Christ Our Substitute and Identification (5 of 6)

An Offering With Sin, or Without Sin — Now That is the Question!

Some bible expositors have said concerning “made sin,” in 2Cor. 5:21, that these words just denote Christ being made a “sin OFFERING” without sin, and then refer to some English translations of the Hebrew word used in the OT, and even of the the Greek word used in both the NT and the Greek Septuagint translation as denoting a “sin OFFERING” to substantiate their case. But first of all, even in these cases it is questionable whether “sin” is to be translated “sin OFFERING.”[1] For even though an offering for sin is implied in many of these cases, the Hebrew and Greek words for “sin,” in and of themselves, do not have the meaning “offering” attached to them. It is an interpolation and interpretation, not a literal translation. And even George Smeaton is noted here at this venture with regards to Christ being “made sin,” and what this properly conveys:

Many deem it best to take it as simply equivalent to a sin-offering.... But it deserves notice, in the first place, that throughout this entire passage the apostle makes no use of sacrificial language.... it is evident that the apostle draws a contrast between two things,—between the personal sinlessness of Jesus, and His official position as made sin for us,—and that this contrast is lost by the sacrificial reference. But there is a further antithesis not less strong. Christ is represented as made sin for us, in the same way in which we are made the righteousness of God.... This is unfavorable to our accepting the idea of a sin-offering. It would be quite unsuitable in the second clause, which affirms that we are made the righteousness of God, and therefore it cannot be admitted in the first. [And if not for] the twofold antithesis now mentioned, the rendering “sin-offering” would be unobjectionable....

The words, strictly considered, therefore mean, that by God’s appointment He was made sin, not in mere semblance, but in reality.... our own sins of nature and life—were laid on Him, or transferred from our head to His....

The import of the passage, then, amounts to this: Christ, the sinless One...wrapped Himself in His people’s sin, and was constituted sin...in such a manner that at the bar of God He was no longer innocent. Rather He was made the concentrated sin of the redeemed church, because found among sinners, federally united to them, and charged at the bar of God with all their sins....

The expression, THE SINLESS SIN-BEARER, may be said aptly to describe His earthly career. Certainly they who look merely at His innocence mistake the gospel, if they do not overthrow it. [2]

Now while I appreciate what Smeaton says here, it should not go without saying that Smeaton (like most) viewed all of this objectively and forensically, and not subjectively with regards to our inward sanctification at all. And he oddly even defends the idea of Christ being only an "offering" for sin in Rom. 8:3, and not being "made sin" with our sin in His flesh in that verse as well. But at least here in 2Cor 5:21 Smeaton believed Christ "in reality" bore our sin (and not just our "guilt), in opposition to Charles Hodge. And Smeaton's point is also to be well taken that those who exalt Christ's "innocence" at the expense of Him assuming our sins in an official capacity actually overthrows the gospel, something that even Smeaton himself is sadly guilty of in understanding all of this only in an objective or forensic manner in both Rom. 8:3 and 2Cor. 5:21. And, unfortunately, he even treats 1Peter 2:24 in this same manner as well. So go figure! But I liked what he said so much about Christ not just being an "offering" for sin in 2Cor. 5:21, that I just could not resist quoting him. Here he is absolutely spot on, and I could not have said it any better.

Secondly, this Greek word for “sin” (harmatia) is never used by the NT writers in the sense of an "offering"; unless Heb. 10:6, as quoted from Psm. 40:6 in the Septuagint, can be used as such an example. But even here in the epistle to the Hebrews, and in the Septuagint, you will notice that the English word “offering” is italicized showing that it is not in the original (and the same goes for Heb. 13:11). And so Psm. 40:6 could very well read in both the Old and New Testament as denoted in the Aramaic Bible in Plain English: “burnt peace offerings for sin you have not requested” (OT), and “burnt peace offerings for sins you have not demanded” (NT). Even my Marshall’s Greek-English Interlinear of the NT literally reads: “and burnt offerings concerning sin thou wast not well pleased.” In all honesty, this is really the best way to translate these verses. Many more examples in the OT could be cited in some English translations that denote something that is being done (or offered) “for sin” and not necessarily just called a “sin offering,” absent of any sin. And many of the verses quoted by others in their preferred translations that support their biased idea or viewpoint of a “sin-offering” without sin, are: Ex. 29:14, 36; 30:10; Lev. 4:3-34; 6:17, 25, 30; 6:17, 25, 30; 7:7, 37; 8:2, 14; 9:2-22; 10:16-19; 16:3-27; 23:19; Num. 6:11, 14, 16; 7:16-87; 8:8, 12; 15:24-27; 18:9; 19:9, 17; 28-29; 2Chr. 29; Ezra 6:17; 8:35; Neh. 10:33; Ezk. 40-46. Again, “offering” in all of these verses is an interpolation, not a literal word-for-word translation. I would recommend reading the Jubilee Bible 2000 or the Douay-Rhiems Bible for a better understanding of the Hebrew word chattah (Strong’s: 2403) translated just “sin.” The Brenton Septuagint Translation in its English translation italicizes "offering" in Ex. 29:14 (showing it's not in the original), omits “offering” altogether in Lev. 4:3, translates it as "atonement" in Ezk. 45:19, but then strangely uses "offering" without any restraint whatsoever for all of the rest of these verses noted above; while the actual Greek Septuagint (LXX) does not say “offering” at all, but just “sin,” “the sin,” or “for sin.” The Douay-Rheims Bible is pretty good, and some other translations such as the KJV, Webster’s, CEV, ISV and GWT all follow suit not using “offering” with regards to a handful of these verses noted above, but the Jubilee Bible 2000 is spot on and consistent in its translation each and every time (and I checked every verse in the OT as it relates to this idea of “offering”). With regards to the making of the Jubilee Bible 2000, Biblegateway.com notes how that, “the usage and context tends to define each key word so you won’t need to depend on theological dictionaries or reference materials. Careful attention has been made to properly translate the first usage of each key word, and through to the last occurrence. Then, as the word makes its way across the Old Testament and if we make the correct match with the corresponding Greek word in the New Testament, an amazing pattern emerges. The Jubilee Bible 2000 is the only translation we know of today that has each unique Hebrew word matched and mated to a unique English word so that the usage (number of occurrences and number of verses where the word occurs) sets forth both a very meaningful number pattern and a complete definition of what God means by each word.” After reading the Jubilee Bible 2000 in all of these verses mentioned above, it should come as no wonder to us by now why Paul could likewise understand how Christ was “made sin” in 2Cor. 5:21, and “for sin” in Rom. 8:3. Paul understood it in exactly the same way as the original Hebrew reads, without all the added verbiage, or additions, to God’s Word. In the Jubilee Bible 2000 (as well as in some other translations noted above), it mentions how that the animal designated to be for sin, is actually just simply called: “sin.” And in a couple of places it says, “offered as sin” or “offer the sin,” but never “sin-offering,” as if to give the impression of an offering with no sin in it. With regards to the Jubilee Bible 2000 omitting “offering,” and just translating chattah as sin, see for example Lev. 4:14, which reads: “When the sin, which they have committed, is understood, then the congregation shall offer a young bullock as the sin and bring it before the tabernacle of the testimony.” Verse 21 likewise reads: “And he shall carry forth the bullock outside the camp and burn it as he burned the first bullock; it is the sin of the congregation.” And, finally, verse 29 reads: “And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin and slay the sin in the place of the burnt offering.” All of this now begins to make more sense. Christ was made sin, for sin, just as Paul literally describes it for us with regards to these OT sacrifices in 2Cor. 5:21, in combination with Rom. 8:3. It was sin for sin, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Only this time it was the innocent victim, the unblemished Lamb of God, who took our sin and our guilt, transferring it to His head as the Sinner (or the old man) who was to be condemned and put to death in our stead. Clearly, the OT offerings that were typical of Christ offering His own body were “sin, for sin.” And I think that we have weakened the force and have diminished the idea of what the Holy Ghost has all along been trying to say to us in that these offerings were really made sin, for sin. It is not just a name used to denote an "offering" that is being implied here, but it is an animal (or person, in Christ's case) that stood as "sin" in the place of and on behalf of: “FOR sin”—for our sin! Again, the emphasis isn’t on “offering,” but on an animal that took the place of another and made sinful with our sin and worthy of God’s judgment or wrath. And this is clearly seen in the scapegoat in Leviticus where the people’s sins were symbolically transferred to the goat, with the goat being made as a sinner to be judged in their stead. According to Lev. 16:5, both goats are said to be "for sin" (see Douay-Rheims trans.), and it was actually the goat for the Lord that made the atonement "for sin" (see also Num. 29:11 correctly translated in the Jubilee Bible 2000); but it was for the sins of the people that were placed on the live scapegoat which didn't do the actual atoning for sin. Clearly, the Lord, out of necessity, had to use these two goats (and not just one) to depict these truths. Christ basically wore two hats, so-to-speak. But have no doubt about it, what Christ did, He did for our sin which was placed in and upon His person. Christ wasn't just an "offering" absent of any sin (although He was that too), but an offering with our sin actually placed in and upon Him. And this is the point that is to be emphasized here in the words "for sin." And if all that were not enough, the Englishman, William Rushton (circa 1831), who published the well-known little book, Particular Redemption, has all this to say with regards to Leviticus 16 along with its accompanying passages:

