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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Corinthians 5:21

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For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

21. For he hath made him to be sin for us ] Literally, He made, i.e. in the Sacrifice on the Cross. The word sin has been variously explained as a sin-offering, a sinner, and so on. But it is best to take the word in its literal acceptation. He made Him to be sin, i.e. appointed Him to be the representative of sin and sinners, treated Him as sin and sinners are treated (cf. 2Co 5:15). He took on Himself to be the representative of Humanity in its aspect of sinfulness (cf. Rom 8:3; Php 2:7) and to bear the burden of sin in all its completeness. Hence He won the right to represent Humanity in all respects, and hence we are entitled to be regarded as God’s righteousness (which He was) not in ourselves, but in Him as our representative in all things. See also 2Co 5:14.

who knew no sin ] Cf. Heb 4:15; 1Pe 2:22; 1Jn 3:5; also Joh 8:46.

that we might be made the righteousness of God in him ] We not only are regarded as God’s righteousness, but become so, by virtue of the inward union effected between ourselves and Him by His Spirit, through faith. See 2Co 5:17 and note. “He did not say righteous, but righteousness, and that the righteousness of God.” Chrysostom. See also Bp Wordsworth’s note. Cf. Rom 1:17; Rom 3:22; Rom 5:19; Rom 10:3; 1Co 1:30.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

For he hath made him to be sin for us – The Greek here is, for him who knew no sin, he hath made sin, or a sin-offering for us. The design of this very important verse is, to urge the strongest possible reason for being reconciled to God. This is implied in the word ( gar) for. Paul might have urged other arguments, and presented other strong considerations. But he chooses to present this fact, that Christ has been made sin for us, as embodying and concentrating all. It is the most affecting of all arguments; it is the one that is likely to prove most effectual. It is not indeed improper to urge on people every other consideration to induce them to be reconciled to God. It is not improper to appeal to them by the conviction of duty; to appeal to their reason and conscience; to remind them of the claims, the power, the goodness, and the fear of the Creator; to remind them of the awful consequences of a continued hostility to God; to persuade them by the hope of heaven, and by the fear of hell 2Co 5:1 l to become his friends: but, after all, the strongest argument, and that which is most adapted to melt the soul, is the fact that the Son of God has become incarnate for our sins, and has suffered and died in our stead. When all other appeals fail this is effectual; and this is in fact the strong argument by which the mass of those who become Christians are induced to abandon their opposition and to become reconciled to God.

To be sin – The words to be are not in the original. Literally, it is, he has made him sin, or a sin-offering hamartian epoiesen . But what is meant by this? What is the exact idea which the apostle intended to convey? I answer, it cannot be:

That he was literally sin in the abstract, or sin as such. No one can pretend this. The expression must be, therefore, in some sense, figurative. Nor,
Can it mean that he was a sinner, for it is said in immediate connection that he knew no sin, and it is everywhere said that he was holy, harmless, undefiled. Nor,
Can it mean that he was, in any proper sense of the word, guilty, for no one is truly guilty who is not personally a transgressor of the Law; and if he was, in any proper sense, guilty, then he deserved to die, and his death could have no more merit than that of any other guilty being; and if he was properly guilty it would make no difference in this respect whether it was by his own fault or by imputation: a guilty being deserves to be punished; and where there is desert of punishment there can be no merit in sufferings.

But all such views as go to make the Holy Redeemer a sinner, or guilty, or deserving of the sufferings which he endured, border on blasphemy, and are abhorrent to the whole strain of the Scriptures. In no form, in no sense possible, is it to be maintained that the Lord Jesus was sinful or guilty. It is a corner stone of the whole system of religion, that in all conceivable senses of the expression he was holy, and pure, and the object of the divine approbation. And every view which fairly leads to the statement that he was in any sense guilty, or which implies that he deserved to die, is prima facie a false view, and should be at once abandoned. But,

(4) If the declaration that he was made sin ( hamartian) does not mean that he was sin itself, or a sinner, or guilty, then it must mean that he was a sin-offering – an offering or a sacrifice for sin; and this is the interpretation which is now generally adopted by expositors; or it must be taken as an abstract for the concrete, and mean that God treated him as if he were a sinner. The former interpretation, that it means that God made him a sin-offering, is adopted by Whitby, Doddridge, Macknight, Rosenmuller, and others; the latter, that it means that God treated him as a sinner, is adopted by Vorstius, Schoettgen, Robinson (Lexicon), Dr. Bull, and others. There are many passages in the Old Testament where the word sin ( hamartia) is used in the sense of sin-offering, or a sacrifice for sin. Thus, Hos 4:8, They eat up the sin of my people; that is, the sin-offerings; see Eze 43:22, Eze 43:25; Eze 44:29; Eze 45:22-23, Eze 45:25.

See Whitbys note on this verse. But whichever meaning is adopted, whether it means that he was a sacrifice for sin, or that God treated him as if he were a sinner, that is, subjected him to sufferings which, if he had been personally a sinner, would have been a proper expression of his hatred of transgression, ands proper punishment for sin, in either case it means that he made an atonement; that he died for sin; that his death was not merely that of a martyr; but that it was designed by substituted sufferings to make reconciliation between man and God. Locke renders this: probably expressing the true sense, For God hath made him subject to suffering and death, the punishment and consequence of sin, as if he had been a sinner, though he were guilty of no sin. To me, it seems probable that the sense is, that God treated him as if he had been a sinner; that he subjected him to such pains and woes as would have been a proper punishment if he had been guilty; that while he was, in fact, in all senses perfectly innocent, and while God knew this, yet that in consequence of the voluntary assumption of the place of man which the Lord Jesus took, it pleased the Father to lay on him the deep sorrows which would be the proper expression of his sense of the evil of sin; that he endured so much suffering, as would answer the same great ends in maintaining the truth, and honor, and justice of God, as if the guilty had themselves endured the penalty of the Law. This, I suppose, is what is usually meant when it is said our sins were imputed to him; and though this language is not used in the Bible, and though it is liable to great misapprehension and perversion, yet if this is its meaning, there can be no objection to it.

(Certainly Christs being made sin, is not to be explained of his being made sin in the abstract, nor of his having actually become a sinner; yet it does imply, that sin was charged on Christ, or that it was imputed to him, and that he became answerable for it. Nor can this idea be excluded, even if we admit that sin-offering is the proper rendering of hamartia in the passage. That Christ, says an old divine commenting on this place, was made sin for us, because he was a sacrifice for sin, we confess; but therefore was he a sacrifice for sin because our sins were imputed to him, and punished in him. The doctrine of imputation of sin to Christ is here, by plain enough inference at least. The rendering in our Bibles, however, asserts it in a more direct form. Nor, after all the criticism that has been expended on the text, does there seem any necessity for the abandonment of that rendering, on the part of the advocate of imputation. For first hamartia in the Septuagint, and the corresponding ‘aashaam in the Hebrew, denote both the sin and the sin-offering, the peculiar sacrifice and the crime itself. Second, the antithesis in the passage, so obvious and beautiful, is destroyed by the adoption of sin-offering. Christ was made sin, we righteousness.

There seems in our authors comment on this place, and also at Rom. 5, an attempt to revive the oft-refuted objection against imputation, namely, that it involves something like a transference of moral character, an infusion, rather than an imputation of sin or righteousness. Nothing of this kind is at all implied in the doctrine. Its advocates with one voice disclaim it; and the reader will see the objection answered at length in the supplementary notes at Rom. 4 and Rom. 5. What then is the value of such arguments or insinuations as these: All such views as go to make the Holy Redeemer a sinner, or guilty, or deserving of the sufferings he endured, border on blasphemy, etc. Nor is it wiser to affirm that if Christ was properly guilty, it would make no difference in this respect, whether it was by his own fault or by imputation. What may be meant in this connection by properly guilty, we know not. But this is certain, that there is an immense difference between Christs having the guilt of our iniquities charged on him, and having the guilt of his own so charged.

It is admitted in the commentary, that God treated Christ as if he had been a sinner, and this is alleged as the probable sense of the passage. But this treatment of Christ on the part of God, must have some ground, and where shall we find it, unless in the imputation of sin to him? If the guilt of our iniquities, or which is the same thing, the Law obligation to punishment, be not charged on Christ, how in justice can he be subjected to the punishment? If he had not voluntarily come under such obligation, what claim did law have on him? That the very words sin imputed to Christ are not found in scripture, is not a very formidable objection. The words in this text are stronger and better He was made sin, and says Isaiah, according to the rendering of Dr. Lowth, The Lord made to meet upon him the iniquities of us all. It was required of him, and he was made answerable. Isa, Isa 53:6.)

Who knew no sin – He was not guilty. He was perfectly holy and pure. This idea is thus expressed by Peter 1Pe 2:22; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; and in Heb 7:26, it is said he was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. In all respects, and in all conceivable senses, the Lord Jesus was pure and holy. If he had not been, he would not have been qualified to make an atonement. Hence, the sacred writers are everywhere at great pains to keep this idea prominent, for on this depends the whole superstructure of the plan of salvation. The phrase knew no sin, is an expression of great beauty and dignity. It indicates his entire and perfect purity. He was altogether unacquainted with sin; he was a stranger to transgression; he was conscious of no sin; he committed none. He had a mind and heart perfectly free from pollution, and his whole life was perfectly pure and holy in the sight of God.

That we might be made the righteousness of God – This is a Hebraism, meaning the same as divinely righteous. It means that we are made righteous in the sight of God; that is, that we are accepted as righteous, and treated as righteous by God on account of what the Lord Jesus has done. There is here an evident and beautiful contrast between what is said of Christ, and what is said of us. He was made sin; we are made righteousness; that is, he was treated as if he were a sinner, though he was perfectly holy and pure; we are treated as if we were righteous, though we are defiled and depraved. The idea is, that on account of what the Lord Jesus has endured in our behalf we are treated as if we had ourselves entirely fulfilled the Law of God, and bad never become exposed to its penalty. In the phrase righteousness of God, there is a reference to the fact that this is his plan of making people righteous, or of justifying them.

They who thus become righteous, or are justified, are justified on his plan, and by a scheme which he has devised. Locke renders this: that we, in and by him, might be made righteous, by a righteousness imputed to us by God. The idea is, that all our righteousness in the sight of God we receive in and through a Redeemer. All is to be traced to him. This verse contains a beautiful epitome of the whole plan of salvation, and the uniqueness of the Christian scheme. On the one hand, one who was perfectly innocent, by a voluntary substitution, is treated As if he were guilty; that is, is subjected to pains and sorrows which if he were guilty would be a proper punishment for sin: and on the other, they who are guilty and who deserve to be punished, are treated, through his vicarious sufferings, as if they were perfectly innocent; that is, in a manner which would be a proper expression of Gods approbation if he had not sinned. The whole plan, therefore, is one of substitution; and without substitution, there can be no salvation. Innocence voluntarily suffers for guilt, and the guilty are thus made pure and holy, and are saved. The greatness of the divine compassion and love is thus shown for the guilty; and on the ground of this it is right and proper for God to call on people to be reconciled to him. It is the strongest argument that can be used. When God has given his only Son to the bitter suffering of death on the cross in order that we may be reconciled, it is the highest possible argument which can be used why we should cease our opposition to him, and become his friends.

(See the supplementary notes on Rom 1:17; note at Rom 3:21. See also the additional note above on the first clause of the verse. The righteousness of God, is doubtless that righteousness which the divine Saviour worked out, in his active and passive obedience, and if ever any of the guilty race of Adam are treated as righteous by God, it must be solely on the ground of its imputation.)

Remarks

1. It is possible for Christians to have the assurance that they shall enter into heaven, 2Co 5:1. Paul said that he knew this; John knew this (see the note on 2Co 5:1), and there is no reason why others should not know it. If a man hates sin he may know that as well as anything else; if he loves God, why should he not know that as well as to know that he loves an earthly friend? If he desires to be holy, to enter heaven, to be eternally pure, why should we have any doubt about that? If he loves to pray, to read the Bible, to converse of heaven – if his heart is truly in these things, he may know it, as well as know anything else about his own character of feelings.

2. If a Christian may know it, he should know it. No other knowledge is so desirable as this. Nothing will produce so much comfort as this. Nothing will contribute so much to make him firm, decided, and consistent in his Christian walk as this. No other knowledge will give him so much support in temptation; so much comfort in trial; so much peace in death. And if a man is a Christian, he should give himself no rest until he obtains assurance on this subject; if he is not a Christian be cannot know that too soon, or take too early measures to flee from the wrath to come.

3. The body will soon be dissolved in death, 2Co 5:1. It is a frail crumbling, decaying dwelling, that must soon be taken down. It has none of the properties of a permanent abode. it can be held together but a little time. It is like a hut or cottage, that is shaken by every gust of wind: like a tent when the pins are loose, and the cords unstranded, or rotten, and when the wind will soon sweep it away. And since this is the fact, we may as well know it, and not attempt to conceal it from the mind. All truth may be looked at calmly, and should be, and a man who is residing in a frail and shattered dwelling, should be looking out for one that is more permanent and substantial. Death should be looked at. The fact that this tabernacle shall be taken down should be looked at; and every man should be asking with deep interest the question whether there is not a more permanent dwelling for him in a better world.

4. This life is burdened, and is full of cares, 2Co 5:2, 2Co 5:4. It is such as is suited to make us desire a better state. We groan here under sin, amidst temptation, encompassed by the cares and toils of life. We are burdened with duties, and we are oppressed by trials; and under all we are sinking to the grave. Soon, under the accumulated burdens, the body will be crushed, and sink back to the dust. Man cannot endure the burden long, and he must soon die. These accumulated trials and cares are such as are adapted to make him desire a better inheritance, and to look forward to a better world. God designs that this shall be a world of care and anxiety, in order that we may be led to seek a better portion beyond the grave.

5. The Christian has a permanent home in heaven, 2Co 5:1-2, 2Co 5:4. There is a house not made with hands; an eternal home; a world where mortality is unknown. There is his home; that is his eternal dwelling. Here he is a stranger, among strangers, in a strange world. In heaven is his home. The body here may be sick, feeble, dying; there it shall be vigorous, strong, immortal. He may have no comfortable dwelling here; he may be poor, and afflicted; there he shall have an undecaying dwelling, an unchanging home. Who in a world like this should not desire to be a Christian? What other condition of life is so desirable as that of the man who is sure that after a few more days he shall be admitted to an eternal home in heaven, where the body never dies, and where sin and sorrow are known no more?

6. The Christian should be willing to bear all the pain and sorrow which God shall appoint, 2Co 5:1-4. Why should he not? He knows not only that God is good in all this; but he knows that it is but for a moment; that he is advancing toward heaven, and that he will soon be at home. Compared with that eternal rest what trifles are all the sufferings of this mortal life!

7. We should not desire to die merely to get rid of pain, or to be absent from the body, 2Co 5:4. It is not merely in order that we may be unclothed, or that we may get away from a suffering body, that we should be willing to die. Many a sinner suffers so much here that he is willing to plunge into an awful eternity, as he supposes, to get rid of pain, when, alas, he plunges only into deeper and eternal woe. We should be willing to bear as much pain, and to bear it as long as God shall be pleased to appoint. We should submit to all without a complaint. We should be anxious to be relieved only when God shall judge it best for us to be away from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

8. In a mere readiness to die there is no evidence that we are prepared for heaven; compare 2Co 5:4. Many a man supposes that because he is ready to die, that, therefore, he is prepared. Many a one takes comfort because a dying friend was ready and willing to die. But in a mere willingness to die there is no evidence of a preparation for death, because 100 causes may conspire to produce this besides piety. And let us not be deceived by supposing that because we have no alarm about death, and are willing to go to another world, that therefore we are prepared. It may be either stupidity, or insensibility; it may be a mere desire to get rid of suffering; it may be because we are cherishing a hope of heaven which is altogether vain and illusive.

9. The Christian should, and may desire to depart and to be in heaven, 2Co 5:2. Heaven is his home; and it is his privilege to desire to be there. Here he is in a world of trial and of sin. There he shall be in a world of joy and of holiness. Here he dwells in a frail, suffering, decaying body. There he shall be clothed with immortality. It is his privilege, therefore, to desire, as soon as it shall be the will of God, to depart, and to enter on his eternal inheritance in heaven. He should have a strong, fixed, firm desire for that world; and should be ready at the shortest notice to go and to be forever with the Lord.

10. The hopes and joys of Christians, and all their peace and calmness in the prospect of death, are to be traced to God, 2Co 5:5. It is not that they are not naturally as timid and fearful of dying as others; it is not that they have any native courage or strength, but it is to be traced entirely to the mercy of God, and the influence of his Spirit, that they are enabled to look calmly at death, at the grave, at eternity. With the assured prospect of heaven, they have nothing to fear in dying; and if we have the earnest of the Spirit – the pledge that heaven is ours – we have nothing to fear in the departure from this world.

11. The Christian should be, and may be, always cheerful, 2Co 5:6. Paul said that he was always confident, or cheerful. Afflictions did not depress him; trials did not cast him down. He was not disheartened by opposition; he did not lose his courage by being reviled and persecuted. In all this he was cheerful and bold. There is nothing in religion to make us melancholy and sad. The assurance of the favor of God, and the hope of heaven, should have, and will have, just the opposite effect. A sense of the presence of God, a conviction that we are sinners, a deep impression of the truth that we are to die, and of the infinite interest of the soul at stake, will indeed make us serious and solemn, and should do so. But this is not inconsistent with cheerfulness, but is rather suited to produce it. It is favorable to a state of mind where all irritability is suppressed, and where the mind is made calm and settled; and this is favorable to cheerfulness. Besides, there is much, very much in religion to prevent sadness, and to remove gloom from the soul. The hope of heaven, and the prospect of dwelling with God and with holy beings forever, is the best means of expelling the gloom which is caused by the disappointments and cares of the world. And much as many persons suppose that religion creates gloom, it is certain that nothing in this world has done so much to lighten care, to break the force of misfortune and disappointment, to support in times of trial, and to save from despair, as the religion of the Redeemer. And it is moreover certain that there are no persons so habitually calm in their feelings, and cheerful in their tempers, as consistent and devout Christians. If there are some Christians, like David Brainerd, who are melancholy and sad, as there are undoubtedly, it should be said:

That they are few in number;
That their gloom is to be traced to constitutional propensity, and not to religion;
That they have, even with all their gloom, joys which the world never experiences, and which can never be found in sin; and,

(4) That their gloom is not produced by religion, but by the lack of more of it.

12. It is noble to act with reference to things unseen and eternal, 2Co 5:7. It elevates the soul; lifts it above the earth; purifies the heart; and gives to man a new dignity. It prevents all the grovelling effect of acting from a view of present objects, and with reference to the things which are just around us. Whatever withdraws us, says Dr. Johnson, from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings – Tour to the Hebrides, p. 322, ed. Phil. 1810. Whatever directs the eye and the heart to heaven; whatever may make man feel and believe that there is a God, a Saviour, a heaven, a world of glory, elevates him with the consciousness of his immortality, and raises him above the groveling objects that wither and debase the soul. Man should act with reference to eternity. He should be conscious of immortality. He should be deeply impressed with that high honor that awaits him of standing before God. He should feel that he may partake in the glories of the resurrection; that he may inherit an eternal heaven. Feeling thus, what trifles are the things of the earth! How little should he be moved by its trials! How little should he be influenced by its wealth, its pleasures, and its honors!

13. The Christian, when he leaves the body, is at once with the Lord Jesus, 2Co 5:8. He rushes, as it were instinctively, to his presence, and casts himself at his feet. He has no other home than where the Saviour is; he thinks of no future joy or glory but that which is to be enjoyed with him. Why then should we fear death? Lay out of view, as we may, the momentary pang, the chilliness, and the darkness of the grave, and think of that which will be the moment after death – the view of the Redeemer, the sight of the splendors of the heavenly world, the angels, the spirits of the just made perfect, the river of the paradise of God, and the harps of praise, and what has man to fear in the prospect of dying?

Why should I shrink at pain or woe,

Or feel at death dismay?

Ive Canaans goodly land in view,

And realms of endless day.

Apostles, martyrs, prophets there,

Around my Saviour stand;

And soon my friends in Christ below.

Will join the glorious band,

Jerusalem! my happy home!

My soul still pants for thee;

When shall my labors have an end.

In joy, and peace, and thee!

– Charles Wesley.

14. We should act feeling that we are in the immediate presence of God and so as to meet his acceptance and approbation, whether we remain on earth, or whether we are removed to eternity, 2Co 5:9. The prospect of being with him, and the consciousness that his eye is fixed upon us, should make us diligent, humble, and laborious. It should be the great purpose of our lives to secure his favor, and meet with his acceptance; and it should make no difference with us in this respect, where we are – whether on earth or in heaven; with the prospect of long life, or of an early death; in society or in solitude; at home or abroad; on the land or on the deep; in sickness or in health; in prosperity or in adversity, it should be our great aim so to live as to be accepted of him. And the Christian will so act. To act in this manner is the very nature of true piety; and where this desire does not exist, there can be no true religion.

15. We must appear before the judgment-seat, 2Co 5:10. We must all appear there. This is inevitable. There is not one of the human family that can escape. Old and young; rich and poor; bond and free; all classes, all conditions, all nations must stand there, and give an account for all the deeds done in the body, and receive their eternal doom. How solemn is the thought of being arraigned! How deeply affecting the idea that on the issue of that one trial will depend our eternal weal or woe! How overwhelming the reflection that from that sentence there can be no appeal; no power of reversing, it; no possibility of afterward changing our destiny!

16. We shall soon be there, 2Co 5:10. No one knows when he is to die; and death when it comes will remove us at once to the judgment-seat. A disease that may carry us off in a few hours may take us there; or death that may come in an instant shall bear us to that awful bar. How many are stricken down in a moment; how many are hurried without any warning to the solemnities of the eternal world! So we may die. No one can insure our lives; no one can guard us from the approach of the invisible king of terrors.

17. We should be ready to depart If we must stand at the awful bar; and if we may be summoned there any moment, assuredly we should lose no time in being ready to go. It is our great business in life; and it should claim our first attention, and all other things should be postponed that we may be ready to die. It should be the first inquiry every morning, and the last subject of thought every evening – for who knows when he rises in the morning but that before night he may stand at the judgment-seat! Who, when he lies down on his bed at night, knows but that in the silence of the night-watches he may be summoned to go alone – to leave his family and friends, his home and his bed, to answer for all the deeds done in the body?

