Red Bird Devotions #29

Uneven Exchange

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

Do you understand what this is saying?  Do you hear the irony?

On the cross, at his very death, Perfect Jesus BECAME all of our petty, foolish, selfish, idolatrous, broken, wayward, ugly SIN so that we—unaware, unappreciative, unacceptable—could be reconciled to God.

…so that we—rejecting, regressing, reprehensible—someday might turn our hearts toward Him and call Him Father.

God had planned this intersection in human history before the creation of the world because He knew; he knew the hearts of His children.  He knew they would go their own way—a way of destruction, death, and disappointment. He knew His fellowship with them would suffer…and they would die…away from Him…UNLESS He intervened.

So intervene He did.  As only He could. 

A Holy God required a Holy Sacrifice—a Perfect Sacrifice—to pay the penalty for our rotten sins.  And so, that Holy God allowed Himself to become rotten, to become SIN, to descend to fiery Hell, so that the wrath of that same Holy God would be satisfied. 

We couldn’t do this—this perfect offering.  He knew this. He showed us this.  He became our Substitute…so we could become His Heart.

….and while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

On that very day we mocked Him, Christ died for us.  We owe Him our very lives.  The uneven exchange is all in our favor.

In accepting Him, we receive life everlasting. 

In giving Himself, God receives us.

I think we got the better deal.

He was despised and rejected by men,
   a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
   and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
   smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:3-5