Here, then, we have in a figure first, the real transfer of sin itself to Christ; secondly, the transfer of the sins of a peculiar people, even the children of Israel; and thirdly, the transfer of all their iniquities, all their transgressions, and all their particular sins. In corroboration of this, it is worthy of notice that the word chattah which in the law of Moses is used for the sin offering, properly means sin itself; so that the victim, in consequence of the typical transfer of iniquity to it, was considered a mass of sin; e.g., Lev. 4:21, and al. freq., where the bullock is called a sin offering of the congregation, but the animal is in the Hebrew called sin itself. "And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn him as he burned the first bullock, THE SIN of the congregation is he." Also the word ashmah which is translated trespass offering, properly signifies guilt; because the animal typically bore the guilt of the transgressor who brought it for an offering. (Lev. 5:6, 7, 18). "The victims and expiations offered for sins," says Calvin, "were called ashmah a word which properly signifies sin itself. By this appellation, the Spirit intended to suggest, that they were vicarious sacrifices to receive and sustain the curse due to sin. But that which was figuratively represented in the Mosaic sacrifices, is actually exhibited in Christ, the archetype of the figures. Wherefore, in order to effect a complete expiation, He gave his soul, that is, an atoning sacrifice for sin, as the prophet says; so that our guilt, and consequent punishment, being as it were, transferred to Him, must cease to be imputed to us [Inst., vol. 2, 16:6]." [3]

Thirdly, if Paul intends to mean “sin OFFERING” here in 2Cor. 5:21, then we are forced to believe that he uses the same Greek word for "sin" (harmartian) here with two entirely different meanings in the immediate context. And this is believed by those who only for a priori theological reasons cannot bring themselves to believe that Christ was actually made as a sinner in our stead with our sins placed in and upon Him. To say that Christ was made a sin-offering with no sin placed upon Him is absolutely unfounded, being contrary to all of the OT sacrifices that were designated as "sin" and "for sin." Clearly, being “made sin” in this context does not mean to be a “sin-offering,” even though it is part and parcel of Christ being made sin (and if an emphasis is to be placed here on Christ just being an “offering” for sin, then the common Greek word for “offering” could have been easily added here, as in Heb. 10:12, 14). Christ being “made sin” here is in juxtaposition to us “becoming righteousness.” We do not become a righteousness-offering. We become righteousness practically in Christ as opposed to us being made sinners practically in Adam. “He who knew no sin” is not to be understood as: “He who knew no sin offering, was made a sin offering for us, so that in Him we might be become a righteousness offering of God.” Reading this verse this way is unnatural, and an attempt to force upon the text a meaning that just isn’t there when carried out consistently and logically throughout this verse. As David Garland notes: "Interpreting the word as 'sin offering' destroys the parallel structure of the sentence."[4] Like Smeaton had said earlier, Christ has been made sin for us in the same way we are made righteousness, obliterating the idea of Christ just being an "offering"; for if this latter idea were true, then being made the righteousness of God would have to be understood in the same manner as Christ just becoming an offering. The two really stand or fall together, as well as our own personal sin not being reckoned to us in verse 19, and then actually being reckoned to Christ in verse 21 who had never known of such personal sin. Again, in verse 19, Paul had just got through saying that our "sin" (or trespasses) have NOT been imputed or reckoned to us; and then immediately thereafter says Christ was "made sin" who knew of no such sin. Why so? Because Christ was as our Substitute imputed (or reckoned) as guilty for our sin placed upon Him, not for His. Christ took our sin in order to remove it from us so that we would not be imputed for it. This is the explanation (or reason) in verse 21 why our sin is not imputed to us in verse 19. It was transferred to Christ (as Leviticus 16 tells us) so that He could bear the guilt or penalty for our sin as our Vicarious Substitute. If Christ had been suffering on the cross for His own personal sin, it would have been the just reward for His own iniquity. Again, if Christ had Himself transgressed, He could not have suffered for another, because all of His suffering would have been reckoned to His own personal account. But as the case may be, He had to take our sins from us and place them upon His own sinless self so that He could be charged for our sins, not us. If our sin had not been placed upon Christ, then He could not have been justly judged by God and crucify our old man, for there would have been no federal union with His people to identify Him as such like we had in our union with Adam. In union with Adam as our federal head, we all sinned in Adam's sin, and were justly judged or condemned with him for that sin; and as an implicate of that first sin we became depraved. But Christ was never in Adam, experiencing no depravity of nature or of being distanced from God, so of necessity Christ had to have our sins (inclusive of even "the sin" and attending curse of Adam) transferred to Him in order to be judged by God as the representative federal head of His people (inclusive of even Adam and Eve). So Christ was actually made sin with the sins of His people, and we are actually made righteousness with Christ's righteousness. Christ didn't in an abstract manner bear our sin, but concretely, as even Heinrich Meyer notes: "Christ was actually exhibited by God as the concretum of harmartia" (biblehub.com). And so we too in like manner have not become righteousness abstractly, but "concretely" in our person. The words "for us" denotes the abstract idea, whereas Christ in His human nature being "made" sin in juxtaposition to us "becoming" righteousness in our human nature, denotes the concrete. The IVP New Testament Commentary also notes here how that, "In Paul's writings the noun dikaiosyne [righteousness] typically is used of character. It is not merely that we acquire a right standing or do good works; we actually become righteous―although the latter may well presume the former. This is no legal fiction. For in Christ (or perhaps "through Christ," en auto) we truly assume his righteousness, just as Christ assumed our sin (Brown 1978:169)."[5] The song of Zechariah is fitting here. Zechariah states by the Holy Spirit that we “have been delivered from the hand of our enemies, to serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life.” (Lke. 1:75-75). Again, the Greek word for “righteousness” here is dikaiosyne which no one doubts denotes living righteously in all holiness (cp. also Mat. 5:20; Rom. 6:13, 18, 19; 14:17; 2Cor. 6:14; 9:9; Eph. 4:24; 5:9; 2Tim. 3:16; 1Pet. 2:24). So there is definitely a biblical precedent for understanding “righteousness” in a practical manner, and not just in a forensic manner. And no doubt this is the “righteousness” that we indeed intimately and personally become in Christ in 2Cor. 5:21, and for which we likewise "knew not" of when we were made sin in Adam.

