”Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp.” | Hebrews 13: 9-11

If you are will believe on Christ Jesus the Lord then you must leave behind all ceremony, legalistic, human works, worldliness, and every other falsehood, and identify ourselves as being one with Christ.

It will mean reproach from those who yet attempt to come to God some other way, but it is reproach worth bearing if we believe that Christ is all.

Atonement ‘at’ ‘tone’ ‘ment’ – God is holy.

God’s elect are sinners.

In order for God to accept a sinner, God must make that sinner holy.

Atonement makes a sinner, holy, so he can be at one with holy God.

God declared how atonement is made for a sinner.

A spotless, sinless, innocent sacrifice is made to be sin for that sinner.

Then the sacrifice dies in the place of that sinner.

Its blood — wherein is the life of the sacrifice – is offered to God upon the mercy seat in the holiest of holies.

Only the High Priest could enter the holiest of holies with the blood.

God prepared a body like ours for his Son.

He took upon him flesh and blood like those he came to save.

He was made under the law of God like those he came to save in order that he might show himself to be perfect in thought, word and deed.

He is the perfect, sinless, spotless, Lamb which God provided to take away the sin of his people.

He had to be perfect or he would not be fit to take our sin.

In order to pay the debt his people owed to the law’s justice, it was a must for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who had never done any sin, to be made sin for us, to made a curse for us.

And it was a must that he suffer all the consequences of our sins until God’s justice was fully satisfied.

It meant Jesus had to suffer the fire of God’s holy law and wrath.

It had to be because God can not show you or me mercy unless his law is first honored and his justice first satisfied toward his people.

Do you see how holy God is?

He will by no means clear the guilty.

God is so holy that he sent his only begotten Son to bear the guilt of his people.

God is so holy that when sin was found on the Lamb he provided, he would not hold back his holy fury.

God is so holy that he will not accept his people until there sin be completely put away and they be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

That is why Christ was made a curse for his people

But we see in this, not only the suffering our Lord endured under the fire of God’s holy, unbending justice, but we see also the shame and reproach he endured by being made sin for us.

If you confess to this world that all your hope is — not in yourself – but in Christ Jesus your Lord you will be an offense to this world.

Glorying in the cross of Christ means renouncing any sanctifying, justifying work that you or I or any other man can perform.

Glorying in the cross of Christ is to confess that Christ sanctified me, made me holy and without blame by his one offering without the camp.

If you leave behind this self-serving, self-righteous, will-worshipping generation and go forth unto Christ without the camp, you shall bear his reproach.

And you will bear it most of all from this religious world.

Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate – in that shameful, reproachful place where the cursed leper was separated from the camp.

Remember: the reproach which Christ suffered was at the hands of religious men and women – religion excommunicated him, kicked him out of the camp, because they would not confess their sin and let go of their self-righteous deeds.

But if he makes you know that he was suffering for you then you will find that there is not anything which is too much to suffer for Christ!

~ Pastor Clay Curtis

Click here to listen to the message “Christ Teaches Lydia the Gospel” (42:14 minutes)

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Visit our primary website at www.ksgctn.org for more information about Kingsport Sovereign Grace Church, watch our livestream (when available) and access our previously recorded messages.

Sovereign Grace Baptist Church Bulletin Article date: 15 March, 2009 | Previous post date: n/a | Ewing, New Jersey