Perfect Status
Introduction
Spending several years in England taught me that, unlike our endlessly sweet American Christmas, older English customs were comfortable speaking of darkness—ghost stories by the fire, tales where the past comes alive and the living die. That mix of light and shadow actually helps us, because if we are going to understand the cradle, we must also face the cross. Imagine a Christmas tree not only wrapped with presents, but decorated with our sins. Those sins explain why Christ had to die, and therefore why he had to be born. Romans 4:25, especially its first half—“who was delivered up for our trespasses”—is, in that sense, a Christmas verse. If we can answer two questions—who delivered Jesus up, and why—then “Glory to the newborn King, God and sinners reconciled” will make sense to our minds and not just move our emotions.
Who Was Delivered Up?
Romans 4:24–25 makes clear that the “who” is Jesus our Lord, the one whom God raised from the dead and who was delivered up to death. To be “delivered up” is to be handed over to a particular fate; in Jesus’s case, to public, shameful crucifixion under the Roman state around A.D. 30. Many today think of Jesus merely as a religious teacher or inspiring moral example, a man who spoke much of love—love for God and even for enemies (Matthew 5), love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But the Gospels present him as more than a teacher of love; he calls himself the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). He not only taught the truth; he embodied it.
This is why he repeatedly foretold not just his ministry, but his own death. On the road up to Jerusalem, he told the disciples that the Son of Man would be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, condemned, mocked, flogged, and crucified, and that this would happen at Passover. He knew exactly what lay ahead, and he walked toward it. The question is: who was doing this handing over, and to what end?
Who Delivered Jesus Up?
On the surface, we can name several human actors. Judas, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests and asked what they would give him if he handed Jesus over; for thirty pieces of silver he betrayed his Lord (Matthew 26). The religious leaders and the crowds also played their part. Jesus spoke of his own generation as twisted and faithless. In John 18, Pilate notes that it was Jesus’s own nation and chief priests who delivered him up to the Roman governor. In Matthew 27 the crowd cries out for his crucifixion and even calls down his blood on themselves and their children. In Acts 3 Peter tells the men of Israel, “You handed over and killed the Author of life,” even when Pilate wanted to release him.
And then there is Pontius Pilate himself. The Apostles’ Creed, outside of Jesus and Mary, names only Pilate, because each Gospel records that he delivered Jesus to be crucified (Mark 15 and parallels). The Jewish leaders could not execute anyone; only Rome could. Pilate, wishing to keep the peace, released Barabbas and handed Jesus over. His reluctance does not erase his responsibility. Our faith is not a vague set of ideas; it is bound to events in history, including the decision of a Roman governor who would be forgotten if his name were not tied forever to this act. Yet Judas’s greed, the crowd’s hatred, and Pilate’s cowardice still do not take us to the deepest explanation of what Romans 4:25 means when it says Jesus “was delivered up.”
Why Was Jesus Delivered Up?
The key lies in those last three words: “for our trespasses.” Paul does not say Jesus was delivered up for money, jealousy, or fear, but for our sins. Beneath all the human actors stands God himself. On the Emmaus road, the risen Christ explained to two disciples that it was necessary, according to Moses and the prophets, for the Messiah to suffer and then enter his glory (Luke 24). At Pentecost Peter says that Jesus was handed over according to God’s definite plan and foreknowledge, even as lawless men killed him (Acts 2:23). In Acts 4 the church prays, confessing that Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the peoples of Israel gathered against Jesus to do whatever God’s hand and plan had decided beforehand would occur. Behind the malice of sinners was the mercy and sovereignty of God.
The Father sent the Son into the world not to condemn it, but so that through him it might be saved (John 3:16–17). And the Son was not a passive victim. In Gethsemane he aligned his human will with his Father’s, and in John 10 he says that no one takes his life from him; he lays it down of his own accord and will take it up again. He came to give his life as a ransom for many. So why was this necessary? Because of our trespasses. Our sins—the ones you most recently confessed and the many you have forgotten—are the real reason there had to be a cross, and therefore a manger in Bethlehem.
Different actors had different motives, as in the opening of Job where raiding tribes, Satan, and God all stand behind the same events with different purposes (Job 1). Satan plays to destroy faith; God uses the same blows to display his worth and his servant’s trust. At the cross, Satan’s aim was destruction; God’s aim was to save us from Satan’s power, because we had gone astray like foolish sheep (Isaiah 53:6). The cross reveals how serious our sin is. To rebel against the God who gave us life is not only wrong; it is suicidal. No amount of later obedience can erase one act of defiance. The cost required—a divine Son in human flesh, delivered up to death—shows how deep our guilt runs.
