Our Sin and Guilt has Gone!

Our Sin and Guilt has Gone!

2 Corinthians 5:21 "God made Him who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God"

We all hate to be told we are wrong. We particularly hate it when the accusation is correct. We are our own worst accusers, but then we also become our own staunchest defenders. We hate being reminded of our sins, because we know we have sinned so many times.

We may have grown up being told and punished for every wrong thing we did. It affects the way we view life, it even affects the way we see God, and ourselves. We see ourselves continually as worthy of punishment, and we see God as One who stands ready to punish us.

We have an inborn desire to sin. Romans 8:7 tells us that our sinful mind is hostile to God. We are born with this desire to run away from and rebel against God. Consequently we sin on a daily basis, no matter how hard we try not to do so.

But isn't it unfair that we should be born with this inbuilt hatred of God? After all, it is the result of Adam's sin. Ever since that day, this sinful nature has been handed down to us, generation after generation. This sinful nature is what this verse is referring to, when Paul says Jesus became sin for us. God goes right to the root of the matter. The litany of things we have done wrong is eradicated when the root problem has been removed.

The root problem was removed by Jesus taking the responsibility for our sinful nature upon himself, while on the cross. In doing this, he now made us righteous. More than just our sins, our sin(ful nature) has been removed from us, and laid on Jesus' shoulders. He then paid the price for this, by dying for us. Now God sees us as being righteous, not just because we have been forgiven for our individual sins (1 John 1:9), but more importantly because Jesus took the responsibility for our sinful nature on himself.

Our fleshly body still has this sinful nature in it, we struggle against it, just like Paul did (Romans 7:15-25). But the responsibility for it was laid on Jesus. The guilt and shame is no longer ours.

This is why we now are considered righteous by God! How incredible! God loves us so much that he removed the responsibility for this inherited sinful nature, and at Jesus ' return we will receive a new body, without the contamination of sin!