actions, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, And if you fail to do those, then you are possessing sin. And so as it says that Jesus is without sin, not only does He have the absence of all the bad stuff that we think of as sin, but He also has the presence of everything good, a perfect love to His Father and perfect love to man. 1 John 3, 5. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. It says, again, in 521, He made him to be sin who knew no sin. In what way did Jesus not know sin? Very practical ways. He didn't know sin like Adam and Eve knew sin. They were given a clear command by God. They were deceived by Satan into believing that the command that God gave them was bad for them. And so they took of the fruit and direct disobedience to God in aid of it. Jesus, when he faced Satan's temptation, head on, at each point, resolutely stood firm on the trustworthiness of God's word and would not cave to the lies of the devil. He didn't know sin like Adam and Eve knew sin. He didn't know sin like Paul knew sin. Paul says in Romans 7 verse 7, what shall we say then? That the law is sin by no means, yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Paul knew what sin was through the law because as he heard the law say, you shall not covet, it came to his heart, the realization that he coveted. But when Jesus heard, you shall not covet, it came into his heart that he would not covet and desire other people's things. He didn't know sin like Paul knew sin. Christ lived the law and dropped not a single commandment. Jesus didn't know sin like the tax collector of Luke 18 knew sin. It says there that the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus never knew a time where he needed to ask God for mercy in response to his sin. He never cried out to God for mercy for his sin. Jesus didn't know sin like the prodigal son knew sin. Luke 15, verse 18 and 19, this son who ran away from his father and wasted all his money on profligate living says, I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. Jesus never took his inheritance and wasted it on prostitutes. He left his father's inheritance and took on human flesh and lived a life of poverty and obedience to his father. Jesus didn't know sin like David knew sin. Psalm 51, verse 3 and 4, in response to his sin with Bathsheba, David says, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. David was a man after God's own heart who caved to his fleshly desires, murdered in order to cover up his sin, used his position of power as a king in order to cover up his horrible commission of adultery and murder. Jesus, who possessed all power, never used it to cover up anything because he had no need. Jesus didn't know sin in any of those ways, and He doesn't know sin like you and I know sin. When we are honest with ourselves, We all have those blotches of shame, those things on our record that we wish we could just blot out. We know what it is to do something shameful. We know what it is to disobey God. We know what it is to have God's command and say, no, I'm gonna do my thing anyway. We know what it is to live with bitterness. We know what it is to hold a grudge. We know what it is to have anger that shipwrecks relationships. We know the rippling devastations of lies. We know jealousy and envy. Jesus knew none of those things. He knew none of it. Christ possessed the capital of being sinless. He had all of this resource, all of this virtue, all of this merit because of His sinlessness. He basically has the world at His fingertips because of His righteousness, His holiness, His purity. And do you know what He spent it on? Do you know what He spent the full virtue of His righteousness on? He spent it on your sin. It says, for our sake He made him to be sin who knew no sin. The one who had no sin. was made to be sin. That does not mean that he was made to be a sinner in an experiential way, and that he now sinned or committed any transgression against God. He did not take on a sin nature. It was just stated that he knew no sin, and His sinlessness did not stop when He got to the cross. It is not as though Jesus begins blaspheming and cursing and sinning when He's on the cross. To the very last breath, Jesus in Himself was sinless. It says in 1 Peter 2.24 that He continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. To the very last breath, He never committed a sin of His own. There on the cross, He stood as a substitute in the place of sinners. He was without sin, but what this is saying is that He was treated as though He were a sinner. God treated Him as though He was a sinner. precisely because he was without sin and could be the only substitute for sinners. In the Old Testament law, you had to bring a sacrifice for your sin before God at the altar. It had to be spotless, an animal, spotless and without blemish. And as one commentator says, that was to show as that animal died, it did not die because of any defects in itself. It was dying the death that the one offering it was supposed to die. And so here we have the spotless Lamb of God offered as a sacrifice on the cross, standing as a substitute for sinners. Galatians 3.13 says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. 1 Peter 2.24, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree. God spent the capital of His own Son's righteousness in order to stand in the stead of sinners. So Christ plays the role of the sinless substitute in our reconciliation to God. What's our role in this? Our role in reconciliation is to be undeserving recipients of reconciliation. That's our role. That's pretty good. we get to be the undeserving recipients of reconciliation. The language is particular here in verse 21. It says that he made him to be sin who knew no sin. Quite literally, it would be the one who knew no sin. Jesus is set apart from all of us because he is the only one, he is the exclusive one, who knew no sin. There's none other like him. When we know our sin, we ought to realize that we don't deserve a whole lot. We really don't deserve anything. And yet, the way that we live our lives is often as though we deserve everything. We deserve everything good is kind of the way we feel, even though we've committed all these horrible sins against God, we still feel like we don't deserve any bad thing to enter into our life at all. And when we do that, we become like that person who sues the store owner for injuries that they sustained while robbing the store. There's actually a story of a man named Nigel Sykes who in 2014 was robbing a pizzeria. He had a gun, tried to take money from the employees. As he was walking away from the employees, one of the employees came from behind, tackled him, took away his gun, and in that, Nigel Sykes experienced some injuries. Nigel Sykes was arrested, put on trial, but later he filed a civil complaint complaining that the treatment that he received while he was robbing the store was unnecessary, and that as a result of the injuries he suffered during his attempted hold-up, the store owed him $260,000. Mr. Sykes later wrote asking to take back his guilty plea, and he said, quote, I'm not good at making good choices. You don't say. But do we do any less? When we sin, we instantly deserve hell, and yet we think God owes it to us to give us an easy life. free from living in a cursed world. And despite our claims to deserve better treatment, we on our own are sinners, guilty, condemned. We