Yet the same cross reveals how serious God’s love is. That the Father would give his only Son, and that the Son would willingly bear our judgment, is almost beyond belief. This is why John 3:16 speaks of God loving the world in this way: he gave. On the cross, Christ suffers what we deserved—that is his passive obedience—added to a lifetime of perfect obedience to God’s law for us—that is his active obedience. As Romans 3 explains, God put Christ forward, by his blood, as the sacrifice that turns away divine wrath, so that all who trust in him are justified as a gift. Our sins are credited to Christ; his righteousness is credited to us, just as Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness (Romans 3–4; Genesis 15:6).
Isaiah 53 helps us hear this: all we like sheep have gone astray; the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was numbered with transgressors and yet bore the sin of many. Paul captures it in a sentence in 2 Corinthians 5: God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. When Jesus cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he meant that this work of bearing wrath and providing righteousness was complete. The eternal Son was born so that, as a real man, he could be delivered up in our place. That is the heart of Christmas.
Because he is who he is, Jesus is not only a substitute but a sufficient one. Our sins are greater than we are because they are against an infinitely great God; we could suffer forever and never exhaust the penalty, which is why Scripture presents hell as unending. But when God pours out his wrath on his perfectly righteous Son, that wrath is truly spent. It is like casting all the oceans’ waters into the endless heavens; compared to the vast righteousness of Christ, that judgment is swallowed up. Christ has borne, fully and finally, the punishment for all who will believe. By faith we are reconciled to God, at one with him again, because Christ was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Conclusion
This is why our Christmas hymns are full of wonder. Long centuries of promise came to a point when, in the dark of night, a baby cried in Bethlehem and angels sang that peace had come. The Lord of heaven drew near, not simply to comfort lonely hearts or fix our circumstances, but to deal with our deepest problem: our sin before a holy God. You may come into this season longing to be delivered from loneliness, guilt, confusion, weariness, or want. The cross takes you deeper and asks: what have you done that God would call wrong? What in your life is serious enough that God would consider it worth nailing his Son to a cross? When you can answer that, you understand why there was a cross, and why there was a cradle thirty years earlier.
Romans 4:25 pulls past, present, and future together. The past death of Christ on the cross holds out future deliverance from judgment for anyone who, today, trusts in him. That is why this is such good news for you. Think of those Syrian prisoners recently freed from places where no one expected to get out alive—cell doors swinging open, men stumbling into sunlight, hardly daring to believe they are really free. Their joy over a temporary deliverance is a faint picture of the joy of being freed from a just, eternal sentence by the One who was delivered up in your place.
The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4). Born to raise the sons of earth. Born to give them second birth. If you will take your sins as seriously as God has—and receive his Son as the Savior he has provided—you may walk out of your cell today, forgiven and reconciled, and join the angels in saying, “Glory to the newborn King.”
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"Because if we're really going to explain Christ's cradle, we must be able to explain Christ's cross. If you imagine a Christmas tree wrapped with presents, and right in the midst of those presents, even more important than them are our sins. In fact, if you imagine a tree decorated, as it were, with our sins, then you can see the only reason Christ died, and therefore the only reason Christ needed to be born."
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"What's the reason for the season? Well, in one sense, it's the last sin you confess to your friend or family member and countless others like them. And God's amazing response of sending his Son as a Savior for us from the penalty that we have each deserved."
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"Sometimes our familiarity in churches with crosses has caused us to miss the cross's shock. But not only was that form of death one of excruciating torture, it was public and so shameful. The person was a display by the ruling regime of what would happen to those who opposed it. It was a terrible death, almost a death made to display death itself in all its consequences."
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"Pilate would be a middle level official long forgotten forever if his name had not been trapped in this amber of infamy. For this delivering up, Paul's only reason for using his name with Timothy was that Pilate had become notorious for his very real delivering up of Jesus our Lord to be crucified. He gained everlasting infamy."
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"Satan was playing checkers. God was playing chess in a greater and more sublime and more central way. That's what was going on in the cross of Christ."
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"Perhaps you've come today bothered by other people and things they've done. You're not really at church yet then. You may be physically in the assembly, but when you really come to church, it's your own sins you have in mind. It's what you deserve from a good God, and what has happened instead."
