Sunday, January 30, 2011

From Pristine Permanent Purity to Complete Convoluted Corruption In Order to Reconcile Us Pt. 2

As I was marching my way through Part 1, it completely slipped my mind to mention that the context of the 2 Corinthians 5:21 passage is reconciliation.  This is the process of God transferring to us through imputation His righteousness in exchange for our sin.  To get a better picture of what I am trying to portray here, let's jump back a couple verses.  2 Corinthians 5:18-19 says, "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."  So, we see that God, through Christ, reconciled us to Himself.  And in verse 19, it flips backwards by literally relaying the same information, but adding that God does not count their trespasses against them.  He does not count their trespasses against them because they have been wholly saturated with the precious, life-giving blood of the Lamb that was slain.  The ministry of reconciliation is the primary means of imputation, the essence of 2 Corinthians 5:21.  Righteousness is what we are after in this post.  

How does the process of reconciliation take place?  It begins with righteousness and ends with it.  First, God has to grant it.  If he grants it, then the end result is inevitably whatever he chooses from that first preconception.  In the case of reconciliation, God does not have to impute His righteousness on our behalf.  However, in His radical mercy, God chose to impute His tremendously beautiful perfection on us, while He took full responsibility for every sin we have ever committed.  He gave Himself.  He sacrificed his perfect, blameless body by becoming intimate with our sin in order that we might receive his blameless righteousness.  Since he granted, initiated, and accomplished this plan, the factor of us receiving the complete wholeness of His righteousness is inevitable.  He horrifically bore our sin, and we delicately inherit His righteousness.  That is why my former college pastor, Kevin, calls it the great switcharoo.  It is the greatest, most significant trade ever developed in the history of mankind.  

God, who by no means, has the right to interact with mankind period somehow takes on human flesh to interact with mankind.  He not only interacts with us.  He loves us.  HE SEES OUR POTENTIAL WHEN WE THINK WE HAVE NONE.  When all we can see is the guiltiness, the rottenness, and the shamefulness of our sin; He reveals to us the marred figure of His Son, and shows us that we are righteous, because of Christ's astounding sacrifice.  Brothers and sisters, HE HAS IMPUTED HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS ON US!!!!  :)  We are holy and blameless before His throne.  We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the realm of His beloved Son, because He has forgiven us all our trespasses (Colossians 1:13-14).  He has reconciled us, redeemed us, revitalized us, forgiven us.  We should be leaping for joy at this amazing prospect.  He, who reconciled us, does not count our trespasses against us.  As the Psalmist says in Psalm 103:12, we can fully rest assured that God will never bring our sins to the table again.  They were crucified with Christ once and for all.  Therefore, our sin does not take center stage.  Instead, Christ's imputed righteousness, given to us, steals the spotlight.  All because He chose to reconcile us.     

Sola Deo Gloria!!!!!                 



         

5 comments:

D.R said...

Hey, thanks for this message: what an amazing God we serve! Not only did He die for us, but He put Himself under mankind, to be judged by them. What a thought!

Anyway, just thought I'd say thanks, and that your blog is being followed over here in Lewis, Scotland

DR (My Island Story)

Joshua said...

Amen to that Dr. Morrison. He is an amazing God. Thanks for following me from over in Scotland. :)

Bleah Briann//Lovely said...

LOL No Joshua they didn't all happen today. But they may or may not have occurred this past week. And I may or may not be willing to disclose that information. ;)

LOL they were pretty embaressing though.

I double dog dare you to do it yourself.

Angie Gamgee said...

Absolutly amazing!

Joshua said...

Angela,
I agree. The righteousness of God is amazing. Thanks for the comment. :)