Many are undecided whether us becoming the righteousness of God is either a possessive genitive (God’s righteousness), an objective genitive (God is the object of our righteousness or of our right actions), or a subjective genitive (a righteousness which comes from God to us). But since Christ is said to have been made sin with our sin in His person, it stands to reason that we are actually made righteousness with God’s righteousness in our person, and therefore this can only be construed of as a “subjective genitive.” What was extrinsic to both of us, becomes intrinsic (or subjective) to each of us on a deep, spiritual, and intimate level. Murray Harris, in arguing for us being objectively judicially or forensically reckoned as righteousness with God’s righteousness, verses Christ being objectively judicially or forensically reckoned as guilty with our sins (even though he believes Christ actually bore our sin), refers to Ladd who says that righteousness “in this context [5:21] is not an ethical subjective righteousness any more than the ‘sinfulness’ of Christ is ethical subjective sinfulness.”[6] So, Murray, according to this reasoning of Ladd’s, has determined that Paul is only speaking forensically and not subjectively. But when we read of Christ actually being made sin, this goes beyond the pale of just being outwardly made sin, but being made sin on an internal and intimate level as the son of man, which was just the opposite of “knowing” of any such sin on an intimate and personal level. Harris notes three possibilities for understanding the sense of “sin,” or harmartia, in verse 21. The first, is that “God treated Christ as if He were a sinner or as a sinner”; the second, that as the sinless sin-bearer “Christ [just] bore the penalty [or the guilt] of sin or the divine wrath against human sin” (Charles Hodge and son’s view); and thirdly, that “God actually caused Christ to be sin, that is, to be the very personification of sin. ‘Christ is made one with the reality of sin and its consequences,’...[It is] God’s transference of [the] sinners’ sin on to the sinless one...”[7] In all honesty, the first and third views, as Harris articulates them above, are to me both one and the same. If someone is “the very personification of sin” in their person not just abstractly, but “actually” as Harris states it, then wouldn’t that constitute them as one and the same “as a sinner”? Ironically, Harris argues for this third idea: “We conclude that in v. 21a Paul is not saying at the crucifixion the sinless Christ became in some sense a sinner, yet he is affirming more than that Christ became a sin offering or even [just] a sin-bearer [as Hodge and others claim]. In a sense beyond human comprehension, God treated Christ as ‘sin,’ aligning him so totally with sin and its dire consequences that from God’s viewpoint he became indistinguishable from sin itself.”[8] I’m a little confused. Isn’t becoming “indistinguishable from sin itself” one and the same with being constituted as becoming as a sinner in our stead? And can all of this just really be understood as being only objectively done in a forensic manner, and not subjectively? Where is the sin, if not subjectively place in and upon Christ’s person? The definition of “personification,” as Harris seems to present it above, is embodiment, incarnation, epitome, representation, likeness, or becoming an avatar for something or someone (like in the movie, Avatar, where the avatar internally becomes the very personification of a human being called “Jake”). There is another definition of “personification” which denotes a person or object as abstractly personifying a certain idea, concept or image, but this not how Harris seems to be using it here. And this is certainly not what Christ became. He became a live “avatar,” so-to-speak, for sin, where all of our sins were actually and spiritually “transferred” to Him.

Of a truth, Christ was in fact the very personification of sin in His entire human nature of spirit, soul and body (or spirit/soul and body if you are a dichotomist). Again, this had to be so in order that Christ could crucify who we were on the inside via our union with Adam as the old man, and thus make us a new man. It is Christ’s resurrection that gives us life as a new man; it was His death to spiritual death, and to the sin of that spiritual death, that Christ killed in us as the old man, putting to rest the power and principle behind the sin. This is the import of 2Cor. 5:21 (and even Rom. 8:3): Christ actually being made sin both within His soul and without in His body, and we becoming the righteousness of God both within our souls and without in our bodies. Before we were saved, sin proceeded from the old heart; it wasn’t just a physical or objective issue, but an inward spiritual and subjective issue. This is just one of the things that Christ came to change for us. So of necessity Christ had to take on the sin that proceeded from our old man or inward nature and kill him in us, so that we could rise as a new man in Christ. We must ask ourselves this question: Before being saved, did we bear our sin just “objectively”? How silly is that! How then can it be said that Christ only bore our sin objectively in His body? You would have to believe like Charles Hodge that Christ didn’t even do that, and just say that Christ only bore the “guilt” of our sin, but not our sin. This is the reason why they say that Christ could not have literally borne our sin, because it goes to the very heart or nature behind these sins. Christ being crucified objectively on the cross only in His body, and even only for forensic reasons at that, does nothing for us of who we are subjectively. Dying physically can render the body powerless to sin, but it does nothing for the soul and the inward inclination or disposition to sin. But Christ bearing our sin upon His soul actually crucified (or killed) our inward disposition to sin as well. It had to be so, otherwise we are still alive to our sin, rather than dead to it. And this is in fact what many still believe! But in Romans 6, Paul says we have died (spiritually) to sin in the crucifixion of our old man in Christ in His union and identification with us (6:6). Jesus told the Pharisees, “Cleanse the inside of the cup” (Mat. 23:26). Many also view this as only being only positionally or forensically righteous (while inside we are still sinners through-and-through), but this does NOT cause the outside of our cup to be clean. We need a circumcision (or a cutting away) or killing of our old heart, in exchange for a new heart. Paul calls it “the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11). How so? By Christ being “made sin” (2Cor. 5:21) or “sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) in order to crucify it in His person, so that it might be crucified in us according to Romans 6:6 through His resurrection life. We discussed earlier about Christ who was not intimately and personally “acquainted” with sin, had become intimately and personally “acquainted” with sin, even in accordance with Isaiah 53:3. And since sin, as Edward Young states, “is something immaterial, how can one be said to bear it?”[9] Young says that, “The answer is that sin involves not merely an inward corruption of the heart but also guilt before God. In saying that the servant [or Christ] bore our sins, therefore, Isaiah is in reality declaring that he [just] bore the guilt of our sins” in the fact that Christ “bore the punishment that was due to us because of those sins, and that is to say that he was our substitute.”[10] Clearly, no doubt, Christ bore our “guilt,” for Isaiah 53:10 says so; but Young had clearly also alluded to “something immaterial” here in the idea that “sin involves...an inward corruption of the heart.”[11] This is the “something immaterial,” as well as the “guilt,” that Christ bore for us and removed. But all of this still begs the question, and for which Young didn’t give an answer (since he is the one who brought it up in the first place): How did Christ take care of the “inward corruption” of sin if all He did, according to Young, Hodge, and many more who think like them, was to just bear the “guilt”? I think Young actually answers this question for us, without really giving us the answer, when he goes on to say: “It may be that in the violence of the figures used [in Isaiah 53] there is a secondary reference to the actual death of the crucifixion.”[12] And no doubt, to me, this “secondary reference” is the spiritual death that Christ incurred upon His soul in the death of our “inward corruption” known as “the old man.” It is amazing to me how that Edwards got so caught-up in the Lord removing our “guilt” as “something immaterial,” that he entirely overlooked one of the most vital and important aspects of Christ work—the overthrowing of the dominion and power of sin emanating from our former old corrupt hearts.

