The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.” So what does it mean to be God’s righteousness? Without being too heavy in a theological way, it means to be in a “right relationship” with our Father in Heaven! So the next question is this: How do we gain this right relationship with God? It is by and through His one and only Son Jesus. To be right with God is to be in right relationship with His Son. It was His one and only Son who bore the brunt of our disobedience and rebellion on a rough-hewn wooden cross for us. “God made Him to be sin for us …” so that we would not be the object of God’s wrath. As John Piper writes, “Christ suffered and died to absorb the wrath of God.” Yes, He became sin for us so that you and I would not absorb His wrath thereby allowing us to be in right relationship with Him. God declares us to be righteous when we declare that Jesus is the Son of God and invite Him to be Lord and leader of our life. God acts in Christ to actually make the believer a righteous person. God chose this way, the way of the cross, so that we might be His righteousness. As Dorothy Sayers wrote in Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World: “For whatever reason, God chose to make people as they are – limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death – he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from us that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When he was man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it all worthwhile.” Yes, Jesus became sin for us so that we might be the “righteousness of God.” Are you in a right relationship today? You can be by inviting Jesus to take over the controls of your life. And when you do, God will declare you to be righteous in His sight.