stand before a holy God without one lick of righteousness to offer to Him. And we deserve nothing. We only deserve His righteous punishment against our sin because He is a just judge. And yet, our role in this whole bout of reconciliation is that God made the one who knew no sin to be sin. Notice that key word, for us, or for our sake. Our role in reconciliation is basically to be subbed in for. To be subbed in for is to have someone do something on your behalf that you can't do. Substitutes happen in sports all the time. If somebody gets injured or out of breath or they just can't get the job done, somebody from the bench comes onto the field in order to fill in the place that you possessed. We all need a substitute. We all owe God perfect obedience. We all owe God now the debt of our sin. And we can't pay for either of them. And so now what we need is to be subbed in for. We need to be taken off the field and have somebody else do the job for us. If you're taking an exam, I could help you, perhaps depending on the subject, study for the exam. I'm doing something for your benefit in that case. You could go through all of the different paradigms that you need to learn, all the different lessons that you need to have ready for the exam, and I could sit side by side with you and help you to study, help you to learn. But when the time comes, I could not sit in and take the test for you. I could not fit in, fill in for you in that way. I could have the best interest in mind for you, but I can't sub in for you when test time comes. But in God's economy, when it comes to dealing with your sin and your lack of righteousness and your need to pay the debt that you owe to Him, God allows His own righteous Son to stand in your place, to take the sin test for you, and to pass with flying colors, and to pay all of the capital that He possesses in His righteousness on your behalf so that you can be set free, so that He can stand in for you when the day of judgment comes, to say that He is the one who paid the just penalty for your sin. He subs in where I could not. He subs in where no one else could not. He subs in for you. He is a substitute for your advantage. It says in verse 19 that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. How is that? What happened to our sins? They were punished on the sinless one. God has the right and the responsibility to count our sins against us. So it would be us who have sins that deserve to be reckoned to our account. But Jesus, with all of his capital, is sent to spend all of his capital on our account. It's not just that He helps us with our sin, it's that He comes to take the test for us. We need the grade innocent, but we deserve the grade guilty. What can be done about this for us? Well, Jesus earns the grade innocent and gives that to us and takes our grade guilty and has that put to Him. The reason for this so that we will not be left empty-handed on the day of judgment. But now we have the capital of Christ applied to us. This is the express purpose in verse 21, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. What is God's righteousness? God's righteousness is His perfect standard, perfectly fulfilled. Every last expectation that He has upon humanity, accomplished, completed. Every ounce of justice, every ounce of integrity, every ounce of purity, every ounce of holiness, kept perfectly. That's God's righteousness. And what happens now is this great exchange where Christ takes our sin and we get His righteousness. The robes are switched. If we were to look at the parallels here, verse 21 says, He made him who knew no sin to be sin. And then it says, so that in Him we, we might become the righteousness of God. What would be the describer, the description that is applied to us? Christ is described as the one who knew no sin. How should we be described? We should be described as the ones who knew no righteousness. So that we, who knew no righteousness might become the righteousness of God. Who shall ascend to the holy hill of the Lord? It's the one who possesses clean hands and a pure heart. And in ourselves, none of us possess that, but Christ does. And he kept the law perfectly for us so that his account of righteousness might be applied to us. Philippians 3, eight through nine, Paul writes, indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. the righteousness from God that depends on faith. That's the righteousness of God. It's a gift from Him, a perfect innocence applied to our account even though we have not been perfectly innocent. So, we find in Jesus Christ the greatest righteousness anyone could ever possess, And so righteous was he that death could not hold him. He rose from the grave, having paid our debt, and shows that he is the one who paid the penalty completely and totally. And so that now our accounts of debt to God are cleared, not just cleared, but now all of the righteous merit that he possesses is applied to our account. so that we can be reconciled with God and now have a real, right relationship with Him. If you know your Bibles, you know, however, that this doesn't apply to everyone. There is a way in which we receive this gift, and it's simply by faith. After all of this, what can you do to earn it? Well, you can do nothing. You can't earn this reconciliation. It's what God has done. He's the initiator of the reconciliation. Christ is the substitute. We're the undeserving recipients. But what is incumbent upon us is that we need to receive it by faith. That's the way we live our whole life. It's the way you start. It's the way you run this race. It's the way you finish. We come simply to God acknowledging, I don't deserve anything that you offer to me. I don't deserve to be brought back into a relationship with you. I don't deserve to have anything except for your righteous judgment, but I know that you gave your son for me. I know that He died for me, the sinless substitute. I know that all of His capital was spent for my sin. I know that He offers me His righteousness, and I trust that He is the one that brings me into a right relationship. What other grounds do we have for reconciliation with the Holy God except for 2 Corinthians 5.21? That's all we have. That's it. So whether you've never put your faith in Christ, or you're stumbling a bit in your Christian walk, or you're doing well, the only grounds that any of us have for a right relationship with God is Jesus Christ subbing in for us and spending His righteousness to pay our debt and applying His righteousness to our account. That's it. Let's pray. Father, we have been just shown from your Word this amazing truth that you have given your beloved Son for us who rightly deserve your wrath. And Lord, it's a humbling position to be in. Our pride often gets in the way. We want to be meritorious and deserving of accolades and credit, but Lord, we deserve nothing. Even if we've walked with you for years and years, we deserve nothing. It's all of your grace. We look back to Christ crucified, Him put on the cross, and we thank you for the gift that you've given us so that we can be made right with you. Lord, I pray that you would help us to remember and to live by the truth of what you have done for us. Help us not to become haughty. Help us not to minimize your holiness and think that we can bring something to you that would appease your wrath. Only your son can do that. We look to him and him alone. We pray in his name, amen.