Hello and welcome back to Pastor Vic’s Nuggets of Truth. Today we’ll be picking up where we left off last time. Remember, we talked about the fact that God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. God always keeps His promises, In Isaiah 55:11 God states, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it”.
Looking at the first item in the Great Exchange we will look at the fact that Jesus took our sins and gave us His forgiveness! Jesus’s forgiveness is what should make us so grateful that we would not want to abuse His grace. It is this important truth that makes us want to change. Show More
Now let’s continue…
In all covenants with God, an exchangetakes place. As covenants are made and kept, God, as the stronger party, gives blessing, provision, protection, wisdom and more to the weaker party, which is mankind.
In our look at covenants, there is no better example of this exchange than the New Covenant. The exchange is so clear, and what we receive is so glorious and abundant, that it is known by some Bible teachers as “The Great Exchange.”
Let’s look at the first example of the exchange provided by the New Covenant:
Jesus took our sin and gave us forgiveness; “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor 5:20-21).
Sin vs. sin nature – the symptom of sin vs. the root cause of sin! Instead of covering over sin as in the Old Covenant, Jesus took our sin away and replaced our sin nature with the Holy Spirit who is righteous!
Of all the exchanges and agreements that have taken place since the beginning of time, the most important exchanges by far are those we have received from Jesus. He truly provided us with The Great Exchange!
As believers, we gave Jesus our sins, failures, guilt, shame, and past. In return, Jesus:
Extends His friendship to us (John 15:14);
Makes us joint-heirs with Him (Rom 8:17);
Wipes away our sins and our past (2 Cor 5:17);
Gives us a hope and a future for this life and eternity (John 14:1-3; Col 1:27; 1 Pet 1:3).
Let us thank God for Jesus and the New Covenant which is far better than any prior covenant!