No doubt, two effects issue from Christ’s redemptive work for us: (1) justification and the forgiveness of sin, and (2) deliverance from the enslaving defilement and power of sin. Redemption, as it affects guilt and procures our justification and remission of sin, is in view in such passages as Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14 and Heb. 9:15. And redemption, as it affects the enslaving defilement and power of sin, is in view in Titus 2:14 and 1Pet. 1:18. Christ’s redemption on the cross for us is not a bare notion or forensic idea, absent of also redeeming us from the power of sin. The latter actually flows from the former. In Christ’s identification with as a sinner in our stead, He crucified the sinner in us; and in our identification with Christ in His resurrection life and power, He raises us up as saints who are holy and beloved. Christ as mediator entered into a federal relationship with His people in which Adam stood previously in his state of righteousness, in order to merit righteousness and life for us. But if Christ had only merely obeyed the righteous requirements of the law, and had not also in union with us paid the penalty for our sins that were placed upon Him, He would not have won title to righteousness and life for us; He would have left us in the state that Adam was in after the fall. As such, the work of Christ merits for us far more than just the forgiveness of sins; it merits for us also the deliverance from our sins. As the son of man, Christ became completely like us so that we could in turn become completely like Him.

John Murray succinctly notes here: “We may not artificially separate redemption as ransom from the guilt of sin from the other categories in which the work of Christ is to be interpreted. These categories are but aspects from which the work of Christ once for all accomplished must be viewed and therefore they may be said to inter-permeate one another.” [13]

Thus, Murray concludes:

Redemption from the power of sin may be called the triumphal aspect of redemption. In his finished work Christ did something once for all respecting the power of sin and it is in virtue of this victory which he secured that the power of sin is broken in all those who are united to him. It is in this connection that a strand of New Testament teaching needs to be appreciated but which is frequently overlooked. It is that not only is Christ regarded as having died for the believer, but the believer is represented as having died in Christ and as having been raised up with him to newness of life. This is the result of union with Christ. For by this union, Christ is not only united to those who have been given to him, but they are united with him. Hence, not only did Christ die for them but they died in him and rose with him (cf. Rom. 6:1-10; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15; Eph. 2:1-7; Col. 3:1-4; I Pet. 4:1,2). It is this fact of having died with Christ in the efficacy of his death and of having risen with him in the power of his resurrection that insures for all the people of God deliverance from the dominion of sin. It supplies the ground for the exhortations “Even so reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11) and gives force to the apodictic assurance, “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14). [14]

Ironically, John Murray (like most in his camp) still believes we have indwelling sin according to his understanding of Romans 7. So it begs the question how these guys can say such things like this above that, “the power of sin is broken,” when they still believe they are “sold as a slave” to it according to Rom. 7:14? Nevertheless, Murray’s point is to be well taken. And if all this isn’t mystical or subjective, then I don’t know what is? For Christ to break the power of sin in us, He had to have in some sense subjectively become us as one who was cursed of God on the tree in His entire human nature, in order that we could become blessed (shall I even say, “righteousness”) in our entire human nature. What Christ did was reciprocal to us, not only in our bodies, but also in our souls—which is the most important aspect to all of this, bar none! So away with such foolish thinking that what happened to Christ, and to us, is not on a “subjective” level, in addition to also being on an “objective” or forensic level.

This sharing in Christ’s death is not just a legal fiction, a form of words to which no inward personal reality corresponds; it is part of the spiritual reality in Christ, a mystery that is there whether we can grasp it or not. No doubt, Christ has taken us with Him in His union and identification with us into His sin-bearing death; and through His death in our union and identification with Him as the sinless Substitute we are taken up into His resurrection of life. As such, this knowledge of Christ’s death for us requires us to see ourselves as spiritually dead to sin, risen and alive for evermore in Him. We who believe have died to sin with Christ painlessly and invisibly (both spiritually and physically) in our solidarity with Him, because He died painfully and publicly on earth and in hell (both physically and spiritually) as our Substitute for us. And the same holds true with what Adam did for us both spiritually and physically, only to be undone or reversed in Christ who is our Second Adam.

Of no doubt, there is more going on here in 2Cor. 5:21 than just a penal satisfaction to justice of just being pronounced either “guilty” or “not guilty.” There is an actual transfer of our personal sins to Christ, and the actual transfer of Christ’s personal righteousness to us. What actually happens to Christ’s own person is reciprocal and antithetical to what actually happens to our own person. Christ being made sin and us being made righteousness cannot be Christ personally being made sin and us NOT personally being made righteousness, and probably thus the reason why many just want to say that Christ was only an “offering” for sin, rather than actually made sin; for the antithesis to Christ actually being made sin in His person is understandably us actually being made righteousness in our person. But as we came to find out, even to say Christ was only an “offering” does injustice to us becoming righteousness; for then “righteousness” would also have to be understood in the sense of only some kind of “offering” as well. Hanging on the cross actually cursed Christ with our sins both physically and spiritually; hanging on faith actually blesses us with Christ’s righteousness both spiritually and physically. When God saw Christ on the cross, He saw us crucified; and when God now sees us, He sees us made alive with Christ. This is where the crucifixion of our old man in juxtaposition to the creation our new man now comes into play here. The forensic aspect to all of this was seen just in passing in verse 19. The practical outworking of all of this is seen in verse 21, where He who knew no sin was made sin so that we MIGHT become the righteousness of God in Him, which, no doubt, was alluded to just earlier in verse 15. And this also agrees with what Peter says, when he says: “who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, MIGHT live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1Pet. 2:24, ASV). “Having died unto sins” (and not “that we might die”) is the correct translation, and takes us back to what Paul said in Romans 6 about us having died to sin in the crucifixion of our old man in order that the body of sin MIGHT be rendered powerless (6:6), and even in Rom. 8:3-4 where Christ is said to have become sinful flesh, condemning it in His person, so that THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US (KJV, WBT, YLT, et al). Here we see continuity of thought throughout in all these verses that have to do with our sanctification, and not with our justification at all. Peter's words throw a monkey wrench into all of this for those who attempt to twist Paul's words to say things he is not saying (at least not in these instances). The justification unto life came to us via Christ's sinlessness; whereas our sanctification comes in the bearing of our sins in order to remove them and set God's people free from the bondage and ravages of sin, in order to live in all righteousness before Him.

Charles Spurgeon likewise refuted the idea that Christ was just an “offering” for sin, and that He was in fact “made” sin. His comments were so well-stated, that I just could not resist noting them here as well:

Not only has He made Him to be the substitute for sin, but to be sin. God looked on Christ as if Christ had been sin; not as if He had taken up the sins of His people, or as if they were laid on Him, though that were true, but as if He, Himself, had positively been that noxious—that God-hating—that soul-damning thing called sin. When the Judge of all the earth said, “Where is Sin?” Christ presented Himself; He stood before His Father, as if He had been the accumulation of all human guilt of the elect; as if He, Himself, were that thing which God cannot endure, but which He must drive from His presence forever. And now, see how this making of Jesus to be sin was enacted to the fullest extent. The righteous Lord looked on Christ as being sin and, therefore, Christ must be taken outside the camp. Sin cannot be borne in God’s Zion—cannot be allowed to dwell in God’s Jerusalem; it must be taken outside the camp—it is a leprous thing—put it away. Sin must always be cast out from fellowship, from love, from pity. Take Him away, take Him away, you crowd! Hurry Him through the streets and bear Him to Calvary. Take Him outside the camp—as was the beast which was offered for sin outside the camp—so must Christ be who was made sin for us! And now, God looks on Him as being sin, and sin must bear punishment. Christ is punished. The most fearful of deaths is exacted at His hands, and God has no pity on Him. How could He have pity on sin? God hates it! No tongue can tell, no soul can discern the terrible hatred of God to that which is evil, and He treats Christ as if He were sin. Jesus prays—but heaven shuts out His prayer. He cries for water, but heaven and earth refuse to wet His lips except with vinegar. He turns His eyes to heaven, He sees nothing there. How could He? God cannot look on sin, and sin can have no claim on God—“My God, My God,” Jesus cries, “Why have You forsaken Me?” O solemn necessity, how could God do anything with sin but forsake it? How could iniquity have fellowship with God? Shall divine smiles rest on sin? No, no, it must not be! Therefore is it that He who is made sin must bemoan desertion and terror; God cannot touch Him; cannot dwell with Him; cannot come near Him! He is abhorred, cast away. It has pleased the Father to bruise Him. He has put Him to grief. At last He dies. God will not keep Him in life—how could He? Is it not the most necessary thing in the world that sin should be buried? “Bury it out of My sight, hide this corruption,” and lo! Jesus, as if He were sin, is put away out of the sight of God and man as a thing obnoxious!" [15]

