2 Cor 5:21
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
2 Cor 5:21 is a key verse: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
We use this verse over and over again. It’s a key verse in the whole of 2 Corinthians. It was one of Luther’s favorites. It is the best business deal ever. God took our sin; we take his holiness. He took our death; he gives us life forever with him.
Why this verse? This isn’t the only place that says something like this. Romans 8:3 says that he was made “in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.” This is not some sudden twist of thought. It’s basic. It has something basic to say to us.
We should study and memorize this verse. The problem is that after we do that, the conversation would turn to: “What do you think the weather is going to be like tomorrow?” “Did you see what happened to the price of gas?” We get sidetracked by something else.
The way this goes is someone says: “Pastor, your hobby is to look at such verses, but my hobby is to support the causes that I want to champion. There are many organizations who do good things. If that’s what you like, fine. What else is new?”
It’s useful to take this verse and ask: What does it mean? “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
There are three necessary consequences from this verse that show why it’s a key verse.
First, it says: “In him.” Not in someone else or somewhere else. It is speaking against other religions. “In him” we become the righteousness of God. There are other verses like this, but we don’t remember them. People know John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Again, we sort of pass over “in him.” The same is true in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
What happens in the common way of thinking? One famous Catholic thinker in the last century, Karl Rahner, said: “The truth is in Jesus Christ.” But then he added that there are “anonymous” Christians, which is to say that they would be Christians if they knew enough, but they don’t have it figured out in the words we use. Therefore there are Christians and “anonymous” Christians.
Shortly after Rahner said this, a leader from the Buddhist religion remarked: “Ha! Then everyone is an ‘anonymous’ Buddhist. After all, if you really got into it, you would realize that the only thing possible is to be a Buddhist.” This is one of the ways that trouble sneaks in. (There are about a half billion Buddhists today.)
Remember it says: “In him” is the righteousness. The other way to go astray that is even sneakier is that we reduce this all to an idea. We say: “Well, yes, there’s truth. Or there’s love. Or there’s Jesus Christ. And there’s the idea about him. And the truth about him.” It’s not about him; it’s that he does it. When we see it that way, it’s not an abstraction. He does it. He is the one in whom is the righteousness of God. That’s the first of the necessary consequences.
The second of the necessary consequences is that it is “in him” and not in the canon (that is, the Bible or the Book), not in the creed, the clergy, or in the church, but in the cross. Note these all begin with the letter “c.” We can work this out with the letter “c.”
But we do have the distraction of saying: “It’s this verse.” Why do you elevate this verse? Why not another verse? We can play the game of Bible verses. It’s not just that there is John 3:16 or 2 Cor 5:21. Why this verse? Is it some kind of canon within the canon? Don’t you have to take all of the Bible? Which, of course, nobody does, and nobody is able to do, but that is what people say in order to avoid this central point. It isn’t a truth or an abstraction, but rather Jesus Christ is the Truth. Truth is a person. He is the middle, the canon for all of Scripture. And the second of these distractions is that it is not the creed. We use the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, and we could look at the earliest and shortest of all the creeds. We find it in 1 Cor 12:3: “Jesus is Lord.” We could say that verse is it. But it so easily becomes again an abstraction. What the Bible is really saying is not Jesus is Lord but he “lords” it. He does it. He is the One who ”lords” it over all of creation and all of salvation. It’s the doing of it. Not some idea that is at stake. When the Word is proclaimed, it