2 Corinthians 5:21

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)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

sin Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").

righteous Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 5:21").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5:21 Christ became the offering for our sin on the cross when he took sin’s penalty on himself and died a criminal’s death. He did this, though he himself never sinned (John 8:46; 1 Pet 2:22; 1 Jn 3:5), so that we might be made right with God—i.e., set in right relationship with God and accepted by him (see Gal 3:13).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

2Co 5:21. Τὸν) Him, who knew no sin, who stood in no need of reconciliation;—a eulogium peculiar to Jesus. Mary was not one, ἡ μὴ γνοῦσα, who knew no sin.—ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησε, 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.—ἡμεῖς) we, who knew no righteousness, who must have been destroyed, if the way of reconciliation had not been discovered.—ἐν αὐτῳ, in Him) in Christ. The antithesis is, for us.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 δεόμεθα κ.τ.λ., for complying with the καταλλ. τῷ θεῷ, by holding forth what has been done on Gods side in order to justify men. This weighty motive emerges without γάρ, and is all the more urgen.

τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτ.] description of sinlessness (τὸν αὐτοδικαιοσύνην ὄντα, 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 μή 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] Rückert, quite without ground, gives up any explanation of the force of μή by erroneously remarking that between the article and the participle ΜΉ always appears, never Οὐ. 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: τὸ οὐχ εὑρημένον, Plut. de garrul. p. 98, ed. Hutt.: πρὸς τοὺς οὐκ ἀκούοντας, Arist. Eccl. 187: ὁ δʼ οὐ λαβών, Lucian, Charid 14: διηγούμενοι τὰ οὐκ ὄντα, adv, Ind. 5, and many other passage.

ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν] for our benefit (more precise explanation: ἕνα ἡμεῖς κ.τ.λ.), is emphatically prefixed as that, in which lies mainly the motive for fulfilling the prayer in 2Co_5:20; hence also ἩΜΕῖς is afterwards repeated. Regarding ὙΠΈΡ, 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.

ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησε] abstractum pro concreto (comp. λῆρος, ὄλεθρος, and the like in the classic writers, Kühner, II. p. 26), denoting more strongly that which God made Him to be (Dissen, ad Pind. pp. 145, 476), and ἐποίησε expresses the setting up of the state, in which Christ was actually exhibited by God as the concretum of ἁμαρτία, as ἉΜΑΡΤΩΛΌς, in being subjected by Him to suffer the punishment of death;[243] comp. κατάρα, Gal_3:13. Holsten, z. Evang. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 437, thinks of Christs having with His incarnation received also the principle of sin, although He remained without παράβασις. But this is not contained even in Rom_8:3; in the present passage it can only be imported at variance with the words (ἁμ. ἐποίησεν), and the distinction between ὁμαρτία and παράβασις 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 ἁμαρτίαν as sin-offering (אָשָׁם, חַטָּאת), with Augustine, Ambrosiaster, Pelagius, Oecumenius, Erasmus, Vatablus, Cornelius a Lapide, Piscator, Hammond, Wolf, Michaelis, Rosenmüller, 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 ἁμαρτ.

γενώμεθα] aorist (see the critical remarks), without reference to the relation of time. The present of the Recepta would denote that the coming of the ἡμεῖς to be ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΎΝΗ (to be ΔΊΚΑΙΟΙ) 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.

δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ] 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 δωρεὰ θεοῦ (Rom_5:17), the opposite of all ἸΔΊΑ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΎΝΗ (Rom_10:3). They who withstand that apostolic prayer of 2Co_5:20 are then those, who Τῇ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΎΝῌ ΤΟῦ ΘΕΟῦ ΟὐΧ ὙΠΕΤΆΓΗΣΑΝ, Rom_10:3.

