How to Fight:
- Mercy and grace to the wretched drip all over this passage. This is good news! Break it down clause by clause, as you would divide an orange into pieces, and delight in the sweetness in each section.
- For our sake - Why did God act in the gospel? For His own glory, yes, but also for our sake. The gospel is for us, because God is good and for us! Feel the love of God in this clause.
- He made him to be sin - Jesus is pure and holy, the unblemished lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus accomplishes this by being made sin, the very thing that God hates, so that God could crush sin in the form of His Son, so that he would not have to crush us. It sounds wicked, to punish the innocent, but we exult in the grace of God that the Son loves the Father's mission and was willing to be made sin.
- Who knew no sin - Jesus never sinned. He is a perfect and pure priest. He has never sinned, and never will... and this makes Him a perfect offering, and makes His righteousness a perfect covering for our sinfulness. Our impurity cannot blot out His perfection.
- So that in him - When we repent and believe in the gospel, the cross of Christ, His death as our death... when we are 'in him', under his protection... He as our Savior:
- We might become the righteousness of God. The gospel means that we are viewed, by God, as though we are as righteous as God. To me, that strikes me as insanity as I type it. I am sinful, worthy of scorn, and shame, and punishment. I deserve hell. Yet in the gospel... in Christ... I am counted righteous.
- Fight against a feeling of condemnation and despair and unworthiness and all that fills you with fear with that. God views you as righteous through Christ! Praise be to God for His gracious gift! Thank you, Lord Jesus.
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