18. We should endeavor to save others from eternal death, 2Co 5:11. If we have ourselves any just views of the awful terrors of the day of judgment, and if we have any just views of the wrath of God, we should endeavor to persuade others to flee from the wrath to come. We should plead with them; we should entreat them; we should weep over them; we should pray for them, that they may be saved from going up to meet the awful wrath of God. If our friends are unprepared to meet God; if they are living in impenitence and sin, and if we have any influence over others in any way, we should exert it all to induce them to come to Christ, and to save themselves from the awful terrors of that day. Paul deemed no self-denial and no sacrifice too great, if he might persuade them to come to God, and to save their souls. And who that has any just views of the awful terrors of the day of judgment; of the woes of an eternal hell, and of the glories of an eternal heaven; can deem that labor too great which shall be the means of saving immortal souls? Not to frighten them should we labor, not to alarm them merely should we plead with them, but we should endeavor by all means to persuade them to come to the Redeemer. We should not use tones of harshness and denunciation; we should not speak of hell as if we would rejoice to execute the sentence, but we should speak with tenderness, earnestness, and with tears (compare Act 20:31), that we may induce our friends and fellow-sinners to be reconciled to God.

19. We should not deem it strange or remarkable if we are charged with being deranged for being active and zealous in the subject of religion, 2Co 5:13. There will always be enough, both in the church and out of it, to charge us with over-heated zeal; with lack of prudence; or with decided mental alienation. But we are not to forget that Paul was accused of being mad; and even the Redeemer was thought to be beside himself. It is sufficient for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his Lord; and if the Redeemer was charged with derangement on account of his special views and his zeal, we should not suppose that any strange thing had happened to us if we are accused in like manner.

20. The gospel should be offered to all people, 2Co 5:14. If Christ died for all, then salvation is provided for all; and then it should be offered to all freely and fully. It should be done without any mental reservation, for God has no such mental reservation; without any hesitation or misgiving; without any statements that would break the force, or weaken the power of such an offer on the consciences of people. If they reject it, they should be left to see that they reject that which is in good faith offered to them, and that for this they must give an account to God. Every man who preaches the gospel should feel that he is not only permitted but required to preach the gospel to every creature; nor should he embrace any opinion whatever which will in form or in fact cramp him or restrain him in thus offering salvation to all mankind. The fact that Christ died for all, and that all may be saved, should be a fixed and standing point in all systems of theology, and should be allowed to shape every other opinion, and to shed its influence over every other view of truth.

21. All people by nature are dead in sins, 2Co 5:14. They are insensible to their own good; to the appeals of God; to the glories of heaven, and to the terrors of hell. They do not act for eternity; they are without concern in regard to their everlasting destiny. They are as insensible to all these things, until aroused by the Spirit of God, as a dead man in his grave is to surrounding objects. And there is nothing that ever did arouse such a man, or ever could, but the same power that made the world, and the same voice that raised Lazarus from his grave. This melancholy fact strikes us everywhere; and we should be deeply humbled that it is our condition by nature, and should mourn that it is the condition of our fellowmen everywhere.

22. We should form our estimate of objects and of their respective value and importance by other considerations than those which are derived from their temporal nature, 2Co 5:16. It should not be simply according to the flesh. It should not be as they estimate them who are living for this world. It should not be by their rank, their splendor, or their fashion. It should be by their reference to eternity, and their bearing on the state of things there.

23. It should be with us a very serious inquiry whether our views of Christ are such as they have who are living after the flesh, or such only as the unrenewed mind takes, 2Co 5:16. The carnal mind has no just views of the Redeemer. To every impenitent sinner he is a root out of a day ground. There is no beauty in him. And to every hypocrite, and every deceived professor of religion, there is really no beauty seen in him. There is no spontaneous, elevated, glowing attachment to him. It is all forced and unnatural. But to the true Christian there is a beauty seen in his character that is not seen in any other; and the whole soul loves him, and embraces him. His character is seen to be most pure and lovely; his benevolence boundless; his ability and willingness to save, infinite. The renewed soul desires no other Saviour; and rejoices that he is just what he is – rejoices in his humiliation as well as his exaltation; in his poverty as well as his glory; rejoices in the privilege of being saved by him who was spit upon, and mocked, and crucified, as well as by him who is at the right hand of God. One thing is certain, unless we have just views of Christ we can never be saved.

24. The new birth is a great and most important change, 2Co 5:17. It is not in name or in profession merely, but it is a deep and radical change of the heart. It is so great that it may be said of each one that he is a new creation of God; and in relation to each one, that old things are passed away, and all things are become new. How important it is that we examine our hearts and see whether this change has taken place, or whether we are still living without God and without hope. It is indispensable that we be born again; John 3. If we are not born again, and if we are not new creatures in Christ, we must perish for ever. No matter what our wealth talent, learning, accomplishment, reputation, or morality; unless we have been so changed that it may be said, and that we can say, old things are passed away, and all things are become new, we must perish forever. There is no power in the universe that can save a man who is not born again.

25. The gospel ministry is a most responsible and important work, 2Co 5:18-19. There is no other office of the same importance; there is no situation in which man can be placed more solemn than that of making known the terms on which God is willing to bestow favor on apostate man.

26. How amazing is the divine condescension, that God should have ever proposed such a plan of reconciliation, 2Co 5:20-21. That he should not only have been willing to be reconciled, but that he should have sought, and have been so anxious for it as to be willing to send his own Son to die to secure it! It was pure, rich, infinite benevolence. God was not to be benefitted by it. He was infinitely blessed and happy even though man should have been lost. He was pure, and just, and holy, and it was not necessary to resort to this in order to vindicate his own character. He had done man no wrong: and if man had perished in his sins, the throne of God would have been pure and spotless. It was love; mere love. It was pure, holy, disinterested, infinite benevolence. It was worthy of a God; and it has a claim to the deepest gratitude of man.

Let us then, in view of this whole chapter, seek to be reconciled to God. Let us lay aside all our opposition to him. Let us embrace his plans. Let us be willing to submit to him, and to become his eternal friends. Let us seek to heaven to which he would raise us; and though our earthly house of this tabernacle must be dissolved, let us be prepared, as we may be, for that eternal habitation which he has prepared for all who love him in the heavens.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

2Co 5:21

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin

Christ being made sin, for us

In every age of the world mankind seem to have been conscious to themselves of guilt.

Now guilt is universally accompanied with a sense of demerit. The altars have groaned under the victims that were heaped upon them; and the temples have been filled with the most costly perfumes. Men have every given the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their souls. We are new no longer permitted to wander in ignorance, uncertainty, and error, respecting the method of our acceptance with God.

I. Consider the character of Christ as upright and innocent. Not only was He free from original sin; throughout the whole course of an active and eventful life, He kept Himself unspotted from the world. Immediately before entering upon His public ministry, His innocence was put to a severe trial. But though the words of the text speak only of our Saviours innocence, we ought not to overlook His high dignity and excellence. He was the everlasting God.

II. Illustrate the doctrine of His being made sin for us. The original word, here rendered sin, is also employed to signify a sin-offering; in which signification it is frequently used in the Septuagint. This phrase is borrowed from the Jewish ritual, of which the sin-offering formed a part. The design of this offering was to take away the guilt of the offerer by the substitution of a victim in his place.

1. That Christ suffered and died in our stead, and consequently expiated our guilt, appears from the nature of His sufferings themselves. Whence proceeded those groans that indicated the agony of His soul? It is impossible to account for this anguish upon the supposition that His sufferings were the same as those of any other man. Many who were thus witnesses for the truth have met death in its most terrible forms with composure, and even with transports of joy. If Christians, then, in such circumstances have triumphed, why did Christ tremble? Not surely because their courage and constancy were greater than His. The causes were completely different. They Suffered from men, who can kill the body but cannot injure the soul. He suffered from God, before whose indignation no created being is able to stand.

2. That Christ suffered in our stead appears from the nature and design of sacrifices. That sacrifices were of a vicarious nature is plain from all the accounts we have of them. The Jewish sacrifices were unquestionably of this nature. But not only were the ancient sacrifices of a vicarious nature–they were instituted as types of Christ, our great High Priest. They must have originated with God, as a proper means of directing the view of men to Him, who was to appear in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Viewed in this light, sacrifices were worthy of God to appoint, and reasonable for man to perform. Since these sacrifices were of a vicarious nature, and since they were also types of Christ, when He offered Himself as a sacrifice upon the Cross, He must have borne the punishment of our sins, and thus have expiated our guilt.

3. That Christ died in our room and stead, appears from the express declarations of Scripture. In Isa 53:4, Christ is said to have borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; and in the 12th verse, He poured out His soul to death, and bore the sins of many.

III. The improvement of the subject.

1. To the faithful follower of Jesus this subject is full of consolation. His guilt is expiated. Not so the impenitent sinner, who will not come to Christ that he may be saved.

2. From this subject we may learn the dreadful nature of sin.

3. From this subject we may learn the amazing love of God to man. (John Ramsay, M. A.)

The incarnation from the human side—

Christ conversant with sin

1. These are bold words of Paul. So much so that the great majority of interpreters are tempted to alter them. For sin they take the liberty of reading sin offering. I suppose if Paul had meant sin offering he could very easily have said so. The ideas conveyed by sin and sin offering are exceedingly different. No man carefully expressing himself would now use the one term, when he intended to give the idea contained in the other. We know no man without sin. He who has had no experience of sin, has not had a human experience. If Christ had been man in every other respect, but without being in some way conversant with sin, men would not have felt the power of His sympathetic love reaching to the worst extremities of their case. The problem is clear enough; Christ to establish His thorough sympathy with my heart must be conversant with sin, which forms so very large a part of my experience; and yet to deliver me from sin He ought to be above it, and in no way involved in its entanglements. He knew no sin, and He was made sin. Here Paul affirms as real those very two things that I have felt to be a necessity.

2. Let us try and find our way through this difficulty, and understand some of the important conclusions in which we may be landed. The difficulty may come up in three different forms.

(1) As an intellectual difficulty; arising from the apparent impossibility of the infinite entering into the experience of the finite. Christ is not the manifestation of the infinite and absolute, which in its infiniteness is incapable of being manifested, he is the manifestation of all that is intelligible and conceivable in God, which can be pictured to the mind.

(2) There is the moral difficulty we are necessitated to consider. How then is it morally possible that the sinless should have the experience of sin? Here careful reflection is necessary. The experience of sin, so common to men, is more complete than may at first seem. There are three things to be carefully distinguished in it.

(a) There are all those inducements that lead to it, and that may for a long time be operating on the mind before its commission.

(b) Then there is the deliberate, wilful act of sin, which for the most part is momentary; and

(c) There is that long course of sorrow, in numerous forms, which flows out of sin.

Into how much of this can the sinless enter? Into the deliberate determination and act of wrong, it is clear that Christ the sinless cannot enter; nor can He have the slightest sympathy with it. But this forms the very least part of the experience of sin; and in every case, as we may see, forms the greatest barrier to all sympathy. But the inducements to sin, the prompting occasions and influences, as they are not in themselves morally wrong, becoming so only when they are wilfully ripened into action, in themselves arising from weakness and suffering, into all these the sinless can enter, without the least moral contamination. I admit that Christ could not Himself feel any inclination to do wrong; therefore neither could He personally feel the difficulty of resisting.. But He could feel for those in whom that inclination and difficulty are greatest. His feelings can go with us up to the point of actual commission, where our guilt begins. Can we not see at once the truth of this? There may be strong temptations to a child that are none at all to an adult. That does not prevent a parent from entering into the difficulties that beset his childs path. In Christ this sympathy was immensely strong, so strong that we can scarcely realise its power. So too was His experience of the general condition of humanity wonderfully deep and comprehensive. Hence into all this experience of sin He could enter sinlessly, to an extent that would make the realisation of temptation in Him far greater than in any one single human being. Then again on the same grounds He could enter as fully into all that after experience of sin in bodily sufferings and bitter mental agonies, with which we are all so well acquainted. He could enter into these because they are not themselves morally wrong; and though He could not know personally the reproaches of conscience and the dreadful remorse of a soul under self-condemnation, He could enter into it all, and that most intensely, through that strong sympathetic love and that perfect knowledge of our human condition which we know Him to have possessed. Still in putting this view before thoughtful men, I have found them clinging yet to the notion that Christs sympathy and temptation could not be perfect without His actually committing wrong, being a sinner, and overcoming it, which leads me to another remark or two.

(i.) It might be so if sin (actual) were a misfortune that we could not avoid, a calamity and woe in which we were plunged against our will. Then our sympathising Saviour would go with us there. And I think the difficulty greatly arises from taking that view. But sin is not that. It is a deliberate intentional act, which at every point we are perfectly conscious of the ability to avoid. Temptation is not doing wrong. Many men are most powerfully and sorrowfully tempted in those cases in which they triumph. It would not lessen the reality of that temptation if they should conquer in every case. Nor does it in Christ who enters perfectly into our temptations so far as they are suffering and wrestling; but who cannot go with us, even in sympathy, when we turn the temptation into actual crime.

(ii.) As a matter of fact, it is by no means true that we either get or expect most sympathy, as sinners, from those who have committed most crimes. Quite the opposite. Nothing so destroys sympathy as wrong doing. And that for a very obvious reason. Every commission of crime destroys the sensibility of the soul and makes us comparatively indifferent both to the suffering of temptation and to the after sorrows which form so large a part of the experience of sin. All our instincts as sinners teach us that it is not in the guilt of another that we shall find the ground of his sympathy with us; but quite apart from that, in the moral tenderness of His nature (which the commission of sin destroys), and in that general humanity of disposition which enables him to make anothers case his own. This is just what we see so wonderfully manifest in Christ we may say then that it is His entire freedom from sin in act that gives that fine tone to His sympathy.

(iii.) I only add one remark on the practical view of the matter. If you can feel the force of what I have put before you in removing objections, then you can unhesitatingly fall back on the simple narrative as it stands in our Scriptures. And in doing that I may confidently assert that as a matter of fact we do in our deepest sinfulness feel the sympathy of the sinless Jesus, as we feel no mans sympathy.

3. I have now only briefly to notice the concluding part of this verse. The entire power of Christianity over us rests in the love, or the loving sympathy of Christ, towards and with us; just that which we have been looking at. It is the love of a holy Saviour to us, that breaks our bonds, that gives us hope that all evil may be conquered, and strengthens us to enter upon the warfare. Most beautifully has Paul put this fact into its sublimest form, when we thus understand his words. Christ the sinless, he teaches, came down into the midst of our sinful humanity, took it and us into his warmest heart of love, became conversant with all the forms of sin that oppress us and make us miserable–though without ever allowing Himself to be in the least degree conquered by them. Herein He awakens our hearts to love, He strikes to the very depths of the soul with His loving sympathy, till His conquest over us is complete. (S. Edger, B. A.)

Christ made sin

I. Christ was absolutely sinless. Not that He was unacquainted with sin, for no man knew it so well as He did. He knew its origin, growth, ramifications, and all the hells it ever had created or ever would create. It was His knowledge of sin that caused Him to fall prostrate in Gethsemane. What then does it mean? That personally He was free from sin. It never stained His heart.

1. He was without sin though He lived in a sinful world. Everywhere sin surrounded Him as a dense, pestiferous atmosphere. But it did not taint Him. His generation failed to corrupt Him.

2. He was without sin, though He was powerfully tempted.

II. That though sinless, He was, in some sense, made sin by God.

1. This cannot mean that God made the Sinless One a sinner. This would be impossible.

2. Two facts may throw light upon the expression.

(1) That God sent Christ into a world of sinners to become closely identified with them. He was numbered with transgressors.

(2) That He permitted this world of sinners to treat and punish Him as if He were the greatest of all.

III. That the Sinless One was thus made sin in order that men might participate in Gods righteousness. The grand end was the moral restoration of man to the rectitude of God. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The sinless recede sin, and the sinful made righteous

I. Christ was personally sinless. The conception and birth of Jesus, while they linked Him to human nature, did not connect Him with human depravity. He was the second holy man, but unlike the first He continued so. He understood the nature of sin, and knew what it was to be tempted; yet in His own experience He was sinless–He knew no sin in His desires, motives, volitions, or acts. His heart never knew self-disapprobation.

II. As the voluntary representative of sinful men, Christ was through a limited period accounted by God a transgressor. In this sense God made Christ sin. Christ was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He did not come into this condition by His own misconduct. Free from exposure to suffering on all personal grounds He consented to suffer for us. But Christ held this position only for a time–and Christ is the only suffering substitute of a guilty race for the purpose of redemption.

III. The object of God in treating Christ as a sinner was to place Himself in a position whence He might account sinful men righteous, and really work righteousness within them. Generally the righteousness of God means that provision which God has made in the sacrifice of Christ for the justification of the ungodly. To be made the righteousness of God by Christ is to have our guilt removed by His sacrifice, and our persons sanctified. Conclusion: Behold–

1. The riches of the goodness of God! God made Christ sin to make us righteousness.

2. The unutterable love of Christ. He who knew no sin made sin for us, and this not by constraint, but willingly, not for self interest, but of a ready mind.

3. An absolute human necessity provided for. But for this interposition.

(1) We are lost.

(2) We have no meeting place with God.

(3) We have no offering wherewith to come before God.

4. The hopeful circumstances in which mankind are placed, and the security of such as participate in Christs mediation!

5. The lessons which by Christs mediation God reads to His intelligent universe (Luk 15:1-32.). (S. Martin.)

Christ made sin for us

I. The personal character of Christ. He knew no sin. The virtues of others are only comparative: their excellencies are counterbalanced by defects. How seldom do men appear to the same advantage in public and in private. There are virtues which are in some degree incompatible: the circumstances which go to form the contemplative character, are unfavourable to the active; and contrariwise. Some virtues border closely on defects:–courage degenerates into temerity; caution becomes timidity. It not unfrequently happens that men, after having established their claim to some particular quality, fail in those points in which their chief excellence consists. It was thus with the faith of Abraham, the meekness of Moses, and the patience of Job. Even where there is no flaw in the character which strikes the eye of the public, or which is noted by private friendship, the individual himself is deeply conscious of his deficiencies. Confessions of this kind are found in the diaries of Luther. In all the particulars referred to, our Lord stood out in marked contrast to the most distinguished servants of God. His virtues were not comparative, but absolute: there was no inconsistency–no disproportion, His was not the excellence which arose from the predominance of some one virtue, but from the union and harmony of all: in the active and contemplative, He was alike eminent. In none of His virtues was there any exaggeration or excess. This purity did not arise from the absence of temptation. Some who have risen superior to greater trials, have been overcome in smaller. To lighter trials our Lord was not less exposed than to severer ones; nor was His conduct in regard to the one, less admirable than in regard to the other. Jewish fishermen would never have drawn that character if they had not seen it.

II. His mediatorial office–He was made sin for us. To assert, and to found the assertion on the text, that Christ, having the guilt of our sins imputed to Him, may be considered as the greatest sinner on earth, is language utterly indefensible. It is not to explain the language of Scripture, but to distort it. Guilt is a personal quality: it is incapable of being transferred. At the very time that Christ was expiating the guilt of sin upon the Cross He was the Holy One of God–the just suffering in the room of the unjust. He who was not guilty suffering in the room of those who were. Some understand the word sin to mean sin-offering. The word rendered sin-offering, as the marginal reading indicates, strictly signifies sin. The terms are singularly emphatic. God made, or treated, or permitted Christ to be treated, not merely as sinful, or a sinner, but as sin itself. Look in proof of this to the records of His life. Consider the estimate which His enemies formed of His character. They did not speak of Him merely as a sinner, but as a friend or favourer of sinners. They did not impute to Him merely gluttony and intemperance, but the indictable offence of blasphemy. Away with Him, was their cry, let Him be crucified. Had there been nothing more in the treatment of Christ than what has been here mentioned, the propriety of the language in the text would have been sufficiently vindicated. But whence the agony in Gethsemane?

III. His benevolent undertaking. That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. This clause is to be explained on the same principle with the former. If by the expression, being made sin for us, is to be understood His being treated as a sinner, the corresponding expression, being made the Righteousness of God in Him, must imply, that we, on His account, are treated as if we were righteous. The sinner on believing in Christ is acquitted, and treated as if he were righteous. This view of the design of Christs sufferings, independently of the direct testimony of the text, follows from the fact of His innocence. If suffering and death are the penalty of sin, as He could not have suffered for His own sins, He must have suffered for the sins of others. (R. Brodie, M. A.)

Substitution

Note–

I. The doctrine. There are three persons mentioned here.

1. God. Let every man know what God is.

(1) He is a sovereign God, i.e., He has absolute power to do as He pleaseth. And though He cannot be unjust, or do anything but good, yet is His nature absolutely free; for goodness is the freedom of Gods nature.

(2) He is a God of infinite justice. This I infer from my text; seeing that the way of salvation is a great plan of satisfying justice.

(3) He is a God of grace. God is love in its highest degree.

2. The Son of God–essentially God; purely man–the two standing in a sacred union together, the God-Man. This God in Christ knew no sin.

3. The sinner. And where is he? Turn your eyes within. You are the person intended in the text. I must now introduce you to a scene of a great exchange. The third person is the prisoner at the bar. As a sinner, God has called him before Him. God is gracious, and He desires to save; God is just, and He must punish. Prisoner at the bar, canst thou plead Not guilty? He stands speechless; or, if he speaks, he cries, I am guilty! How then shall he escape? Oh! how did heaven Wonder, when for the first time God showed how He might be just, and yet be gracious! when the Almighty said, My justice says smite, but My love stays my hand, and says, spare the sinner! My Son shall stand in thy stead, and be accounted guilty, and thou, the guilty, shalt stand in My Sons stead and be accounted righteous! Do you say that such an exchange as this is unjust? Let me remind you it was purely voluntary on the part of Christ, and that it was not an unlawful thing is proved by the fact that the sovereign God made Him a substitute. We have read in history of a certain wife whose attachment to her husband was so great, that she had gone into the prison and exchanged clothes with him; and so the prisoner has escaped by a kind of surreptitious substitution. In such a case there was a clear breach of law, and the prisoner escaping might have been pursued and again imprisoned. But in this case the substitution was made by the highest authority.

II. The use of His doctrine. Now, then, we are ambassadors for God, etc., for–here is our grand argument–He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin. I might entreat you to be reconciled, because it would be a fearful thing to die with God for your enemy. I might on the other hand remind you that those who are reconciled are thereby inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. But I shall not urge that; I shall urge the reason of my text. I beseech thee, be reconciled to God, because Christ has stood in thy stead; because in this there is proof that God is loving you. Thou thinkest God to be a God of wrath. Would He have given then His own Son? God is love; wilt thou be unreconciled to love?

