LIVE Apologia Academy - John Samson on Reformed Theology

The Doctrine of Election and God’s Saving Grace

As we start this session on Reformed Theology, I'd like to start with a quote from Mark Webb, who was teaching something similar on the doctrines of Sovereign Grace. And he writes this, I asked for questions from the class.

One lady in particular was quite troubled. She said, this is the most awful thing I've ever heard. You make it sound as if God is intentionally turning away men and women who would be saved, receiving only the elect.

I answered her in this vein. You misunderstand the situation. You're visualizing that God is standing at the door of heaven and men are thronging to get in the door. And God is saying to various ones, yes, you may come, but not you.

And you, but not you, et cetera. The situation is hardly this. Rather, God stands at the door of heaven with his arms outstretched, inviting all to come. Yet all men, without exception, are running in the opposite direction towards hell as hard as they can go.

So God, in election, graciously reaches out and stops this one and that one and this one over here and that one over there, and effectually draws them to himself by changing their hearts, making them willing to come.

Election keeps no one out of heaven who would otherwise have been there, but it keeps a whole multitude of sinners out of hell who otherwise would have been there. Were it not for election, heaven would be an empty place and hell would be bursting at the seams.

That kind of response, grounded as I believe that it is in scriptural truth, does put a different complexion on things, doesn't it? If you perish in hell, blame yourself as it is entirely your fault. But if you should make it to heaven, credit God, for that is entirely his work.

To him alone belongs all praise and glory, for salvation is all of grace from start to finish. It's a quote that I think is helpful because it does just lay out the biblical doctrine of election in its rightful setting.

The Order of Salvation and Why It Matters

In this session, I'd like to talk about what theologians call the ordo salutis, the order of salvation. And we're going to answer the big question that's on a lot of people's hearts, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

All right, we're not going to answer that one, but it's a question of order, order. What happened in salvation? The term salvation is an all-inclusive term, and really to understand our Bibles correctly, we need to grasp that fact.

Salvation covers the whole gamut of spiritual words like redemption and adoption and justification and regeneration. They all fit into this bigger, wider word of salvation. And so when we talk about Reformed soteriology, the doctrine of salvation according to the Reformed faith, what we're talking about is what the Bible says about salvation.

And that general term of salvation needs to then be studied further so that we look at things like regeneration. Where is that in the scheme of things? And in what order do we place regeneration? And I'm going to submit to you that what we believe on such things really does matter.

It matters tremendously regarding how we view God, how we view His grace, how we view His salvation. As we look at this from various different angles, we understand that when God does something, He does something perfectly well.

He does things so well that He never fails in all He seeks to do. That, in fact, is the God of the Bible, and we've established that along the way in our times together so far. But realize this, if we get certain things in the wrong order, we not only lose sight of the biblical understanding, but we can be involved in heresy to the point that we're outside the Christian faith.

For instance, sanctification is an aspect or a component of the wider, broader term, salvation. But to say that sanctification, which speaks of our commitment to God, being close to God, that that happens before justification is a heresy.

It goes flatly and blatantly against what the Bible says, and that is that we're saved by grace through faith and not of works. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 spell it out very, very clearly. Works has the idea of actions, things that we do, which is a component of our sanctification, our commitment to God, our prayer life, our study of the Bible, all of the fruit of the Spirit, all of these things, and nowhere does the Bible teach that we ought to come up with works to gain justification.

In fact, it's not of works, lest anyone should boast. Ephesians 2, 9, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest anyone should boast.

Works play a part in salvation, the broader term, but salvation is accomplished by the grace of God alone and our faith in Him alone, and works are the result of conversion. As Ephesians 2, and the next verse, verse 10 says, we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

We're saved by grace through faith alone, but works show forth the fact that we are a converted person. Works show forth, as James chapter 2 declares very, very clearly, it shows to humanity that our claim to faith, the claim to say I have true faith, is actually a genuine claim.

So to say sanctification happens before justification would be to believe that salvation is in some way by works. Now works follow true faith. You see there's an order. We have faith in Christ and we're justified.