Christ clothed Himself with our nakedness when He died on the cross for us; we wear His robe of righteousness! He bore our shame and disgrace; we bear His glory and honor. He endured our sufferings to this end: that our joy might be full, and that His joy might be fulfilled in us!

Again, Christ took upon Himself not only the "guilt" of our sin (as Charles Hodge and son claim), but the sin as well. In the OT, the notion was that the sin of the offerer was transferred and imputed (or reckoned) to the offering, and the offering bore as result of this imputed sin the death-penalty. It was to show forth the substitutive nature and endurance of the offering for the penalty or liability that was due to the people for their sins. And in Leviticus 16 it was to remove them from us to be disposed of by Christ. No doubt, all of this is the blessed doctrine of substitution and identification. So we may now safely and confidently affirm that just as Christ who knew no sin in His person, was made sin in His person; we too who knew no righteousness in our person, become righteousness in our person. Now that makes sense! Paul is imploring us (and not the world in this case), “be reconciled to God”[16] (v. 20), by living righteous lives based upon the fact that Christ has made us into His righteousness. As verse 15 earlier denotes, “He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.” And then Paul immediately afterward adds the verse here in question in verse 21 to support his thesis, along with the following verses in 6:1 and 2, where he urges (or “implores,” same Gk. word as in 5:20) the Corinthians to not receive the free and passive grace of God in vain—i.e., void of any action on their part. This is in essence what Paul is also telling the Romans in Rom. 6:19-22: “for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit had you then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being MADE[17] free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life" (King James 2000 Bible). Please also refer to the last two immediate footnotes above for some more thoughts on 2Cor. 5:20-21 and 6:1-2.

F. F. Bruce, in agreement with Matthew Poole's incorrect analysis earlier in part one with regards to Rom. 8:3, likewise has this to say in his commentary: “the sentence was passed and executed on sin in Christ’s ‘flesh,” in His human nature, and thereby in [our] human nature as such.”[18] And to this I would agree! But again, I ask, how could the sentence be passed and executed on our sin if Christ’s entire human nature of spirit, soul and body, at the time of His crucifixion, was without any sin in or upon Him to be judged and atoned for? Our sin had to be in and upon Christ for there to be the “sentence passed and executed on sin…in [our] human nature”—in a human nature with sin in it, not without it. Christ became like flesh of sin, for sin, in order to condemn sin in our human nature (along with the attending sin(s) of our bodies), in order that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. And note that in the Greek it is "in" (ev) us, not "with a reference to" us, where the Greek peri would be more fitting here if Paul was only talking about our objective justification.

Charles Hodge, in tandem with Albert Barnes who was also cited earlier in part one concerning Rom. 8:3, expresses similar wording to F. F. Bruce above in his commentary, by stating: “Christ took upon Himself our nature, in order to expiate the guilt of that nature.”[19] But, again, if Christ didn’t take upon Himself, on the cross, our sin-stained human nature, then how could He be said to have taken on “our nature” and “the guilt of that nature” when there was no guilt for any sin placed upon Christ in His human nature to begin with? Of course, many of these men define “guilt” as someone who is personally responsible for sinning—who commits an offense (such as us before being saved)—but then say that while Christ “assumed our guilt” as our substitute by imputation, He didn’t actually assume “our sin” in our nature, in an attempt to absolve Christ of any sin placed in and upon His human nature. This is what they mean by “vicarious” atonement. One who is the substitute for another, but with no sin in or upon His person. Indeed, Christ was a vicarious atonement and substitute for our sin by “imputation,” but He wasn’t a vicarious substitute absent of any sin in or upon His person; He was a substitute with our sin placed in and upon His person. He wasn’t punished as a sinless substitute, assuming only our "guilt," but punished as or “like” someone who had actually Himself sinned. Christ assumed both the penalty and the power of sin for us, and then released us from that penalty and power in His flesh as the spotless lamb of God both with and without our sins. This is what becoming “flesh of sin” (or “sinful flesh”) and “for sin” retains. Christ was "made sin" for our sin that was actually placed upon Him, thus becoming an actual atoning sacrifice "for sin" as both the sinless substitute and the sin-bearing Scapegoat, in accordance with Leviticus 16. Again, not for His sin, mind you, but for ours. And not just on behalf of us, but in the place of and instead of us. Christ identified with us and our sin (both within and without), in order that we can identify with Him and His righteousness (both within and without). Not just forensically, but internally as well. Again, Hodge (and those like him) is thinking only of imputation here as outlined earlier above, absent of any sin imparted in or upon Christ's person at all. But in Christ’s case, both are true with regards to our sins imparted to Him and for which He was reckoned (or imputed) as a sinner in our stead for no personal or inherent sin of His own; in juxtaposition to Adam’s sin in condemning all of us to death through no fault of our own and thus practically making us all sinners who also physically die; and the same goes for Christ's righteousness justifying us unto life through no work of our own, along with Him practically giving us life and sanctifying us and also raising us up physically to life someday. As John Murray has succinctly stated: “Our union with Christ in his death and resurrection must not be bereft of its intimacy, but with equal jealousy it must be interpreted in terms of Spiritual and mystical relationship” (Romans, vol. 1, p. 218; emphasis mine). This is not to say that Murray, or anyone else who I quote in this article, is in total agreement with me on everything I am saying, but just to say that what Adam did to us, what occurred to Christ on the cross on our behalf, and what Christ did for us as a result of both His death and resurrection, was was no bare notion or idea of just pronouncing people "guilty" or "not guilty."

In the OT, Aaron placed his hands upon the head of the Scapegoat to symbolically depict the transference of the people’s sins upon the sacrifice. But at the same time, it wasn’t a bare or empty gesture void of any spiritual import or conveyance. It may have done nothing at that time internally to “make the worshiper perfect in conscience” (cf. Heb. 9:9; NASB), to "take away sin" (Heb. 10:4, 11), or to “put an end to sin” (cf. Dan. 9:24) as Christ ultimately came to do, but it nonetheless absolved them of the guilt of their outward sins, signifying even greater things to come. Aaron was to “confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and PUT THEM ON the goats head….The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place…” (Lev. 16:22). God made that sacrifice become their sin-bearing sacrifice which personally bore the guilt of the offending sinner as if their sin was in fact its own sin. Note that it was not just in bearing the “guilt” of the sin, but signified the actual bearing of the “sin” of the offenders as well in order to take it away from us experientially in our person. This is why Paul could say that Christ was “made sin” and took on “sinful” flesh (or flesh “of sin”), and how Peter could say, “He Himself bore our sins in His body” (1Pet. 2:24). And get this, Peter adds, “so that we might die to sins and live to righteousness,” the very same thing expressed by Paul earlier above in 2Cor. 5:21 where we “might become” (same aorist subjunctive[20]) the righteousness of God practically in our lives, based upon what Christ has done for us internally. We are talking about a lifestyle here; our sanctification. Our justification before God is not really what is at the forefront here. That is spoken of elsewhere (cf. Isa. 53:11b; Rom. 3:24, 26, 28; 4:3-5, 11, 24-25; 5:1, 9, 15-19; 8:30-34; Gal. 3:6-9, 24). Paul (as well as Peter) is dealing with the practical side of our being made the righteousness of God intrinsically, not extrinsically. “Righteousness” isn’t just an external forensic act, it has become internal in us as well in our identification with Christ as a new man; and in order to be worked out in our bodies over time. And the term “righteousness” is often used in this manner throughout the Scriptures, as we just saw earlier in Rom. 6:18-21 (see also Mat. 5:6, 20; 21:32; Lke. 1:75, et al). I like how the International Standard Version (ISV) translates 2Cor. 5:21: "God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that God's righteousness would be produced in us." The Good News Bible is not bad either: "Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God." The verse literally translated, reads: "The One having known no sin [experientially], He made sin [experientially] for us, so that we might become [experientially] the righteousness of God in Him." [21]