III. The sweet enjoyment which this doctrine brings to a believer. Are you weeping on account of sin? Why weepest thou? Weep because of thy sin, but weep not through any fear of punishment. Look to thy perfect Lord, and remember, thou art complete in Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ our sin-offering

I. What is the essential idea of sin? Some people desire to minimise sin; some evaporate it entirely away; some sneer at the idea. As men grow superficial and heartless they lose all true conception of sin, as a real, abiding, universal, awful fact; but, with Luther, we want no painted sin or painted Christ, we have to do with realities. If sin is not a reality, the Bible is inexplicable. At the outset we say that sin is not merely an individual, personal act. It involves the transgression of the law, but more. No man lives to himself. No act stops with the act or the actor. Your gun is fired in the air, the blaze goes from your chimney, but there is grime left in each. So the channels of our nature grow sooty. The act of sin leaves a stain which we and others see. Sin sinks into us. The sot is powerless. The fibres of his will are unstranded, unravelled. The impure become infected through and through. Sin is not a merely personal act, for it affects others. It scalds and scars the souls about us. We breathe our speech into the delicate membrane of the phonograph, turn the handle, and hear again the same. Had we instruments delicate enough we might grind out again from yonder post the sounds it has recorded here. No, sin is not an individual, isolated act, stopping with the act. Sin is a debt. We owe something to the laws of our being, those of the universe. We may overdraw, but we have got to pay sooner or later, though there be a delay. Sin is also spoken of as a disease. Sin is transmissible to posterity. Furthermore, we cannot say that it is a natural incident in the process of evolution, as did Emerson, so that the thief or the man in the brothel is on his way to perfection. Such a statement is an insult to conscience, an affront to God. Some flippantly say that Adams fall was a fall upward, which is absurd. Dives went down into the pit and Lazarus upward, borne to Abrahams bosom. Some talk of a lie as but an incomplete form of truth. Then the devil, the father of lies, is the grandfather of truth! Darkness is partial light! It is folly to excuse our sin by subterfuge.

II. The remedy and cure is a crucified Christ. Sin for us, who knew no sin. Christ, once for all, has been made a sacrifice for sin. He instead of the sinner dies. His death for sin is a real matter. He alone can deliver and purify those who are polluted by sin. (J. B. Thomas, D. D.)

The substitution of one for all

Note–

I. That the saviour was personally free from all sin. He knew no sin.

1. And of whom can this be said, but of Him? There is not one who must not acknowledge with David, Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. And if our Saviour had been born, like others, after the flesh, such would have been His state also. But He knew no sin. Though He assumed our nature He did not partake of its corruption. Before His incarnation He was known as the Holy One of Israel; before His birth, He was declared to be a holy thing; and when He was born, He was born without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin. Thus the Lord created a new thing in the earth. Christ then was born into the world holy, perfectly holy; did He continue so till He left it? The disciple who betrayed Him, confessed that he had betrayed the innocent blood.

2. And this was necessary in order to His being the Saviour of sinners. If He had once sinned, His obedience would not have been commensurate with the demands of the law which we had broken (Heb 7:26).

II. That God made Him, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us, i.e., a sin offering. Sin is a great evil, and required a great sacrifice. It is a breach of Gods law which is holy, just, and good; and subjects the unhappy transgressor to the heavy curse of that law (Gal 3:10); and to us sinners there was no hope of deliverance, unless some one should be found who could make a sufficient atonement. We could never have done this. Neither repentance, nor future obedience would have been sufficient to repair the breach which sin had made. No personal sufferings of ours could ever have expiated our offences. Even the sacrifices under the law could not make the comers thereunto perfect. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us. He left no demand of the law unfulfilled, and no claim of Divine justice unsatisfied. His work is perfect. There needs no righteousness of our own to be added to His, nor any sufferings of our own to be joined to those which He endured.

III. The end which God had in view. That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

1. God, the moral Governor of the world, requires righteousness from all the children of Adam. But we have all come short of the glory of God, and of the righteousness He requires. How then can man be just with God? There is no answer but that of the gospel. There we read that the Son of God in human nature–the nature which had sinned–became obedient to the law for man, obedient unto death, and thus brought in perfect and everlasting righteousness. We read also that this righteousness is imputed to us of God, for our complete justification before Him, the very moment we believe in Christ; which is therefore called believing unto righteousness. There is thus a reciprocal imputation; the believers guilt is transferred to the Saviour, and the Saviours righteousness made over to the believer. And as that Saviour is a Divine Saviour His righteousness may, with the strictest propriety, be called the righteousness of God.

2. This happy and glorious change of state is attended with the most blessed and transforming effects on the spirit and conduct. He who frees from the guilt and consequences of sin, delivers also from its love and power. Christ is made of God sanctification as well as righteousness. The very faith which justifies, sanctifies also. In particular, it secures the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, by whose powerful operations we are renewed in righteousness and true holiness, after the image of God. Conclusion:

1. How glorious does the character of God appear in all this! Mark–

(1) His love. Was there ever such love?

(2) His wisdom in providing a Saviour so exactly adapted to our wants.

(3) His holiness and justice.

2. How anxiously should we inquire whether we are made the righteousness of God in Christ!

3. How studious should we be to grow in grace and in holiness, and thus evince that our faith is a lively and active principle, working by love, and bringing forth much fruit to the glory of God! (D. Rees.)

The heart of the gospel

1. The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. They who preach not the atonement, whatever else they declare, have missed the soul and substance of the Divine message. In the days of Nero there was great shortness of food in Rome, although there was abundance at Alexandria. A certain man who owned a vessel went down to the sea coast, and there he noticed many hungry people, watching for the vessels that were to come from Egypt. When these vessels came to the shore there was nothing but sand in them which the tyrant had compelled them to bring for use in the arena: Then the merchant said to his shipmaster, Take thou good heed that thou bring nothing back with thee from Alexandria but corn, for these people are dying, and now we must keep our vessels for this one business of bringing food for them. Alas! I have seen certain mighty galleys of late loaded with nothing but mere sand of philosophy and speculation, and I have said, Nay, but I will bear nothing in my ship but the revealed truth of God, the bread of life so greatly needed by the people.

2. The doctrine of substitution is set forth in the text. I have found, by long experience, that nothing touches the heart like the Cross of Christ. The Cross is life to the spiritually dead. There is an old legend that when the Empress Helena was searching for the true Cross they found the three Crosses of Calvary buried in the soil. Which out of the three was the veritable Cross they could not tell, except by certain tests. So they brought a corpse and laid it on one, but there was neither life nor nation, but when it touched another it lived; and then they said, This is the true Cross.

I. Who was made sin for us? He who knew no sin.

1. He had no personal knowledge of sin. Throughout the whole of His life He never committed an offence against the great law of truth and right. Which of you convinceth Me of sin? Even His vacillating judge enquired, Why, what evil hath He done?

2. As there was no sin of commission, so was there about our Lord no fault of omission. He was complete in heart, in purpose, in thought, in word, in deed, in spirit.

3. Yea, more, there were no tendencies about our Substitute towards evil in any form.

4. It was absolutely necessary that any one who should be able to suffer in our stead should Himself be spotless.

II. What was done with Him who knew no sin? He was made sin. The Lord laid upon Jesus, who voluntarily undertook it, all the weight of human sin. Instead of its resting on the sinner it was made to rest upon Christ. Christ was not guilty, and could not be made guilty; but He was treated as if He were, because He willed to strand in the place of the guilty. Yea, He was not only treated as a sinner, but He was treated as if He had been sin itself in the abstract. Sin pressed our great Substitute very sorely. He felt the weight of it in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the full pressure of it came upon Him when He was nailed to the accursed tree. The Greek liturgy fitly speaks of Thine unknown sufferings: probably to us they are unknowable sufferings. The Lord made the perfectly innocent one to be sin for us: that means more of humiliation, darkness, agony, and death than you can conceive. I will not say that He endured either the exact punishment for sin, or an equivalent for it; but I do say that what He endured rendered to the justice of God a vindication of His law more clear and more effectual than would have been rendered to it by the damnation of the sinners for whom He died. The Cross is under many aspects a more full revelation of the wrath of God against human sin than even Tophet.

III. Who did it? He, i.e., God Himself. The wise ones tell us that this substitution cannot be just. Who made them judges of what is just? Do they say that He died as an example? Then is it just for God to allow a sinless being to die as an example? In the appointment of the Lord Jesus to be made sin for us, there was a display of–

1. The Divine Sovereignty. God here did what none but He could have done. He is the fountain of rectitude, and the exercise of His Divine prerogative is always unquestionable righteousness.

2. The Divine justice.

3. The great grace of God. God Himself provided the atonement by freely and fully giving up Himself in the person of His Son to suffer in consequence of human sin. If God did it, it is well done. If God Himself provided the sacrifice, be you sure that He has accepted it.

IV. What happens to us in consequence? That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Every man that believes in Jesus is through Christ having taken his sin made to be righteous before God. More than this, we are made not only to have the character of righteous, but to become the substance called righteousness. What is more we are made the righteousness of God. Herein is a great mystery. The righteousness which Adam had in the garden was perfect, but it was the righteousness of man: ours is the righteousness of God. Human righteousness failed; but the believer has a Divine righteousness which can never fail. How acceptable with God must those be who are made by God Himself to be the righteousness of God in Him! I cannot conceive of any thing more complete. (C. H. Spurgeon)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 21. For he hath made him to be sin for us] , He made him who knew no sin, (who was innocent,) a sin-offering for us. The word occurs here twice: in the first place it means sin, i.e. transgression and guilt; and of Christ it is said, He knew no sin, i.e. was innocent; for not to know sin is the same as to be conscious of innocence; so, nil conscire sibi, to be conscious of nothing against one’s self, is the same as nulla pallescere culpa, to be unimpeachable.

In the second place, it signifies a sin-offering, or sacrifice for sin, and answers to the chattaah and chattath of the Hebrew text; which signifies both sin and sin-offering in a great variety of places in the Pentateuch. The Septuagint translate the Hebrew word by in ninety-four places in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, where a sin-offering is meant; and where our version translates the word not sin, but an offering for sin. Had our translators attended to their own method of translating the word in other places where it means the same as here, they would not have given this false view of a passage which has been made the foundation of a most blasphemous doctrine; viz. that our sins were imputed to Christ, and that he was a proper object of the indignation of Divine justice, because he was blackened with imputed sin; and some have proceeded so far in this blasphemous career as to say, that Christ may be considered as the greatest of sinners, because all the sins of mankind, or of the elect, as they say, were imputed to him, and reckoned as his own. One of these writers translates the passage thus: Deus Christum pro maximo peccatore habuit, ut nos essemus maxime justi, God accounted Christ the greatest of sinners, that we might be supremely righteous. Thus they have confounded sin with the punishment due to sin. Christ suffered in our stead; died for us; bore our sins, (the punishment due to them,) in his own body upon the tree, for the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all; that is, the punishment due to them; explained by making his soul-his life, an offering for sin; and healing us by his stripes.

But that it may be plainly seen that sin-offering, not sin, is the meaning of the word in this verse, I shall set down the places from the Septuagint where the word occurs; and where it answers to the Hebrew words already quoted; and where our translators have rendered correctly what they render here incorrectly. In Exodus, Exo 29:14, Exo 29:36 : Leviticus, Lev 4:3, Lev 4:8, Lev 4:20, Lev 4:21, Lev 4:24, Lev 4:25, Lev 4:29, Lev 4:32-34; Lev 5:6, Lev 5:7, Lev 5:8, Lev 5:9, Lev 5:11, Lev 5:12; Lev 6:17, Lev 6:25, Lev 6:30; Lev 7:7, Lev 7:37; Lev 8:2, Lev 8:14; Lev 9:2, Lev 9:3, Lev 9:7, Lev 9:8, Lev 9:10, Lev 9:15, Lev 9:22; Lev 10:16, Lev 10:17, Lev 10:19; Lev 12:6, Lev 12:8; Lev 14:13, Lev 14:19, Lev 14:22, Lev 14:31; Lev 15:15, Lev 15:30; Lev 16:3, Lev 16:5, Lev 16:6, Lev 16:9, Lev 16:11, Lev 16:15, Lev 16:25, Lev 16:27; Lev 23:19 : Numbers, Num 6:11, Num 6:14, Num 6:16; Num 7:16, Num 7:22, Num 7:28, Num 7:34, Num 7:40, Num 7:46, Num 7:52, Num 7:58, Num 7:70, Num 7:76, Num 7:82, Num 7:87; Num 8:8, Num 8:12; Num 15:24, Num 15:25, Num 15:27; Num 18:9; Num 28:15, Num 28:22; Num 29:5, Num 29:11, Num 29:16, Num 29:22, Num 29:25, Num 29:28, Num 29:31, Num 29:34, Num 29:38.

Besides the above places, it occurs in the same signification, and is properly translated in our version, in the following places:-

2 Chronicles, 2Ch 29:21, 2Ch 29:23, 2Ch 29:24 : Ezra, Ezr 6:17; Ezr 8:35 : Nehemiah, Neh 10:33 : Job, Job 1:5 : Ezekiel, Eze 43:19, Eze 43:22, Eze 43:25; Eze 44:27, Eze 44:29; Eze 45:17, Eze 45:19, Eze 45:22, Eze 45:23, Eze 45:25. In all, one hundred and eight places, which, in the course of my own reading in the Septuagint, I have marked.

That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.] The righteousness of God signifies here the salvation of God, as comprehending justification through the blood of Christ, and sanctification through his Spirit or, as the mountains of God, the hail of God, the wind of God, mean exceeding high mountains, extraordinary hail, and most tempestuous wind; so, here, the righteousness of God may mean a thorough righteousness, complete justification, complete sanctification; such as none but God can give, such as the sinful nature and guilty conscience of man require, and such as is worthy of God to impart. And all this righteousness, justification, and holiness, we receive in, by, for, and through HIM, as the grand, sacrificial, procuring, and meritorious cause of these, and every other blessing. Some render the passage: We are justified through him; before God; or, We are justified, according to God’s plan of justification, through him.

IN many respects, this is a most important and instructive chapter.

1. The terms house, building, tabernacle, and others connected with them, have already been explained from the Jewish writings. But it has been thought by some that the apostle mentions these as readily offering themselves to him from his own avocation, that of a tentmaker; and it is supposed that he borrows these terms from his own trade in order to illustrate his doctrine; This supposition would be natural enough if we had not full evidence that these terms were used in the Jewish theology precisely in the sense in which the apostle uses them here. Therefore, it is more likely that he borrowed them from that theology, than from his own trade.

2. In the terms tabernacle, building of God, c., he may refer also to the tabernacle in the wilderness, which was a building of God, and a house of God, and as God dwelt in that building, so he will dwell in the souls of those who believe in, love, and obey him. And this will be his transitory temple till mortality is swallowed up of life, and we have a glorified body and soul to be his eternal residence.

3. The doctrines of the resurrection of the same body the witness of the Spirit; the immateriality of the soul; the fall and miserable condition of all mankind; the death of Jesus, as an atonement for the sins of the whole world; the necessity of obedience to the Divine will, and of the total change of the human heart, are all introduced here: and although only a few words are spoken on each, yet these are so plain and so forcible as to set those important doctrines in the most clear and striking point of view.

4. The chapter concludes with such a view of the mercy and goodness of God in the ministry of reconciliation, as is no where else to be found. He has here set forth the Divine mercy in all its heightenings; and who can take this view of it without having his heart melted down with love and gratitude to God, who has called him to such a state of salvation.

5. It is exceedingly remarkable that, through the whole of this chapter, the apostle speaks of himself in the first person plural; and though he may intend other apostles, and the Christians in general, yet it is very evident that he uses this form when only himself can be meant, as in verses 12 and 13, 2Co 5:12; 2Co 5:13 as well as in several places of the following chapter. This may be esteemed rather more curious than important.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin: Christ knew no sin, as he was guilty of no sin; Which of you (saith he, Joh 8:46) convinceth me of sin? 1Pe 2:22, He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: but God made him to be sin for us. He was numbered with the transgressors, Isa 53:12. Our sins were reckoned to him; so as though personally he was no sinner, yet by imputation he was, and God dealt with him as such; for he was made a sacrifice for our sins, a sin offering; so answering the type in the law, Lev 4:3,25,29; 5:6; 7:2.

That we might be made the righteousness of God in him; that so his righteousness might be imputed to us, and we might be made righteous with such a righteousness as those souls must have whom God will accept. As Christ was not made sin by any sin inherent in him, so neither are we made righteous by any righteousness inherent in us, but by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us; as he was a sinner by the sins of his people reckoned and imputed unto him.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

21. Foromitted in the oldestmanuscripts. The grand reason why they should be reconciled to God,namely, the great atonement in Christ provided by God, is statedwithout the “for” as being part of the message ofreconciliation (2Co 5:19).

heGod.

sinnot a sinoffering, which would destroy the antithesis to “righteousness,”and would make “sin” be used in different senses in thesame sentence: not a sinful person, which would be untrue, andwould require in the antithesis “righteous men,” not”righteousness”; but “sin,” that is, therepresentative Sin-bearer (vicariously) of the aggregatesin of all men past, present, and future. The sin of the world isone, therefore the singular, not the plural, is used;though its manifestations are manifold (Joh1:29). “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the SINof the world.” Compare “made a curse for us,” Ga3:13.

for usGreek,“in our behalf.” Compare Joh3:14, Christ being represented by the brazen serpent, theform, but not the substance, of the old serpent. At Hisdeath on the cross the sin-bearing for us was consummated.

knew no sinby personalexperience (Joh 8:46) [ALFORD].Heb 7:26; 1Pe 2:22;1Jn 3:5.

might be madenot thesame Greek as the previous “made.” Rather, “mightbecome.”

the righteousness of GodNotmerely righteous, but righteousness itself; not merelyrighteousness, but the righteousness of God, because Christ isGod, and what He is we are (1Jo4:17), and He is “made of God unto us righteousness.”As our sin is made over to Him, so His righteousness to us (in Hishaving fulfilled all the righteousness of the law for us all, as ourrepresentative, Jer 23:6;1Co 1:30). The innocent waspunished voluntarily as if guilty, that the guilty might begratuitously rewarded as if innocent (1Pe2:24). “Such are we in the sight of God the Father, as isthe very Son of God himself” [HOOKER].

in himby virtue of ourstanding in Him, and in union with Him [ALFORD].

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For he hath made him to be sin for us,…. Christ was made of a woman, took flesh of a sinful woman; though the flesh he took of her was not sinful, being sanctified by the Spirit of God, the former of Christ’s human nature: however, he appeared “in the likeness of sinful flesh”; being attended with infirmities, the effects of sin, though sinless; and he was traduced by men as a sinner, and treated as such. Moreover, he was made a sacrifice for sin, in order to make expiation and atonement for it; so the Hebrew word signifies both sin and a sin offering; see Ps 40:6 and so , Ro 8:3. But besides all this, he was made sin itself by imputation; the sins of all his people were transferred unto him, laid upon him, and placed to his account; he sustained their persons, and bore their sins; and having them upon him, and being chargeable with, and answerable for them, he was treated by the justice of God as if he had been not only a sinner, but a mass of sin; for to be made sin, is a stronger expression than to be made a sinner: but now that this may appear to be only by imputation, and that none may conclude from hence that he was really and actually a sinner, or in himself so, it is said he was “made sin”; he did not become sin, or a sinner, through any sinful act of his own, but through his Father’s act of imputation, to which he agreed; for it was “he” that made him sin: it is not said that men made him sin; not but that they traduced him as a sinner, pretended they knew he was one, and arraigned him at Pilate’s bar as such; nor is he said to make himself so, though he readily engaged to be the surety of his people, and voluntarily took upon him their sins, and gave himself an offering for them; but he, his Father, is said to make him sin; it was he that “laid”, or “made to meet” on him, the iniquity of us all; it was he that made his soul an offering for sin, and delivered him up into the hands of justice, and to death, and that “for us”, in “our” room and stead, to bear the punishment of sin, and make satisfaction and atonement for it; of which he was capable, and for which he was greatly qualified: for he

knew no sin; which cannot be understood or pure absolute ignorance of sin; for this cannot agree with him, neither as God, nor as Mediator; he full well knew the nature of sin, as it is a transgression of God’s law; he knows the origin of sin, the corrupt heart of man, and the desperate wickedness of that; he knows the demerit, and the sad consequences of it; he knows, and he takes notice of too, the sins of his own people; and he knows the sins of all wicked men, and will bring them all into judgment, convince of them, and condemn for them: but he knew no sin so as to approve of it, and like it; he hates, abhors, and detests it; he never was conscious of any sin to himself; he never knew anything of this kind by, and in himself; nor did he ever commit any, nor was any ever found in him, by men or devils, though diligently sought for. This is mentioned, partly that we may better understand in what sense he was made sin, or a sinner, which could be only by the imputation of the sins of others, since he had no sin of his own; and partly to show that he was a very fit person to bear and take away the sins of men, to become a sacrifice for them, seeing he was the Lamb of God, without spot and blemish, typified in this, as in other respects, by the sacrifices of the legal dispensation; also to make it appear that he died, and was cut off in a judicial way, not for himself, his own sins, but for the transgressions of his people; and to express the strictness of divine justice in not sparing the Son of God himself, though holy and harmless, when he had the sins of others upon him, and had made himself responsible for them. The end of his being made sin, though he himself had none, was,

that we might be made the righteousness of God in him; not the essential righteousness of God, which can neither be imparted nor imputed; nor any righteousness of God wrought in us; for it is a righteousness “in him”, in Christ, and not in ourselves, and therefore must mean the righteousness of Christ; so called, because it is wrought by Christ, who is God over all, the true God, and eternal life; and because it is approved of by God the Father, accepted of by him, for, and on the behalf of his elect, as a justifying one; it is what he bestows on them, and imputes unto them for their justification; it is a righteousness, and it is the only one which justifies in the sight of God. Now to be made the righteousness of God, is to be made righteous in the sight of God, by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. Just as Christ is made sin, or a sinner, by the imputation of the sins of others to him; so they are made righteousness, or righteous persons, through the imputation of his righteousness to them; and in no other way can the one be made sin, or the other righteousness. And this is said to be “in him”, in Christ; which shows, that though Christ’s righteousness is unto all, and upon all them that believe, it is imputed to them, and put upon them; it is not anything wrought in them; it is not inherent in them. “Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength”, says the church, Isa 45:24 and also, that the way in which we come by this righteousness is by being in Christ; none have it reckoned to them, but who are in him, we are first “of” God “in” Christ, and then he is made unto us righteousness. Secret being in Christ, or union to him from everlasting, is the ground and foundation of our justification, by his righteousness, as open being in Christ at conversion is the evidence of it.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Him who knew no sin ( ). Definite claim by Paul that Jesus did not commit sin, had no personal acquaintance ( , second aorist active participle of ) with it. Jesus made this claim for himself (Joh 8:46). This statement occurs also in 1Pet 2:22; Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26; 1John 3:5. Christ was and is “a moral miracle” (Bernard) and so more than mere man.