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"A decade of obedience cannot undo a minute of sin."
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"So, friends, Jesus was born to die, the second person of the Trinity. The Son took on flesh, was incarnate, truly became a man so that he could be delivered up. This is the Christmas story. This is Christianity. This is the truth. This is our hope."
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"For us to take the wrath that we've deserved would be to try to put the waters of the ocean in a cup. But for God to expend his wrath upon his perfectly righteous Son would be like taking all the waters of the ocean and hurling them into the vastness of space where they would soon appear as nothing compared to the infinite righteousness of Christ."
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"Friends, the relief, the stunned relief, the joy, the jubilation that begins to break out for a serious but temporary deliverance is a picture of that sharp joy you and I can know when we find relief from a truer sentence than Assad ever handed out, more unlasting, more unending, more justified, more hopeless, except for the fact that Jesus Christ was delivered up for our trespasses."
Observation Questions
- Read Romans 4:24–25. According to these verses, to whom will righteousness be “counted,” and what two key things does Paul say happened to “Jesus our Lord”?
- In Romans 4:25, what specific reason does Paul give for Jesus being “delivered up,” and what different reason does he give for Jesus being “raised” (even though the sermon focused on only the first half)?
- In Acts 2:23, who does Peter say “delivered” Jesus up to be crucified, and through whose “hands” was this carried out?
- In Acts 4:27–28, which groups and individuals are named as gathering against Jesus, and how does the passage describe God’s role in what they did?
- In Isaiah 53:4–6, what does the text say about what the Servant bears and what “we” have done, and how are “him” and “us” contrasted?
- In John 3:16–17, what does God do with his “only Son,” what is his stated purpose in doing so, and what contrasting outcomes are mentioned for the world?
Interpretation Questions
- Based on Romans 4:24–25 and the sermon, what does it mean that righteousness is “counted” or “credited” to us, and how is this connected to Jesus being “delivered up for our trespasses”?
- How do Acts 2:23 and Acts 4:27–28 together show both human responsibility (Judas, Pilate, crowds, leaders) and God’s sovereign purpose in the death of Jesus?
- According to Isaiah 53:4–6 and 53:12, in what sense is Jesus presented as a substitute, and how does this help explain why his suffering was “necessary” (Luke 24:25–27)?
- How does John 3:16–17 help us understand both the seriousness of our sin and the depth of God’s love, as emphasized in the sermon’s statement that “no lesser cure could be found”?
- The sermon said that “Jesus was born to die.” How does connecting the cradle (Christmas) and the cross (Good Friday) change the way we should understand and celebrate Christmas?
Application Questions
- When you hear that Jesus was “delivered up for our trespasses,” how personally do you connect your own specific sins to his death, and what might it look like this week to take your sin as seriously as God does?
- The sermon contrasted coming to church mainly bothered by others’ sins versus your own. In what area of life do you most tend to focus on others’ wrongs, and how might remembering Christ’s cross reshape your attitude and responses there?
- If God’s love for you is shown most clearly in the costly giving up of his Son, what fears, guilts, or doubts are you still holding that this truth should begin to quiet, and how could you respond in prayer and obedience?
- How might viewing Christmas through Romans 4:25 change the way you talk about Christmas with family, children, or non‑Christian friends—especially when explaining why the baby in the manger had to die on a cross?
- The sermon used the image of prison doors swinging open for those under a death sentence. Where in your life do you still live as if you were condemned rather than freed in Christ, and what concrete step of faith or repentance could you take this week in light of your deliverance?
Additional Bible Reading
- Romans 3:21–26 — Paul explains how God can be just and yet justify sinners through Christ’s blood, fleshing out the logic behind “delivered up for our trespasses.”
- Isaiah 52:13–53:12 — The prophecy of the Suffering Servant that undergirds the sermon’s teaching on substitution, trespasses, and the Lord laying our iniquity on him.
- Acts 2:22–39 — Peter’s Pentecost sermon shows Jesus’ death as both God’s plan and Israel’s guilt, and calls listeners to repent and believe.
- Acts 4:23–31 — The early church’s prayer interprets Jesus’ death as fulfilling God’s predestined plan, strengthening confidence in God’s sovereignty over human evil.
- John 3:14–21 — Jesus explains his being “lifted up” and given by the Father so that those who believe will have eternal life instead of condemnation.