ἘΝ ΑὐΤῷ] 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 ἁμαρτίαν, just like κατάρα, 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 (μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν), 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 κκτάρα, and His death as mors vicaria for the benefit (ὑπέρ) of the sinful men, to be whose ἱλαστήριον He was accordingly made by God a sinner. As the γίνεσθαι δικαιοσύνην θεοῦ took place for men imputatively, so also did the ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν αὐτόν take place for Christ imputatively. In this lies the congruity.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2Co 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. 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, τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐλέγχει με περὶ ἁμαρτίας (Joh 8:46 ), had never been disproved, and the Apostolic age held that He was χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας … ἀμίαντος , κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν (Heb 4:15 ; Heb 7:26 ), and that ἁμαρτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἕστιν (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 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 (Lev 16:21 ). ἁμαρτία 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 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 Joh 5:18 ; Joh 8:53 ; Joh 10:33 ). The nearest parallel in the N.T. is γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα (Gal 3:13 ); cf. also Isa 53:6 , Rom 8:3 , 1Pe 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. 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).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who was clean void of sin.

Righteous before God, and that with righteousness which is not essential to us, but being essential in Christ, God imputeth it to us through faith.

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

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

For--omitted in the oldest manuscripts. The grand reason why they should be reconciled to God, namely, the great atonement in Christ provided by God, is stated without the "for" as being part of the message of reconciliation (Co2 5:19).

he--God.

sin--not a sin offering, which would destroy the antithesis to "righteousness," and would make "sin" be used in different senses in the same sentence: not a sinful person, which would be untrue, and would require in the antithesis "righteous men," not "righteousness"; but "sin," that is, the representative Sin-bearer (vicariously) of the aggregate sin of all men past, present, and future. The sin of the world is one, therefore the singular, not the plural, is used; though its manifestations are manifold (Joh 1:29). "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the SIN of the world." Compare "made a curse for us," Gal 3:13.

for us--Greek, "in our behalf." Compare Joh 3:14, Christ being represented by the brazen serpent, the form, but not the substance, of the old serpent. At His death on the cross the sin-bearing for us was consummated.

knew no sin--by personal experience (Joh 8:46) [ALFORD]. Heb 7:26; Pe1 2:22; Jo1 3:5.

might be made--not the same Greek as the previous "made." Rather, "might become."

the righteousness of God--Not merely righteous, but righteousness itself; not merely righteousness, but the righteousness of God, because Christ is God, and what He is we are (Jo1 4:17), and He is "made of God unto us righteousness." As our sin is made over to Him, so His righteousness to us (in His having fulfilled all the righteousness of the law for us all, as our representative, Jer 23:6; Co1 1:30). The innocent was punished voluntarily as if guilty, that the guilty might be gratuitously rewarded as if innocent (Pe1 2:24). "Such are we in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God himself" [HOOKER].

in him--by virtue of our standing in Him, and in union with Him [ALFORD].

Next: 2 Corinthians Chapter 6

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 21. For he hath made him to be sin for us] Τον μη γνοντα ἁμαρτιαν, ὑπερ ἡμων ἁμαρτιαν εποιησεν· He made him who knew no sin, (who was innocent,) a sin-offering for us. The word αμαρτια 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 αμαρτια 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.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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 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. 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. (Isaiah 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 John 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 Romans 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.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(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 man’s sin: mankind identified with Christ’s righteousness—that 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 Christ—first ideally and objectively, as far as God’s action is concerned, and then actually and subjectively, by that act of will which he calls faith—we 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.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 53:6; 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."

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 (γὰρ 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’ ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν hamartian epoiēsen . 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” (ἁμαρτίαν 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” (ἁμαρτία 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 Whitby’s 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 Christ’s 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 ἁμαρτία 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 ἁμαρτία hamartia in the Septuagint, and the corresponding אשׁם '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 author’s 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 Christ’s 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 God’s 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?