He made to be sin ( ). The words “to be” are not in the Greek. “Sin” here is the substantive, not the verb. God “treated as sin” the one “who knew no sin.” But he knew the contradiction of sinners (Heb 12:3). We may not dare to probe too far into the mystery of Christ’s suffering on the Cross, but this fact throws some light on the tragic cry of Jesus just before he died: “My God, My God, why didst thou forsake me?” (Mt 27:46).

That we might become ( ). Note “become.” This is God’s purpose () in what he did and in what Christ did. Thus alone can we obtain God’s righteousness (Ro 1:17).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

For. Omit. It is a later addition, in order to soften the abruptness of the following clauses.

Made to be sin [ ] . Compare a curse, Gal 3:13. Not a sin – offering, nor a sinner, but the representative of sin. On Him, representatively, fell the collective consequence of sin, in His enduring “the contradiction of sinners against Himself” (Heb 12:3), in His agony in the garden, and in His death on the cross.

Who knew no sin [ ] . Alluding to Christ ‘s own consciousness of sinlessness, not to God ‘s estimate of Him. The manner in which this reference is conveyed, it is almost impossible to explain to one unfamiliar with the distinction between the Greek negative particles. The one used here implies the fact of sinlessness as present to the consciousness of the person concerning whom the fact is stated. Compare Joh 8:46.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “For he hath made him to be sin for us,” (huper hemon hamartian epoiesen) “He made sin on behalf of us;” “God” is the “He” who made “him,” Jesus sin “to be,” on behalf of us, a representative for sin for us, Isa 53:6; Isa 53:9; Isa 53:12; Gal 3:13; 1Pe 2:22; 1Pe 2:24; 1Jn 3:5.

2) “Who knew no sin,” (ton me gnonta hamartian) “The one not having known sin,” either inherent that is inborn, or by defilement, Joh 8:46; Heb 4:15.

3) “That we might become,” (hina hemeis genometha) “in order that we might become,” be or exist as something besides guilty sinners, lost and doomed, Joh 1:11-12; Gal 4:4-5.

4) “The righteousness of God in Him,” (dikaiosune theou en auto) “(The) righteousness of God in him,” the Christ. Jer 23:5-6; Rom 1:16-17; Rom 5:19; 1Co 1:30; Php_3:19.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

21. Him who knew no sin. Do you observe, that, according to Paul, there is no return to favor with God, except what is founded on the sacrifice of Christ alone? Let us learn, therefore, to turn our views in that direction, whenever we desire to be absolved from guilt. He now teaches more clearly, what we adverted to above — that God is propitious to us, when he acknowledges us as righteous. For these two things are equivalent — that we are acceptable to God, and that we are regarded by him as righteous.

To know no sin is to be free from sin. He says, then, that Christ, while he was entirely exempt from sin, was made sin for us. It is commonly remarked, that sin here denotes an expiatory sacrifice for sin, and in the same way the Latin’s term it, piaculum (566) Paul, too, has in this, and other passages, borrowed this phrase from the Hebrews, among whom אשם ( asham) denotes an expiatory sacrifice, as well as an offense or crime. (567) But the signification of this word, as well as the entire statement, will be better understood from a comparison of both parts of the antithesis. Sin is here contrasted with righteousness, when Paul teaches us, that we were made the righteousness of God, on the ground of Christ’s having been made sin. Righteousness, here, is not taken to denote a quality or habit, but by way of imputation, on the ground of Christ’s righteousness being reckoned to have been received by us. What, on the other hand, is denoted by sin? It is the guilt, on account of which we are arraigned at the bar of God. As, however, the curse of the individual was of old cast upon the victim, so Christ’s condemnation was our absolution, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isa 53:5.)

The righteousness of God in him In the first place, the righteousness of God is taken here to denote — not that which is given us by God, but that which is approved of by him, as in Joh 12:43, the glory of God means — that which is in estimation with him — the glory of men denotes the vain applause of the world. Farther, in Rom 3:23, when he says, that we have come short of the glory of God, he means, that there is nothing that we can glory in before God, for it is no very difficult matter to appear righteous before men, but it is a mere delusive appearance of righteousness, which becomes at last the ground of perdition. Hence, that is the only true righteousness, which is acceptable to God.

Let us now return to the contrast between righteousness and sin How are we righteous in the sight of God? It is assuredly in the same respect in which Christ was a sinner. For he assumed in a manner our place, that he might be a criminal in our room, and might be dealt with as a sinner, not for his own offenses, but for those of others, inasmuch as he was pure and exempt from every fault, and might endure the punishment that was due to us — not to himself. It is in the same manner, assuredly, that we are now righteous in him — not in respect of our rendering satisfaction to the justice of God by our own works, but because we are judged of in connection with Christ’s righteousness, which we have put on by faith, that it might become ours. On this account I have preferred to retain the particle ἐν, ( in,) rather than substitute in its place per, ( through,) for that signification corresponds better with Paul’s intention. (568)

(566) The Latin term piaculum is sometimes employed to denote a crime requiring expiation, and at other times, an expiatory victim. — Ed

(567) Thus in Lev 5:6, אשם, ( asham,) denotes a trespass-offering; and in the verse immediately following, it means an offense or trespass. See Calvin’s Institutes, volume 2. — Ed.

(568) The force of the preposition ἐν ( in,) as made use of by the Apostle in this passage, is more fully brought out by Beza in the following terms: “ Justi apud Deum, et quidem justitia non nobis inh’rente, sed qu’, quum in Christo sit, nobis per fidem a Deo imputatur. Ideo enim additurn est : ἐν αὐτῷ Sic ergo sumus justitia Dei in ipso, ut ille est peccatum in nobis, nempe ex imputatione. Libet autem hic ex Augustino locum insignem exscribere, velut istius commentarium plenissimum. Sic igitur ille Serm. 5. de verbis Apostoli: Deus Pater eum, qui non noverat peccatum (nempe Iesum Christum) peccatum effecit,ut nos simus justitia Dei (non nostra) in ipso (non in nobis.) His adde Phi 3:9;” — “Righteous before God, and that by a righteousness which is not inherent in us, but which, being in Christ, is imputed to us by God through faith. For it is on this account that it is added: ἐν αὐτῷ ( in him.) We are, therefore, the righteousness of God in him in the same way as he is sin in us — by imputation. I may here quote a remarkable passage from Augustine, as a most complete commentary upon it. In Serm. 5 on the words of the Apostle he expresses himself thus: God the Father made him sin who had not known sin, (Jesus Christ,) that we might be the righteousness of God (not our own) in him (not in ourselves.) To these add Phi 3:9.” — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(21) For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.The for is omitted in many of the best MSS., but there is clearly a sequence of thought such as it expresses. The Greek order of the words is more emphatic: Him that knew no sin He made sin for us. The words are, in the first instance, an assertion of the absolute sinlessness of Christ. All other men had an experience of its power, gained by yielding to it. He alone gained this experience by resisting it, and yet suffering its effects. None could convict Him of sin (Joh. 8:46). The Prince of this world had nothing in Him (Joh. 14:30). (Comp. Heb. 7:26; 1Pe. 2:22.) And then there comes what we may call the paradox of redemption. He, God, made the sinless One to be sin. The word cannot mean, as has been said sometimes, a sin offering. That meaning is foreign to the New Testament, and it is questionable whether it is found in the Old, Lev. 5:9 being the nearest approach to it. The train of thought is that God dealt with Christ, not as though He were a sinner, like other men, but as though He were sin itself, absolutely identified with it. So, in Gal. 3:13, he speaks of Christ as made a curse for us, and in Rom. 8:3 as being made in the likeness of sinful flesh. We have here, it is obvious, the germ of a mysterious thought, out of which forensic theories of the atonement, of various types, might be and have been developed. It is characteristic of St. Paul that he does not so develop it. Christ identified with mans sin: mankind identified with Christs righteousnessthat is the truth, simple and yet unfathomable, in which he is content to rest.

That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.Better, that we might become. The righteousness of God, as in Rom. 3:21-22, expresses not simply the righteousness which He gives, nor that which He requires, though neither of these meanings is excluded, but rather that which belongs to Him as His essential attribute. The thought of St. Paul is that, by our identification with Christfirst ideally and objectively, as far as Gods action is concerned, and then actually and subjectively, by that act of will which he calls faithwe are made sharers in the divine righteousness. So, under like conditions, St. Peter speaks of believers as made partakers of the divine nature (2Pe. 1:4). In actual experience, of course, this participation is manifested in infinitely varying degrees. St. Paul contemplates it as a single objective fact. The importance of the passage lies in its presenting the truth that the purpose of God in the death of Christ was not only or chiefly that men might escape punishment, but that they might become righteous.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

21. For Giving a reason for the beseech of the previous verse, one of the tersest statements of the atonement ever uttered. A different side of the same subject is given 2Co 5:14-15. But there it is part of the apostolic statement, here it comes in to the consequent appeal. He Referring to God.

Sin This word some commentators have interpreted to mean a sin-offering, by a Hebraism, as in Exo 29:14 the Hebrew word for “ sin-offering” is literally sin. But here, as the antithetic word righteousness signifies righteous persons, it is clear that sin signifies a sinner. It is very possible that the above Hebraism may have suggested the antithesis. It is a very concentrated expression to make Christ conceptually the very embodiment of sin. It can only mean that Christ, in our stead, endured a suffering (not a punishment to him) so morally equivalent to our punishment, that it may take its place and we be exempted.

Who knew no sin A beautiful description of perfect innocence. The Greek negative for no implies a no under the estimation or opinion of some one; and the question is, in whose opinion does the word imply that Jesus was sinless. Alford says in Jesus’ own; but we rather agree with Meyer, that God’s opinion is meant. It was the divine view that the innocent one should suffer, and that Christ was that sinless one. It was a sinless one who was to suffer, in order that his sufferings go not to expiate his own sin, but accrue for the sins of others.

Righteousness The embodiment of God’s righteousness. This means not, that Christ’s righteousness of character is imputed to us as if it were ours. Such a transfer could not take place. One man cannot be literally guilty of another’s sin, nor innocent by another’s goodness. One man indeed may be pardoned because another has suffered. Damon may be released because Pythias suffers for his crime; but it would be only as emotional, and not literal, language that we would then say that Pythias became a criminal, or became treason, and that his innocence was imputed to Damon. So it is not literal but emotional or conceptual language when we say, that Christ became sin for us, or that his righteousness is imputed to us. The language used by some religionists in describing Christ as a sinner is repulsive to any reflective mind. Thus Luther uses words which seem not blasphemous purely because the blasphemous intention was wanting. “The prophets did foresee in spirit that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer that ever was or could be!” “Whatsoever sins I, thou, and we, all have done, or shall do hereafter, they are Christ’s own sins, as verily as if he himself had done them.” Surely it is absurd to say this. It was because of Christ’s very innocence that, his sufferings being accepted in lieu of our punishment, God is pleased to pardon us. And when it is then said that we are righteousness, it is not meant that we are literally innocent, never having committed sin, for that cannot be: it is meant that we are held constructively righted, and judicially treated as never having sinned; as every pardoned person is.

In him Antithesis to for us.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Him who knew no sin he made sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.’

And finally he gives the full basis of that reconciliation. It is because the perfect One, the sinless One Who knew no sin (1Pe 2:22; Heb 4:15), was ‘made sin’ for us. Our sin was in some way absorbed by Him. Just as in the Old Testament the offeror laid his hand on the sacrifice indicating that his sin now lay on the sacrifice, so was our sin laid on the greater Sacrifice, to be borne by us no more. There lies behind this the idea of the sacrificial suffering of the Servant in Isa 53:10, and indeed in the remainder of Isaiah 53. Being made sin He bore the consequences of sin. He suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God (1Pe 3:18). And the result is that we become the righteousness of God in Him. Rather than being full of our sin, which has been laid on Christ, we become full of God’s righteousness (either His righteousness or the righteousness which He has provided in Christ), which enclothes us and possesses us (Rom 5:19). Just as Christ absorbed our sin, so do we absorb His righteousness. Now we can approach God without fear of rejection, because we approach Him radiant in the righteousness of Christ. Thus are we fully reconciled to God.

‘Him who knew no sin.’ The verb means to ‘know in experience’. In the Garden the tree was the tree ‘of knowing in experience good and evil.’ In the first man, the earthly man, all partook of that tree, and became sinful (Rom 5:12-14). And in a sense all men continually taste of that tree for all being aware of good continually choose to experience evil, proving that they are sinful. But Jesus, the second man (1Co 15:47), the man from Heaven, knew no sin. It was something outside His experience. He knew only good. That was why He could be the unblemished sacrifice (1Pe 1:19). The introduction of this idea here stresses the source of the righteousness of God which can be imputed to us. It was the Righteous One.

‘The righteousness of God.’ God is the standard of all righteousness, and therefore the righteousness of God is righteousness in all its perfection, it is perfect righteousness. And it is that righteousness that is required for reconciliation. And in Christ it is not only accounted to us but implanted within us by His Spirit, the one to ensure our acceptance with God, the other to write it in our hearts that it might be revealed in our lives (2Co 3:3). For the similar idea of righteousness imputed and imparted to us in Christ see 1Co 1:30 where ‘He is made to us — righteousness’. See also Php 3:9.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

2Co 5:21. Made to be sin, &c. “A sin-offering for us, that, by the sacrifice of himself, he might expiate the guilt of our transgressions, and that so we might be made accepted in him, and furnished with a plea as prevalent for our justification and admission into the divine favour, as if we had retained our innocence untainted, and in every respect conformed ourselves to the righteousness which the law of God required and demanded.” There is an evident and beautiful contrast between Christ’s being made sin, and our being made righteousness; that is, our being forgiven and placed in a state of acceptance and favour with God, through Christ, although all sin is perfectly hateful to God.

Inferences, drawn from 2Co 5:10-11.It is the privilege and distinguishing character of a rational being, to be able to look forward into futurity, and to consider his actions, not only with respect to the present advantage, or disadvantage, arising from them; but to view them in their consequences, through all the parts of time in which himself may possibly exist, and to eternity. If, therefore, we value the privilege of being reasonable creatures, the only way to preserve it is to make use of it; and, by extending our views into all the scenes of futurity, in which we ourselves must bear a part, to provide for solid and durable happiness, through the power of almighty grace. With respect to that principal point, that very grand article of religion,the expectation of a life after this,we may observe, that as the wisest men thought there must be, so the gospel assures us there will be a day, in which God will judge the world in righteousness, and render to every man according to his works. If this doctrine, indeed, has had a larger and more extensive influence, through the authority of the gospel, than it could have had by the light of any inferior dispensation, the world has then received an advantage by the encouragement given to holiness and virtue, and the restraint laid upon vice by these means, which ought ever to be acknowledged with thankfulness; although the gospel, in other respects, yields the strongest motives to gratitude, as well as the most powerful encouragements to universal obedience.

The gospel has communicated to us the knowledge of many circumstances which were not discoverable but by the means of revelation: three of these are the following:that there shall be a resurrection of the body; that Christ shall be the judge of the world; and that the rewards and punishments in another life shall be in proportion to our experience and behaviour in this. We will briefly consider these particulars, and shew for what purpose they were revealed.
1. The resurrection of the body was revealed to give all men a plain and a sensible notion of their being subject to a future judgment. Death is, in some sense, the destruction of the man: sure we are that the lifeless body is no man;and the spirit, in its state of separate existence, is not properly man; for man is made of soul and body; and therefore to bring the man into judgment to answer for his deeds, the soul and body must be brought together again. This doctrine, established upon the authority of the gospel, effectually removes all difficulties that affect our belief of a future judgment, considered with respect to religion and morality: for the grand point in which religion is concerned in the present instance, is to know, whether men shall be accountable hereafter for their actions here. Reason tells us that they ought to be so; but a great difficulty arises from the dissolution of the man by death; a difficulty followed by endless speculations upon the nature of the soul, its separate existence, its guilt in this separate state, with respect to crimes committed in another, and in conjunction with the body, &c. But take in the declaration of the gospel, that soul and body shall be as certainly united at the resurrection, as they were divided by death, and every man be completely himself again; and there is no more difficulty in conceiving that men may be judged for their iniquities hereafter, than there is in conceiving that they may be judged here, when they offend against the laws of their country. But some have asked, “What body shall be raised, since no man has exactly the same body two days together? New parts are perpetually added by nutrition, old ones carried off by perspiration; so that in the compass of a few years, a human body may be almost totally altered.” But this objection, plausible as it may seem, has nothing to do in the present case: religion is concerned only to preserve the identity or sameness of the person, as the object of future judgment; and has nothing to do with that kind of identity against which the objection can be supposed to have any force. Were the case otherwise, the difficulty would be really as great in human judgments now, as in the divine judgment hereafter. Suppose a murderer at twenty should not be discovered till he was sixty, and then brought to trial; would common sense admit him to plead that he was not the same person who committed the fact; and to allege, in proof of it, the alterations in his body for the last forty years? Suppose then that, instead of being discovered at sixty, he should die at sixty, and should rise either with the body he had at sixty, or twenty, or any intermediate time,would not the case be just the same with respect to the future judgment?This shews, therefore, that the article of the resurrection, so far as it is a support of religion and of a future judgment, stands quite clear of this difficulty.

But the prejudices which affect infidels, or sceptics, most, on considering this article of the resurrection, arise from the weakest of all imaginations,that they can judge from the settled laws and course of nature what is or is not possible to the power of God. It is very true, that all our powers are bounded by the laws of nature, except when supernatural power is given from on high: but does it follow that God’s power must be so bounded, who appointed these laws of nature, and could have appointed others, if he thought proper? We cannot raise a dead body; our hands are tied up by the laws of nature, which we cannot surpass; neither can we create a new man: but we certainly know, from reason and experience, that there is one who can: and what can induce us to suppose that he cannot give life to a body a second time, who, we can certainly know, gave life to it at first?These matters, therefore, we may safely refer to the power of the Almighty, to which all nature is obedient, and upon which we may securely depend for the performance of divine promises,how unpromising soever, to our short-sighted intellect, the circumstances may be which attend them.

Indeed, the gospel has removed all difficulties which lie in the way of our considering ourselves as accountable creatures, and subject to the future judgment of God. It is not the spirit, or soul alone, but the whole man, who is to be brought to that judgment; and plain sense must see and acknowledge the reasonableness of judging a man hereafter for the crimes committed in this life, as evidently as it sees the reasonableness of judging him here, when his crimes happen to be detected. So that revelation has brought faith and common sense to a perfect agreement.

2. And this gospel revelation, secondly, has made known to us that Christ shall judge the world. We need not multiply texts to this purpose. Joh 5:22; Joh 5:27. Act 10:42; Act 17:31 are fully sufficient to establish a doctrine so very well known to all Christendom.

But it is material to observe, that this authority is given to Christ, because he is the son of man, as he himself assures us, Joh 5:27 and that the Person ordained to be judge is, in respect to one of his natures, a man;even the man whom God raised from the dead, as St. Paul asserts, Act 17:31. How happy is it for us to have a judge,I had almost said so partial, but I may well say so favourable to the faithful, that he was content to be himself the sacrifice, to redeem us from the punishment due to our sins! When we consider ourselves,how weak we are,how frequently we have been doing wrong;and contemplate the infinite majesty, holiness, and justice of God; what account can we hope to give of ourselves to him, whose eyes are purer than to behold iniquity? But see, God has withdrawn his terrors, and comes as a man, to be the judge of men; so that we may say of our judge, what the Apostle to the Hebrews says of our High Priest, We have not a judge who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

It may, perhaps, be thought that this is drawing consequences upon the ground of vulgar apprehensions, and that, in reality, there is no difference, whether God judge us in the divine nature, or commit the judgment to the Son of man: for, since Christ shall come in his humanity, not only in the power, but in the wisdom and justice of his Godhead also, to judge the world, what difference can there be in the judgment, since in both cases it must be guided and formed by the wisdom and justice of God?True it is, that a mere man is not qualified to be a judge of the world: the knowledge of hearts is necessary to the right discharge of that office; a knowledge with which no mere man was ever endowed. But still, if man is to be judge, the sentiments, notions, and feelings of the man, however guided and influenced by the wisdom of his godhead, must preside over and govern the whole action; otherwise the man will not be judge.

Hence then we may answer some difficulties which speculative men have brought into the subject of a future judgment. Some have imagined that justice, mercy, and goodness in God, are not of the same kind with justice, mercy, and goodness in them; and therefore that we can never, from our notions of these qualities in man, argue consequentially to the attributes of God, or to the acts flowing from these attributes: the result of which is, that when we talk of God’s justice, or mercy, in judging the world, we talk of something which we do not understand. But if men would consult scripture, these difficulties would not meet them in their way: for surely we know what justice, mercy, and goodness mean among men; and since the scriptures assure us that the man whom God raised from the dead is ordained Judge of the world, we may be very certain that the justice, mercy, and goodness to be displayed in the future judgment, will be such as all men have a common sense and apprehension of; unless we can imagine that a new rule is to be introduced, to which the Judge, and those to be judged, are equally strangers. Upon this foot of scripture then we may certainly know what the justice, mercy, and goodness are by which we must finally stand or fall; and this point being secured, the speculation may be left to shift for itself.

3. Let us then go, thirdly, one step farther, and view the consequences of this judgment;this solemn judgment, which every mortal must undergo. If we consult the scriptures, we shall find no evidence of any farther change to be made in our future state, after judgment has once passed upon us. That we are accountable, and shall therefore be judged, reason testifies; but can see nothing relating to us after judgment, except the reward or the punishment consequent upon it.

As reason can shew us nothing beyond judgment, but that state and condition which are the effect of it: so the Holy Scripture declares, that nothing else there shall be, by describing the rewards and punishments of another life as having perpetual duration. Life eternal is prepared for the righteous, and everlasting punishment for the wicked. The fire prepared to receive them is never to go out, the worm prepared to torment them will never die: so that in this view our all depends upon the judgment which shall be finally passed on us at the second coming of our Lord; and therefore there is a justness of thought, as well as great charity to the souls of men, in what the Apostle adds,Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

If the Christian revelation has cleared our doubts, by bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel; if it has given us ground for hope and confidence, by assuring us that we shall be judged by him who so loved us, that he gave himself for us, and submitted to die that we might live; it has also given us ground to be watchful and careful over ourselves, and to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, through the grace of God. For it is a fearful thing to be called to answer for ourselves before the great Searcher of all hearts:to answer to Him who loved us, for despising the love that he shewed us!to answer to Him who died for us, for having crucified him afresh, and put him to open shame; and for having accounted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing! This will be the sad case of every impenitent sinner. The view of this misery and distress, which sinners are calling upon themselves by their iniquity, moved the Apostle, and must ever move those who are called to the ministry of the word of God, to warn men to flee from the wrath which is to come. We know the terror of the Lord, and therefore persuade men. Happy would it be, if, knowing and considering these terrors, men would suffer themselves to be persuaded in time, and haste for refuge unto the everlasting hope set before them, in Jesus Christ our Lord!

