In Jesus the scripture was fulfilled which says, “And he was numbered with the transgressors.”

Precious promise of God for sinners.

Jesus was numbered among the transgressors that they might be numbered among the righteous. Their sins and sinfulness were imputed to him; his righteousness, holiness, and suffering were imputed to them. He was brought down to hell; they were lifted up to the height of heaven—beyond sin and death and hell and the grave and above the possibility of condemnation and damnation.

Oh, precious promise!

He was numbered with the transgressors!

We are numbered with the righteous!

The scripture was fulfilled.

The fulfillment of scripture in this case means that God determined and carried out every detail of the cross of Christ. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. Man was not sovereign at the cross. God was sovereign because he was carrying out his eternal purpose in love for the salvation of his people and for the glory of his name. And among those details of the cross, God determined that Jesus would be crucified between two thieves.

And God determining that, the world and the false church of Jesus’ day with their wicked hands actually crucified Jesus between two thieves. The world and the false church numbered Jesus among the transgressors.

A transgressor is a lawless person.

Jesus was condemned as a lawless person, the ultimate antinomian. Not for any work of unrighteousness that he had done, for no one convicted him of sin. He had no sin but only righteousness and spotless holiness. He was the holy and the just one. But for his doctrine, he was condemned as a lawless antinomian.

The scribes and Pharisees had assiduously watched Jesus and lurked to hear what would come out of his mouth. As they listened, they heard Jesus condemn all their laws, which they had added to the law of Moses as the way of salvation. They heard Jesus say too that he had come as Lord of the law, to fulfill the whole law in order to free his people from its condemnation and sentence of death. He taught that he alone is the way to God the Father and to eternal life with him. Jesus taught that only those whom the Father draws come to him. Jesus taught that those whom the Father draws have Christ by faith only. He taught the perfect sovereignty of God in salvation.

Further, Jesus denied the theology that man is saved by keeping the law of Moses, that by law-keeping a man is received into God’s grace, and that through obedience a man has closer fellowship with God. Jesus called that theology the doctrine of the devil—a wicked theology that causes people to thank God that they are not sinners as other men are!

And under oath Jesus swore to the truth that he is the Christ and thus the only way of salvation.

For that doctrine the church condemned him as a lawless and wicked person who taught the people to ignore the law of Moses. Thus he was considered a danger to the church and an enemy of the state. For that doctrine the church numbered him among the lawless, the antinomians, and the transgressors.

So unbelievers always number Christ among the transgressors. They number him among the transgressors when they condemn his doctrine as lawless and antinomian.

He is still crucified in this world between two thieves when the apostate church world—doubting that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, viewing that doctrine as lawless, and seeing that doctrine as a threat to its own power—declares that the gospel of salvation all of grace, all of Christ, and all of God is a dangerous doctrine, a lawless doctrine that will make men careless and profane. Christ is numbered among the transgressors when his truth is condemned as evil.

That Jesus was so numbered among the transgressors teaches us exactly this: our salvation is wholly of God’s grace, wholly by Christ’s cross, wholly without our works, and wholly by faith alone. His numbering among the transgressors teaches us that apart from any obedience, activity, love, or repentance on our part we are saved from guilt, sin, and death and delivered into the eternal favor of God!

Jesus was numbered among the transgressors!

Hallelujah!

Salvation is of the Lord!

Long ago, the Spirit of God testified through the prophet Isaiah that this would happen to Christ. In the Spirit Isaiah saw Christ on Golgotha and testified in Isaiah 53:12 of his vision. Isaiah saw Christ crucified between two thieves.

The men crucified with Christ were two murderers and brigands. Concerning their natures, crimes, wickedness, and sins, the Bible makes no distinction. The men were one in those respects. They had been caught, tried, and condemned to death. Then those murderers were hung, one on the left of Jesus and the other on his right.

As transgressors they were lawless men. They were lawless in the sense that they did not own any law or authority other than themselves. They did not own God’s law. They did not acknowledge church law. They did not heed state law. They did as they pleased, and they lived as they pleased. They were against any law except their own law.

Belonging to their lawlessness and manifesting their lawless hearts was their rebellion. So especially on the foreground was their contempt for law and for all authority besides themselves.

The word rebellion expresses the godlessness of man. Man was a rebel in the beginning. Man willed to be God. Man willed to determine for himself what is good and what is evil.