Sermon Main Topics
I. The Unexpected Connection Between Christmas and Ghost Stories
II. Who Delivered Jesus Up to Death?
III. Why Was Jesus Delivered Up to Death?
IV. The Good News of Deliverance Through Christ
Detailed Sermon Outline
One of the stranger aspects of living in England from 1988 to 1994 was spending six Christmases there.
There was much that was familiar or expected: Christmas trees, Christmas cards, exchanging presents. But there were also some strange things about celebrating Christmas in England. For our young family.
Some things were surprising but not really strange. Everything closing for two weeks, amazing stuff being on television, movies, new programs, documentaries. But the really, really strange thing for Connie and me were the Christmas ghost stories. I wonder if you've even heard of these.
In England, there's an old custom of telling Christmas-themed spooky stories at night in the evening. And so I, of course, dutifully, as a young husband and father, went to the local bookstore, found some copies of Christmas spooky stories, and brought them home. And there were a few that were really scary.
Some so much so that as I would read them, I would pause, look over at Connie with eyes wide and simply have to make up an ending because there's no way I was going to read what was right there.
And then, of course, Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol made more sense. That story with those ghosts, especially that scary Ghost of Christmas Future, yeah.
Anyway, in some ways the custom actually made the true story of Christmas a bit easier to share than in the context of the American Christmas, saccharine and unyieldingly sweet. At least in the British version, there is a presence of light and dark.
In those tales, times past come alive and the currently living die.
Do you see why those unsettling facts are important to us being able to explain Christmas, let alone appreciate it? Because if we're really going to explain Christ's cradle, we must be able to explain Christ's cross.
If you imagine a Christmas tree wrapped with presents and right in the midst of those presents, even more important than them, are our sins.
In fact, if you imagine a tree decorated, as it were, with our sins, then you can see the only reason Christ died, and therefore the only reason Christ needed to be born. What's the reason for this season? Well, in one sense, it's the last sin you confessed to your friend or family member, and countless others like them. And God's amazing response of sending his Son as a Savior for us from the penalty that we have each deserved?
In that sense, our text today from Romans chapter 4 is a classic Christmas text. Let's turn there now. Romans chapter 4, the very last verse on the Bibles provided, you'll find it on page 942, page 942. We're saving the second half of the verse for next week. We're just going to use the first half of the verse this morning.
Consider it carefully. We're simply considering those first seven words, Romans chapter 4 verse 25. Who was delivered up for our trespasses. 1.
The question of who Paul is writing of here is easily answered by reading the verse before it. So if you just look right before that, see where the sentence begins.
It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses. So who was delivered up? Jesus our Lord.
And what is Paul writing about here? What happened to Jesus? Well, let's be crystal clear about this. He was delivered up. That means He was put aside for a particular fate.
In this case, death. Paul is saying that Jesus had been handed over, surrendered to the state, with the intention of the state crucifying Him to death.
So, how is that our Christmas text for today? Well, two simple questions that I expect answering correctly will unbidden bring on that Christmas cheer as surely as the ghost's visit did to Scrooge's soul.
One, who delivered up Jesus to this death? Who delivered up Jesus to this death? And number two, why was Jesus delivered up to this death?
Number one, who delivered up Jesus to this death? And number two, why was Jesus delivered up to this death? You see the answers to these two questions and you'll get the point here. And I think what will unfold will be good enough that by the end we'll want to join with those angels heralding the news in song, Glory to the newborn King, peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. Kids, let me challenge you especially.
Do you ever wonder why this time of year you read these stories about baby Jesus who's very sweet, and then he does nothing wrong, but he has to die on the cross. Why would sweet baby Jesus end up dying on the cross? That's what you want to figure out. And that's what this sermon should help you, if you pay attention to these two questions. It's a great question to ask.
It gets to the heart of Christmas and to our text. So let's jump in. Number one, who delivered Jesus up? We read here who was delivered up. This is referring specifically to an event in the past, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem around 30 AD, about 25 or 30 years in the past when Paul was writing this.
Some people think that Jesus is an important political figure. Maybe they don't know a lot about him, but we see him this time of year as a newborn king. Perhaps in simple ignorance, they think of him as a figure who became a great man in this world. They simply don't know that he didn't. He had no kingdom in this world that he ruled.
He amassed no wealth. His last occupation was as An itinerant rabbi, he died as a young man in his early 30s.