REFLECTIONS.1st. No wonder, with eternal glory full in his view, that the Apostle fainted not. He enlarges on the delightful theme, which cannot but minister something of the like courage and consolation to every gracious soul. We have,

1. The Apostle’s expectation and desire, which every faithful servant of Jesus can, in a measure, adopt as his own. For we know, by the evidence of God’s word, the testimony of our conscience, and the witness of the Spirit; yea, all the faithful saints of God may have a humble confidence, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle, the frail body in which we as pilgrims at present sojourn for a day, be dissolved, and return to the dust whence it came, we have a building of God, infinitely more magnificent, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens, a celestial palace, prepared for the everlasting residence of all the faithful, and suited to the excellence of the glorified soul. For in this tabernacle of clay we groan earnestly, loaded with many afflictions, and desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven, and to arrive at the celestial city, where sin and sorrow shall never enter more: if so be, that being thus clothed with robes of light and purity, we shall not be found naked, exposed any longer to the storms of this wretched world, but be in eternal joy and felicity. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, longing for our perfect state of happiness, when we shall be for ever released from the burthens of outward afflictions: not for that we would be unclothed, and wish to part with our bodies, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life; translated as Enoch, or changed in a moment, as their bodies shall be who are alive at the coming of the Lord. Note; (1.) Our present abode is a wretched tabernacle, which must quickly be taken down. Are we panting after that eternal mansion which is prepared for the faithful saints of God? (2.) To a soul that has ever tasted of the bitterness of sin, and groaned under the trials and temptations of this mortal state, the exchange of worlds is a consummation devoutly to be wished for.

2. The Apostle mentions the ground of his expectation and hope. Now he that hath wrought us for this self-same thing is God, whose mighty energy has spiritualized our souls, and led them up to seek those high and heavenly things: who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit, in his graces, consolations, and abiding residence in our hearts. Therefore we are always confident in the humble assurance of support under all our trials, till they shall happily end; knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and, like pilgrims, distant from our true home and rest. For we walk by faith, not by sight, looking above all present objects to the eternal world, and having our hearts influenced, and our conduct regulated accordingly; we are confident, I say, in the experience of God’s present love; and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord; well pleased, if God so willed, to bid an eternal adieu to all our infirmities and afflictions, and enter immediately into the beatific vision of our Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. This is our holy ambition, so to be found in him, sprinkled with his blood, and walking under the influence of his grace, that now, and in the day of his appearing and glory, both our persons and services may meet with his approbation. Note; (1.) None enter the heavenly world, but those who have the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts, and are made meet for the inheritance among the saints in light. (2.) Faith in God’s promises inspires confidence of their fulfilment; we know that we have not followed cunningly-devised fables. (3.) They who, by faith, behold the glories of a better world, cannot but with pleasure look forward to the happy change. (4.) The stronger our hope of heaven is, the more enlivened will be our diligence in the way that leads thither.

3. He reminds them of the awful day which approached, as a spur to himself, and a warning to them. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, where, without disguise, every man’s real character will appear, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad; admitted graciously to the reward of eternal blessedness, or sinking under righteous vengeance into the abyss of endless misery. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, and the fearful end of the hypocrite and ungodly, we persuade men, by every alarming and alluring motive, to fly from the wrath to come, and embrace the gospel which we proclaim. But, whether they will hear or forbear, we are made manifest unto God, who knows our simplicity in all our ministrations, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences; for our labours and sufferings bear witness to the unfeigned concern that we have shewn for your souls. Note; (1.) The sense of an approaching judgment should awaken a holy solicitude to be ready for it. (2.) Gospel ministers must use the terrors of the Lord to rouse the lethargic sinner, and urge him to fly from his impending ruin.

2nd, The Apostle,
1. Prevents an insinuation which might have been suggested by his enemies, as if he meant to commend himself. For we commend not ourselves again unto you, nor speak this with a view to ingratiate ourselves into your good opinion, but to give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart, furnishing you with arguments to silence the vain boastings of those Judaizing teachers, who would malign and traduce us. For whether we be beside ourselves, and in our zeal for the gospel talk as men distracted, as they would insinuate, it is to God, and for his glory, that we thus speak; or whether we be sober, and, as the wiser part among you justly think, say nothing but the words of truth and soberness, it is for your cause, whose salvation we seek to promote.

2. He declares the noble principle which influenced his preaching and practice. For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, and have determined, on maturest deliberation, that if one died for all, for sinners of all degrees, whether Jews or Gentiles, without distinction, then were all dead, alike in need of his redemption, by nature the children of wrath, and under the curse of a broken law; and that he died for all, that they which live, not only redeemed by his blood, but quickened by his Spirit, should not henceforth live unto themselves, for their own ease, interests, or honour, but unto him which died for them, and rose again, devoting themselves to his blessed service, who purchased them at so dear a rate. Note; (1.) A sense of Christ’s love upon the heart is the only genuine principle of true obedience. (2.) We then truly live, when the Redeemer’s glory is made the grand aim of all our conversation.

3rdly, From the foregoing premises,
1. The Apostle determines, without respect of persons, to preach the gospel alike to Jews and Gentiles, who are both redeemed by the same Lord. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, paying no regard to any external privileges of descent from Abraham, or to circumcision: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, and many of us formerly thought, during his abode on earth, that he was come to erect a temporal kingdom, and exalt the Jewish nation to the pinnacle of human glory, yet now henceforth know we him no more; these foolish prejudices are removed; we have got an acquaintance with the spiritual nature of his salvation, and know that the great design for which he became incarnate was to advance the divine glory in the recovery of lost souls, whether Jews or Gentiles, without distinction, even of as many as will believe in his name.

2. He urges, as the main point of Christianity, a real change of heart. Therefore if any man be in Christ, vitally united to him, he is a new creature, though the same person, yet morally so renewed in the Spirit of his mind, and so spiritualized in understanding, will, and affections, that he is quite different from his former self: old things are passed away; his naturally corrupt principles and practices are laid aside, and behold, with wonder, the amazing alteration! all things are become new; he has new light in his mind; a new bias given to his will and affections; his whole course of life is altered; his principles, prospects, ways, thoughts, pursuits, company, are as directly opposite to what they were before, as if he were really another man. Reader, hast thou experienced this change?

3. This new creation is God’s work, and wrought, by means of his gospel, for and in all who will yield to be saved by his grace. And all things are of God, who planned and executes the wondrous scheme of our redemption for all his faithful saints; and hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, through his atoning blood, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world, Gentiles as well as Jews, unto himself, by that amazing expedient of the substitution of his own Son in the sinner’s stead, not imputing their trespasses unto them, but laying upon him the iniquities of us all; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation, that we should publish this gospel of peace to every creature. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, sent, in his name, to heal the dangerous breach between the holy God and the sinful soul, as though God did beseech you by us, under whose commission we act with authority, and speak in his name: we pray you, by every endearing argument, as you value your immortal souls, and urge you, in Christ’s stead, whose person we represent, and whose gospel we minister, be ye reconciled to God; submit to the righteousness which is of God, by faith; accept his proffered pardon and grace; bow humbly at his feet; without reserve yield up yourselves to him, that the reconciliation may be mutual. For he hath made him to be sin, a sin-offering, for us, who knew no sin of his own, but willingly took our iniquities upon himself, and suffered for them, making a full atonement and satisfaction to the justice of God; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, by virtue of our faith in him, and union with him. My soul, with wonder and delight hear and embrace these glad tidings; and may thy whole and constant trust be in his infinite merit!

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

2Co 5:21 . This is not the other side of the apostolic preaching (one side of it being the previous prayer), for this must logically have preceded the prayer (in opposition to Hofmann); but the inducing motive , belonging to the . . ., for complying with the . , by holding forth what has been done on God’s side in order to justify men. This weighty motive emerges without , and is all the more urgen.

.] description of sinlessness ( , Chrysostom); for sin had not become known experimentally to the moral consciousness of Jesus; it was to Him, because non-existent in Him, a thing unknown from His own experience. This was the necessary postulate for His accomplishing the work of reconciliation.

The with the participle gives at all events a subjective negation; yet it may be doubtful whether it means the judgment of God (Billroth, Osiander, Hofmann, Winer) or that of the Christian consciousness (so Fritzsche, ad Rom. I. p 279: “quem talem virum mente concipimus, qui sceleris notitiam non habuerit”). The former is to be preferred, because it makes the motive , Which is given in 2Co 5:21 , appear stronger. The sinlessness of Jesus was present to the consciousness of God , when He made Him to be sin. [242] Rckert, quite without ground, gives up any explanation of the force of by erroneously remarking that between the article and the participle always appears, never . See e.g. from the N. T., Rom 9:25 ; Gal 4:27 ; 1Pe 2:10 ; Eph 5:4 ; and from profane authors, Plat. Rep. p. 427 E: , Plut. de garrul . p. 98, ed. Hutt.: , Arist. Eccl . 187: , Lucian, Charid 14: , adv, Ind. 5, and many other passage.

] for our benefit (more precise explanation: . . .), is emphatically prefixed as that, in which lies mainly the motive for fulfilling the prayer in 2Co 5:20 ; hence also is afterwards repeated. Regarding , which no more means instead here than it does in Gal 3:13 (in opposition to Osiander, Lipsius, Rechtfertigungsl. p. 134, and older commentators), see on Rom 5:6 . The thought of substitution is only introduced by what follow.

] abstractum pro concreto (comp. , , and the like in the classic writers, Khner, II. p. 26), denoting more strongly that which God made Him to be (Dissen, ad Pind. pp. 145, 476), and expresses the setting up of the state , in which Christ was actually exhibited by God as the concretum of , as , in being subjected by Him to suffer the punishment of death; [243] comp. , Gal 3:13 . Holsten, z. Evang. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 437, thinks of Christ’s having with His incarnation received also the principle of sin, although He remained without . But this is not contained even in Rom 8:3 ; in the present passage it can only be imported at variance with the words ( . ), and the distinction between and is quite foreign to the passage. Even the view, that the death of Jesus has its significance essentially in the fact that it is a doing away of the definite fleshly quality (Rich. Schmidt, Paulin. Christol. p. 83 ff.), does not fully meet the sacrificial conception of the apostle, which is not to be explained away. For, taking as sin-offering ( , ), with Augustine, Ambrosiaster, Pelagius, Oecumenius, Erasmus, Vatablus, Cornelius a Lapide, Piscator, Hammond, Wolf, Michaelis, Rosenmller, Ewald, and others, [244] there is no sure basis laid even in the language of the LXX. (Lev 6:25 ; Lev 6:30 ; Lev 5:9 ; Num 8:8 ); it is at variance with the constant usage of the N. T., and here, moreover, especially at variance with the previous .

] aorist (see the critical remarks), without reference to the relation of time. The present of the Recepta would denote that the coming of the to be (to be ) still continues with the progress of the conversions to Christ. Comp. Stallbaum, ad Crit. p. 43 B: “id, quod propositum fuit, nondum perfectum et transactum est, sed adhuc durare cogitatur;” see also Hermann, ad Viger. 850.

] i.e. justified by God . See on Rom 1:17 . Not thank-offering (Michaelis, Schulz); not an offering just before God, well-pleasing to Him , but as (Rom 5:17 ), the opposite of all (Rom 10:3 ). They who withstand that apostolic prayer of 2Co 5:20 are then those, who , Rom 10:3 .

] for in Christ , namely, in His death of reconciliation (Rom 3:25 ), as causa meritoria , our being made righteous has its originating ground.

[242] Comp. Rich. Schmidt, Paulin. Christol . p. 100.

[243] It is to be noted, however, that , just like , Gal 3:13 , necessarily includes in itself the notion of guilt ; further, that the guilt of which Christ, made to be sin and a curse by God, appears as bearer, was not His own ( ), and that hence the guilt of men , who through His death were to be justified by God, was transferred to Him; consequently the justification of men is imputative . This at the same time in opposition to Hofmann, Schriftbew . II. 1, p. 329, according to whom (comp. his explanation at our passage) Paul is held merely to express that God has allowed sin to realize itself in Christ, as befalling Him , while it was not in Him as conduct. Certainly it was not in Him as conduct, but it lay upon Him as the guilt of men to be atoned for through His sacrifice, Rom 3:25 ; Col 2:14 ; Heb 9:28 ; 1Pe 2:24 ; Joh 1:29 , al. ; for which reason His suffering finds itself scripturally regarded not under the point of view of experience befalling Him , evil, or the like, but only under that of guilt-atoning and penal suffering . Comp. 1Jn 2:2 .

[244] This interpretation is preferred by Ritschl in the Jahrb. f. D. Th . 1863, p. 249, for the special reason that, according to the ordinary interpretation, there is an incongruity between the end aimed at (actual righteousness of God ) and the means ( appearing as a sinner). But this difficulty is obviated by observing that Christ is conceived by the apostle as in reality bearer of the divine , and His death as mors vicaria for the benefit ( ) of the sinful men, to be whose He was accordingly made by God a sinner. As the took place for men imputatively , so also did the take place for Christ imputatively . In this lies the congruity.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2023
THE WAY OF RECONCILIATION WITH GOD

2Co 5:21. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

A MORE important question cannot be asked than this, How shall man be just with God? In the words before us, that question is resolved. The Apostle has before declared in more general terms, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them: but in our text he enters more particularly into the subject, and informs us, that, in order to effect a reconciliation between our offended God and us, God caused a double transfer to be made; first, of our sins to Christ, that they might be punished in him; and next, of Christs righteousness to us, that it might be rewarded in us, and that we might be accepted through it. This doctrine of the mutual transfer of our sins to Christ, and Christs righteousness to us, being not generally understood, we will,

Explain it

Two things are to be explained:

The imputation of our sins to Christ

[It is an undoubted fact, that the Lord Jesus Christ died under the curse of Gods broken law. But was he himself a sinner? No: in him was no sin: both in his Divine and human nature he was perfectly holy: and he was able to appeal to his bitterest enemies, Which of you convinceth me of sin? Indeed, if he had had sin himself, he could not have atoned for our sins. The lamb that was slain at the passover was to be without spot or blemish: and such was Christ, after the fullest possible examination, proclaimed to be by the very judge who condemned him. It was for our sins that he died: they were laid upon him by his own consent, that they might be punished in him, and that through his vicarious sacrifice we might be absolved. This will be best understood by the sacrifices which were offered under the law. The person who had sinned was exposed to the wrath of his offended God. But by Gods appointment he brought an offering, a bullock or a kid, and, after putting his hands upon the head of his offering in token of his transferring his guilt to it, the victim was slain in his stead, and he was absolved from his guilt. The particular command, that the offender should put his hand on the head of his offering, place beyond all reasonable doubt the point we are insisting on [Note: Lev 4:4; Lev 4:15; Lev 4:24; Lev 4:29. See also particularly Lev 16:21-22.] ]

The imputation of Christs righteousness to us

[Man, though forgiven, was still incapable of fulfilling perfectly in future the law of God, and consequently was incapable of working out a righteousness wherein he could stand before God. A righteousness therefore was provided for him fully adequate to all the demands of Gods holy law, even the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by his own obedience unto death, not only made an end of sin, and reconciliation for iniquity, but brought in also an everlasting righteousness [Note: Dan 9:24.], which is unto all, and upon all them that believe in him [Note: Rom 3:21-22.]. It is on this account that he is called, The Lord our righteousness. Thus, He is made righteousness unto us, and we are made, as our text expresses it, the righteousness of God in him. It is not to be expected that this should be capable of such illustration as the former point, because nothing similar to it ever did, or could, exist: yet we may behold something of the kind in the very sacrifices which were first offered. We are informed, that, after their fall, our first parents sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons, because by their sin they had made themselves naked to their shame. But God, we are told, made coats of skins, and clothed them [Note: Gen 3:7; Gen 3:21.]. If it be asked, of what beasts were these skins? we answer, of those beasts which God had previously appointed to be offered in sacrifice to him: (for, if this was not the time when sacrifices were ordained, we have no account whatever of their first institution, notwithstanding they were undoubtedly of Divine origin:) and the very beasts which died as sacrifices for their sins, provided them also with clothing to cover their nakedness. Thus the Lord Jesus by his death atones for our sins, and by his righteousness clothes us as with an unspotted robe, in which we stand before our God without spot or blemish [Note: Isa 61:10.].]

But as this doctrine is disputed by many, we will proceed to,

II.

Vindicate it

Some deny this doctrine as unscriptural, whilst others abuse it to licentiousness: but against all we will vindicate it as the only true way of reconciliation with God: against,

The proud infidel

[One will say, this doctrine of a mutual transfer is not agreeable to my reason. But reason is not competent to judge of these matters. This is a point of pure revelation: and the office of reason in relation to it is, not to sit in judgment upon it, but to inquire whether it be really revealed: and, if it be, then is it to be assented to as true, whether we can comprehend it or not. But it is not at all repugnant to reason. We see daily somewhat of a similar nature transacted before our eyes. A man has made himself surety for his friend; that friend becomes insolvent; and his debt is required at the hands of his surety. If it be not discharged, the surety is imprisoned: but if the surety discharges the debt, the original debtor has no further claim made upon him. Thus do reason and experience fully sanction the substitution of the innocent for the guilty, and the liberation of the guilty through the sufferings of the innocent. And that this is the way for mans reconciliation with God, is abundantly testified throughout all the inspired writings. That the types are all founded in this notion, has already appeared: and the prophecies declare the same with one voice. No one can read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and doubt of this truth. All our iniquities were laid upon him: he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed. The New Testament speaks the same language throughout: He bare our sins in his own body on the tree, and suffered, the just for the unjust [Note: 1Pe 2:24; 1Pe 3:18.]. Here there is a substitution of Christ in the place of sinners: just as it is said, that peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die; that is, would die in his place, in order to preserve his life; so Christ died for, and in the place of, the ungodly, that by his own death he might preserve them from everlasting death [Note: Rom 5:6-8.]. Yes, however the scoffing infidel may deride these things, they are the very truth of God; nor is there any other way of reconciliation for any child of man.]

The self-righteous Pharisee

[Many will admit that Christ died for sinners, who yet cannot receive the idea of his righteousness being imputed to them for their justification before God. They think that, though Christ by his death atoned for our sins, we are to procure for ourselves a title to heaven by a righteousness of our own. But this cannot be; for it would give to man a ground of glorying before God, when God has expressly said that all boasting is excluded by the Gospel, and that men must glory in Christ alone. This was the great error of the Pharisees of old; and it proved a stumbling-block to them to their everlasting ruin [Note: Rom 9:31-33; Rom 10:1-2.]. This is the great error of the Papists also, and, more than all other things, contributed to stir up the more enlightened part of the Christian world to separate themselves from the corruptions of the Church of Rome. Happy would it be, if many, who call themselves Protestants, did not in this matter go back again to the heresies which they profess to have renounced! But however pertinaciously men cling to the covenant of works, they never can obtain salvation by it: they must lay hold on the covenant of grace: they must renounce their own righteousness, even as the Apostle Paul himself did, and seek for acceptance by Christs alone [Note: Php 3:9.]: in Christ shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory [Note: Isa 45:25.].]

The Antinomian professor

[There are, it must be confessed, some who abuse the doctrine of our text, and maintain, that, because Christ is our righteousness, we need no righteousness of our own. They acknowledge indeed that Christ is our sanctification: but they suppose that his sanctification is imputed to us in the same way as his righteousness. But this is contrary both to reason and Scripture; for sanctification necessarily implies a change both of heart and life. We may easily conceive righteousness to be imputed, and that persons not righteous in themselves, may be dealt with as righteous on account of the righteousness of another: but it is not possible that a person can be made inwardly holy by the holiness of another, any more than a dead tree can be made a fruitful one by having the fruit of another tree suspended on it. And the Scripture universally requires us to be daily putting off the old man and putting on the new. If real and radical holiness be not required of us, why is it so strongly and so continually inculcated throughout all the apostolic writings? Of those who deny that the law is to the believer a rule of life, we would ask one question: What does the law require which the Gospel does not? The law requires us to love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves; and what does the Gospel require less? What part of our duty does it dispense with? Alas! it is a fatal error to imagine that holiness is not as necessary now as formerly. Were this true, Christ would actually be a minister of sin, in that he would be vacating the obligations of Gods law, which is as immutable as God himself. For our justification, it is true, we do not need any righteousness of our own; and if we were to attempt to unite our righteousness to that of Christ, we should make void the whole Gospel; and Christ would have died in vain. But to attest the reality of our faith, and manifest our love to Christ j to glorify our God on earth, and obtain a meetness for heaven, holiness is absolutely indispensable; and if we cultivate it not, even universal holiness of heart and life, we shall never see the kingdom of God.]
Having thus endeavoured to establish the doctrine of our text, we proceed,

III.

To improve it

Let no man despair of mercy

[What can any person want in order to his reconciliation with God, which has not been already wrought? There is a perfect atonement for your sins, and a perfect righteousness for your justification; and the benefits of both are offered you freely, without money and without price. All that is necessary to your reconciliation on Gods part, is already done by Jesus Christ: and all that remains to be done on your part, is to receive gratefully what God offers freely. Truly this is, if I may so call it, the religion of a sinner: it is suited to sinners of every class: and wherever it is received in truth, it shall prove effectual for our present peace, and our everlasting salvation.]

Let no man attempt to alter the plan which God himself has devised

[We are ever leaning to the side of self-righteousness. But the righteousness which God imputes to us is, and ever must be, a righteousness without works [Note: Rom 4:6.]. We must be justified freely by Gods grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Why should we wish to alter this? What is it less than madness for a person destitute of one single farthing to undertake to pay ten thousand talents, when he may be freely forgiven his whole debt? Be content to be indebted wholly to the grace of God and the mediation of the Lord Jesus: and let God alone be exalted in your salvation.]

