The Great Work of Jesus
Scripture Reading — 2 Corinthians 5:11-21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
—2 Corinthians 5:21
When we lived in Hawaii, our home was a short distance from the ocean. Behind our house was a lane, and people often used it to dump garbage. I decided that dumping trash in such a beautiful area was not acceptable, and the lane needed to be cleaned up. So as often as I could, I would haul a load of garbage to the local dump.
One day I was picking up trash in the lane when our neighbor came home. When he first saw me, he became angry because he thought I was dumping garbage. When he learned that I was actually cleaning it up, his mood quickly changed, and he asked if I belonged to the church down the street. I said I did.
Jesus Christ similarly came into our “neighborhood” to clean up the mess in our world made by our sin. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
This clean-up action involved more than spending a little time hauling garbage. Jesus gave his life by dying on the cross to clean up our mess. This opened up a whole new identity for us to become “the righteousness of God.”
Have you invited Jesus to cleanse your life of sin and give you a new identity?
Father, thank you for demonstrating your love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. We are awed by your great love that allows us to be called children of God. Amen.
About the author — John Kuperus
Since he was young, John Kuperus has had a passion that everyone would know Jesus. Spreading the good news that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15) is very important to him. To be better equipped for missions, John attended Reformed Bible College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He applied these skills with marketplace evangelism in a business he started in Sussex, New Jersey. This calling continued to follow him, so John attended seminary and became a minister in the Christian Reformed Church, serving a church in Ontario for eight years. Currently he serves as a missionary for Youth with a Mission (YWAM). He witnesses Jesus changing lives as people walk out of the darkness into the light. John is married to Helen, and they have seven children.
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