Scripture tells us that robbery was the chosen way of life of the men between whom Jesus was crucified. They were freebooters, violent robbers, plunderers, brigands, rebels against the Roman state, and excommunicates from the church of God. They lived in caves and dens in the earth. They lurked in highways and byways looking for some man to slay; some soldier to assault; some government official to murder; some man to rob or woman to rape; or a helpless, enfeebled, or lonely person to beat up, assault, and rob.

In Luke 23 scripture calls the men “malefactors”—wicked evildoers. They transgressed all of God’s commandments. They were doers of evil. Evil lived in their hearts, so that their hearts were evil and wicked. There was for those malefactors no law except their own lusts and their own plans and desires. Their feet were swift to shed blood; the poison of asps was under their tongues; their hearts were full of lying and deceit; and the word of falsehood was in their mouths. They were vile, beastly, godless men who owned no law and no lord except themselves. They feared no punishment by either church or state or God.

And since the history of those men occurred in Israel, we may say that they, as Barabbas, were Jews. They had been circumcised and brought into the temple by their parents. The men were familiar with the law of God, the scriptures, the worship of God, and their calling to honor God and the king. Even in their railing on Christ, they used the language of the covenant. The men knew of God’s promise, of the Messiah, of heaven, and of forgiveness. These truths they had rejected. Theirs was a bristling, knowing rebellion against all authority and a terrible apostasy.

And as such they were worthy of death. They were worthy to be cast out of the church by excommunication, to be executed by the state and put out of society, and to be cast into the lake of fire, from which there is no exit. As one of the malefactors said, “We, indeed, are justly condemned.”

Luke 23:32 says that two other criminals were led out with Jesus.

And Jesus was crucified in the midst of them.

Other criminals!

There was the criminal, Jesus of Nazareth. Besides him, there were two other criminals. In other words, it was not that the Jews crucified Jesus and that alongside him and unrelated to him they crucified two criminals. It was not as though the people thought that Jesus was innocent and that the two men crucified with him were guilty.

But the Jews condemned Jesus likewise as a lawless, rebellious apostate and antinomian. And when Jesus was hung in the middle of those two criminals and crucified with those malefactors, the people declared Jesus to be the chief of the thieves, robbers, wicked evildoers, and criminals—as it were, their ringleader and the greatest of their type.

And, crucifying him, the Jews declared Jesus accursed of God and unworthy to exist in society, in the church, and in the world.

Oh, it is true that the Roman state reserved crucifixion for her worst enemies. So Rome, as the representative of the world, declared Jesus Christ to be her worst enemy and unfit to live in society and worthy to be punished for his crimes.

But what does the law say? The law says that whoever is hung on wood is accursed of God. They crucified Jesus on the cross and cursed him there.

And when they crucified him with thieves, they numbered Jesus with the transgressors.

To number is to reckon. To reckon in the case of Jesus was to constitute him by legal declaration a transgressor. Once the judge declared Jesus guilty, he was legally numbered among criminals. Although Pilate first declared Jesus innocent, afterward Pilate legally declared Jesus a criminal. Pilate declared Jesus to be worthy of death as an enemy of the Roman state. Pilate did that in response to the church, which had declared Jesus worthy of death for blasphemy because he made himself the Son of God.

Jesus’ condemnation was not because he was an actual transgressor. He had walked all over Judea and Galilee and even to the lands beyond, and he had done good there. He had taught good and worked good, and he was good among the people there. All the proceedings of his trial, both before the Sanhedrin and before Pontius Pilate, showed that Jesus was innocent. The Sanhedrin could not get two witnesses to agree to anything. Pontius Pilate expressed four times that he found no fault with Jesus.

They numbered him with the transgressors because they saw in him the perfectly innocent one, the perfect man, God in the flesh; and they hated him. More than in the crucifixion of the malefactors, whom all men would agree were despicable; in that act of the apostate church and the wicked world to number Jesus with the transgressors, man is laid bare in all his lawlessness, iniquity, and hatred of God and of all that is good. Not only did the church and the world condemn Jesus; but also, by crucifying him between two thieves, they declared him to be the absolutely worst thing that had ever happened to the earth.

That is what man always does with Christ. Man does not open his heart to Christ. Man crucifies Christ. The church and the world did that with Christ then, and man does that with Christ now. When Christ comes in the gospel and by the gospel declares that God justifies the ungodly, that righteousness is a gift freely imputed to believers, and that salvation is all of grace and all of God and all on the basis of Christ’s atoning death; then man declares that gospel positively iniquitous, a careless and profane doctrine that makes whole churches and all those who believe it worldly, lawless, and evil. Thus man puts Christ among the lawless yet today!