Let all who embrace this salvation endeavour to adorn it

[This is the duty of all, and the privilege of all; this is what the grace of God teaches us; and it is a most important end of our union with Christ [Note: Rom 7:4.]. Are you reconciled to God? endeavour henceforth to manifest your friendship towards him in every possible way. Think not much of any thing you are called either to do or suffer for his sake. Can any thing be too much to do for one who has done so much for you, or to suffer for one who has suffered so much for you? If a man will lay down his life for an earthly friend, of how small account should you reckon any temporal interests, or even life itself, for such a friend as this? Seek to know more and more of this stupendous mystery revealed in our text: and, whilst you are filled by it with rapturous admiration, give full scope to all its transforming efficacy, till it has changed you into the very image of your God.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Volumes might be written, on this most blessed verse of Scripture: and when all the powers of the human mind had been drained, to express everything the imagination could conceive, of blessedness contained in it, numberless things would be left unsaid, and unwritten; so infinitely full are the blissful contents. That Christ, who knew no sin, should be made sin for his people: that he who is holiness itself, and who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; should be counted unholy, and have all the iniquity of his people laid upon him! yea, he that is One with the Father, over all God blessed forever, should be made a curse for them: what a world of mysteries is contained in this subject? But, Reader! think, and think with holy, rapture, and joy, of the blissful truth connected with it, if Christ who knew no sin, was made sin for them; they also which are his people, and who in themselves are all sin, and know no righteousness, are made the righteousness of God in him? So that they are really, and truly, considered righteous before God in his righteousness, as much as Christ stood forth in God’s view the sinner’s Surety, and was beheld, and reputed sin for them. And this becomes the sole cause, as was all along intended, of the sinner’s justification before God. Not to procure favor to his people, to any of their labored attempts after righteousness; but to be the very righteousness of his people. Christ is himself their righteousness. And they are accepted as righteous in him. Oh! the unspeakable felicity of thus eyeing Christ, and knowing Him, as the Lord our righteousness. Sweetly the Apostle speaks of the Church, made righteous in his righteousness, when he saith; who of God is made unto us, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And as sweetly the Prophet hath taught the Church, under God the Holy Ghost, to take all the comfort, and confidence, of the divine provision, when putting those words in the mouth of the redeemed: Surely shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength; even to him shall men come, and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory, Isa 45:24-25 ; 1Co 1:30 .

REFLECTIONS

Who is blessed in the Lord, that can join the Apostle’s confidence, on the same well-grounded assurance in Christ; that when the tabernacle of this earthly house shall fall, the mansion of glory in Jesus, stands open for his sure reception? Oh! the vast, the conceivable difference, which will take place, at the judgment-seat of Christ, between the redeemed of the Lord, and the unregenerate! Who shall form conception, between the shouts of holy joy, and the shrieks of the condemned? Lord Jesus! be thou my portion now; and sure I am, thou wilt be my everlasting confidence then, Lord! give me all the sweet properties of the new creature, and so cause the love of Christ to constrain me, that during the whole time-state of my continuance here below, I may thus judge, and thus act, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him, who died for them, and rose again! Blessed Lord Jesus! I would be wholly thine! And, oh! the rapturous thought! I am made the righteousness of God in thee!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Ver. 21. To be sin for us ] That is, a sin offering, or an exceeding sinner, as Exo 29:14 . So Christ was, 1. By imputation, for our sins were “made to meet upon him,” as that evangelical prophet hath it,Isa 53:6Isa 53:6 ; Isa 2:1-22 . By reputation, for he was reckoned among malefactors, ibid. And yet one Augustinus de Roma, archbishop of Nazareth, was censured in the Council of Basil for affirming that Christ was peccatorum maximus, the greatest of sinners. See Aug. Enchirid. xli. Christ so loved us, saith one, that he endured that which he most hated, to become sin for us (he was made sin passive in himself to satisfy for sin active in us), and the want of that which was more worth than a world to him, the sense of God’s favour for a time. Ama amorem illius, &c., saith Bernard. There are two things in guilt, saith a late reverend writer (Dr Sibbs): 1. The merit and desert of it; this Christ took not. 2. The obligation to punishment; this he took, and so he “became sin,” that is, bound to the punishment of sin. The son of a traitor loseth his father’s lands, not by any communion of fault, but by communion of nature, because he is part of his father. The son is no traitor; but by his nearness to his father is wrapped in the same punishment; so here. In a city that is obnoxious to the king’s displeasure, perhaps there are some that are not guilty of the offence; yet being all citizens, they are all punished by reason of their communion. So Christ, by communion with our natures, took upon him whatsoever was penal that belonged to sin, though he took not, nor could take, the demerit of sin.

Who knew no sin ] That is, with a practical knowledge; with an intellectual he did, else he could not have reproved it. We know no more than we practise. Christ is said to “know no sin,” because he did none.

That we might be made, &c. ] As Christ became sin, not by sin inherent in him, but by our sin imputed to him; so are we made the righteousness of God, by Christ’s righteousness imputed and given unto us. This the Papists jeeringly call “putative righteousness.”

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21. ] States the great fact on which the exhortation to be reconciled is grounded : viz. the unspeakable gift of God, to bring about the reconciliation. It is introduced without a (which has been supplied), as still forming part of the . Him who knew not sin ( would merely assert the fact , that up to the time of , He was ignorant of sin. But with a participle, as has been observed since the doctrine of the particles has been more accurately studied, always denies subjectively , i.e. in reference to the view of some person who is the subject, or to the hypothesis of some person who is the direct or indirect utterer of the assertion. Cf. note on ch. 2Co 4:18 .

With what reference then is the particle here used? Fritz. (in Meyer) thinks, to the Christian’s necessary idea of Christ, “quem talem virum mente concipimus, qui sceleris notitiam non habuerit:” Meyer, and Winer, edn. 6, 55. 5. , to God’s judgment of Him. I much prefir to either regarding it as subjective with reference to Christ Himself , Who said, Joh 8:46 , ; He was thus (see Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. 131, who gives among other examples, one very similar, from Thucyd. i. 118, , ), ‘ knew not ,’ i.e. by contact, by personal experience, ‘ sin .’ See, for the sense , 1Pe 2:22 ; Heb 7:26 ), on our behalf (or, instead of us : I prefer here the former, because the purpose of the verse is to set forth how great things God has done for us : the other, though true, does not seem so applicable.

The words . are emphatic) He made ( to be ) sin (not, ‘ a sin-offering ,’ as Augustine, Ambros., cum., Erasm., Hammond, Wolf, al., for the word seems never to have the meaning , even in the LXX (see however the remarkable reading of the Codex A at Lev 6:25 ); and if it had, the former sense of the same word in this same sentence would preclude it here: nor = , as Meyer, al.: but, as De Wette, al., SIN, abstract, as opposed to RIGHTEOUSNESS which follows; compare , Gal 3:13 . He, on the Cross, was the Representative of Sin , of the sin of the world), that we might become (the present, . as in rec., would signify, as Stallbaum, Crito, p. 43 (Meyer) ‘id quod propositum fuerit, nondum perfectum et transactum esse, sed adhuc durare.’ The aor., which is supported by all the MSS., also yields the best sense, as joining the whole justification of all God’s people, as one act accomplished, with the Sacrifice of Christ) the righteousness of God (see above: representatives of the Righteousness of God, endued with it and viewed as in it , and examples of it ) in Him (in union with Him, and by virtue of our standing in Him).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

2Co 5:21 . The very purpose of the Atonement was that men should turn from sin. . . .: Him who knew no sin (observe rather than , as it is not so much the bare fact of Christ’s sinlessness that is emphasised, as God’s knowledge of this fact, which rendered Christ a possible Mediator) He made to be sin on our behalf . Two points are especially deserving of attention here: (i.) That any man should be sinless ( cf. Ecc 8:5 ) was an idea quite alien to Jewish thought and belief; and therefore the emphasis given to it by St. Paul, and the absolutely unqualified way in which it is laid down in a letter addressed to a community containing not only friends but foes who would eagerly fasten on any doubtful statement, show that it must have been regarded as axiomatic among Christians at the early date when this Epistle was written. The claim involved in the challenge of Christ, (Joh 8:46 ), had never been disproved, and the Apostolic age held that He was , (Heb 4:15 ; Heb 7:26 ), and that (1Jn 3:5 ; cf. St. Peter’s application of Isa 53:9 at 1Pe 2:22 ). That He was a moral Miracle was certainly part of the primitive Gospel, (ii.) The statement is best understood if we recall the Jewish ritual on the Day of Atonement, when the priest was directed to “place” the sins of the people upon the head of the scapegoat (Lev 16:21 ). cannot be translated “sin-offering” (as at Lev 4:8 ; Lev 4:21 ; Lev 4:24 ; Lev 4:34 ; Lev 5:9-12 ), for it cannot have two different meanings in the same clause; and further it is contrasted with , it means “sin” in the abstract. The penalties of sin were laid on Christ , “on our behalf,” and thus as the Representative of the world’s sin it becomes possible to predicate of Him the strange expression ( being used here as at Joh 5:18 ; Joh 8:53 ; Joh 10:33 ). The nearest parallel in the N.T. is (Gal 3:13 ); cf. also Isa 53:6 , Rom 8:3 , 1Pe 2:24 . . . .: that we might become, sc. , as we have become (note the force of the aorist), the righteousness of God in Him ( cf. Jer 23:6 , 1Co 1:30 , Phi 3:9 , and reff.). “Such we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly or frenzy or fury or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God” (Hooker, Serm. , ii., 6).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

For. Omit.

He, &c. Read, Him Who knew not sin, for us He made sin.

sin. App-128. Only here and 2Co 11:7, in this Epistle. The first occurance in this verse is by Figure of speech Metonymy (App-6) put for sin-offering. Compare Eph 5:2. The same Figure of speech appears in the same connexion in Gen 4:7. Exo 29:14; Exo 30:10. Lev 4:3; Lev 6:25. Num 8:8. Psa 40:6 (7); &c.

no = not. App-106.

be made = become.

the. Omit.

righteousness. App-191.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

21.] States the great fact on which the exhortation to be reconciled is grounded:-viz. the unspeakable gift of God, to bring about the reconciliation. It is introduced without a (which has been supplied), as still forming part of the . Him who knew not sin ( would merely assert the fact, that up to the time of , He was ignorant of sin. But with a participle, as has been observed since the doctrine of the particles has been more accurately studied, always denies subjectively, i.e. in reference to the view of some person who is the subject, or to the hypothesis of some person who is the direct or indirect utterer of the assertion. Cf. note on ch. 2Co 4:18.

With what reference then is the particle here used? Fritz. (in Meyer) thinks, to the Christians necessary idea of Christ, quem talem virum mente concipimus, qui sceleris notitiam non habuerit: Meyer, and Winer, edn. 6, 55. 5. , to Gods judgment of Him. I much prefir to either regarding it as subjective with reference to Christ Himself, Who said, Joh 8:46, ; He was thus (see Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. 131, who gives among other examples, one very similar, from Thucyd. i. 118, , ),-knew not, i.e. by contact, by personal experience, sin. See, for the sense, 1Pe 2:22; Heb 7:26), on our behalf (or, instead of us: I prefer here the former, because the purpose of the verse is to set forth how great things God has done for us:-the other, though true, does not seem so applicable.

The words . are emphatic) He made (to be) sin (not, a sin-offering, as Augustine, Ambros., cum., Erasm., Hammond, Wolf, al., for the word seems never to have the meaning, even in the LXX (see however the remarkable reading of the Codex A at Lev 6:25); and if it had, the former sense of the same word in this same sentence would preclude it here: nor = , as Meyer, al.: but, as De Wette, al., SIN, abstract, as opposed to RIGHTEOUSNESS which follows; compare , Gal 3:13. He, on the Cross, was the Representative of Sin,-of the sin of the world), that we might become (the present, . as in rec., would signify, as Stallbaum, Crito, p. 43 (Meyer)-id quod propositum fuerit, nondum perfectum et transactum esse, sed adhuc durare. The aor., which is supported by all the MSS., also yields the best sense, as joining the whole justification of all Gods people, as one act accomplished, with the Sacrifice of Christ) the righteousness of God (see above: representatives of the Righteousness of God, endued with it and viewed as in it, and examples of it) in Him (in union with Him, and by virtue of our standing in Him).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

2Co 5:21. ) Him, who knew no sin, who stood in no need of reconciliation;-a eulogium peculiar to Jesus. Mary was not one, , who knew no sin.- , made Him to be sin) He was made sin in the same way that we are made righteousness. Who would have dared to speak thus, if Paul had not led the way? comp. Gal 3:13. Therefore Christ was also abandoned on the cross.-) we, who knew no righteousness, who must have been destroyed, if the way of reconciliation had not been discovered.- , in Him) in Christ. The antithesis is, for us.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

2Co 5:21

Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf;-God had made Jesus who committed no sin to suffer as though he had sinned.

that we might become the righteousness of God in him.-That man who was guilty of many sins might be blessed as though he had not sinned, and be clothed with the righteousness of God. [Christ was accounted as one sinful and treated as such in bearing our guilt that we might be accounted as righteous while standing in him before God.]

Jesus took our nature and shared our sorrows here on earth, that we might partake of his nature and share his glories in heaven. This plea for reconciliation was to the Corinthians whom he called saints. This shows that while the reconciliation had begun by their entrance into Christ, it was not completed and perfected; and the entreaty was to complete and perfect the reconciliation. That reconciliation will be completed and perfected only when man in his heart and life has been brought into complete harmony with God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. (2Co 10:5).

[Since some preachers speak of themselves as ambassadors of Christ, it is necessary to consider what it takes to constitute an ambassador. An ambassador must be chosen by the head of the government, and be ratified by the chief council of the nation. He must receive a commission and must be sealed with the great seal of the nation or power sending him. Having thus been duly qualified, he receives power at the appointed time to do or transact business in the name and for the government sending him. Not until the appointed time, and at the appointed place, can he act. His power may be either ordinary or extraordinary, according to the terms of the instruction given. Jesus, after he had chosen his apostles, gave them a commission with extraordinary power, saying to them: Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained (Joh 20:23), What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Mat 18:18), and to Peter he said: I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Mat 16:19). And when he had accomplished his work on earth, just before he ascended to heaven, he appeared to his apostles, and said unto them: All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations (Mat 28:18-19), and gave them the seal of the court of heaven to their apostleship, saying: And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mar 16:17-18).

The record shows how fully and faithfully God bore the apostles witness with signs and wonders and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will, and, being assembled together with them, he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, said he, ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence (Act 1:4-5), and when they had received power according to his word, Peter declared that Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, had poured forth that which they saw and heard. Then exclaimed, Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins (Act 2:36-38), and no terms of remission of sins were ever proclaimed by any of them except those preached on this occasion. The apostles were and are the ambassadors of Christ. They sustained a relation to the gospel that no other preachers in their day or since sustained or could sustain. They were the revealers of the gospel. The rest are simply proclaimers of what was revealed through the apostles.

No preacher today has any new revelation, nor can he make any valid claim to be a witness of the resurrection. He has no authority to declare the remission of sins, but can only point people to the apostles declaration on the subject. He may preach the gospel, but he can never reveal it. He has no message that is not already made known. Then he has not the credentials of an ambassador. He cannot work miracles. The apostles were instructed to go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation, to every creature, and it is said: And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the words by the signs that followed. (Mar 16:20). Now this gospel that was revealed through Christs ambassadors is given in trust to the whole church of Christ to proclaim that the whole world may know the manifold wisdom of God. Paul in his instruction to a preacher of the gospel said, The things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. (2Ti 2:2). We need expect no more gospel ambassadors until the Lord has a new message for the denizens of earth. We need expect nor more miraculous performances, because there is no new divinely appointed message that needs the credentials of miracles to attest that it is from on high, and that the men bringing it are ambassadors of God.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

sin Sin. (See Scofield “Rom 3:23”).

righteous Sin. (See Scofield “Rom 5:21”).

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

The Sinless Made Sin

Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.2Co 5:21.

There are many to whom there is no dearer verse in the Book than this. But there are others who can only study it with knitted brows and puzzled minds. Sometimes perhaps they think they have glimpses of its meaning, but the momentary insight fades, and they are puzzled again. Their experience is like John Bunyans in his groping days; he sometimes for his comfort got sweet glances at this and kindred verses; But these words were but hints, touches and short visits, though very sweet when present: only they lasted not; but, like to Peters sheet, and of a sudden were caught up from me to heaven again. Yet even if we do not always fully understand, we can feel somewhat of the tremendous import, and therefore of the tremendous importance, of a verse like this; its daring paradox seems to point us into the centre of things, and its passionate intensity moves our hearts to wonder and prayer.

Perhaps the verse is made somewhat easier if we are careful to distinguish between two thingsone the mannerism of St. Paul and the other the message that lies behind the mannerism. St. Pauls style is often very direct, compressed and abrupt. And where some writer of looser method and less intense quality would put some word of connexion or of comparison, St. Paul dispenses with all connecting links and puts a bold identification. Take for the sake of clearness a parallel instance, which is all the clearer because it is two instances in one. In another place he says, Ye were sometime darkness, not in darkness, not children of darkness, not in bondage to darkness, but by a bold and direct identification, ye were darkness. And then he goes on, but now are ye light in the Lordnot ye have come into the light, nor ye have been brought to see the light; but again by a bold and direct identification, Now are ye light. Perhaps such a parallel case throws light upon St. Pauls method of expression here, where by an awfully daring identification, he speaks about Christ being made sin and ourselves being made righteousness.

With these introductory words we pass to the contents of the text. It contains two subjects.

I.The Sinless made Sin

II.The Sinner become Righteousness.

The Sinless Made Sin

1. Him who knew no sin. That any man should be sinless was an idea quite alien to Jewish thought and belief; and therefore the emphasis given to it by St. Paul, and the absolutely unqualified way in which it is laid down in a letter addressed to a community containing not only friends but foes who would eagerly fasten on any doubtful statement, show that it must have been regarded as axiomatic among Christians at the early date when this Epistle was written.

It was Christs own verdict upon Himself. He whose words search our very hearts, and bring to light unsuspected seeds of badness, never Himself betrays the faintest consciousness of guilt. He challenges His enemies directlyWhich of you convinceth me of sin? It is the verdict of all sincere human souls, as uttered by the soldier who watched His crossTruly this was a righteous man. It is the verdict even of the great enemy who assailed Him again and again, and found nothing in Him, and whose agents recognized Him as the Holy One of God. Above all, it is the verdict of God. He was the beloved Son, in whom the Father was well pleased. For three-and-thirty years, in daily contact with the world and its sins, Christ lived and yet knew no sin. To His will and conscience it was a foreign thing. What infinite worth that sinless life possessed in Gods sight! When He looked down to earth it was the one absolutely precious thing. Filled full of righteousness, absolutely well-pleasing in His eyes, it was worth more to God than all the world beside.

Your friend asks, When does Scripture mention the least impatience or any sin in the man Christ Jesus? and then goes on to speak, with great horror, of my awful notion of admitting the germ of evil, etc., in Him. I presume this is a misconception of an expression which I have more than once used. Specially dwelling on the Redeemers sinlessness, I have shown how all the innocent feelings of our nature were in Him, but stopped on the verge which separates the innocent from the wrong. An inclination of human nature is not wronghunger, angerbut being gratified unduly, or in forbidden circumstances, it passes into sin. Be ye angry, and sin not. Legitimate anger was to stop short of sinful vindictiveness. Similarly, our Lord felt the weariness of life, and was anxious to have it done, amidst perpetual opposition of enemies and misconception of friends. How am I straitened till it be accomplished? O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? There was no germ of sin in Christ; for sin is the acting of an evil will. Sin resides in the will, not in the natural appetites. There was no germ of sin in Him; but there were germs of feeling, natural and innocent, which show that He was in all points tempted like as we are.1 [Note: Lift and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 143.]

2. All sinless as Christ was, God made Him to be sin on our behalf. What does this mean? Not exactly that He made Him a sin-offering on our behalf. The expression for a sin-offering is different, and the parallelism with righteousness in the next clause forbids that reference here. The sin-offering of the Old Testament can at most have pointed towards and dimly suggested so tremendous an utterance as this; and the profoundest word of the New Testament cannot be adequately interpreted by anything in the Old. When St. Paul says, Him that knew no sin God made sin, he must mean that in Christ on His cross, by Divine appointment, the extremest opposites met and became oneincarnate righteousness and the sin of the world. The sin is laid by God on the sinless One; its doom is laid on Him; His death is the execution of the Divine sentence upon it. When He dies, He has put away sin; it no longer stands, as it once stood, between God and the world. On the contrary, God has made peace by this great transaction; He has wrought out reconciliation: and its ministers can go everywhere with this awful appeal: Receive the reconciliation: Him who knew no sin God hath made sin on our behalf, and there is henceforth no condemnation to them that are in Christ.

Chrysostom makes the following comment on this verse: What mind can represent these things? He made the righteous One a sinner, that He might make the sinners righteous. Rather this is not what he says, but something much greater. He says, not that He made Him a sinner, but that He made Him sin,not only Him who had not sinned, but Him who did not know sin,that we might be made (not righteous, but) righteousness, and the righteousness of God. For this is the righteousness of God, when we are justified, not by works (for in this case it is necessary that there should be no spot in them) but by grace in the blotting out of all sin. This does not permit us to be lifted up, for God freely gives us all and teaches us the greatness of the gift; because the former righteousness is that of the law and of works, but this is the righteousness of God.

3. If we look at the verses that precede we shall see that St. Pauls thoughts, as always when he treats of these great themes, were dwelling on the identification of Christ with sinful man. One died for all, therefore all died, he says (2Co 5:14); and those who are in him are new creatures, reconciled to God and living not unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again. Hence it would seem that the phrase made to be sin must be understood in the light of this thought of identification. We may, perhaps, paraphrase the words thus:Jesus Christ, though sinless, identified Himself with us in our sinfulness, in order that we, though sinful, might be able to identify ourselves with Him in His righteousness.

