Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

As we embark on the final chapters of John, on Sunday I said I would be framing each sermon between now and the crucifixion of Jesus with 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He [God the Father] made Him [God the Son] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” That is the backdrop and foundation for all of the historical details.

Along those lines, there are a couple of glorious quotes from a sermon Jeff Pollard preached when a number of us were able to worship at Mount Zion a few Sundays ago:

“All our sins are heaped upon Him; and all of His righteousness is heaped upon us.”

This is the great exchange laid before us in 2 Corinthians 5:21! Jesus knew no sin, but He was sent to have the sins of His people heaped upon Him, to bear every single one. But that is not all. All of His righteousness is then heaped upon His people in return. It is the “double cure” of the hymn “Rock of Ages”: “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure!”

Jeff Pollard then said this of Judas:

“We’re made of the same stuff as Judas, and would be Judas, if the Lord had left us on our own.”

Judas is simply emblematic of what any one of us would be if God left us to follow our natural desires and serve our own inclinations. What we have done and would do is bad enough, but so much worse is who we are when left alone to be our true selves. (Take that, Disney!)

Oh, praise God for His unfathomable grace! He has not left us with the heap of our own sins, but Christ has born our sins and given us His righteousness in their place!

Your brother,

Jason