So, according to 2Cor. 5:21, Rom. 8:3, Leviticus 16 (and many more passages), Christ didn’t just “assume” our “guilt,” but “our sins” as well; He was pronounced guilty as charged, just as if He himself had sinned our sins. He wasn’t a mock substitute, but a real and actual substitute in every sense of the word—something unheard of in a secular court of law—and which makes it even all the more supernatural and virtually impossible for a common man to do or even be charged for. But just as Adam’s sin was transferred to us through no fault of our own, so too was our sin transferred to Christ through no fault of His own; and in turn Christ transferred His own righteousness to us through no good deed of our own so that we might live as righteous people are suppose to live; no longer as sinners but as saints (or as holy ones).

Charles Hodge goes on to say immediately after what he said above: “the expiation must be made in the nature which had sinned.”[22] It is not clear what Hodge is talking about here. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that what he is saying is that while Christ in His own human nature was without sin, He assumed our human nature (yet without the sin) in order to satisfy God’s justice and pronounce us “not guilty,” or, in his own words earlier noted above, “to expiate the guilt.” That this much is to be determined in what Hodge is saying here in this latter part of my statement, there can be no denying. And the rest of his commentary bears this out. Thus Hodge erroneously concludes that what Christ did here in Rom. 8:3, He did not do in order to condemn or put an end to sin in us (because Hodge still believes it to be in us according to his view of Romans 7), but only to justify us before God; to only “expiate the guilt.” According to Hodge, what Christ did He did not do within us in order that we may keep the law, but to only satisfy the laws demands for us in order to justify us. This is how he understands the law in verse 4 being fulfilled in us. It is positionally through Christ, and not experientially in our own person. And I dealt with all of that earlier, so I won't belabor that again here. Only to say again that the two genitives of possession, "the law of the Spirit" and "the law of sin and death," do not denote the Spirit of the Mosaic Law or the sin and death of the Mosaic Law, but are denoting the principle or power of each, as "the law of the Spirit" clearly denotes, similar to "the law of faith" in Rom. 3:27. So, according to Hodge, it is not what Christ does "within" us, but outside of us; not intrinsically but extrinsically. But, as we came to understand of 2Cor. 5:21, justification is not the theme in either of these cases. The theme in both Romans 8 and 2Corinthians 5 is our sanctification. And until one crosses over that hurdle in their mind of seeing these verses in that manner, they will just not even be able to receive what I am saying.

Again, for those who do not view Rom. 8:1-3ff as a deliverance from sin, but only as justification from sin, most (but not all) will likely be naturally inclined to believe Romans 7 as the nominal Christian experience with no real deliverance in sight whatsoever; relying solely on justification from their sin, rather than on their emancipation from their indwelling sin. For them, “no condemnation” means, regardless of still being the sinner that they believe they are according to Romans 7, they will never be condemned as sinners so long as they are now in Christ. As true as this may be, this is not what Paul is talking about here. Paul’s theme, in Romans 6-8, is emancipation from the slavery of sin in which being “under the law” and “sold as a slave under sin” incited. Being no longer “under the law” but “under grace” (Rom. 6:14; 7:1-6) now emancipates us practically from sin. What the law was powerless to do in us, when we still had the sinful, carnal human nature, Christ now does in and through us by giving us a new nature called “the new man” who is a "new creation" with a "new heart." Our old sinful heart has been entirely removed (or circumcised), with a new heart now ruling the roost (see Ezk. 11:19; 36:26).

So, in getting back to our subject at hand, if there was no sin placed in and upon Christ’s human nature to bear in spirit, soul and body, then what kind of expiation for sin actually occurred? None whatsoever! Maybe just for the "guilt" of those sins, which Hodge and company believes, but not for the remediation of those sins. But just the opposite did in fact take place in Christ: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1Pet. 2:24). This doesn't sound like Christ just bearing our "guilt." As said before, how can we “die to sin,” if Christ didn’t become us in our spirit, soul and body in order for us to likewise internally, and eventually externally, die to sins and live for righteousness as even Rom. 6:6 declares of us? And just crucifying our outward bodies of flesh does us no good; we must be crucified and killed within, that we may live for God through our souls (our mind, will and emotions) and eventually without in our physical mortal bodies. This is what the inward spiritual circumcision is all about. It is a cutting away or a crucifixion of our old inner natural man and heart of stone, in order that we may be given a new heart transplant of flesh that puts to death (or puts an end to) our own self-determining wills and the deeds of our fleshly mortal bodies. This is truth, brethren, as it is told to us in the Bible. According to Rom. 6:6, Christ crucified our old sinful human nature (aka, the old man) and the body that sins, in a death that occurred in Christ's entire human nature on the cross. Both a body that is now dead to sin, and a dead sinful nature (or old man), has rendered sin powerless over our lives. This is what being “dead to the sin” means. And Paul now simply says, “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to the sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11; lit. trans.). This is the practical aspect of all this in our psyche and in our physical mortal bodies, based upon what has happened to us internally in the cutting-away (or circumcision) of our former old man from our physical bodies; with that small token of the flesh that was circumcised from the males in the OT being a sign of much greater things to come; where our entire bodies would one day be severed from our old man in the spiritual circumcision of Christ from the inside out. This is now a reality for all of us who have been baptized with the spiritual baptism of Christ (cf. Rom. 6:1ff). And this is exactly what Paul had told the Christians at Colossae: “in Whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11; lit. trans.). The “body of the flesh” here isn’t the sinful nature that some have erroneously said is being put off; that occurred in the spiritual circumcision of our spirit (or heart) made without human hands. Our fleshly human body is what is being spoken of here as being “put off” and away from our old sinful nature as old clothing, in order that our bodies might now live unto righteousness and be clothed with Christ. The Greek word soma here for “body” is never used in the NT with regards to the sinful nature, the word “flesh” is reserved for that, albeit not here in this particular case in Colossians. The word “body” means exactly this: the body “of the flesh” of humans, as opposed to other bodies of other entities such as those described for us in 1Cor. 15:35ff. Paul had just got through using it in this sense with regards to Christ’s own physical body in Col. 1:22, “in the body of the flesh of Him,” and this was most likely said this way with regards to Christ to counter any Gnostic beliefs. Every spirit that didn’t confess that Jesus Christ had come “in the flesh” was not of God. To deny the incarnation of the Son of God as having come in human flesh was in essence to be a denial of God Himself.