Now this identification of Christ with sinful men is due to His intense sympathy. There was a time in our Lords life on earth, we are told, when He met a man coming out of the tombs, whom no man could bind, no, not with chains. That man was possessed by an unclean spirit. Of all men upon earth, you would say that he was the one between whom and the pure and holy Jesus there must have existed the most thorough-going repugnance. What Pharisee who shrank from the filthy and loathsome words of that maniac could have experienced one-thousandth part of the inward and intense loathing which Christ must have experienced for the mind that those words expressed? For it was into that He looked; that which He understood; that which in His inmost being He must have felt, which must have given Him a shock such as it could have given to no other. He must have felt the wickedness of that man in His inmost being. He must have been conscious of it, as no one else was or could be. Now, if we have ever had the consciousness, in a very slight degree, of evil in another man, has it not been, up to that degree, as if the evil were in ourselves? Suppose the offender were a friend, or a brother, or a child, has not this sense of personal shame, of the evil being ours, been proportionably stronger and more acute? However much we might feel ourselves called upon to act as judges, this perception still remained. It was not crushed even by the anger, the selfish anger, and the impatience of an injury done to us which, most probably, mingled with and corrupted the purer indignation and sorrow. Most of us confess with humiliation how little we have had of this lively consciousness of other mens impurity, or injustice, or falsehood, or baseness. But we do confess it; we know, therefore, that we should be better if we had more of it. In our best moments we admire with a fervent admirationin our worse, we envy with a wicked envythose in whom we trace most of it. And we have had just enough of it to be certain that it belongs to the truest and most radical part of the character, not to its transient impulses. Suppose, then, this carried to its highest point. Cannot you, at a great distance, apprehend that Christ may have entered into the sin of that poor maniacs spirit, may have had the most inward realization of it, not because it was like what was in Himself, but because it was utterly and intensely unlike? And yet are you not sure that this could not have been, unless He had the most perfect and thorough sympathy with this man, whose nature was transformed into the likeness of a brute, whose spirit had acquired the image of a devil? Does the co-existence of this sympathy and this antipathy perplex you? When we consider we see that they must dwell together in their highest degree, in their fullest power, in any one of whom we could say, He is perfect; He is the standard of excellence. Diminish by one atom the loathing and horror, or the fellowship and sympathy, and by that atom you lower the character; you are sure that you have brought it nearer to the level of your own low imaginations; that you have made it less like the Being who would raise you towards Himself.1 [Note: F. D. Maurice.]

Love is a principle essentially vicarious in its own nature, identifying the subject with others, so as to suffer their adversities and pains, and taking on itself the burden of their evils. It does not come in officiously and abruptly and propose to be substituted in some formal and literal way that overturns all the moral relations of law and desert, but it clings to the evil and lost man as in feeling, afflicted for him, burdened by his ill deserts, incapacities, and pains, encountering gladly any loss or suffering for his sake. Approving nothing wrong in him, but faithfully reproving and condemning him in all sin, it is yet made sinplunged, so to speak, into all the fortunes of sin, by its friendly sympathy. In this manner it is entered vicariously into sacrifice on his account. So naturally and easily does the vicarious sacrifice commend itself to our intelligence, by the stock ideas and feelings out of which it grows.2 [Note: Horace Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice, 42.]

There is a fine Welsh poem in which the poet imagines that the Sun, and all the attendant planets and satellites in his sphere, passed before the Great White Throne of the Creator; and as each passed, He smiled; but when Earth came to her turn, He blushed. We may couple with that a true story which was recently told of human sin and crime. A girl was brought before a board of guardians for immoral conduct of a very gross and aggravated kind; and, instead of showing any womanly shame, she was hard and brazen-faced. A lady who was on the board sat amongst the guardians, and her face was dyed crimson with shame. Though the girl showed no shame for herself, the lady felt it for her sin and her hardness; and as the girl caught sight of that pure, shame-cast face, she broke down in a flood of tears, and afterwards asked to be permitted to speak to her unknown friend. The incident led to the girls ultimate reclamation. And when, according to the poet, we are told that God blushed as the Earth passed beneath His eye, may not his suggestion be coupled with this story, and may not the blush that suffused the face of Christ be also reflected from the face of Earth?3 [Note: F. B. Meyer, In the Beginning God, 163.]

I wandered forth to meet the rising sun.

To all infinity the snow lay bright

Beneath the dawna seamless garb of white

In Gods own looms immaculately spun.

Oh, spotless peace! Yet, ere an hour should run,

I knew that, with the broadening of the light,

The feet of man would mar that perfect sight,

And blot it wholly ere the day were done.

And, as I went, my heart was full of pain

To think of all mans deeds that would deface,

Ere set of sun, the glistening garb of grace:

Of truth that would be blotted with pretence,

And of the treachery that would print its stain

Upon the virgin snow of innocence.1 [Note: G. Thomas, The Wayside Altar, 32.]

4. Sympathy has always an element of vicariousness in it, the more as it rises to the highest form of spiritual identification. Sympathy, by common consent one of the holiest and most influential forces in social life, is indeed itself a vicarious emotion. Its presence implies that we are putting ourselves into another mans place and participating in his experiences. By an act of imagination we bring our sensibilities into unison with kindred sensibilities in groups of sufferers, and so enter into their lot. There has been a mental substitution of our personality for that of a neighbour who is racked with pain, stricken by tragic bereavement, or wallowing in want and abject privation. It is quite possible we may suffer as much as the ill-fated victim himself, or even more, if his temperament chance to be slow and stolid. By an act of mental transmigration we share the dire conditions of another, and the process may be momentary or persistent. This act of thinking ourselves into anothers place may be so vivid that his trouble will continue to haunt us for years. Who will venture to deny that there is the dawn of a great virtue in every generous impulse which compels us to put ourselves at the standpoint of a sufferer? Sympathy when divorced from wise, practical action may cease to be a virtue. It may pass into hypocrisy, and be cherished because of the sense of spurious self-approval to which it ministers. But all the same we are bound to recognize that it is the source of altruism, and that the sincere emotion is one of the great healing forces at work in a woe-begone world.

What we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is nothing strange as regards the principle of it, no superlative, unexampled, and therefore unintelligible grace. It only does and suffers, and comes into substitution for, just what any and all love will according to its degree. And in this view, it is not something higher in principle than our human virtue knows and which we ourselves are never to copy or receive, but it is to be understood by what we know already, and is to be more fully understood by what we are to know hereafter, when we are complete in Christ. Nothing is wanting to resolve the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus but the commonly known, always familiar principle of love, accepted as the fundamental law of duty, even by mankind. Given the universality of love, the universality of vicarious sacrifice is given also. Here is the centre and deepest spot of good, or goodness, conceivable. At this point we look into heavens eye itself, and read the meaning of all heavenly grace.1 [Note: Horace Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice, 48.]

There is an authentic and beautiful little story told graphically by Dr. Hannathe biographer and the son-in-law of Dr. Chalmers. In a household which enjoyed all the benefits of high culture and Christian care one of the children committed a grievous and unexpected faulthe told a falsehood to cover a petty theft. Rebuke and punishment were administered, carried further than they had ever been before, but without effect. The offender was not awakened to any real or deep sorrow for his offence. The boys insensibility quite overcame his father. Sitting in the same room with his sullen and obstinate child, he bent his head upon his hand and burst into a flood of tears. For a moment or two the boy looked on in wonder; he then crept gradually nearer and nearer to his sobbing parent, and at last got up on his fathers knees, asking in a low whisper why it was that he was weeping so. He was told the reason. It wrought like a spell upon his young heart; the sight of his father suffering so bitterly on his account was more than he could bear. He flung his little arms round his father and wept along with him. That father never needed to correct his child again for any like offence.

5. Here, however, it is necessary to meet two common mis-apprehensions. On the one hand, it is often maintained that for any sin, however great, the word of forgiveness and reconciliation is enougha man needs no more; while on the other hand it is averred that the deed once done can never be undone, that the sinner must bear the consequences of his sin, and, what is more terrible, remain for ever associated with the memory of it. As F. W. H. Myers in Saint Paul says:

Yes, Thou forgivest, but, with all forgiving,

Canst not renew mine innocence again:

Make Thou, O Christ, a dying of my living,

Purge from the sin but never from the pain.

(1) Why can there not be forgiveness without sacrifice? The answer is this: Because of that moral necessity in the Nature of God which calls for the condemnation of sin. It cannot be necessary to defend with argument the position of such a moral necessity in the Nature of God as calls for the condemnation of sin. To some extent we are conscious of that moral necessity in ourselves, not only in moments of disgust and loathing following an evil indulgence, but also, and far more surely, in moments of spiritual strength and vision, when, lifted near to God, we have discerned, as from His side, the goodness of good and the sinfulness of sin. To some extent we are conscious of that moral necessity as confessed in the life of the community and of the nation in its undying struggle after public righteousness, its eternal condemnation of public sin. But when we lift our thought to God the Righteous, the existence of a moral necessity in His Nature calling for the condemnation of sin becomes an axiom, a self-evident proposition transcending demonstration. Apart from it, God the Righteous is unthinkable. For there are but four attitudes possible in any being toward sinignorance, indifference, consent, condemnation. God the Righteous cannot be ignorant; God the Righteous cannot be indifferent; God the Righteous cannot consent; God the Righteous must condemn, must, under the moral necessity of His Being. But how is condemnation to be expressed? In two ways only is it expressible to man on the part of Godthrough precept and through penalty. When the first fails, there remains only the second. God condemned sin by precept to the unfallen world: Thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. The wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all sin, all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The judgment of God was known, that they which commit such things are worthy of death. The condemnation of sin through precept was universally published; it was written in the natural conscience, it was spoken in the Law. God was true to the moral necessity of His Nature in openly condemning sin and warning against it. In vain; the freedom of man challenged the precept of God. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. The condemnation of sin by penalty became, therefore, in the failure of precept, a moral necessity in the nature of God the Righteous. He could not do otherwise. There is nothing of passion, nothing of revenge, nothing of hatred, nothing of sanguinary desire in Gods punishment of sin. The punishment of sin is the condemnation of sin by penalty, its condemnation by precept having failed. Therefore to suggest forgiveness without sacrifice is to suggest a knowledge of sin on Gods part unaccompanied by His condemnation of it.

The fact of what is meant by original sin is as mysterious and inexplicable as the origin of evil, but it is obviously as much a fact. There is a fault and vice in the race which, given time, as surely develops into actual sin as our physical constitution, given at birth, does into sickness and physical death. It is of this inherited tendency to sin in our nature, looked upon in the abstract and without reference to concrete cases, that I suppose the ninth Article speaks. How can we suppose that such a nature looks in Gods eyes, according to the standard of perfect righteousness which we also suppose to be Gods standard and law? Does It satisfy that standard? Can He look with neutrality on its divergence from His perfect standard? What is His moral judgment of it as a subject for moral judgment? What He may do to cure it, to pardon it, to make allowances for it, in known or unknown ways, is another matter, about which His known attributes of mercy alone may reassure us; but the question is, How does He look upon this fact of our nature in itself, that without exception it has this strong efficacious germ of evil within it, of which He sees all the possibilities and all the consequences? Can He look on it, even in germ, with complacency or indifference? Must He not judge it and condemn it as in itself, because evil, deserving condemnation? I cannot see what other answer can be given but one, and this is what the Article says.1 [Note: Lift and Letters of Dean Church, 248.]

(2) But there is the feeling already hinted at, namely, that every sinner feels himself to be permanently associated with his own evil deeds. Suppose that a man has committed a great sin, such, for instance, as the betrayal of a trust. If that sin becomes known to society the sinner will be punished, not only by the censures of his fellows but by their remembrance of his action. He will always be pointed at as the man who did such and such things in such and such a year. No matter how much he tries, he will never wholly live it down, if he has really been guilty of the offence. But suppose that the world does not know of the misdeed. Will his experience be very different? If he is a man of low sordid nature he will probably suffer no pangs of remorse, but if he is a man of high temper, with capacity for nobler things, he will discover that, as Milton says,

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

It is noteworthy that the sense of guilt, as we have now stated it, is the product of the influence of Jesus Christ in the world. Nothing precisely like it is to be found apart from that influence. As Professor Van Dyke says, It was Jesus of Nazareth who illuminated the moral evil in the world most deeply and clearly. He showed its spring, its secret workings, and the power which lies behind it. Thus, to state the point briefly, Jesus, who showed to mankind the foulness of sin, must also be the Person who can deal with guilt, otherwise it were better that He had never come at all. As a matter of fact, this is just what Christians have always believed their Master was able to do. The Christian doctrine of Atonement is the only remedy that has ever been propounded to the world to deal with the psychological fact of guilt. It satisfies a Christ-awakened need. It has been verified by experience during nineteen hundred years. The belief that Christ by His sufferings has wrought out our redemption has been the secret that has lifted thousands of our fellow-men out of the slough of sin and made a holy life possible. Men are not saved by fancies. There must therefore be somewhere in the doctrine a truth that has shown itself able to free men from the thraldom of sin and the worst of its consequences.

In Ellen Thorneycroft Fowlers interesting book, Concerning Isabel Carnaby, there occurs a conversation between a godly father and a noble son. I may here venture to give an extract from the same.

The teaching of modern philosophy is that what is done is done, and what we have written we have written; and that there is no atonement for the deed once accomplished, and no washing out of the handwriting against us. But I have not so learnt of Christ.

Then do you believe that what is done can ever be undone? asked Paul. Surely that is impossible.

I do not wish to prophesy smooth things, replied his father, nor to sprinkle the way of life with rose-water. I know that if a man breaks the law of Nature he will be punished to the uttermost, for there is no forgiveness in Nature. I know that if a man breaks the laws of society he will find neither remission nor mercy, for there is no forgiveness in society; but I believe that if a man breaks the law of God his transgression can be taken away as though it had never been, for there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.

It is a grand gospel that you preach, father, and seems almost too good to be true.

Nothing is too good to be true; the truth is the best of everything.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell, A Faith for To-day, 277.]

The Sinner Become Righteousness

Having identified Christ with sin, the Apostle goes on in a somewhat similar way to identify believing souls with righteousness. That we might become the righteousness of God in him. The usual interpretation of these words applies them to the acceptance of the believing soulhis forgiveness, his justification. That of course is included, but it is also transcended. Just as on the one hand it takes a whole Christ, and not merely a portion of His history, to fill out the great meaning of the words He was made to be sin, so it requires a whole Christian experience, and not merely the initial stages of it, to fill out the full meaning of these words, that we might become righteousness in him. As on the one hand you cannot find such a commentary upon sin as you find in the experience of Christ, so on the other hand you cannot find such an illustration of righteousness as in the souls in whom the work of Christ bears its fruits, beginning and growing and going on to perfection. Just as Christ was treated in this world as if He were sin, so His people are treated here and hereafter as if they were righteousness.

1. As Christ has identified Himself with us in our sinfulness, so we are identified with Him in His righteousness. Not, again, by any legal fiction; but as, by the purity and love and sorrow of a true mother, a wandering son may be rescued, broken down in penitence and led to trust in God and in his mother, when he cannot trust himself, so the cross of Jesus has ever been the supreme agency whereby God comes close to men, breaks down their pride, heals their self-distrust, and assures them that the love and self-sacrifice and obedience of Christ are all for them.

One day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at Gods right hand. There, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse: for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons, my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me.1 [Note: Bunyan, Grace Abounding.]

2. In whatever way our Lord was made sin, we are made righteousness. As sin was placed on Him, and He was reckoned with as though it were His own, so His righteousness is reckoned to us, who are in Him by faith, as though it were indeed ours. Christs identification with us in our sin filled Him with untold anguish; so let our identification with Him in His glorious righteousness fill us with unspeakable joy. And if it is indeed ours, let us dismiss our fears; let us dare to stand in the very light of Gods holiness, accepted in the Beloved; let us greatly rejoice in the Lord, and our souls be joyful in the Lord, since He has covered us with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and a bride adorneth herself with jewels.

An error of mysterious and alarming sound was charged upon Dr. Crispnamely, the permutation of persons, or commutation of persons. If the perplexed reader inquires with wonder what this heresy can be, a historian tells him, it is actually to make a Saviour of the sinner, and a sinner of the Saviour. I have read Dr. Crisps sermons and there is no declaration in them which is as strong as the following by Luther: Faith without adulteration must be taught, because by it thou mayest be so cemented with Christ that out of thee and Him there may be made one person that cannot be separated, but eternally coheres; that with confidence thou mayest be able to say, I am Christthat is, Christs righteousness is mine, His victory is mine, His existence is mine, etc. And, conversely, Christ may say, I am that sinnerthat is, his sins are Mine, his death is Mine, etc., because he adheres to Me, and I to him. We have been joined by faith into one flesh and bone (Eph 5:30), we are members of Christs body, of His flesh and of His bones. This faith unites me to Christ more closely than a husband is joined to his wife. So this faith is not a trifling quality, but its magnitude is such that it obscures and entirely sweeps away those most senseless dreams of sophistical charity, concerning merits, concerning worth or qualities of our own, etc. Crisps alleged heresy is thus the Apostles doctrine that Christ was made sin, and that believers are the righteousness of Godthe old scriptural doctrine taught by the Reformers, by judicious Hooker, and others.1 [Note: D. C. A. Agnew, The Theology of Consolation, 234.]

3. The identification is always in Christ. In him, says the Apostle. These striking and original words show that St. Paul means much more than the imputation of human sin to Christ, and the imputation of Divine righteousness to men; the sin is not merely regarded as laid on Him, nor the righteousness as conferred on us, but there is in both cases an inner identification, as it wereof Him with sin, and of us with righteousness. This, then, is the heart of the gospel, according to St. Paul: this explains the reconciliation on which throughout the paragraph he has so frequently and earnestly insisted. We are acquitted, justified, in Christ; but, in order to this, He had to be made sin. We could never have been identified with Him and His righteousness, had He not first been identified with us and our sin. We climb the heights because He descended to the depths.

We can conceive a vast society of men wholly obedient to the will of God, living in reverent adoration, working with lowly love; we can conceive this society composed of those who have made a sorrowful trial of what life out of harmony with God is, and who, having sinned, have been redeemed; in such a society all that is good and beautiful in our present human life is secured and made permanent, all that is base and vile is excluded; death has lost its meaning, because it is understood that these beings are immortal, and if they pass from world to world, gently translated they may fade out of sight, but, no longer identified with a material and earthly organism, they are no longer subjected to the law of decay. Thrilled through and through with the unimpeded life of God, moving in the faultless harmony of that one holy and loving will, they range through the endless spheres and systems of existence, ever learning, ever wondering, ever worshipping, blessed infinitely as in brief and vanishing moments of the present life some of us have been blessed. The yearning which this order of things can create but never satisfy is progressively satisfied. The dreams of the good are realized

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky.

Now this dream of a sinless humanity, made out of this sinful humanity redeemed, this dream which haunts the imagination of Plato, Sir Thomas More, and the Utopian prophets of all ages, this dream which, materialized, inspires all Socialist reformers, this dream which evolutionists retain in the cold and comfortless form of a distant and vastly improved humanity in which we have no part except that of dying for it, this dream is the sober expectation of the Apostles. They are convinced that it will be; they are also convinced that they hold in their hands the truth and the power which will ultimately, however slowly, realize it.

How far off the final triumph of Christ may be when sin shall be destroyed for ever and death itself shall die, it is not ours to know. Long has been the strife, intense the agony, and the whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain together until now; and so will continue till Christ be formed in every human soul, and in Him all are made alive. Then will the prayer of ages be answered and Gods will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Towards this sublime consummation, the unchallenged reign of God the Father, and the uninterrupted harmony of the human race with its Creator, all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, unceasingly conspire. We have seen how far from primeval fire vapour and stellar dust, through immeasurable geologic eras this process swept forward till the earth became prepared for that august, mysterious guest called Life, and on through that endless kaleidoscopic succession of ever rising organisms till God-like man appeared, and still on through mans chequered career till Christ Himself became incarnate to remake Mankind, to save that which was lost, and to turn this sin-blighted earth into Heaven. For this He is now energizing in the souls of men, and we cannot doubt that the ultimate survival of the Christ-type is assured. By Divine right of the fittest it must prevail. Thus, at long last, shall the Divine heart be satisfied, and a saved and wondering universe beholdno longer in a mirror darkly, but face to facethe Unveiled Glory.1 [Note: L. W. Caws, The Unveiled, Glory, 205.]

With this ambiguous earth

His dealings have been told us. These abide:

The signal to a maid, the human birth,

The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all

The innumerable host of stars has heard

How He administered this terrestrial ball.

Our race have kept their Lords entrusted Word.

Of His earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,

The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,

Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,

Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,

Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

Nor, in our little day,

May His devices with the heavens be guessed,

His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way

Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But in the eternities,

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear

A million alien Gospels, in what guise

He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O, be prepared, my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When, in our turn, we show to them a Man 1:1 [Note: Alice Meynell, Poems, 114.]

4. Now out of all this two great lights flash forthone upon God, and one upon ourselves.

(1) Here is a great light upon God. For it is God who does it all: He hath made Him to be sin. There used to be a way of stating the sacrifice of Christ as if it were something flung at the feet of an angry God to persuade Him to change His mind. But God did not need to change His mind. The ministry of reconciliation began in His own heart before ever it expressed itself in the perfect Life or the wondrous Death. It was necessary that the world should be redeemed by sacrifice; but the sacrifice that redeemed us was the sacrifice of God, and the price that bought us was the gift of God. He hath made him to be sin; and when we see Christ identifying Himself with our sinful race, even to the uttermost of all that was involved in that, we know that the heart of God is thus entangled in our sorrow, and the hands of God are stretched out to save us from our sin. That is why this message is so melting, so subduing, so morally magnificent. It was of the message of this verse that Goethe said, There is nothing diviner than this. And there is indeed nothing diviner than thisthat God Himself should stoop to share the lot of His creatures, even to the deepest that was involved in their sin, and should raise them to His own glory and immortality. This is a God we can worship. His nature and His name is Love.

When you speak to me of the love of God, I always feel sure that you mean a love which includes and implies righteousness, and I had hoped that you would interpret me in the same way. In fact I would say that, in contrasting the fatherhood of God with His judgeship, I meant the first to represent a righteousness which seeks to communicate itself, and the second a righteousness which seeks to vindicate itself, and I intended to say that the second was put in action in subserviency to the first.2 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, ii. 183.]

For me,

I have my own church equally:

And in this church my faith sprang first!

In youth I looked to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, His visible power;

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

Of the power, an equal evidence

That His love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid His worlds, I will dare to say

Love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it;

Shall arise, made perfect, from deaths repose of it.

And I shall behold Thee, face to face,

O God, and in Thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!

Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,

I shall find as able to satiate

The love, Thy gift, as my spirits wonder

Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,

With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under,

And glory in Thee for, as I gaze

Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways

Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine

Be this my way! And this is mine!1 [Note: Browning, Christmas Eve.]

(2) Here also is a light upon ourselves and our own possibilities. We want to make something of ourselvesWhat shall it be? Shall we allow God to make usrighteousness? To make us the righteousness of God? To give us this Divine standing and hope and victory? We must bestir our hearts to receive the message, to take the gift, to live the life; since, because Christ has lived and died, all things are possible. That we might be made What hope, what promise, what victory lies there!

