April 28 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might be made the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Devotional

My reader, it is your highest honor just as it was his deepest shame—your richest glory just as it was his deepest humiliation—that he literally did bear all the sins of all his church. Just as truly as we are made the righteousness of God in him, so he was made sin (or a sin-offering) for us.

Behold how beautifully the Holy Spirit brings out the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and of union with Christ. He brings out substitutionary atonement thus, "God made him to be sin who knew no sin." And he brings out union with Christ thus, "so that in him we might be made the righteousness of God."

Oh, amazing truth! Sinking himself to our deepest dishonor, he raises us up to his highest glory. Lowering himself with our fallen humanity, he raises us up to a union with God. Substituting himself for us, he makes us one with himself.

Oh, moving thought! Were all our iniquities, all our transgressions, and all our sins laid on Jesus? Yes, every last one! Before his infinite mind, to whom the past and the future are one eternal now, the sins of all his chosen ones to the remotest period of time passed in review and were made to meet on the head of the atoning Lamb. Here is opened the high source of all real blessedness to a believing soul. Sweet is the spring, and sweet are the streams that flow from it—reconciliation with God! His free forgiveness! Union with his nature! Adoption into his family! Acceptance in the Beloved! Oneness with a risen Head! Access within the veil! Filial and perpetual communion! The "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Phil. 4:7)! All these are among the costly results of Christ bearing sin.

And see how completely he has borne the mighty load. The moment our iniquities touched him, it seems as though he threw them to an infinite distance, or sunk them to an infinite depth. Never, in point of law and justice, can they appear against the pardoned soul. Laid upon our Surety, condemned, and punished, and pardoned in him, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).

How strong is the language which declares this truth! "I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist" (Isa. 44:22). "You cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:19). "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us" (Ps. 103.12). "Iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none shall be found" (Jer. 50:20). And why? "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

And may we not regard as among the most precious and costly blessings resulting from this truth, its sanctifying tendency? My beloved, the deepest view you can ever have of God's hatred of sin is in the cross of Calvary; and the deepest sense of "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" (Jeremiah Burroughs) you can ever feel is its entire pardon, imprinted on your heart with the atoning blood of Jesus, and witnessed by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. You hate it because it is forgiven; you abhor it because it is pardoned.

Oh, powerful and precious motive to holiness! O my soul, yield yourself to its sweet influence, draw your constraints to a life of deeper sanctification from the cross, hunger and thirst with more intense desire after Divine conformity, as one all whose iniquities, transgressions, and sins are forever cancelled by the blood of God's dear Son.

Oh hateful and hated sin, atoned for so richly, pardoned so freely, blotted out so entirely, how can I admire you? How can I love you? How can I cherish you? And how can I yield to you now? You burdened and bowed down to the earth the soul of my blessed Lord. You marred the beauty, and veiled the glory, and humbled the spirit of my Beloved. You wreathed his brow with thorns. You crimsoned his body with blood. You troubled his soul even unto death.

And yet you, my transgressions, are forgiven! You, my sins, are covered! You, my iniquities, are not imputed! All because Jesus, my Surety, was wounded, and bruised, and stricken for me!

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
see him dying on the tree!
'Tis the Christ by man rejected;
yes, my soul, 'tis he, 'tis he!
'Tis the long expected Prophet,
David's Son, yet David's Lord;
proofs I see sufficient of it:
'tis the true and faithful Word.

Tell me, ye who hear him groaning,
was there ever grief like his?
Friends through fear his cause disowning,
foes insulting his distress:
Many hands were raised to wound him,
none would interpose to save;
but the deepest stroke that pierced him
was the stroke that Justice gave.

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose the evil great,
here may view its nature rightly,
here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
see who bears the awful load!
'Tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God.

Here we have a firm foundation,
here the refuge of the lost.
Christ the Rock of our salvation,
Christ the Name of which we boast.
Lamb of God for sinners wounded!
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
who on him their hope have built.

(Thomas Kelly, 1804)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.