Some people think that Jesus is important because of the love he taught and exemplified. And this is closer to the truth. Jesus was loving in his manner and actions, and he taught love better than it had ever been taught before. In a couple of weeks, Lord willing, Joseph Digpen is going to help us think about Jesus' command in Matthew 5:44 to love your enemies. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Jesus highlighted the Old Testament command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And Jesus did more than simply instruct, He expressed it with His life, looking at Some of his opponents in John 5:42 we read Jesus said, I know that you do not have the love of God within you. My friends, Jesus was more than a teacher. He taught the truth because he embodied it as no one else ever had or could.
Not simply as living ethically in accord with it, but because he was in a profound and personal way, he was the truth. As Jesus taught in John 14:6, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. I mean, you study through the Gospels to see what Jesus' life is like. It is a life that includes teaching, but He does the most remarkable things.
I think among the most remarkable must be the three times or more that He predicted His own death. Perhaps you've noticed that if you've read through the Gospels. In the days just before He came to Jerusalem for what would be His final week of His earthly ministry, as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside and on the way He said to them, See, we're going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged. And crucified. And then a few days later, right before the Passover, Jesus said to His disciples, you, know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.
Sometimes our familiarity in churches with crosses have caused us to miss the cross's shock. But not only was that form of death one of excruciating torture, It was public and so shameful. The person was a display by the ruling regime of what would happen to those who opposed it. It was a terrible death, almost a death made to display death itself in all its consequences.
And that pain and shame and public rejection made it perfectly fitted for the role it was to play. Which brings us back to the question, who would do such a thing? Who would hand a nonviolent young rabbi like Jesus over to such a horrible death?
If we were to go back and study the film, I think we could perhaps pick out One person, one of his own disciples, Judas. Judas even uses this very language in the question he asked to the chief priests, what will you give me if I deliver him over to you?
So Judas delivered Jesus up to death.
Why would he do that? Scripture tells us it's for a very, very specific reason. Thirty pieces of silver. Any other motive he may have had is mere speculation on our part.
But we have to recognize that Judas is not the entire story. When Paul mentions here summarily at the end of Romans 4 that Jesus our Lord was delivered up, he couldn't have had in mind only the action of Judas. There were a swirl of other actors afoot, not only the disciple Judas, but others of Jesus' own nation, His own people, lots of them. Jesus addressed a crowd sharply in Matthew 17, O faithless and twisted generation. How long am I to be with you?
How long am I to bear with you? Pilate summarized Jesus' situation in John 18 as, you, own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me.
It was the crowd that we read in Matthew 27 did this. When Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood. See to it yourselves. And all the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children. It was all the people, the crowd so large and riotous that the Roman ruler himself had seemed to feel threatened.
This is why Weeks later, when Peter addresses the crowd in Solomon's Portico after the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he specifically says to the crowd in Acts chapter 3, Men of Israel, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate. When he had decided to release him, you killed the Author of life.
So the men of Israel definitely delivered Jesus up.
But that could not be a sufficient explanation of his death. That could not be all of what Paul means there at the end of Romans Chapter 4.
In the most ancient Christian statement outside the Bible, the Apostles' Creed that we ourselves used earlier this morning, the Creed mentions Jesus Christ, mentions His virgin mother, Mary.
Other than that, that Creed mentions only one person. Grab your bulletin right now. Grab your bulletin. Let's just notice this. I've got mine here somewhere.
Look at page six.
Who is the one person who's named?
Pontius Pilate.
If you look to see who the Gospels say delivered Jesus to be crucified, they all name Pontius Pilate. Mark 15:15, so Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Matthew says the same. Luke says the same. John says the same.
Pilate's reluctance in all the narrative accounts is clear, but his responsibility is even clearer. In Roman occupied Judea, the Jewish leaders had no authority to execute prisoners or criminals. Only the Roman government had that kind of capital authority. Crowds could riot, only Pilate could finally deliver Jesus up to be crucified.
So in order to have peace, he did. And confessing his guilt in this is part of the warp and woof of the Christian faith ever since. It shows that our faith is not a stoic philosophy or a way to look at life. But it is an understanding of events in history, specifically. Years later, when Paul was writing to Pastor Timothy of the church in Ephesus, he could refer back to Jesus keeping the good confession, not wavering from the truth, though it should cost him his life, before Pontius Pilate.