Romans chapter 5, verse 1 says, therefore having been justified by faith, we have, present tense, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The believer can look back on his justification knowing that the moment, the very moment he had faith in Christ, God justified him.

Romans 4, 4 and 5 spell it out in the clearest of terms that salvation, justification is by faith and not by works. In fact, if we want what we deserve because of our works, we're going to hell because we have never done one good work according to God.

On a civil level, on a human level, it's very much better for humanity that you and I do works. But in the sight of God, none of us have done a good work in our unregenerate state whereby we can say I've done something that's pleasing to God.

And that's a shock to humanity and especially the religious person who thinks they can get to God by what they do. We conclude, Romans 3, 28 says, that one is justified by faith apart from works of the.

Law.

Then in chapter 4 and verse 4, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. We all know the analogy he's bringing out here. The man who works, when he's paid, he does not consider what remuneration comes to him a gift, he's actually earned it and there should be a problem if he doesn't get what he has worked for.

Therefore, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. But or and to the one who does not work but trusts him or as some translations read, believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Logical Order Versus Temporal Order

Again, so, so clear. When we talk about the order of salvation, we're talking about the logical, not the temporal order of things. I'm sure you've seen on the television perhaps a crash dummy involved in a car crash whereby scientists and those who monitor the situation record the car hitting an object, usually a brick wall of some kind, and the crash dummies inside the car are moving all over the vehicle and the reason for that is to test how secure and safe the car is.

And good ratings means that in that particular car, you're more likely to survive a crash than in a poor rating. And if you can think of that crash dummy, it doesn't move until first the car hits the.

Wall.

There's an order. And yet, in real time, just in normal speed, it's very hard to determine it, determinate what happens before the other thing because it all happens so fast. It could all be over within a second or less than a second.

The car hits the wall, the dummies move, but it all looks like it's happening at the same.

Time.

And yet, there's a logical order going on there because the dummy doesn't respond to the crash until the crash actually happens. And the arms are all flayed everywhere of the dummy after the impact. And so, when we think of those things and we think which comes first, we need to get these things right because certain things logically have to happen before other things.

Can.

We need to start with a view of God that allows God to be on His throne because that's the only one that's real and true. Then we have to see what God says about man and his condition before God outside of regeneration.

And that's the first word in this understanding that we need a grasp. To be regenerate means to be alive. It means to come alive. And the Bible speaks of man in spiritual death before his conversion. Ephesians 2 is just one of a number of scriptures we could turn to.

Writing to the church at Ephesus, the Apostle Paul writes, and you were dead, the Greek word is nekros, dead like a stinking corpse. There's no other way to translate it, dead, D-E-A-D. And the Bible speaks of man being D-O-A, dead on arrival, not physically, but all men since Adam are born spiritually dead.

Adam died spiritually the moment he sinned and he never had any children, him and Eve, never had any children until after the fall and he passed on that spiritual death to all who came after him. 1 Corinthians 15 makes that clear.

As in Adam, all die, not most, not 78%, not 98%, but all die. We're born spiritually dead towards God. That means that although we might be religious and although we might have some sort of void in our hearts, as some people like to speak of it, we do not want the true God because our hearts are hearts of stone.

That's the biblical imagery we see, not a heart that is slightly stony, or some people are more stony than others, no, every child of Adam is born spiritually dead, without a pulse spiritually. Some people just look with observation with their eyes and say, no, no, that guy, look at him, he's really seeking, four years ago he was into Buddhism, now he's into Mormonism and before that he was into the new age and he's just seeking.

No, no, no, no, what he's doing is running as fast and as hard as he can away from the true God until he finds the true God, he will search in every way for something other than the true God. Make sense?

Why?

Because his nature is to run from God. That was Adam's nature after the fall when he heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. What did he do? He hid himself and he covered himself and all of man's religion is an attempt to cover himself.

Let that sink in. So when someone is into so-called Buddhism, he's running from the true God, he's covering himself, he has a guilty conscience and he's trying like crazy to assuage that conscience so that he can sleep at night.