I’ve Canaan’s 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.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Him (Christ) who knew no sin, (who had never sinned, nor was capable of sinning) he (God) hath made [4] sin for us. I had translated, with some French translators, he hath made a sacrifice for sin, as it is expounded by St. Augustine and many others, and grounded upon the authority of the Scriptures, in which the sacrifices for sins are divers times called sins, as Osee iv. 8. and in several places in Leviticus, by the Hebrew word Chattat, which signifies a sin, and is translated a victim for sin. But as this is nt the only interpretation, and that my design is always a literal translation of the text, not a paraphrase, upon second thoughts I judged it better to follow the very words of the Greek, as well as of the Latin text. For besides the exposition already mentioned, others expound these words, him he hath made sin for us, to signify that he made Christ like unto sinners, a mortal man, with the similitude of sin. Others that he made he reputed a sinner; with the wicked was he reputed; (Mark xv. 28.) God having laid upon him all our iniquities. (Isaias liii. 6.) --- That we might be made the justice of God in him; that is, that we might be justified and sanctified by God’s sanctifying grace, and the justice we receive from him. (Witham) --- Sin for us. That is, to be a sin-offering, a victim for sin. (Challoner)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Pro nobis peccatum fecit, Greek: uper emon amartian epoiesen. See St. Augustine, lib. de pec. Orig. chap. 32. serm. 48. de verbis Dei. nunc 134. tom. v. p. 655. and Serm. vi. de verb. Apost. chap. 8. Serm. clv. t. 5. p. 745.; Epist. ad Honoratum 120, nunc 140. chap. 30. tom. ii. p. 450, &c.

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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

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.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He hath made him to be sin for us; rather, he made; he speaks with definite reference to the cross. The expression is closely analogous to that in Gal_3:13, where it is said that Christ has been "made a curse for us." He was, as St. Augustine says, "delictorum susceptor, non commissor." He knew no sin; nay, he was the very righteousness, holiness itself, (Jer_23:6) and yet, for our benefit, God made him to be "sin" for us, in that he "sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin". (Rom_8:3) Many have understood the word "sin" in the sense of sin offering; (Lev_5:9, Lev_5:10) but that is a precarious application of the word, which is not justified by any other passage in the New Testament. We cannot, as Dean Plumptre says, get beyond the simple statement, which St. Paul is content to leave in its unexplicable mystery, "Christ identified with man"s sin; man identified with Christ"s righteousness." And thus, in Christ, God becomes Jehovah-Tsidkenu, "the Lord our Righteousness". (Jer_23:6) That we might be made the righteousness of God in him; rather, that we might become. The best comment on the pregnant significance of this verse is Rom_1:16, Rom_1:17, which is developed and explained in so large a section of that great Epistle (see 3:22-25; 4:5-8; 5:19, etc.). In him In his blood is a means of propitiation by which the righteousness of God becomes the righteousness of man, (1Co_1:30) so that man is justified. The truth which St. Paul thus develops and expresses is stated by St. Peter and St. John in a simpler and less theological form (1Pe_2:22-24; 1Jn_3:5)

Christ made sin.

he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." "Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (Revised Version). From this passage we gather three wonderful truths.

I That Christ was ABSOLUTELY SINLESS. "Who knew no sin." Intellectually, of course, he knew all the sin in the world; but he never experienced it, he was absolutely free from it.

1. He was "without sin," although he lived in a sinful world. Of all the millions who have been here he alone moved amongst the world and received no taint of moral contamination.

2. He was "without sin," although he was powerfully tempted. Had he been untemptable there would have been no virtue in his freedom from sin, and had there been no tempter there would have been nothing praiseworthy in his sinlessness. "He was tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

II That, though sinless, Christ was in some sense MADE SIN BY GOD. "He hath made him to be sin for us." What meaneth this?

1. It cannot mean that God made the sinless One a sinner. This would beimpossible. No one can create a moral character for another.

2. It cannot mean that God imputed to him the sin of the world, andpunished him for the world"s sin. The idea of literal substitution is repugnant to reason and unsustained by any honest interpretation of God"s Holy Word. The atonement of Christ consists, not in what he said, did, or suffered, but in what he was. He himself is the Atonement, the Reconciler. What, then, does it mean? Two facts may throw some light.

(1) That God sent Christ into a world of sinners to become closely identified with them. He was related to sinners, mingled with them, ate and drank with them, and was in the community, counted as one of them. "He was numbered with the transgressors.

(2) That God permitted this world of sinners to treat Christ as a sinner. He was calumniated, persecuted, insulted, murdered. God permitted all this, and what he permits is, in Scripture language, often ascribed to him.

III That the sinless One was thus made sin in order that men MIGHT PARTICIPATE IN GOD"S RIGHTEOUSNESS. "That we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Never did Divine moral excellence or the righteousness of God shine out with such glory to man as in the sufferings which Christ endured in consequence of this connection with sinners. As the stars can only show themselves at night, and as aromatic plants can only emit their precious odour by pressure, so the highest moral virtues can only come out by suffering and battling with the wrong. What self-sacrificing love, what unconquerable attachment to truth, what loyalty to the infinite Father, what sublime heroism of love, was here exhibited in the incarnation, the beneficent deeds, and overwhelming sufferings of Jesus!