Now some of the same mindless babble or thought, as noted earlier above by others concerning Rom. 8:3, is expressed also by R. Kent Hughes in his commentary on Romans, when he writes: “Christ took on man’s flesh (human nature) without becoming a sinner.”[23] And then he immediately quotes the venerable Charles Cranfield as if to buttress his arguments, who says: “…the Son of God assumed the selfsame fallen human nature that is ours, but…in His [Christ’s] case that fallen human nature was never the whole of Him.”[24] First of all, how can one take the selfsame “fallen” human nature as ours and yet it never be the whole of him? This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. And to add to all of this confusion, Hughes immediately states in his own words after quoting Cranfield: “Thus His flesh (his human nature) remained strong and unfallen.”[25] Are you just as confused as I am? This is nothing more than a bunch of double-talk. Like I said, “mindless babble.” Of course, all of this begins to make more sense when we realize that Hughes is quoting Cranfield out of context. I have Cranfield's commentaries, and what Cranfield is saying is that Christ “never ceased to be the Eternal Son of God,” which Hughes has conveniently omitted at the end of Cranfield’s statement above, and then twists it in support of his own thesis that Christ’s human nature remained “unfallen.” What Cranfield meant by saying that it “was never the whole of Him” is that Christ never ceased to be Deity, in spite of the fact that He actually assumed our sinful fallen human nature (see footnote after his quote below). Cranfield’s point is not that Christ never assumed our fallen nature as Hughes erroneously asserts, but that He never ceased to be the Son of God, in addition to having a fallen human nature. And so Cranfield concludes his point by saying,

…the use of ὁμοίωμα [likeness] here was...to take account of the fact that the Son of God was not in being sent by His Father changed into a man, but rather assumed human nature while still remaining Himself [the Son of God]. On this view the word ὁμοίωμα [likeness] does have its sense of 'likeness'; but the intention is not in any way to call in question or to water down the reality of Christ’s σἀρξ ἁμαρτίας [sinful flesh], but to draw attention to the fact that while the Son of God truly assumed σἀρξ ἁμαρτίας [sinful flesh], He never became sinful flesh and nothing more [with the emphasis being here on “nothing more”], nor even σἀρξ ἁμαρτίας [sinful flesh] indwelt by the Holy Spirit and nothing more..., but always remained Himself [as the second Person of the Trinity]. [26]

Again, if Hughes’ argument is correct (which it isn’t), how can one take on or assume another’s “fallen” nature and not somehow retain that same fallen nature within themselves until it is eventually overturned? And this is exactly what Christ has done for us! All of our sins and sufferings were placed inwardly and outwardly upon Christ so that He could crucify our sinful human nature in its entirety in order that we may live righteous lives before God. If our “fallen” human nature wasn’t Christ’s to crucify, then our fallen nature was not crucified. And if that is the case, then we are all still sinners bent on sinning with a still prevalent fallen sinful nature (which is what many still believe). It is one thing to say that one “assumes the guilt” of another, but quite another thing to say that one “assumed the selfsame fallen human nature that is ours,” but then not actually do so. That's hypocrisy! Again, this is nothing more than double-talk. No, Christ “actually” assumed both “our guilt” and “our sin” in His spirit, soul and body. And as John Calvin once wisely remarked, “certainly had not His soul shared in the punishment, He would have been a Redeemer of bodies only.”[27] The early church father Irenaeus agreed: “who gave His own soul for our soul and His own flesh for our flesh.”[28] And being that these men are dichotomists, when they say “soul” they also mean spirit. Reformed baptist pastor John Gill likewise notes on the phrase “flesh of sin” (or “sinful flesh”): “flesh is not to be taken strictly for a part of the body, nor for the whole body only, but for the whole human nature, soul and body.”[29] To this I agree! What Christ suffered, He suffered in His spirit, soul and body so that He could redeem our spirit, soul and body—our entire human nature—not just a “part” of it. Of course, men who often say such things as these above would disagree as to what it was that Christ actually suffered in his spirit, with most stopping short of the idea that He assumed our sinful nature, but the point is to be well taken that Christ suffered punishment in His spirit, and not just in His body. And we will see later that many of the reformers referred to Christ's death as both a spiritual death and a physical death.

To my amazement though, Martin Luther actually agrees with me. He taught that “the prophets did foresee in spirit, that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer, that ever was or could be in the world,”[30] and how He was “not an innocent person and without sins; is not now the Son of God…but a sinner which hath and carrieth the sin of…all men in His body: not that He Himself committed them, but that He received them upon His own body, that He might make satisfaction for them with His blood.”[31] And again, “He was accursed, and of all sinners, the greatest.”[32]

Again, John Gill, in agreement with Luther, and even with what I am saying all along in this article, writes:

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.[33]

Since John Gill was the pastor and forerunner to Charles Haddon Spurgeon at the New Park Street Chapel, later called, Metropolitan Chapel, then what follows in part six will come as no surprise to us where Spurgeon got all of his notions or ideas from about Christ. It was, no doubt, from one of his predecessors, John Gill. And, no doubt, their revelation in these matters was passed on to them by none other than Christ Himself through His Spirit of revelation.

Click here for part 6.


Footnotes:

[1] For example, in Lev. 5:6, some translations prefer not to add to God’s word and to just leave the word “sin” translated as “sin,” and not as “sin offering.” The Douay-Rheims Bible reads: “And of its blood he shall sprinkle the side of the altar, and whatsoever is left, he shall let it drop at the bottom thereof, because it is for sin.” The Jubilee Bible 2000 similarly reads: “and he shall sprinkle of the blood of the sin upon the side of the altar; and the rest of the blood shall be wrung out at the bottom of the altar; it is sin.” I personally like these translations, for they emphasize the actual sin itself that is being dealt with and not just the “offering” for sin.
[2] The Apostle’s Doctrine of the Atonement (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), p. 224, 226, 228, 229).
[3] Pages 66-67. Words in brackets mine. Though these words of Calvin read a little differently in my English copy, the sense is still the same. The "guilt" (or ashmah) is for sin; and the sacrifices became "guilty" due to the people's sins that were transferred to them.
[4] The New American Commentary, 2 Corinthians (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Pub., 1999), p. 300.
[5] Accessed online at: biblegateway.com. Word in brackets mine.
[6] The New International Greek Testament Commentary (NIGTC) The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 455. Words in brackets Murray’s.
[7] Ibid, p. 453. Emphasis and words in brackets mine.
[8] Ibid, p. 454. Emphasis and words in brackets mine.
[9] Isaiah, vol. 3, p. 347.
[10] Ibid., pp. 347-348. Words in brackets mine.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] The Death of Christ; accessed online at: https://www.monergism.com/death-christ.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Christ—Our Substitute; sermon: 310.
[16] For those who cannot bring themselves to believe Paul is telling us to be reconciled to God, due to the fact that they think Paul is talking about our justification here and not our sanctification, they have concocted the notion that this isn’t what Paul is commanding us to do, but what we are to tell others to do who are not saved. They stress the “passive” voice of this verb here to denote that it isn’t something we do, but what God does. But this need not pose a problem for us, for even though we are told elsewhere by Paul to work out our own salvation, it is God nevertheless who is passively at work within us both to will and to act according to His good pleasure (cf. Php. 2:12-13). So this verse in 2Corinthians could very well read paraphrased: “Let God reconcile you to Himself.” We are to work out our reconciliation which He initially begins in us, and who will also carry it out unto completion until the day of Christ Jesus (cf. Php. 1:6). We see this active and passive idea in Rom. 6:6 and Gal. 5:24 with regards to the crucifixion of our old man (also called “the flesh or “the sinful nature”). In Rom. 6:6, in the Greek, our old man has been passively crucified by Christ; in Gal. 5:24, in the Greek, Paul shows our active participation in this past crucifixion through obedience of belief, saying nothing of the fact that this faith (or “belief”) is also not of ourselves but the gift of God (cf. Eph. 2:8; Php. 1:29; 2Pet. 1:1). But faith nevertheless is our “active” response to God. Sometimes Paul stresses the “passive” nature in all of this, and sometimes the “active” response on our part; but we should not be too quick to jump to a conclusion that our reconciliation with God is not also something that is worked out in us over time because of the “passive” nature of a verse. One just shows God’s side in all of this; the other our side. Here in 2Corinthians Paul used the aorist passive imperative, and does not mean as Lenski in his commentary asserts that we are to tell unbelievers, “be once and for all reconciled.” This “aorist” tense in the “imperative” is also used in Col. 3:5 with regards to us no less, when Paul says, “Put to death the members of your earthly body.” Here Paul uses the aorist active imperative denoting something that we are to still decisively once and for all do. Such is the idea presented to us in 2Corinthians, only it is God who is at work within us both to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Paul continues in 2Cor. 6:1, “And working together with Him, we also urge you [or, exhort you] not to receive the [free and passive gift of the] grace of God in vain (NASB[a]); i.e., void of any response on our part (cp. 1Cor. 15:10). No doubt these exhortations are to the Corinthian believers. There are no chapter breaks in the Greek. Paul is continuing where he left off in 5:21. The first two verses of chapter 6 are closely linked to the last paragraph in the preceding chapter. And some translations actually include these verses with the last part of chapter 5, and then start a new paragraph in 6:3 (see NIV, HCSB, NLT, GNT, CEV). The Greek verb for “urge” (parakalountos) in 6:1, is the same verb used in 5:20 and translated “implore.” Using the same verb ties both of these verses together nicely, and the quotation from Isaiah in in 2Cor. 6:2 explains the urgency behind Paul’s appeal, “Be reconciled to God. Work together with Him with no empty response on your part.”