By doing a religious thing, he thinks that will soothe him. Problem is it doesn't soothe or bring any merit in any way to his relationship with.

God.

In fact, everything he does is a demerit. And that's true whether he's an atheist, by proclamation anyway, or into Buddhism or Shintoism or Confucianism or any of the cults, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormon faith, the LDS.

Anything out there that is not the true God and this true gospel is an attempt to run from God. Let that sink in. That's man's condition. And so what needs to happen for him to be interested in any way with the true God is that God has to intervene from above.

And that's what Jesus makes clear in John chapter 3, unless a man is born again or literally born from above, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Notice the strong language of Jesus. And again, I want us to go to the language of Scripture, to Jesus, to the Apostle John, to James, to Peter, to the apostolic writings of the New Testament and of course the Old as well, which confirms the exact same thing.

Let's find what we believe in Scripture. Only Scripture is God-breathed. I appreciate the many theologians of the past and in our present day, but none of them individually nor all of them collectively can rise to the level of Scripture.

And I want to see if we're going to believe these doctrines of grace, I want to see Jesus talking about these things. And he does. There's a series I would recommend at this point by Steve Lawson, available from Ligonier Ministries called The Doctrines of Grace in the Gospel of John.

I'd encourage people to either view it online or order the series on DVD or CD, tremendous going through these doctrines from the lips of Jesus and from the writings of John there in the Gospel of John.

He limits his teaching to the Gospel because there's so much of it just in John's Gospel. And it's a wake-up call to all of us to see just how much Jesus spoke of these things. In John chapter 3, Jesus makes clear to Nicodemus that unless a man is born again, he cannot.

Not he's got a 50 -50 chance or it's not going to look good. The chances are rare. No, he cannot. It's actually impossible. Unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. All right, let's break that up a little bit.

Let's see what those words mean. To enter the Kingdom of God, what does that mean? We understand that is to have faith, confidence, trust, reliance in Christ alone, in His Gospel alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

That is what we do in terms of putting our trust in Him. And on that basis, we are justified, declared right by God in His sight. And Jesus said, no man, which is a universal statement, no one can, no one can unless he's born again.

He can't enter. He has no ability to enter unless he's first born again. Notice there's an order from the lips of Jesus. Before someone can enter the Kingdom, regeneration must take place. Let that sink in.

Because the most popular view in so-called Christendom today is the idea that we put our faith in Christ and then we're born again. But that goes totally counter to what Jesus said on this issue. It's explicit.

It's talking about salvation. He's not just bringing in a little bit about salvation in a different context. The whole discussion with Nicodemus by Jesus is about salvation. In fact, it's later on in this chapter we have the most famous words in the Bible which speak of salvation.

John 3 .16 is in the same chapter of John 3, obviously. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Again, the context continues.

Salvation, salvation, salvation. But Jesus made it clear that unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Then He said in similar words in verse 5 of that chapter, unless a man is born again, born from above, or as it says in verse 5, born of water and the Spirit, he cannot, again notice that phrase, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

And He explains what He means in verse 5 by verse 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit, capital S, is Spirit, lowercase s. That which is born of the Holy Spirit is the human spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. It's interesting what Jesus does at this point because what He doesn't do is explain seven ways of being born again. He didn't say, right, here are seven steps to you being born again.

No, He immediately explains the new birth by speaking of the wind and the mystery of the wind and speaking of the divine action of God, the Holy Spirit. He doesn't say it's in your hands, you do these three things and you'll be born again, which is the way that modern evangelicalism, so-called, goes about this often times.

No, Jesus points to the mystery of the wind and says that's what's at stake and that's what's taking place when someone is born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

Hear what Jesus said, so it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, like wind, comes invisibly and like wind we don't see the wind, we see the effects of the wind. We see the papers in the streets just flying through the streets.

We see entire houses when the wind blows strongly crumble under the power of the wind and parts of the roof are flying through the air. We see the effects of the wind, we don't see the wind so much. You don't know where it comes from or where it goes and Jesus is making it clear.