The Sinless counted as a sinner.

We give but the bare outline of a course of thought on this subject, because it is so suggestive of controversial theological topics, and can be treated from the points of view of several distinct theological schools.

I CHRIST AS A SINLESS MAN. What proofs of this have we? And how does such sinlessness separate him from man and ensure his acceptance with God?

II THE SINLESS CAN NEVER, IN FACT, BE OTHER THAN SINLESS. Neither God nor man can be deceived into regarding Christ as a sinner. No exigencies of theology may make us speak of God as regarding Christ as other than he was.

III THE SINLESS CAN TAKE, AS A BURDEN ON HEART AND EFFORT, THE SINS OF OTHERS. Show fully in what senses this can be done.

IV WITH SIN THUS ON HIM, A SINLESS MAN MAY SUBMIT TO BE TREATED AS IF HE WERE HIMSELF A SINNER.

V WHEN THE SINLESS MAN THUS TAKES THE SINS OF OTHERS ON HIM HE BEARS THE SIN ALTOGETHER AWAY. Jesus took up the matter of our sin that it might be a hindrance and trouble to us no more forever. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He made him a sin offering, who knew no sin - A commendation peculiar to Christ. For us - Who knew no righteousness, who were inwardly and outwardly nothing but sin; 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 through him - Might through him be invested with that righteousness, first imputed to us, then implanted in us, which is in every sense the righteousness of God.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 Christ’s 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 Heaven’s 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.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

21. Hath made him … who knew no sin. As a sinless substitute he suffered for our sins, that our sins might thus be atoned for, the law satisfied, and we be forgiven and accounted righteous. Since we die with Christ, in him we pay the penalty, and are justified.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

21. τόν (אBCDFG, Latt. Copt.) rather than τὸν γάρ (א3D3KLP, Syrr. Arm. Aeth.). The γάρ might be inserted to avoid abruptness.

γενώμεθα (אBCDEBLP) rather than γινώμεθα (cursives).

21. τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν. The insertion of γὰρ in some MSS. and versions illustrates the tendency, especially in versions, to insert particles, which make the diction more smooth, but less forcible. Here the abruptness of the appeal is impressive. ‘Does any one ask, How should I be reconciled?’ Him who knew no sin, on our behalf he made (to be) sin (Gal 3:13): in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Cremer, Lex. p. 640. Here, as probably in Heb 3:2, ἐποίησεν may mean ‘constituted.’ The proposal to make ἁμαρτίαν in ἁμ. ἐποίησεν mean ‘sin-offering’ has found advocates from Augustine to Ewald; but N.T. usage is against it. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (Eng. tr., Justification and Reconciliation, Edinb. 2nd ed. 1902), is a storehouse of information as to theories respecting this difficult subject. See also Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, Lond. 1881; Lias, Hulsean Lectures, Camb. 1884; Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, Lond. 2nd ed. 1889.

ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ. This includes both the righteousness which is God’s attribute and also that which proceeds from Him as a grace to man: see Sanday and Headlam on Rom 1:17. While God is made human in Christ, even to the extent of being a sacrifice for man’s sin, man is made divine in Christ, even to the extent of winning the reward for God’s righteousness. As Theodoret puts it, κληθεὶς ὅπερ ἦμεν ἡμεῖς, ἐκάλεσεν ἡμᾶς ὅπερ ὑπῆρχεν αὐτῷ. Note that the two cases are looked at from opposite sides: ἐποίησεν states God’s action towards Christ, γενώμεθα states man’s advantage through the same. See Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 122 ff.

