2 Corinthians 5:21

2 Corinthians 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 ” (John 14:30); and what the Epistle to the Hebrews says of His death (2 Corinthians 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” here and the precisely similar phrase, Galatians 3:13, “ made a curse for us” necessarily 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 sin” not personally, but by transference to Him of our guilt, with all its penal effects clearly “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 Romans 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 2 Corinthians 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.”