And through that numbering of Christ with the transgressors, the scriptures were fulfilled! God decreed so. God judged Jesus so. God judged Jesus the worst sinner who ever walked on the earth. God judged Jesus to be worthy of death, worthy to be crucified and cursed.

Blessed scripture: numbered with the transgressors.

God numbered Jesus among the transgressors because he bore the sin of many. God says in Isaiah 53:12 that he will divide Christ a portion with the great and give him spoil with the strong. God will highly exalt Christ and give him a name that is above every name. Why? “Because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

The sin of many.

Not the sin of all.

That was clear at the cross. Those two malefactors represented all men. All men as they are evil by nature, full of iniquity, and full of transgression. Men worthy of death and worthy of hell. And Jesus was crucified in the midst of them. Jesus divided between those two men. Jesus did. Jesus, as he was numbered among the transgressors, did not merely stand between those two men, exist between them, and hang between them; but he also divided between them. Jesus—Christ crucified—as he hung there at that moment and as the word of his cross comes throughout all of history to all kinds of people divides between people and people. That word finds all men alike. All men are the same by nature. They are murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, murderers of brothers and sisters, thieves and robbers, adulterers and whoremongers, blasphemers and false swearers, and evildoers of every kind. And Jesus divides between them. He divides between them every time the gospel is preached and he is crucified among its hearers.

He divides between them because he bears the sin of many.

Not the sin of all.

If he bore the sin of all, then he would not make division between men, and he would not be the cause of division between men. If he died for all, then all men would have an equal chance to be saved, and then men themselves would make division among men.

But Jesus divides.

And Jesus divides because God divided. God made an eternal distinction between men. God appointed some to eternal damnation, and God appointed some to eternal salvation. God made a distinction between men by the election of grace and by a just reprobation.

And to carry out that decree, God sent Christ to bear the sin of many.

And God imputed to Christ the transgressions of many. Having imputed those transgressions to Christ, God numbered Christ among the transgressors. Indeed, God made Christ sin, who knew no sin. God made Christ a curse for his people, to deliver his people from the curse that they deserved. God counted Christ the worst criminal and sinner ever to live, so that his people might be accounted the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

And Christ willingly did the will of God.

Is that not plain from the prophecy of Isaiah, the scripture that was fulfilled? It was not merely that Christ was numbered among the transgressors. But Christ did not defend himself, and he made intercession for those transgressors. Being found among the transgressors, he made intercession for them.

Is that not clear from the cross? Is that not clear from Jesus’ very first word from the cross? “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Jesus interceded for his people. He found himself among them as transgressors, and he did not disown them and refuse to recognize them, but he had pity on them, and in his pity he prayed for them. “Forgive them, Lord, and blot me out!”

And God heard Christ. God listened to Christ. God poured out all of his wrath, his justice, and the holiness of his offended majesty upon Jesus Christ for all the sins of all God’s people, which sins God imputed to Christ.

The fulfillment of scripture!

Scripture is the revelation of God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. The fulfillment of that scripture is thus the coming to pass of the word of God, the fulfillment of the promise of God that the salvation of all of God’s people is accomplished in every respect by Jesus Christ, and the carrying out of what God decreed for their salvation from all eternity.

Because Christ was numbered among the transgressors, his people are numbered among the righteous, the law-keepers, the obedient, the blessed, and the holy. This is the gospel.

You may not count this gospel as antinomian and so number Christ among the lawless, as the church of his day did.

God does not number his people among the law-
keepers, the obedient, the righteous, the blessed, and the holy because they keep the law themselves. They are by nature malefactors and ungodly. But they are numbered among the law-keepers, the obedient, the righteous, the blessed, and the holy because of Christ’s work, which they receive by faith.

So this is the truth of the text: God numbered Christ among the antinomians, the lawless, the wicked, the iniquitous, and the evildoers because God imputed our sins to Jesus Christ. And God numbers us among the righteous, the holy, the obedient, the blessed, and the law-keepers because he imputes Christ’s righteousness to us.

Do you believe that?

Then you are among the righteous!

You were numbered by God among the righteous eternally.

You are numbered by God among the righteous now.

You will be numbered by God among the righteous in the judgment.

By faith alone.

Not by your obedience.