It's not in the power of man to determine this new birth, it's a birth from above. It's God himself at work causing new birth. Just like it's not in the power of man to cause his own physical birth. We were not asked, do you want to be born to this particular mother, this particular father?

Do you want to be born at this particular time in history, in this particular nation?

No.

Decision about our birth is out of our hands and in the hands of our parents and that's an analogy for the new birth in a spiritual sense. Just back to chapter 1 of this amazing Gospel of John and the Gospel writer makes that clear in verse 12.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children.

Of God.

And then it explains that statement in the next verse, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Several factors were not involved. These are the not ofs of John chapter 1 verse 13 and we need to embrace the not ofs.

It was not because of this, not because of this, and not because of this. What are the three things mentioned? Who were born, not of blood, not because of ancestry, nor of the will of the flesh. Man's will was not the deciding factor in our salvation.

And again, for the synergist, the Arminian, the one who says it's a joint or combined operation between God and man, this regeneration, this born again experience that everybody needs to enter the kingdom, the will of the flesh is the ultimate deciding factor in synergism.

But Jesus makes it clear in John 3, and the gospel writer John makes it clear in John 1, that the will of the flesh had nothing to do with anything that happened in terms of becoming children of God. The ultimate deciding factor is God.

People will respond, but doesn't it say to all who received him? Isn't that an act of man? Yes, yes, but notice verse 13 says the reason that we, humanity, did receive, if anyone did receive him, it was not because of the will of the flesh or ancestry, not because of the will of man.

Not because of the will of man, but of God. And in a logical order, the ordo salutis, we would have to make the claim, according to scripture here in John 3 and John 1, the will of man is not the decisive factor here.

We're born from above, we're regenerated, and that causes us to want what we didn't want, to receive what we didn't want to receive before, because God takes out the heart of stone, puts in a heart of flesh that actually wants the Jesus of the Bible and his salvation.

A lot of people want the benefits of God, they just don't want God. And that's true of all of us outside of regeneration. So understanding the order is dead in sin, then first God regenerates the human spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that new life comes, and then actions take place.

The receiving of Christ, the believing in Christ, the loving of Christ. Those things do not happen.

Why?

Well, if you think of it logically, it's impossible for hearts of stone to make decisions like this. I want to become a heart of flesh, I want to have a different nature. No, hearts of stone, by their very nature, do not want change.

There's nothing in them to grab hold of that is in any way wanting change. We want change in our life, maybe a different kind of purpose to life, we just don't want the God of the Bible, or his salvation, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

So anyone who's receiving him, God says by this verse, it was an act of God. It doesn't point to man, it points away from man. That's the whole loading of scripture here. It's not as a result of man, it's the result of God at work.

Because God was first at work, man is now receiving Christ. Because verse 13 explains verse 12. So back to chapter 3, where Jesus is making this very, very clear to Nicodemus and all of us who read these words.

The wind blows where it wishes, you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes, so it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit. When we're talking about this ordo salutis, we're again talking about a logical, not a temporal order.

What I mean by that is just like at the crash scene of the car. Let's take the car with the two crash dummies inside. It could all be over in a second and it's only when the camera slows down or the many cameras from very different angles record it and we watch the whole event afterwards can we see that one thing happened before the other.

Because in time it just looked like a crash, dummies thrown, wow, that's just hard to take.

In.

And it's because there are these sophisticated cameras at work that's allowing us to slow things down that we can see that there was an order involved. Now what happens in our salvation is someone comes to Christ.

What happens first? It's the Bible that explains the logical sequence that must have taken place. Man by his nature does not want God and so God has to intervene first to do divine surgery like the power of the wind.

The wind blows where it wishes. And I can think from my own heart when I was 14 years of age, I went to a service I didn't want to go to on a Sunday night. It was May the 10th in the year 1980 and I didn't want to be there.

Didn't like the singing, didn't like the preaching, but halfway through I became interested in what I wasn't interested in eight seconds before. I can't pinpoint the time but God knows the time and He knows when any of us move from the condition of death to becoming alive.