And Paul even mentions Pilate by name. Friends, that was decades after Pilate was done. Pilate would be a middle-level official long forgotten forever if his name had not been trapped in this amber of infamy for this delivering up. Paul's only reason for using his name with Timothy was that Pilate had become notorious for his very real delivering up of Jesus our Lord. To be crucified.
He gained everlasting infamy.
And yet, as true, even undisputably true as everything we've said so far is, our feet don't seem to have touched bottom yet. Not to be standing firmly on the truth. It doesn't seem like we've landed on exactly what Paul means here in Romans 4 by Jesus our Lord being delivered up. Yes, it was to death. Yes, it was Jesus.
But all these motives The fear of disorder on Pilate's part, the hatred on the crowd's part, the 30 pieces of silver on Judas' part, none of them pull in another important piece of the puzzle in assembling the necessary completion of the Christmas story. It seems that the cross must be related to the cradle, the death to the birth, the dying to the being born.
We find all these clues focused in the last three words of our text for this morning, for our trespasses.
And this really brings us to the second question we want to answer. Number two, why was Jesus delivered up? Paul doesn't say here for 30 pieces of silver. Paul doesn't say for jealousy's sake or for fear's sake. No, Paul says here, for our trespasses.
And this brings us to the truth that this delivering up happened ultimately by the act of God Himself with His eyes, as it were, clearly set on the problem of us in our sins, mired fatally in our own trespasses. This is what Jesus had taught His own disciples. On the road to Damascus, the resurrected Christ had taught his two disciples, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe, all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Necessary?
Not for Judas. Not for the crowds, but necessary for the plan of God to take place.
If the Son of Man, the Messiah, were to perform the task, the task set for Him, which is more than simply teaching and being a good example, but it was to be doing the unique work which only He could do, the work of dying on the cross for our trespasses, then it was necessary. This is why Peter, in that spontaneous Pentecost sermon to the crowds in the temple precincts, could refer to Jesus as the deliverer, the Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. That's why Peter could pray later in front of the Christians in Acts 4, and this one is good enough you should turn there. Grab your Bibles, Acts 4, turn over to Acts chapter 4. Look at this prayer, just a few verses long, but Peter makes exactly this point in praying.
We tell much about our theology from the way we pray.
Acts 4:24, and when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in this city there were gathered together against yout holy servant Jesus, whom youm anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. Friends, this is why Jesus could tell Nicodemus in that famous John chapter 3 about God sending his Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus was sent to live and to die.
And Jesus knew this and taught this to Nicodemus and to his dweLled disciples. And this delivering up was voluntary. Some have suggested that this Christian story of the father giving the son to die is cosmic child abuse. But there are many problems with that objection. One of the most significant is that in this case not only was it the father's will, but it's the son's as well.
Made known famously in the Garden of Gethsemane where the son conforms his will to to his fathers, but also in John 10:18, Jesus taught of his own life, no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it back up again. Earlier he taught that he would give his life as a ransom for many. Why would God use the malice of men to crucify his incarnate, only begotten son? And we find the answer in those last three words, For our trespasses.
In that sense, fellow sinners, it is you and I. It is our sins that provide the real reason why Jesus was delivered up. We stand guilty for such a terrible act. Being necessary if we are to be freed. These last three words help us to see not only who delivered Christ up, but also why.
As we've considered, different actors had different motives. We saw this a couple of years ago when we looked at the book of Job, didn't we? At the beginning of the book of Job, you remember Job chapter 1, Job's children are killed by marauding Sabeans and Chaldeans. No doubt these Sabeans and Chaldeans had their own motives for what they were doing. They were thieving, they were robbing.
But Job's first chapter has already given us another actor with other motives, Satan. Satan was specifically wanting to embarrass God by showing him that his apparently holy servant Job only appeared to worship God because of the prosperity God had given Job. So God allows Job to be tempted by Satan, to be afflicted by means of these human actors. So a whole second level of causation and purpose and motive for the same actions. The Sabaeans and the Chaldeans have theirs, and for the very same actions, Satan has his.
But that's not all, because behind and even above Satan's malice was God's sovereignty, because God knew that Job in fact did fear him. And Satan's malice would expose the truth of Job's faith and God's worthiness to be trusted. So these trials that Satan meant to expose the hypocrisy of those who worship the Lord would in fact be used by God to expose Satan's lies and to display God's own worthiness, to be trusted in all times. Satan was playing checkers, God was playing chess.