I have somewhere read of an American statesman who sinned a certain sin. On his death-bed he asked for a dictionary; he wanted, he said, to look up the word Remorse. The physician told him there was no dictionary in the room. Take a card then, said he, and write on it the word that best symbolizes my soul. Write it in large letters. Underscore itthe word Remorse. It was done as he desired, and after he had gazed upon it for a time, he handed the card again to the doctor. What shall I do with it? said the puzzled physician. Put it in your pocket, was the reply; and when I am gone, take it out and look at it, and say, That is the soul of John Randolph. That is what some men have made of themselvesremorse, living remorse, incarnate remorse. But God desires that we should be made something better than that: He desires that we should be made righteousness. It is possible.

Just and holy is Thy name,

I am all unrighteousness;

False and full of sin I am,

Thou art full of truth and grace.1 [Note: J. M. E. Ross.]

The Sinless Made Sin

Literature

Blake (R. E.), Good News from Heaven, 10.

Bonar (H.), Light and Truth: Acts and Epistles, 400.

Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons, 31.

Campbell (R. J.), City Temple Sermons, 61.

Campbell (R. J.), A Faith for To-day, 255.

Dallas (H. A.), Gospel Records, 240.

Edger (S.), Sermons Preached at Auckland, ii. 66.

Greenhough (J. G.), Christian Festivals and Anniversaries, 47.

Grubb (E.), The Personality of God, 83.

Hall (C. C.), The Gospel of the Divine Sacrifice, 57.

Hepher (C.), The Revelation of Love, 127.

Horton (R. F.), Brief Sermons to Busy Men, 15, 29.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, v. 242.

Maurice (F. D.), The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 179.

Meyer (F. B.), In the Beginning God, 163.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, ix. 257.

Ross (J. M. E.), The Christian Standpoint, 126.

Russell (E.), An Editors Sermons, 55.

Secker (T.), Sermons, vii. 23.

Selby (T. G.), The Strenuous Gospel, 95.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxii. (1886), No. 1910; lvi. (1910), No. 3203.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), iii. (1863), No. 389.

Christian World Pulpit, xlviii. 42 (J. D. Thompson); liv. 209 (R. J. Campbell).

Expositor, 2nd Ser., ii. 143 (G. Matheson).

Record, Nov. 24, 1911 (H. E. Noyes).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

he: Isa 53:4-6, Isa 53:9-12, Dan 9:26, Zec 13:7, Rom 8:3, Gal 3:13, Eph 5:2, 1Pe 3:18, 1Jo 2:1, 1Jo 2:2

who: Isa 53:9, Luk 1:35, Heb 7:26, 1Pe 2:22-24, 1Jo 3:5

we: 2Co 5:17, Isa 45:24, Isa 45:25, Isa 53:11, Jer 23:26, Jer 33:16, Dan 9:24, Rom 1:17, Rom 3:21-26, Rom 5:19, Rom 8:1-4, Rom 10:3, Rom 10:4, 1Co 1:30, Phi 3:9

Reciprocal: Gen 3:21 – make Exo 28:38 – bear the iniquity Exo 29:10 – put Exo 39:30 – the plate Exo 40:10 – most holy Lev 1:4 – put Lev 3:2 – lay Lev 3:8 – he shall Lev 3:12 – a goat Lev 3:13 – lay his hand Lev 4:3 – for a sin Lev 4:21 – a sin offering Lev 4:34 – the horns of the altar Lev 4:35 – and the priest shall make Lev 5:11 – for it is Lev 8:14 – he brought Lev 8:22 – the ram of consecration Lev 9:2 – a young Lev 9:3 – Take ye Lev 9:15 – General Lev 10:17 – to bear Lev 12:6 – a lamb Lev 14:19 – General Lev 15:14 – General Lev 16:10 – to make Lev 16:21 – putting Lev 22:19 – General Lev 23:19 – one kid Num 7:45 – General Num 8:8 – another Num 19:9 – clean Num 21:9 – A serpent of Num 28:15 – one kid Num 28:30 – General Deu 21:23 – he that is hanged is accursed of God 1Sa 18:4 – stripped himself 2Ch 29:21 – a sin offering Job 21:19 – iniquity Psa 4:1 – O Psa 22:31 – his righteousness Psa 24:5 – righteousness Psa 69:4 – then I Psa 85:11 – righteousness Psa 89:16 – righteousness Psa 98:2 – righteousness Pro 9:3 – sent Son 1:5 – comely Isa 1:27 – redeemed Isa 53:5 – But he was Isa 53:10 – when thou shalt make his soul Isa 54:17 – and their Isa 57:19 – Peace Jer 23:6 – The Lord Our Righteousness Eze 40:39 – the sin Eze 43:19 – a young Eze 45:22 – bullock Zec 3:4 – and I will Mat 6:33 – his Mat 26:38 – My Mat 27:24 – just Mar 10:45 – and to Mar 15:24 – crucified Luk 22:37 – And he Joh 1:29 – which Joh 6:51 – the life Joh 8:46 – convinceth Joh 9:24 – we know Joh 11:51 – that Jesus Joh 13:10 – but Joh 14:30 – and Joh 16:10 – righteousness Joh 17:23 – I Joh 19:4 – that ye Act 22:14 – that Rom 4:6 – imputeth Rom 4:25 – Who was Rom 5:10 – when Rom 6:10 – he died unto Rom 8:10 – life Rom 8:32 – that Rom 14:17 – but Rom 16:7 – were 1Co 15:3 – Christ 2Co 3:9 – the ministration of righteousness 2Co 12:2 – in Christ Eph 1:3 – in Christ Eph 1:6 – he Eph 2:13 – are 1Th 5:10 – died 1Ti 2:6 – gave Heb 2:9 – by Heb 4:15 – yet Heb 9:14 – without 2Pe 1:1 – through 1Jo 2:5 – hereby 1Jo 2:29 – he is

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

SUBSTITUTION

For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

2Co 5:21

I cannot understand the mind of that man who can read the Gospel and not see substitution. From all eternity Christ had undertaken, in the sovereignty of His grace and love, to become a surety for His people. A surety has two things to dohe has to suffer, in place of the person whom he guarantees, whatever that person would otherwise have endured; and he has to pay, if demanded, whatever demand may justly be made on behalf of him whom he represents. And the text puts the thing before us exactly in that order. We, being guilty, and therefore under sentence, our innocent Surety, having first by His humanity made Himself next of kin in order that He might do it, and then made Himself guilty and passed under the whole sentence. He was treated just as if He were in His own person all the sin that ever has been or ever will be forgiven in this world. He was made sin.

I. The sentence under which the condemned sinner laboured was fourfold exile, sin, death, and hell; and in its fourfold fullness the undeserving Surety bore it.

(a) Exile. See Him in the very fact of His presence in this world, in banishment from His Fathers kingdom, walking this cold, wicked earth so long, far away from all proper happiness, holding intercourse by prayer with Him on Whose bosom He had dwelt and with Whom He was one; till, as the consummation draws on, He goes out into further and further separation, and experiences the actual hiding of His Fathers countenancethat sinking sense of loneliness, bereft of God and man.

(b) Sin. And what is that desolate feeling which overspreads that dying hour? what is that anguish cry, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why is that Fathers eye averted from that beloved One and His departing spirit left to endure the misery such as waits on some poor outcast rebel? He was made sin.

(c) Death. But Christ goes to His death, and neither God nor man to cheer Him. Had he been the guiltiest man of all our race, He could not have died more wretchedly. There is not an accent to mitigate, not one ray of light to illume that midnight darkness. Can you explain it on any other possible ground than that He was actually made sin for us?

(d) Hell. And further, in the strong language of our Church, I do not hesitate to say of Him, He descended into hell.

And the exile, and the sin, and the death, and the hell, they all say with one voice, He was made sin for us.

II. Thus we arrive at our true, our comforting, our saving contemplation.Those groans, that dying struggle, that heavy punishment, what are they? Sin is the causesins struggle, sins punishment. It is sinmy sin and your sin, if we believe it. It is sin that is dying there. Therefore the horrors of that scene. It is the dark death of that black thing, sin. It is the execution of sin. Sin is vanquishedsin is deadsin is buried. I write sins epitaph, It is gone! Therefore, brethren, it is all passed now. Death is deadpunishment is punishedhell is closedall done. God cannot demand the same debt twicethat would not be just. He cannot punish the Surety and the man. He cannot punish Christ and me. It was His own counsel and His own hand that did it. He made Christ sin for me, and the very reality of the whole sentence He has borne: and I will go delicately, for the bitterness of death is past.

III. Christ gave God a perfect obedience from the cradle to the grave.He gave it Him as a man. It was Gods own righteousnessfor it was just the righteousness which God loves and God requires. This righteousness, again, Christ did not work for HimselfHe did not need it; but if I may so speak, He paid it into the hands of God, to be placed to the account of His Church, that it might be available for every man who really wants it and really takes it. Accordingly, every true penitent, in his turn, comes up naked, and puts on that beautiful robe, and then he is seen in ithe is seen in Christ; and, as Christ was once placed in our stead for punishment, when He was made sin for us, we are now placed in Christs stead for righteousness, when we are clothed in His meritGod Himself requires nothing furtherGod Himself, I speak it reverently, can conceive nothing furtherHe sees us in Him, perfect and entire, wanting nothing. We stand in all Christs obedience, and present to God a law kept in our Surety. Therefore, as surely as He, being us, was in exile, we, being Him, are in the family; as He grieved in our place, we rejoice for ever in His; as He died an accounted sinner, we live for ever accounted saints; and as He went down to hell in our name, we mount up to heaven in His.

Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

The circumstances of Our Lords sufferings and death are certainly the most momentous in the history of mankind, and it is trifling with the deepest experiences of human nature not to endeavour to realise and apprehend them. According to the Apostles, they are nothing less than a revelation of the love of God in bearing the consequences of our sins Himself, in order that, if possible, we may be spared those consequences. They are intended to bring home to us, in the most affecting form, the loving will of God that we should accept His truth and submit to His righteousness; and He not merely requires us to do this, or exhorts us to it, but suffers with us and for us, in the human nature He has assumed, in order that He may save us by the manifold influences of that suffering. Contemplate God in Christ, thus reconciling the world to Himself, and how can we fail to respond to the appeal which follows?We pray you in Christs stead, be ye reconciled to God. He Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

2Co 5:21. Be sin, for us means that Christ the sinless one, was made an offering for sin on behalf of mankind. This makes it possible for man to lead a life of righteousness by being in Him.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

2Co 5:21. Him[1] who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf,[2] that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is the most systematic, the most comprehensive, and the most unmistakeable expression of the Divine intention in the death of Christ which the New Testament contains; settling vital questions in Christian theology, and affording unspeakable relief to consciences burdened with a sense of sin. (1) So far from God requiring to be moved by the death of Christ to compassionate and provide salvation for a sinful world, it was God Himself who spontaneously sent His Son on this errand into our world. (2) Sinlessness, in the most absolute sense applicable to a creature nature, is here ascribed to Christ; expressing precisely what Christ said of Himself immediately before His apprehension, The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me (Joh 14:30); and what the Epistle to the Hebrews says of His death (2Co 9:14), He offered Himself without blemish unto God. Therefore (3) to be made sin cannot mean to be made personally sinful, either in act or inclination: but neither must it be rendered made a sin-offering, to which many expositors would reduce the words. It is to be noted (says Meyer) that the word sin hereand the precisely similar phrase, Gal 3:13, made a curse for usnecessarily includes in itself the notion of guilt, but guilt not His own (who knew no sin ); hence the guilt which through His death was to be removed from men was transferred to Him, and so the justification of men is imputative. (4) This settles beyond dispute the righteousness of God which we become in Him. For if Christ, while personally righteous, was made sinnot personally, but by transference to Him of our guilt, with all its penal effectsclearly we, while personally guilty, are made the righteousness of God in Him by transference of His righteousness to us. Both are equally imputative; in both cases the act is purely judicial. (See Rom 5:18, where the same judicial sense of sin in the sense of guilt, and of righteousness in the sense of justification, is clearly intended.)

[1] The For, which in the received text introduces this great verse, though clearly no part of the genuine text, is so natural an addition that it could hardly tail to creep in, since the verse is added as a great motive for complying with the entreaty of the preceding verse, Be ye reconciled to God.

[2] In the footnote to 2Co 5:14, it was stated that the pre-position here rendered for means for the benefit of; but that the nature of the case and the context of each place must decide in what precise way the benefit is conferred. There the way being that of substitution, the sense instead of underlies the statement; but here the idea of substitution is conveyed by another clause of the verse, and therefore in this verse on our behalf is the proper reading.

Our faith receives a righteousness

That makes the sinner just.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, 1. The spotless innocency of our Lord Jesus Christ, as mediator, declared: He knew no sin; that is, practically and experimentally, he knew it not so as to commit it in the least degree; he was a pure, innocent, and sinless, Person: but theoretically and speculatively he did know sin. He well understood its nature, its effects, and fruits: none knew the bitter fruits of sin so well as our blessed Saviour.

Observe, 2. God’s ordination of Christ with reference unto sin, He hath made him to be sin; not made him a sinner, but a sin-offering, a sacrifice for sin. Made; that is, ordained a sacrifice to expiate sin, and to bear the punishment due to sinners.

Observe, 3. The end of this ordination with respect to us, That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Here note, The righteousness of the Mediator is called the righteousness of God; because,

1. It was the righteousness of that Person who was God.

2. Because the only wise God found out and appointed it.

And, 3. Because it is accepted by God; and the penitent believer, for the sake of it, looked upon as righteous and justified.

Learn hence, 1. That sin must have a sacrifice. He hath made him to be sin; that is, a sin-offering, or a sacrifice to expiate sin. Under the law the sacrifice was called sin, because the sin of the person was laid upon the sacrifice; there was a sort of a translation of the sin from the sinner to the sacrifice.

Learn, 2. That Jesus Christ was made a sacrifice for our sin. Our guilt was imputed to him, and our punishment was borne by him; which made Luther call Christ “the greatest sinner in the world;” not that he had any sin in his nature, or in his life, but because the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Learn, 3. That Jesus Christ being made sin for us, is the meritorious cause and means of our being made the righteousness of God in him. Surely God may be as just in pardoning us, who have no righteousness of our own, as in condemning his own Son, who had no sin of his own.

Have we broken his royal and righteous law? yet Christ has kept it and fulfilled all righteousness, Have we sinned against mercy? yet Christ has suffered without mercy: and all this by the ordination and appointment of God the Father, who made his own and only Son to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Verse 21 The strength of Paul’s plea lay in the fact that God loved us enough to send a sinless Son to die for sinful man.

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

2Co 5:21. For he made him, who knew no sin A commendation peculiar to Christ; to be sin Or a sin-offering rather, (as the expression often signifies both in the Old Testament and the New;) for us Who knew no righteousness, who were inwardly and outwardly nothing but sin, and who must have been consumed by the divine justice, had not this atonement been made for our sins; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him Might be accounted and constituted righteous by God, or might be invested with that righteousness; 1st, imputed to us; 2d, implanted in us; and, 3d, practised by us; which is, in every sense, the righteousness of God by faith. See note on Rom 10:4; Php 3:9.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him. [Wherefore, I have no choice in the matter, but must meet enmity with persuasion and an effort at reconciliation; for if men attack me I am not a free and independent man, but an ambassador to Christ the Reconciler; and if they attack my ministry, lo, it also is not mine, but is Christ’s ministry of reconciliation; so on Christ’s behalf I am constrained to seek reconciliation, not with myself alone, but with God. And surely my appeal is not without weight, for it has the constraining power of the love of God–a love manifested in God’s gift of his sinless Son, who was made sin for us that we might be reconciled to God by attaining the righteousness of God in him; i. e., by virtue of our union with him as part of his mystical body.]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT

21. He made Him heir who knew no sin, in our behalf, that we may become the righteousness of God in Him. This verse is wonderful and paradoxical in the extreme. Translators generally soften it by inserting sin offering, which is not in the original and will not do, because it breaks up the antithesis with righteousness. This settles the question of absolute substitution beyond the possibility of cavil, affirming that God made him sin (i. e., the noun sin), not in an active sense, which would be shocking, but in a passive sense, in our behalf, so that He actually punished all of the sin of the ages in His own beloved Son. This accounts for His turning His face away when the dying Savior hung on the cross. That was the crucial moment when He laid the sin of the whole world on Him and made Him sin (noun), instead of us. We tread lightly on ground so awful. We must give it to you as it is. It is too awful for anything like criticism to be indulged. This is the irrefutable climax of the substitutionary atonement, involving the unequivocal conclusion that He not only took the sin of the whole world on Himself, but that He became the personal substitute for every human being involved in the Fall. Hence we have nothing to do but become the righteousness of God in Him. Here is imputed righteousness. When the sinner by simple faith casts himself on the mercy of God in Christ, He invariably imputes to him His own righteousness in Christ. This is the only hope of a guilty world. Human efforts are in vain. If we could be justified by obedience to law, the Son of God might have stayed in Heaven. This was the very reason He came and died in our room and stead, because there was no other hope. Do you believe in imputed righteousness? I do. If righteousness were not imputed to the sinner there would be no hope for him, as the Holy Spirit is not obtained to regenerate him till the law is satisfied and he is justified. This must be done through a mediator. Hence while the sinner is under the law and condemned to death eternal, God imputes to him the righteousness of Christ, justifying Him freely for Christs sake alone, when in the utter abandonment of all sin he casts himself on the mercy of God in Christ. Does not Christ retain His own righteousness? He has a righteousness peculiar to His divinity and essential to it which He does not give to another, but eternally retains. He has also a second righteousness peculiar to His humanity and essential to it, which he does not impart to another, but eternally retains. He has also a third righteousness arising from His perfect obedience to the Divine law, actively keeping it for us during His earthly life and passively dying to pay its penalty in the room and stead of every guilty soul in all the world. This third righteousness of Christ is neither essential to His perfect humanity nor His perfect divinity nor his perfect mediatorship. Hence He procured it for every sinner in every age of this probationary world. This is the righteousness which the Father freely imparts to every truly penitent believing sinner, when He counts him righteous for the sake of Christ alone. When the violated law is thus satisfied, the Holy Spirit, who has already convicted him and enabled him to repent and believe, immediately regenerates him, thus quickening his dead soul into Divine life. Do you believe in imputed holiness? I do not. Righteousness is synonymous with justification. It takes place in Heaven when God cancels your sins from Heavens chancery, blotting them all out and counting you righteous for the sake of the work which Christ has done for you when He died as your substitute. Sanctification is a work wrought in you, of which you are a conscious participant, in contradistinction to justification, which is a work done for you. Hence while imputation is homogeneous to righteousness, impartation is normal to holiness. In this controversy, like many others, we find the truth intermediate between two extremes. Some preach imputed righteousness and imputed holiness, which is an error. Others preach imparted righteousness and imparted holiness, which is also erroneous, the truth obtaining in the interim, where we preach imputed righteousness for the sinner and imparted holiness for the Christian.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 21

To be sin for us; to be condemned for us,–subject to the terrible penalties of sin in our stead.–Made the righteousness of God; made subjects of the righteousness of God.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

5:21 For he hath made him [to be] {q} sin for us, who {r} knew no sin; that we might be made the {s} righteousness of God in him.

(q) A sinner, not in himself, but by imputation of the guilt of all our sins to him.

(r) Who was completely void of sin.

(s) Righteous before God, and that with righteousness which is not fundamental in us, but being fundamental in Christ, God imputes it to us through faith.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2Co 5:21 condenses the ground of Paul’s appeal and expresses it in another paradox. This verse explains the "how" of full reconciliation and takes us to the very heart of the atonement.

"In these few direct words the Apostle sets forth the gospel of reconciliation in all its mystery and all its wonder. There is no sentence more profound in the whole of Scripture; for this verse embraces the whole ground of the sinner’s reconciliation to God and declares the incontestable reason why he should respond to the ambassadorial entreaty. Indeed, it completes the message with which the Christian ambassador has been entrusted." [Note: Hughes, p. 211. Cf. Broomall, p. 1272.]

Paul probably intended that we understand what he wrote about Jesus Christ becoming sin in three ways. First, God treated Jesus as if He were a sinner when He poured out His wrath on Jesus, who bore the guilt and penalty for all people’s sins. Jesus’ sinlessness is a clear revelation of Scripture (Isa 53:9; Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26; 1Pe 2:22; 1Jn 3:5). Second, Jesus Christ became a sin offering (Lev 4:24; Lev 5:12), the perfect and final one. Some Hebrew words mean both "sin" and "sin offering" (i.e., hatta’t and ’asam; Isa 53:6; Isa 53:10). Third, He became the locus of sin under the judgment of God, the place where God judged sin.

"So complete was the identification of the sinless Christ with the sin of the sinner, including its dire guilt and its dread consequence of separation from God, that Paul could say profoundly, ’God made him . . . to be sin for us.’" [Note: Harris, p. 354.]

Jesus Christ was the target of God’s punishment of sinners God having imputed the sin of all humankind to Him (cf. Rom 8:3; 1Co 15:3). Now God makes us the targets of His righteousness and imputes that to us (1Co 1:30; Php 3:9). The effect of God imputing righteousness to believers is that now God sees us as He sees His righteous Son, namely, fully acceptable to Him.

"Paul has chosen this exceptional wording ["made sin for us"] in order to emphasize the ’sweet exchange’ whereby sinners are given a righteous status before God through the righteous one who absorbed their sin (and its judgment) in himself." [Note: Bruce, p. 211.]

"Here, then is the focal point to which the long argument has been building up. Paul, having himself been reconciled to God by the death of Christ, has now been entrusted by God with the task of ministering to others that which he has himself received, in other words, reconciliation. 2Co 5:20 then follows from this as a dramatic double statement of his conception of the task . . . That is to say, when Paul preaches, his hearers ought to hear a voice from God, a voice which speaks on behalf of the Christ in whom God was reconciling the world. Astonishingly, the voice of the suffering apostle is to be regarded as the voice of God himself, the God who in Christ has established the new covenant, and who now desires to extend its reconciling work into all the world. The second half of the verse should not, I think, be taken as an address to the Corinthians specifically, but as a short and pithy statement of Paul’s whole vocation: ’On behalf of Christ, we make this appeal: "Be reconciled to God!"’

"What the whole passage involves, then, is the idea of the covenant ambassador, who represents the one for whom he speaks in such a full and thorough way that he actually becomes the living embodiment of his sovereign-or perhaps, in the light of 2Co 4:7-18 and 2Co 6:1-10, we should equally say the dying embodiment." [Note: N. T. Wright, "On Becoming the Righteousness of God," in Pauline Theology. Vol. II: 1 & 2 Corinthians, pp. 205, 206.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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