There's a time of our birth. Now some people have this conundrum because they've heard teaching that is very erroneous and it's put them in bondage. Truth sets people free. Error puts people in bondage.

I remember speaking to someone who said because I can't, I cannot locate in my mind the day and the time of my conversion, I'm not really saved. In fact what had happened was this person went to a service where the evangelist said unless you know the exact day and time when you were converted, you're not really born again.

I want to just ask, where is that in the Bible? It doesn't say any such thing. And we can go to the great theologian from Australia, Crocodile Dundee, to get this one sorted out. That's because you remember he was asked in the movie, well he went and asked a tribal official when he was a youngster when was he born and the answer came back in the summertime.

That's all the information he ever had regarding his birth. Does he sit around as Crocodile Dundee trying to work out whether he's really alive? No the evidence of his aliveness is the fact that he's breathing in and out, that there's a pulse, that he's doing certain things and that's true and you and I might go to a scene of an accident and we see the paramedics at work, they're looking oftentimes when there's a severe crash for signs of life, they check the pulse, they see if there's breathing and if there is they're encouraged because the person is still alive.

They don't go and try to ask what time and day were you born, they're asking is this person alive and that's what the New Testament does when it speaks about us looking to see if we're alive spiritually.

It says examine yourselves to see if you're in the faith. You look in 2 Corinthians, it speaks of that and it means check your pulse. If there's a heartbeat spiritually, if there is evidence of a conversion that will be seen in the activity you're now doing, you actually love what you didn't love before.

Not perfectly, not even well at times but there's something in you that still has a heartbeat to know God. That's evidence of God being at work. There's something in you that still loves the true gospel and you want to hold on to it.

That's God showing you that spiritual birth has taken place. That's what we're called to do, not look at a time and place and I was able to under God just steer away from the false teaching and say check yourself, are you alive spiritually?

Just like Crocodile Dundee, if you can sense that you're alive, you must have had a birth and that's why it didn't really phase Crocodile Dundee in the movie as to whether or not he was alive because he couldn't pinpoint the year of his birth and a lot of people can show by a dramatic conversion that they were converted on a certain day and they become suspicious of those who say, you know what, I can't point to a day or month or I can't even put it within three years.

There are some people who say, you know, somewhere between my fifth and eighth birthday, somewhere in there, I was made alive spiritually and I haven't looked back since and I still love this Christ and there's evidence that I do love him but I can't put a date on it.

And I want to just encourage you, you're just as much converted as the person who has the dramatic, almost like the Apostle Paul road to Damascus experience.

Are you alive?

Well, Reformed theology will really help you at this point. You couldn't be alive with evidence to show you're alive unless you were first dead and made alive by God by regeneration. Regeneration is the smaller word, salvation is the bigger word and regeneration is the first thing God does and with that we speak of monogysm.

We've spoken of that word earlier in this course. It's a great word to get hold of, monogysm. One power working. It's the power of God and God alone and that's what we should attribute to God in our salvation.

The reason I'm a Christian and someone else who might have heard the exact same message I did is not, is because of the power of God, not my ability to intelligently work out who Jesus is for myself, not because of anything found in me, not because my heart was more subtle and more humble than my neighbors, no.

To be dead spiritually is to be dead spiritually, D-O-A, dead on arrival, that's how we arrive on planet earth. The reason I'm a Christian and someone else is not is because of the activity of the Holy Spirit alone.

It's not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but I'm receiving Christ because I'm born of God and one thing happens before the other. Here's three words in a sentence I want you to really grasp because I think it will really set the stage for understanding this ordo salutis.

Three words, regeneration precedes faith. We all understand the word precedes, it means to come before. Regeneration comes before faith. If you believe that, you're on the way to reformed theology and reformed soteriology and the reason I believe it is because Jesus taught it in John chapter 3 and we see it elsewhere in our New Testament.

So just summarizing for a moment, there's a logical order of things, not a temporal.

Order.

