Last week we concentrated on the fact that “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus became something He was not so that He could make us something we could not be. Everything that God has done from the moment of creation has been for our redemption, all of His movements and actions, all of His patience and waiting, all of His speaking and revealing. From the moment that He promised Eve that her seed would crush Satan’s head, to starting again with Noah and his children, to creating a family that would become a nation for Himself out of an old man and his barren wife, to rescuing that family from slavery and supernaturally molding them into a nation. From the law to the prophets, the judges to the kings, the exiles of judgment followed by the returns of mercy everything that God ever did and will ever do has been for our redemption. He sent His Son, perfect, glorious, beautiful and obedient to be for us the embodiment of God, Colossians 1:15 says that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”, and then to become to God the embodiment of all sin so that the Father could allow Jesus to become both the priest and the sacrifice that would pay for every sin ever committed. “For our sake” is an incredible statement because it means that in Jesus the Father was not merely satisfying Himself as if He were blood-thirsty or wrath-hungry, as if what mattered to His heart was making sure that His judgment was applied, but it means that the Father, in His kindness and love found a way for His wrath to be applied and sinners to be redeemed all at once. God is holy, He can’t overlook sin, but He is merciful so He made a way for His holiness to be kept pure and our impurity to be redeemed at the same time. He gave His Son. How often do we stop and consider how incredible the incarnation of Jesus was? The Son of God, the One who spoke everything into being according to Colossians 1, the One who was with God and was God according to John 1, didn’t just become a man, He became an infant. The Creator of the universe had to be nursed and changed, carried and held, rocked to sleep and protected from things like cold and heat, germs and disease, bullies and bad habits. Jesus wasn’t born a man, He was born an infant, grew into a toddler, a teenager, a twenty-something and then, when He was 30 years old, He finally began to reveal to the world who and what He had always been, the Son of God, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the Lord of everything. II Corinthians 5:21 tells us that “For our sake” Jesus became something but it also tells us that His becoming sin had an exchange involved, it had a purpose, He became sin so that we could become God’s righteousness. What He became for our sake has to translate into what we become for His sake. Jesus becoming sin means that He lived a perfect life, He kept and fulfilled the Law, He followed only the voice of His Father, He sought and saved the lost, He did the will of the One who sent Him and then, at Passover, He became the spotless Lamb that all the sins of the world were placed upon, that was taken outside the camp and then was sacrificed on behalf of all who had ever been or would ever be. That is what it meant for Jesus to become sin. The question we have to handle today is “what does it mean for us to become the righteousness of God?” I believe that Paul defines it pretty well in our text verses, becoming the righteousness of God begins with being convinced that One died for all and if we are convinced of that then we have to realize that this means that all have died; becoming the righteousness of God has to start with seeing the sacrifice of Jesus as not just available to all but already paid for all. We can’t view anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason as anything other than someone that Jesus died for. That’s the first step, before we serve, before we witness, even before we pray, we have to see Jesus’ blood as already spilt, Jesus’ love as already established and the Father’s will for redemption as already extended to the life of every single person that has ever and will ever live. The only behavior that can come into play in our mindsets, beliefs and desires for every person we ever encounter has to be God’s behavior. I can’t live for His sake and I can’t become God’s righteousness unless I understand that Jesus didn’t merely die for you and He didn’t merely die for me, He died for all, He tasted death for everyone. First we must believe that One died for all and second, we have to then live for the One who died. Living for Jesus means we live like Jesus. We don’t live for the world, we don’t live for those we have a burden for or even those that God surrounds us with, we live for Jesus by living like Jesus in every relationship, every culture, every society, every context that we find ourselves in and that we see not just in our lives but in the world. This morning, as we celebrate Palm Sunday I desire for us to see Jesus’ heart, that even as He was finally being called a King, His heart was weeping for those that were not aware of the peace they were missing. Today we are going to talk about Jesus’ actions, the Father’s heart and what it means for us to be the righteousness of God in the midst of a worldwide crisis.