ἐν αὐτῷ. By virtue of His atoning death and our union with Him. It balances ὑπὼρ ὑμῶν: but we do not ‘become righteousness’ ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, ‘on Christ’s behalf.’ On the death of Christ as a propitiatory sacrifice see Sanday and Headlam on Rom 3:26.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21.] He describes his office as that of an ambassador for Christ, consisting in beseeching them, on their part, to be reconciled to God; and that, in consideration of the great Atonement which God has provided by Christ. On Christ’s behalf then (i.e. in pursuance of the imposition on us of the λόγος τῆς κατ.) we are ambassadors, as if God were exhorting by us: we beseech (‘you,’ but not uttered as an integral part of the present text, not a request now made and urged, as Rom 12:1; he is describing the embassage; we are ambassadors, and in our embassage it is our work to beseech—‘Be ye,’ &c.) on Christ’s behalf, Be reconciled to God:—καταλλ. strictly passive: ‘God was the Reconciler—let this reconciliation have effect on you—enter into it by faith.’ Our E. V., by inserting the word ‘ye,’ has given a false impression, making it appear as if there were an emphasis on it, corresponding to God being reconciled to us, as if it had been καταλλάγητε καὶ ὑμεῖς τῷ θεῷ,—whereas it is the simple being reconciled in that reconciliation in which God was, in Christ, the Reconciler.

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 γάρ (which has been supplied), as still forming part of the λόγος τῆς καταλλαγῆς. Him who knew not sin (τὸν οὐ γνόντα would merely assert the fact, that up to the time of ἐποίησεν, He was ignorant of sin. But μή 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. 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. β, 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, τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐλέγχει με περὶ ἁμαρτίας; He was thus ὁ μὴ γνοὺς ἁμαρτίαν (see Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. 131, who gives among other examples, one very similar, from Thucyd. i. 118, ἡσύχαζόν τε τὸ πλέον τοῦ χρόνου, ὄντες καὶ πρὸ τοῦ μὴ ταχεῖς ἰέναι ἐς τοὺς πολέμους),—‘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 ὑπὲρ ἡμ. are emphatic) He made (to be) sin (not, ‘a sin-offering,’ as Augustine, Ambros., Œcum., 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 = ἁμαρτωλός, as Meyer, al.: but, as De Wette, al., Sin, abstract, as opposed to Righteousness which follows; compare κατάρα, Gal 3:13. He, on the Cross, was the Representative of Sin,—of the sin of the world), that we might become (the present, γινώμ. 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).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21. τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν. ‘Him who came to no acquaintance with sin.’ Aug. (Con. duas epp. Pelag. i. 23) compares our Lord’s words to the wicked, ‘I know you not’ (Mat 7:23), “although, beyond a doubt, nothing is hidden from Him.” The asyndeton makes the announcement of this amazing paradox all the more impressive, a fact which was not felt by the copyists who inserted γάρ. The Apostle anticipates the question which his urgent καταλλάγητε is sure to provoke; How is it possible for sinners such as we are to become reconciled to God? His reply is as epigrammatic as it is startling.

We cannot press the classical force of μή as necessarily indicating a subjective view, because in N.T. μή with participles is the usual construction, although οὐ still survives; see on 1Co 9:26. But here μή is probably subjective, and if so, it is God’s view that is meant; ‘Him who in God’s sight came to no knowledge of sin.’ These opening words of the paradox have parallels enough in Scripture (1Pe 2:22; 1Jn 3:5; Heb 4:15, Heb 7:26); and in the front of them we may place Christ’s own challenge to His opponents, that none had ever convicted Him of sin (Joh 8:46). So far from knowing sin, He was, as Chrys. says, Αὐτοδικαιοσύνη, Righteousness itself. He had known sin in others, had Himself been tempted to it, but His conscience had never accused Him of having yielded. The commandments never roused in Him, as they did in His Apostle (Rom 7:7-11), the consciousness that He had transgressed in act or will.

With the very doubtful exception of 2Th 2:3, ἁμαρτία in the sing. is not found in any other group of the Pauline Epistles. In this group it is found in all four Epistles (11:7; 1Co 15:56; Gal 2:17, Gal 2:3:22; Rom. 3-8. often, 14:23). The plur. is found in all four groups. St Paul rarely uses ἁμάρτημα (1Co 6:18; Rom 3:25; elsewhere only Mk. and 2 Pet.). Westcott, Ephesians, p. 165.

Note the chiasmus between τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν and ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν, and comp. 4:3, 4:8, 9:6, 10:11, 13:3.

ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν. ‘On our behalf He made to be sin.’ Quis auderet sic loqui, nisi Paulus praeiret (Beng.). The nearest approach to this startling utterance comes also from St Paul, when he speaks of Christ as γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα (Gal 3:13). Both passages are probably influenced by the language of LXX respecting the sin-offering and the guilt-offering in Lev. 4., and respecting the scape-goat in Lev_16. The authority of Augustine, who states the view repeatedly, especially in his anti-Pelagian treatises, has caused many to solve the difficulty of ‘made him to be ἁμαρτία’ by supposing that ἁμαρτία, peccatum, here means ‘sin-offering.’ Lev 4:25, Lev 4:29 perhaps may be quoted in support of this; but no support for it can be found in N.T., and it cannot stand here, because of ἁμαρτίαν in the previous clause, where it must mean ‘sin.’ Nor can the other suggestion of Aug. be accepted, that ἁμαρτία may mean human nature, as being liable to suffering and death, which are the penalties of sin; so that ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν means that God made Christ assume human nature. This is improbable enough in itself; and, as before, the previous ἁμαρτίαν forbids it. * We must face the plain meaning of the Apostle’s strong words. In some sense which we cannot fathom, God is said to have identified Christ with man’s sin, in order that man might be identified with God’s own righteousness. The relationship expressed by ‘Christ in us and we in Him’ is part of the solution. It is by union of Christ with man that Christ is identified with human sin, and it is by union of man with Christ that man is identified with Divine righteousness. No explanation of these mysterious words satisfies us. They are a bold attempt to express what cannot even be grasped in human thought, still less be expressed in human language; and it is rash to put our own interpretation on the verse, build a theory of the Atonement upon that interpretation, and then claim for the theory the authority of St Paul. St Paul is giving a courageous answer to a difficult question; he is not starting or summarizing a systematized doctrine of reconciliation. In his answer he has given a striking illustration of the truth of J. H. Newman’s words, made so famous by Charles Kingsley; “It is not more than an hyperbole to say, that, in certain cases, a lie is the nearest approach to the truth.” St Paul’s words here cannot be true, and yet it is possible that they are the best way of stating what is true. We have once more got down to “the bed-rock of a contradiction.” “But it raises one’s opinion of the extraordinary sanity of Paul’s judgment, and his insight, that he could be so near to the substitutionary view of the Atonement without accepting it. He was in fact kept from accepting it by his view of the nature of faith, which was of an extremely practical kind. He regarded salvation as consisting in the continuing of the life of Christ and sharing His obedience, but not in being merely justified, as in a law-court, by a fictitious claim to merit which one did not possess” (P. Gardner, The Religious Experience of St Paul, p. 195).

ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα. ‘In order that we might become.’ It is for our gain, not His; the whole process is ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. For ἡμεῖς he might have said οἱ μὴ γνόντες δικαιοσύνην.

δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ. It is God’s, not ours (Rom 10:3); it is the righteousness which characterizes Him and which He imparts as a grace to man (Rom 5:17). See on Rom 1:17; also Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 123-126; Bruce, St Paul’s Conception of Christianity, p. 176.

ἐν αὐτῷ. It is in Christ, i.e. through our union with Him and our sharing in the outcome of His Death and Resurrection, and not in our own right, that we become righteous in God’s sight. Ἐν αὐτῷ in this clause corresponds to ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν in the previous clause; but the same preposition could not be used in both places. St Paul could not have said that Christ was made to be sin ‘in us’; still less that we become righteous ‘on Christ’s behalf.’ See on Rom 3:26.

For numerous theories of the Atonement see Ritschl, justification and Reconciliation, 2nd ed. 1902; H. N. Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, 1881; Dale, The Doctrine of the Atonement, 1875; A. Lyttelton in Lux Mundi, 1889; Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, 1889; J. M. Wilson, Hulsean Lectures, 1899; G. B. Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation, 1905; R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 1907.

א3 D3 E K L P, Syrr. Arm. Aeth. Goth. AV insert γάρ after τόν: א * B C D * F G 17, 67 * *, Latt. Copt. RV. omit. Aug. (Enchir. 41) knew of a text in quibusdam mendosis codicibus which had ὁ μὴ γνοὺς ἁμαρτίαν, is qui non noverat peccatum, pro nobis peccaium fecit, “as if,” says Augustine, “for our sakes Christ committed sin!”