Justification, Sanctification, and the New Birth

All of the salvation in the sense of a conversion could have taken place in a moment of time but if we slow the cameras down and look at the scripture, we need to understand I couldn't have entered the kingdom of God unless I was first born again and I get that from Jesus.

Another thing we need to understand is to distinguish between justification, which is God declaring us right in His sight, and sanctification. Sanctification is the lifelong process on planet earth where the Christian is being made more conformable to the image of Christ and for all of us that's an ongoing process and sometimes we think we're doing well in that and then other times God exposes the depths of our corruption, the flesh nature that is still alive and well and it's an ongoing process and I'm glad Paul wrote what he did in Romans 7 where he spoke about him being the wretched man that he was.

In fact he spoke of it in the present tense. I don't believe he's speaking of pre-conversion days. He's speaking of his relationship with God and saying the good that I want to do I don't do and the good, the bad things I don't want to do I end up doing, oh wretched man that I am and he's speaking as an apostle of Christ and speaking in the present tense and he says in my mind I love the law of God, I want God's will but I end up not always accomplishing it.

I don't believe he could have said that as an unconverted man. He's speaking in the present tense and speaking of the life of sanctification and he understood that God has to be at work for us to even want the things of God.

He's very clear on that. So justification is God declaring someone right in his sight. You go to the court guilty before God because of sin but Jesus as the substitute, the sin bearer has borne your sins in his body on the tree according to 1 Peter 2 24 and he has taken the guilt and punishment you deserved upon himself and as our sin bearer he was punished for us.

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement, the punishment due to us came upon him and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to our own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity or the rebellion of us all.

That's the work of Calvary's cross, Christ on the cross for us. Has not only died for our sins but he lived for our righteousness and all of the positive righteousness of Christ is transferred to the account of the believer at the moment of conversion.

When he places his faith in Christ the death of Christ is attributed to him, the life of Christ is attributed to him, he goes from the courtroom free, God says not guilty. Not only do I reckon you righteous in my sight but I reckon you righteous in the righteousness of my son which is perfect that cannot be added to and 8 ,000 years from now, 20 ,000 years from now you cannot be as a child of God more righteous than you are the moment you place your faith in Christ because you've been made righteous with a righteousness that is not your own.

Luther called it an alien, justitium, an alien righteousness, it's from outside of us, it's amazing, that's why they call it amazing grace. It's all the act of God and that's justification, sanctification as I say is that life long process and it's important that we distinguish between these two, justification and sanctification and get this, our very salvation is on the line in doing this.

You confuse this and you end up with a false gospel and it's Galatians makes clear, anyone who preaches a different gospel, another gospel is under the anathema of God, we are to believe what God has revealed in his word and Galatians makes it clear what that is, justification is by faith, by faith alone.

One man said, justified means just as if I'd never sinned and that's good as far as it goes, I'd like to take it another stage further, justified means just as if I'd never sinned and just as if I'd always obeyed because the righteousness I've been given doesn't merely cancel out my sin but gives me positive righteousness and that's my most pressing need.

Jesus said unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you shall in no way enter the kingdom of God. I need more than just my sins taken away but that just brings me to zero, imagine a man with 8 billion dollars in debt and that debt is cancelled, he's going to be pretty joyous but he's still only got zero in his account, his debt is cancelled, that's wonderful but to get to heaven you need something in the bank account, you need positive righteousness and God gives you Christ's righteousness so that you as a believer, poor in spirit, bankrupt in heart knowing that you bring nothing to the table except your sin, look in, check into your bank account, it's as if you go online, check your account and you check in and in the morning you think, you know, I don't remember making a deposit and it says I've got 100 billion in my account, I think I'd remember putting that in as a deposit and then you realize it's what God has done for you in Christ, you're loaded, you've been given a righteousness that is not your own and it's perfect, it's flawless, it's His.

How do we know that? 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30 says, By His doing, which again speaks of the monogistic act of God, by His doing you are in Christ Jesus who has made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

Christ is our righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21, For He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, in Christ. There it is.