2 Corinthians 5:21
Past The Roots
The gospel. The Good News of Jesus. The heart of Christianity. The reality that God has sent HisSon, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins that we might be set free from its powers - a transformed life- set free for everlasting joy.
The gospel is like a multifaceted diamond. One beautiful, complex, precious truth that can beseen from many angles. It is beyond comprehension because it is about an eternal God, but it is not beyond reach.
“Shallow enough for a child not to drownDeep enough for an elephant to swim.”-Augustine
We could spend an eternity swimming the depths of the gospel and still never hit the bottom. And yet it is simple enough that even a child can understand its beauty.
One bible verse that sums up the heart of the message of the gospel is: '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
Theo Von
Comedian Theo Von recently went viral for expressing with sadness his struggle with a brokenness deep inside himself that he can’t seem to fix. Despite not being a Christian, he has started praying,
“God, will you come - all the way - past the roots.”
This is something we can all relate to. We know what’s right but we still do what is wrong. Romans 2 says this is evidence that we are made by God. He has written his moral law on our hearts. Knowing right from wrong is evidence we are made in the image of God.
But there’s this other part of us that desires to go against that moral law. We don’t like to be told what to do. We like to do our own thing, even if we know that thing is wrong.
And there’s an even bigger problem - even if we learn to control our wrong behaviours, we can’t change our wrong desires. We have broken roots that run deep inside us.
A Root Problem
According to the Bible our roots go back to the first man - Adam. He stood as humanity’s representative. He is like the sourdough starter; whatever he is like, every other person after him will be like.
God made him to enjoy God and glorify Him. He was free to live and serve God. But by Genesis3, when faced with a moral decision, Adam does exactly what each of us has done at some point in our lives and chooses to do the wrong thing despite knowing what is right. And in that moment, the poison of sin entered the picture and infected every other human who would come from Adam. The greatest tragedy of Adam’s sin is that we were cut off from God. Our offence could not stay in the presence of a Holy God.
This is our story. Theo Von is right, we have a root problem and even beyond that. A deep brokenness that goes beyond the realm of us being able to fix ourselves.
The Gospel
‘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
This is good news. It starts with God. It is HIS work. It is what HE has done to change the story. He made Him - that is Jesus, the Son of God, God in flesh, God come down from heaven. He steps in to our story and gets to the very roots of our brokenness. Jesus gets you, because He has walked the same experiences you have.
This is important - in other parts of the Bible, Jesus is called the second Adam. A new kind of representative for humanity. Where the first Adam failed, this new kind of Adam wouldn’t. Yes He is fully God, but He is also fully man. He knew what it was to be tempted - yet He lives a sinless life. Never doubts, never falls, never lusts, never lies.
Then the great mystery of the gospel - He became sin. He didn’t become a sinner, but a sin bearer. He identifies 100% with our sin, taking the roots of our brokenness upon Himself - he carries it to the cross in His body, where He dies and puts to death the power of sin.
At the cross, Jesus deals with the root problem. As the second Adam, He goes back to the very origins of our story and makes a way for our stories to be rooted back in to the life of GodHimself. He stood in our place for us. He dies in our place so that you and I might receive forgiveness.
But it doesn’t stop there. He takes our sin yes - but then He gives us His righteousness. His righteousness isn’t something we achieve, it’s something we receive. He goes past the roots of our story and makes us right with God.
Therefore the gospel isn’t about behaviour. The gospel doesn’t say receive forgiveness now go and earn your righteousness. We can have confidence, however messed up we are, that if we areIN CHRIST - if we are resting, trusting, staking our claim on Him, then our sins have truly been dealt with.