And if all that were not enough, this aorist passive verb in the imperative mood occurs again twice in Mat. 5:24 and 1Cor. 7:11. In Matthew, an offerer is commanded to receive the passive reconciliation from an offended party before offering his gift on the altar; while in 1Corinthians, the wife is commanded to receive the passive reconciliation from her husband. Were the offerer or the wife to remain purely passive in and of themselves, there would have been no need for the imperative. Likewise, God has passively initiated a reconciliation with us through Christ and now expects us as believers to immediately and without wavering respond. Clearly, reconciliation involves much more than just our justification on God’s part; it requires on our part immediate obedience as well to His commands unto our sanctification and fellowship (or reconciliation) with Him. David Garland, in quoting Gloer, writes: "While this [reconciliation] is, indeed, the 'universal missionary entreaty' of the church to the world, in this context [of 2Cor. 5:21] it is addressed to the Corinthian Christians who are alienated from Paul and highlights the continual claim of the new way of living in Christ."[b] Calvin agrees: "Be reconciled. It is to be observed, that Paul is here addressing himself to believers." So why does Paul implore those who are already believers to be reconciled to God? They had already accepted the gospel message. Calvin explains it that we sin everyday, therefore we must be reconciled every day. But the aorist tense used here would not be suited to refer to something that must be repeated everyday. It is to be noted here that the aorist tense is also used above in Mat. 5:24 and 1Cor. 7:11 to note the immediate action or attention of those to whom these exhortations are addressed; and the aorist tense seems to describe this more effectively as something that should not be drawn-out over a long period of time, but something that should become immediate and final. Such is Paul's exhortation here to the Corinthians in 2Cor. 5:21. Thus, Calvin's conclusions are unfounded that our being reconciled to God need be a daily occurrence, especially since some believers (such as myself) don't sin on a daily basis. And if we do, what does that tell us about such a person who continually sins day-in and day-out? That they have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof in their practice?

Notes to footnote above:

[a] Words in brackets mine.

[b] The New American Commentary, 2 Corinthians (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Pub., 1999), n. 823, p. 298.

[17] “Being made free” here is an aorist passive participle verb. It is in the “passive” voice which denotes us having been made free by the action of another outside of ourselves so that we will live holy lives before God. In 2Cor. 5:21 it says God “made” Christ to be sin (aorist active indicative) that we “might” become (aorist middle subjunctive) the righteousness of God. God actively made the Son to become sin in His flesh for us, and made us free internally from that sin, according to Rom. 6, that we “might” become the righteousness of God lived out in our mortal bodies. In other words, what God "made" Christ to be has been reversed in us. Now, granted, the verb (or word) for “being made free” in Romans is different from the verb (or word) for being “made” sin in Second Corinthians, but the point being noted here is that we are made free from sin, in juxtaposition to Christ being made sin so that we can become righteous.
[18] F. F. Bruce, Romans (Downers Grove: IVP, 1985), p. 163. Words in brackets mine.
[19] Charles Hodge, Epistle to the Romans (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1835), p. 253.
[20] The “subjunctive” mood in the Greek language denotes something that is a possibility for us based upon us meeting certain criteria. This is not justification here, but sanctification. We haven’t been made righteousness (as true as this may be), but we “become” the righteousness of God over time in our bodies. This “aorist subjunctive” mood is used also in Rom. 6:6b, where Paul says: “that the body of sin might be annulled (or rendered powerless).” Sin doesn’t stop dead in its tracks; it’s a process of growth after having had our old man crucified, as also mentioned in verse 6. In a similar manner, the righteousness spoken of here by Paul in 2Cor. 5:21 isn’t imparted to us in an instant (as true as that may also be in making us a new man), but is a process to be worked out in our lives over time based upon what Christ has done to our sinful human nature, when He was “made sin” on the cross for us. As Jamieson, Fausset and Brown succinctly note here on 2Cor. 5:21: “not the same Greek as the previous ‘made.’ Rather, ‘might become.’”
[21] Words in brackets mine to give us the true sense.
[22] Charles Hodge, Epistle to the Romans (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1835), p. 253. Again, Hodge is thinking about a “human” nature without sin, as most men like him tend to be saying. They believe Christ assumed our guilt in a human nature, but not in a sinful one; Christ assumed the “guilt” of the offender, but not the sin.
[23] R. Kent Hughes, Romans (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991), p. 150. Words in parenthesis his. Emphasis in bold and italics mine.
[24] Ibid. Words in brackets and emphasis in bold and italicization mine.
[25] Ibid. Words in emphasis and italicized mine; words in parenthesis his.
[26] C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1975), p. 381; emphasis and words in brackets mine. Cranfield lists five arguments in his commentary concerning what Romans 8:3 might be saying to us. In the fifth argument, mistakenly quoted by Hughes, Cranfield actually supports as biblical. The second argument, which Cranfield does not support, reads as such: “Paul introduced ‘likeness’ in order to avoid implying that the Son of God assumed fallen human nature. The sense being, ‘like our fallen flesh, because really flesh, but only like, and not identical with it, because unfallen.’ This, though it is the traditional solution, is open to the general theological objection that it was not unfallen, but fallen, human nature which needed redeeming.” (ibid., p. 380; emphasis mine). The other three arguments are not even worth noting here. It is the two noted above that are pertinent to this discussion at hand.
[27] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), Book II, XVI, 12, p. 445.
[28] As quoted in Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub., 1994), vol. 2, p. 354. Emphasis mine.
[29] Gill’s Exposition on the Entire Bible online at Biblehub. com.
[30] Martin Luther, Luther on Galatians, (London Edition, 1838), pp. 213-215; as quoted by Albert Barnes in his commentary on Galatians, pp. 334-335.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] See John Gill’s commentary online at: www.biblehub.com