In a greater and more sublime and more central way, that's what was going on in the cross of Christ. The ultimate reason why the Father delivered up His only begotten Son to die was to save us all from Satan's power, because we were gone astray, as we rightly sing. So why did Jesus have to die? It was on account of our sin.
My brother, my sister, does this make you see how serious your sins are? Perhaps you've come today bothered by other people and things they've done. You're not really at church yet then. You may be physically this assembly, but when you really come to church, It's your own sins you have in mind. It's what you deserve from a good God and what has happened instead.
Because we're trespassing against the commands of the one who gave us life. Of the one who tells us what life is for. The story of our first parents in Genesis 3 shows us what a disaster sin causes. To rebel against and disobey such a good being as God is is pointless. And even suicidal.
We can think of how false and destructive self-exaltation and pride are, and yet how much we desire them. You see how dangerous sin is. No wonder God's Word represents the being that calls us to sin in Revelation 12 as the great dragon, the old serpent. And how seriously God takes sin, we can see no place more clearly than here. No lesser cure could be found.
No smaller payment could be made than the death of the incarnate Son of God. Our own actions would never dig us out of the hole we've dug. A decade of obedience cannot undo a minute of sin. Too often our own actions have been offenses and transgressions, violations of law and acts of deliberate rebellion. Disobedience, transgression.
The seriousness of our own sins is shown by the cost the Lord would pay to free us from them. And we could meditate on this all day long. But there's another aspect I want you to notice from the delivering up of Jesus for our trespasses. And that's learn from this the seriousness of God's love.
How He must love us if He goes to this extent to deliver us, that the Son would lay down His life for such as us, that the Father would send His only Son for the likes of me and of you. This is why we sing about God's love like we do, because were we being told it for the first time, it would be almost unbelievably good news that God in His loving mercy would pay the debt that we could not pay, and He would do it out of His love for us. So the cross shows us not only the seriousness of our sin, but also the depths of God's love.
John 3:16, For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His who gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. You see, on the cross, Christ's passive obedience and suffering, what we had deserved, he was delivered up for our trespasses, was added to a lifetime of Christ's active obedience, to all of God's commands. So Jesus went to the cross as a substitute. His example we are to follow, but His unique substitution we may only accept by faith. Look over in Romans, the chapter right before we've been in, Romans chapter 3.
Beginning in verse 21.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there's no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This is why Paul has taught, what he has, about Genesis 15:6, Abram believing God and God crediting it to him as righteousness. This is what he's talking about, what he has about imputation in this chapter.
Negatively. God's wrath has been propitiated, assuaged, through the substitutionary death of Christ for us. And positively, as God's own righteousness has been imputed that is accounted by faith in Jesus to us, as God's own righteousness was accounted to Abraham by means of his faith in God and his promises. So in all of this teaching, Paul is following Jesus' own understanding of his role as that of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 is a wonderful passage that's behind all of what Paul is writing here in Romans 3 and 4.
If you wanna study and meditate on it more, it's a great chapter, really it starts at chapter 52, verse 13. And one of the ways you understand it is by reading it aloud and putting the emphasis on him and our, that's the contrast. So in Isaiah 53:6, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. That's how you begin to understand Isaiah 53.
Him, us. Him, us. Or down in chapter 53 verse 12, the last verse. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death, he was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many. And makes intercession for the transgressors.
Ryan Krieger will bring us another verse from Isaiah 53 tonight, Lord willing for us to meditate on, as we continue to think about God's own provision for us. This is why Paul wrote what he did in 2 Corinthians 5, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So dying as He did was Christ's central work. That's why He could say in John 19:30, right before He bows His head and gives up His spirit, it is finished. That's referring to the work of Christ, the work that He was undertaking of interposing His precious blood between the righteous demands of God's law and our sinful selves.
So friends, Jesus was born to die. The second person of the Trinity, the Son, took on flesh, was incarnate, truly became a man so that He could be delivered up. This is the Christmas story. This is Christianity. This is the truth.
This is our hope. Friends, admire not only the greatness of our sin and of God's love in providing as He has, but also notice God's power and the effectiveness of His plan of delivering Jesus up. Jesus was not only a substitute, He was a sufficient substitute. He was effective. We could never be such a substitute for ourselves, even if we ourselves died for our sins.
