1007 和好的本质
神使那无罪的替我们成为罪，好叫我们在他里面成为神的义。《哥林多后书 5:21》
罪是一种根本关系——它不是错误的作为，而是错误的本体/人——它是故意的、坚决地要脱离神而独立。基督教信仰将一切都建立在罪的极端、自信的本质上。其它信仰都处理罪行——圣经只对付罪。耶稣基督首先面质的，是人里面罪的遗传，正因为我们在呈现福音时忽略了这一点，福音的信息就已失去它的扎心和爆炸力。
圣经所揭示的真理并不是耶稣基督背负我们肉体的罪行在祂自己身上，而是祂担当无人能触碰的罪的遗传。神使祂自己的儿子「成为罪」，以至于祂可以使罪人成为圣徒。整本圣经都揭示出我们的主通过与我们认同，而不是通过同情我们，将世人的罪背负在祂自己身上。祂刻意背负在祂自己的肩上，祂自己的身体承受了人类完全的、累积的罪。「神使那无罪的替我们成为罪…」祂这么做，就把全人类的拯救，单单置于救赎的根基上。耶稣基督使人类与神和好，将其带回到神设计的所是。现在任何人都可以经历到那个和好，被带入与神合一，建基于我们的主在十字架上所成就的。
人不能自我救赎——救赎是神的工作，并且是绝对做成和完全了。它对个人的应用，乃是他们自己的个人行为或回应的事。救赎的启示真理，和一个人生命中实际有意识的救恩经历，必须要有所区分。
来自章伯斯的智慧
亚伯拉罕信神的伟大之处，乃在于他预备好为神做任何事。《不知往何处去》
1007 The Nature of Reconciliation
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. —2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship— it is not wrong doing, but wrong being— it is deliberate and determined independence from God. The Christian faith bases everything on the extreme, self-confident nature of sin. Other faiths deal with sins— the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ confronted in people was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the gospel that the message of the gospel has lost its sting and its explosive power.
The revealed truth of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took on Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took on Himself the heredity of sin that no man can even touch. God made His own Son “to be sin” that He might make the sinner into a saint. It is revealed throughout the Bible that our Lord took on Himself the sin of the world through identification with us, not through sympathy for us. He deliberately took on His own shoulders, and endured in His own body, the complete, cumulative sin of the human race. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us…” and by so doing He placed salvation for the entire human race solely on the basis of redemption. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God, on the basis of what our Lord has done on the cross.
A man cannot redeem himself— redemption is the work of God, and is absolutely finished and complete. And its application to individual people is a matter of their own individual action or response to it. A distinction must always be made between the revealed truth of redemption and the actual conscious experience of salvation in a person’s life.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. Not Knowing Whither, 903 R