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Sermon text: 2 Cor 5:21
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
As part of the "Help, I'm..." series, Rev Reuben deals with the topic of holiness, which means being set apart. Some of us Christians struggle with feelings of unholiness or unrighteousness because of something we did in the past that we think God is unable to forgive us of.
The serpent is a symbol of evil as a result of the devil taking on its form to tempt Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Yet, in Jn 3:14, Jesus likened Himself to the bronze serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness! Why so? This was because a divine exchange took place on the cross, whereby Jesus was treated as the worst sinner and took our place of condemnation and judgement. But the flip side of it was that we in turn have taken His place as being righteous before God the Father. That is why Paul meant in 2 Cor 5:21 -- God made Jesus who was sinless to become sin, so that we can be the righteousness of God in Christ.
To better illustrate this truth, he invited 2 volunteers up on stage and gave them a tshirt each -- one was to wear an ACS tshirt and the other a Raffles tshirt. The one initially wearing the ACS tshirt is like Jesus, and the one wearing the RI tshirt is like mortal men. At the cross, the 2 exchanged tshirts: so the one representing Jesus ends up wearing the RI tshirt and the one representing mortal men ends up wearing the ACS tshirt.
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