* It is hardly necessary to point out that there is no warrant for limiting the ‘we’ in this section (1-10) to the Apostle, as if he expected to be made an exception to belivers in general.

† See alos Rom 5:12. In the early versions, hic often represents the Greek article, and Jerome has allowed this to stand in various places in the Epistles which he seems to have revised much less carefully than the Gospels. In the Gospels he has not allowed hic mundus to stand for ὁ κόσμος.

* Cicero suggests that it is because corpses are buried in the ground, that people believe that the life of the dead is spent under the earth; quam opinionem magni errores consecuti sunt (Tusc. I. xvi. 36; see also De Rep. vi. 6:15, 26, 29).

* Spenser seems to have that the form of the natural body is derived from the soul. In his Hymne in Honour of Beutie he says; “For of the soule the bodies forme doth take; For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.” Philo thought otherwise; ὀ ημέτερος νοῦς οὐ δεδημιούργηκε τὸσῶμα, ἀλλὰ ἔστιν ἔργον ἑτέρου (De Migr. Abr. § 35).

D D (Sixth century). Codex Claromontanus; now at Paris. A Graeco-Latin MS. The Latin (d) is akin to the Old Latin. Many subsequent hands (sixth to ninth centuries) have corrected the MS.

E E (Ninth century). At Petrograd. A copy of D, and unimportant

F F (Late ninth century). Codex Augiensis (from Reichenau); now at Trinity College, Cambridge.

G G (Late ninth century). Codex Boernerianus; at Dresden. Interlined with the Latin (in minluscules). The Greek text is almost the same as that of F, but the Latin (g) shows Old Latin elements.

* See the beautiful passage in Plat. Phaedo, 66, 67. But non agnoscit fides philosophicum corporis a Crueatore dati fastidium (Beng.).

* This use of γυμνός is found in Plato, e.g. Cratylus 403, Gorgias 523, 524.

† Rom 15:4, προεγράφη is repeated as ἐγράφη, Eph 6:13, ἀντιστῆναι as στῆναι, 1Pe 1:10, ἐξηραύνησαν as ἐραυνῶντες (J. H. Moulton, p. 115).

אԠא (Fourth century). Codex Sinaiticus; now at Petrograd, the only uncial MS. containing the whole N.T.

C C (Fifth century). Codex Ephraemi, a Palimpsest; now at Paris, very defective. Of 2 Corinthians all from 10:8 onwards is wanting.

K K (Ninth century). Codex Mosquensis; now at Moscow.

L L (Ninth century). Codex Angelicus; now in the Angelica Library at Rome.

P P (Ninth century). Codex Porfirianus Chiovensis, formerly possessed by Bishop Porfiri of Kiev, and now at Petrograd.

B B (Fourth century). Codex Vaticanus.

17 17. (Evan. 33, Act_13. Ninth century). Now at paris. “The queen of the cursives” and the best for the Pauline Epistles; more than any other it preserves Pre-Syrian readings and agrees with B D L.

* information respecting the commentator is to be found in the volume on the First Epistle, pp. lxvi f.

d d The Latin companion of D

e d The Latin companion of E

g d The Latin companion of G

* This desire is frequently expressed by philosophers, especially of the Platonic and Neo-Platonic School, but it is not expressed here. The Jewish belief was that the soul, furnished with a body, contitutes a man.

† “The common ἐφʼ ᾧ c. fut. indic., ‘on condition that,’ does not appear in the N.T.” (J H. Moulton, p. 107).

67 67. (Eleventh century). At Vienna. Has valuable marginal readings (67 * *) akin to B and M; these readings must have been copied from an ancient MS., but not from the Codex Ruber itself.

* In the Testament of Abraham 15 (p. 95, ed. James), ὁ ἀσώματος Michael says to Abraham, ποίησον διάταξιν περὶ πάντων ὧν ἔχεις· ὄτι ἤγγικεν ἡ ἡμέρα ἐν ᾗ μέλλεις ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἐκδημεῖν καὶ ἔτι ἄπαξ πρὸς Κύριον ἔρχεσθαι.

