2 Corinthians 5:21

The very purpose of the Atonement was that men should turn from sin. τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν κ. τ. λ.: Him who knew no sin (observe μὴ rather than οὐ, 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. Ecclesiastes 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, τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐλέγχει με περὶ ἁμαρτίας (John 8:46), had never been disproved, and the Apostolic age held that He was χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας … ἀμίαντος, κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν (Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 7:26), and that ἁμαρτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἕστιν (1 John 3:5; cf. St. Peter's application of Isaiah 53:9 at 1 Peter 2:22). That He was a moral Miracle was certainly part of the primitive Gospel, (ii.) The statement ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν 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 (Leviticus 16:21). ἁμαρτία cannot be translated “sin-offering” (as at Leviticus 4:8; Leviticus 4:21; Leviticus 4:24; Leviticus 4:34; Leviticus 5:9-12), for it cannot have two different meanings in the same clause; and further it is contrasted with δικαιοσύνη, it means “sin” in the abstract. The penalties of sin were laid on Christ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, “on our behalf,” and thus as the Representative of the world's sin it becomes possible to predicate of Him the strange expression ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν (ποιέω being used here as at John 5:18; John 8:53; John 10:33). The nearest parallel in the N.T. is γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα (Galatians 3:13); cf. also Isaiah 53:6; Romans 8:3; 1 Peter 2:24. ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα κ. τ. λ.: that we might become, sc., as we have become (note the force of the aorist), the righteousness of God in Him (cf. Jeremiah 23:6; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Philippians 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).