Daily Bread

Perfect Righteousness – 2 Corinthians 5:21

One of the greatest mysteries in life is the willingness of Jesus Christ to die for us. Though we have always answered and found the right answer for that, we still can never grasp the depth of it. It is not a usual thing for a person to die for another person. Even those people who are very close to us and who deeply loved us are not ready to die for us. 

The verse for today talks about the summarization of what Jesus did and how He did everything for us. The Gospel of reconciliation is really indeed a mystery for us especially when our verse today says that the God the Father made Jesus who hates sin and knows no sin to become sin for us so that we will be made righteous in Him. 

For a normal person, it will be very unfair for us. Imagine, you have to take the fall of the crime you have not committed for the sake of someone else— absurd, right? However, that is exactly what Jesus did for us. He took all the blame for us. He took the wrath of God for us. He stood between us and the wrath of God to shield us from it. 

With God in His grace, He stretched out His hands to us sinners to welcome us through the death of Jesus Christ. He has made our eternal life possible and our redemption possible. In Jesus Christ through faith in Him, we will be forgiven, made righteous and forever be clothed in His identity. Everything He has given to us is out of His grace— the favor we never deserve. 

With God in His mercy, He stooped down to our level. He stretched out His patience and gave us the way out we don’t deserve. By stooping down on our level, He made Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He was the One who paid the penalty of our sins and received the condemnation we rightfully deserve but He does not. 

Lastly, with God in His love, He left the comforts of heaven to suffer in this corrupted world. Because of His love for us, He was ready to sacrifice everything for us, even His life. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, we have been made new and clothed in God’s righteousness. Again, because of His grace, mercy and love, we will now be identified with Him and we are adopted as His children. 

Now, God the Father made God the Son, Jesus as our atoning sacrifice where He poured all His wrath. He was the One who paid for all the trespasses we made. Before, at the Old Testament time, the people will have to choose the purest, the best lamb to become their atoning sacrifice as they ask for forgiveness to God. However now, Jesus was the lamb we will sacrifice in the altar. He was made like a criminal because of all the sins we’ve done— it is the price of all our sins. 

So, as the verse says about Jesus being made to sin for us, it means that Christ was identified as a sinner, stained with all our sins despite Him being sinless and as He was identified as one of us, we are too, identified in Him by faith. We are identified in His perfect righteousness. He took our sinful nature and changed it into a righteous one in Him. 

Therefore, let us all be grateful that God is full of grace, merciful and loving. We must declare in our mouth and believe in our heart that we have been saved and that Jesus died for us. We must claim the gift of God that was made possible through Jesus Christ. 

May we always be reminded that we are already forgiven and we are already made righteous through our faith in Jesus Christ. Let us always thank and rejoice with God for His salvation and for His love towards us. So instead of putting our hopes and faith into this temporal world, let us put our hope and faith to the living God who sent His Son to die for our stead. 

May we always be grateful and share this good news to all the people we know so that they too will know the goodness of our God and they too will be identified in the likeness of Christ. 

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