* Comp. Venit ad nos ex his, quos amamus, etiam absentibus, gaudium: sedid leve et evanidum. Conspectus et praesentia et conversatio aliquid habet vivae voluptatis: utique si non tantum quem velis, sed qualiem velis, videas (Seneca, Ep. xxxv. 2, 3).

† The approximation to this in Wisd. 3:1-5 is worth considering. ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. … Because God made trial of them, and found them worthy of Himself.’ See on vv. 1 and 4.

f d The Latin companion of F

* Augustine speaks of a certain divine power, qua fict ut cuique opera sua vel bona vel mala cuncta in memoriam revocentur et mentis intuitu mira celeritate curnantur, ut accuset vel excuset scientia conscienliam, atque ita simul el omnes et singuli judicentur (De civ. Dei, xx. 14).

† Stanley is in error in stating that “when the Baislica became the model of the Christian place of worship, the name of βῆμα (or tribunal) was transferred to the chair of the bishop.” The βῆμα was the space inside, and sometimes in front of, the apse, containing the altar, the seats of the presbyters, and the cathedra of the bishop, the last being in the centre of the wall of the apse.

* G. B. Redman, in his essay on the Theology of St Paul in The Parting of the Roads, pp. 213-238, after working through the evidence in the Epistles, comes to this conclusion; “Hence the theory of a gradual development of St Paul’s thought, involving the abandonment of the old idea of the coming of the Lord to inaugurate a new order of things, in favour of a conception of the gradual improvement of earthly conditions by the work of the Spirit, seems insufficiently supported by the evidence. The Advent Hope retains a permanent place in his scheme of Christianity.”

* We find gloriari in in the same sense; non pudet philosophum in lo gloriari quod haec non timeat (Cic. Tusc. 1:21:48); in virtute recte gloriamur (Nat. Dear. III. xxxvi. 87). More often gloriari has no preposition or de.

* See J.A. Beet in the Expositor, 3rd series, vi pp. 140-150 (1887).

* The connexion is of this kind. To live for oneself means that one estimates others by purely external destinctions (κατὰ σάρκα); ever since we recognized the meaning of Christ’s death we have ceased to assign any value to such distinctions: it is the internal qualities that count.

* P. Gardner may perhaps be claimed as a supporter of it when he says; ‘This reference is not to the human life of Jesus, which Paul had probably not witnessed, but to the kind of knowledge which is only of the senses, and has not become a process of the spirit” (The Religious Experience of St Paul, p. 200). See also Headlam, St Paul and Christianity, pp. 51f., and Foundations, p. 188.

* See also J. G. Machen in the Princeton Biblical Studies, p. 559, and H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 52.

* It is possible that here, as sometimes in classical Greek, ἀρχαῖος has the meaning of ἀρχαϊκός, ‘antiquated,’‘old-fashioned”; haec appellatio fastidium aliquod ostendit (Beng.).

* In 2:16, 3:5, 5:1, 12:6, RV. corrects ‘of’ to ‘from,’ but here it leaves ‘of’ unchanged.

† Ephraim Levine, in his essay on the Breach between Judaism and Christianity in The Parting of the Roads, p. 288, points out that Jews insisted on sincere penitence and complete reparation as necessary preliminaries to a reconciliation with God. He quotes Mishna Yoma;“Sins between man and man cannot be atoned for till the sinner has ackowledged his guilt and made reparation”; and he refers to C. G. Montefiore’s article on the Jewish conception of repentance in the Jewish Quarterly Review (1903).

* In Xen. Hellers. III. ii. 4, the MSS. have είπὼγ ὡς ὃτι ὄκνοίη, but editors reject the ὄτι. In late Greek ὡς ὅτι seems to be used as equivalent to ὅτι. See Milligan on 2Th 2:2.

* Klöpper points out that ὺπὲρ χρ. cannot mean ‘in Christ’s stead,’ which is not given in vv. 18, 19; it means ‘in Christ’s interest,’ Chrisli causam agens. The Apostle is God’s ambassador to further the cause of Christ.

* Gregory of Nyssa, who quotes the statement several times, would make ‘sin’ mean ‘flesh,’ the seat of sin.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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

Made to be sin [αμαρτιαν εποιησεν] . 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 [τον μη γνοντα αμαρτιαν] . 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.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.