That wouldn't atone for them sufficiently. Friends, our sins are greater than we ourselves because the one against whom we have sinned is so great. By faith in this one who was delivered up, we are made right with God. Romans chapter 4 has been about justification. What Paul comes to here in the end is that Christ's death is the way that God will provide for our justification by counting Christ's righteousness as our own and counting our sins as His own.
That's how Christ will make atonement for us. And so make us in God to be at one, the gospel of atonement comes only by Christ being delivered up for us. And because Christ is given up in our place, the punishment that we deserve has been given up by God. God's wrath against us because of our sins, which were we to bear it ourselves, would never be exhausted. Friends and relatives, this is why we know that hell is eternal.
Because even if we were to bear the sins penalty that is due, we would never exhaust that penalty. Even in Revelation, it seems that those who are under God's punishment rail against Him. The sins, as it were, continue, as does the punishment. But in Christ, in Christ, God's wrath is completely exhausted.
There's actually a sufficient substitute for all of our sins and transgressions in Christ. For us to take the wrath that we've deserved would be to try to put the waters of the ocean in a cup.
But for God to expend his wrath upon his perfectly righteous Son would be like taking all the waters of the ocean and hurling them into the vastness of space where they would soon appear as nothing compared to the infinite righteousness of Christ.
Christ paid the penalty for all who would believe in him. Friend, this is such good news. My voice is not in the best shape it's ever been in, or I might be able to tell you better about this good news. But my guess is the friends or family members you've come with can tell you how imperfectly and haltingly, but really and truly in their own lives, they have seen how God's provision in Christ has been the most important thing in their life. We would love for you to know this relationship with God restored through the grace of God in Christ by delivering Christ up for our trespasses.
If you will trust in Christ, you can know that restored relationship with God even today. Friends, this is why Christmas songs are full of expressions of wonder and delight. So many of our hymns are as Christians. But the suddenness of the Messiah's birth, the initiating of the long prophesied ministry, hones centuries of expectations into the sharp joy of hope finally realized. The Lord of heaven has come near to us.
The darkness of our night of sin has been suddenly broken by the cheering news of Jesus' lowly birth in Bethlehem. This has been reproduced in life after life of those of us sitting here who personally know what it means to be lost and to be found, to be spiritually homeless, and then to be welcomed by the God we have offended because of the sacrifice of Christ in our place. Oh friends, this is news worth telling and even traveling distances to tell. I wonder what you've come this morning thinking that you mainly need to be delivered from.
We face a lot of maladies in this world.
Is it loneliness? The holidays can emphasize that.
Is it a guilty conscience?
Confusion?
Weariness?
Poverty?
Lack of opportunity?
God's Word would take Christ's cross and lay it on your heart and call you to take your sins as seriously as He has.
What have you done that God would consider wrong?
What have you done? That God would consider wrong.
Whoever you are here today, a poor person or a visiting head of state, what could you have done that God would think it worth nailing his Son to a cross, piercing his side with a spear for?
If you find the answer to that, you'll find the answer to why there was a cross. And 30 years before that, why there was a birth in Bethlehem.
We should conclude, sometimes the past, the present, and the future all seem to run into each other. That happens here in verse 25. Here in this verse, the past death of Christ on the cross promises a future of deliverance from punishment for any of our trespasses if we will only today trust Christ as our Savior. You see what good news that is for you? A friend of mine from the Middle East wrote me this week about all that's unfolding in Syria, and he noted a story that I'm sure many of us have seen.
About the political prisons being opened across Syria, including the horrific Sednaya prison outside of Damascus, where for the last few decades more than 100,000 prisoners have been held. It was as described by one prisoner who had been held there since he was 15, a dark, horrific place from which no one ever expected to be delivered.
But friends, you can now go online and watch story after story of people who expected only to be executed, but instead their cell doors are swung open and they're told of the news that they are delivered, that the Assad regime has fallen and what they could have expected was only death is in fact their life is given back to them. Friends, the relief, the stunned relief, the joy, the jubilation that begins to break out for a serious but temporary deliverance is a picture of that sharp joy you and I can know when we find relief from a truer sentence than Assad ever handed out. More unlasting, more unending, more justified, more hopeless, except for the fact that Jesus Christ was delivered up for our trespasses. We have had the prison doors swung open if we will trust in Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of God our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.
Amen. Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. Let's pray.
Lord God, we think of the joy, the jubilation that we can know in Christ today. We pray that we would know that truly and that it would spread for your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.