2 Corinthians 5:21

"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." What a message! God is now begging you to be reconciled to Himself, because on the cross He once settled the question of sin with Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that God made Him to be sin for us. But it adds that He "knew no sin." 1 Peter 2:24 tells us that "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree." But it assures us that "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." 1 John 3:5 tells us that "He appeared to take away sins," and adds, "in Him there is no sin." Nothing could be clearer. Only a sinless sacrifice could meet the claims of God's holiness against sin. If Jesus had not been sinless, He could not have stood in the sinner's place. He would not have survived the judgment, and we would have had no Saviour.

One verse made this question clear to me: was Christ a sin-bearer all His life? The verse is, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." He must first be shown to know no sin all His life. Only then can He be made sin. If He bore sins during His life, that would mean atonement without blood. But "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."

Some commentators would translate sin for us as sin-offering. In the original language there is only one word for both sin and sin-offering. That is how closely the holy offering is identified with the sinful person who brings it.

Sin had to be put away completely out of God's sight. So God had to be perfectly glorified about it, in the very place where sin was before Him. Christ was made sin, and He appeared in order to remove it from God's sight, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Besides this, our sins (guilt) were in question, and Christ bore them in His own body on the tree. The sins are borne, and Christ has them no more. They are gone as guilt before God for ever.

There is much force and value in the word "made." It shows how completely righteousness was foreign to the nature of man, just as sin was foreign to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own — in other words, he knew no righteousness — and so he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and so He had to be "made sin," in order that we might be made righteousness — "the righteousness of God in Him." And this passage teaches more. That the Lord Jesus was "made sin for us" is no more real, no more true, no more solid, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him."

If God will not charge my trespasses to me, then what will He charge? Righteousness — even the righteousness of God… Sin is finished with, as far as the believer is concerned. Christ lives as our continuing righteousness before God, and we live in Him. There is not so much as one single entry against us in the book of divine justice; but there is a risen and glorified Christ to our credit.

The Old Testament sacrifices give us a picture of Christ's sacrifice. So God making Christ a sacrifice for sin can be explained. But that God should make Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us — that baffles all explanation… Sin marked everything we were. And all that we were, He was made when He died on the cross. Righteousness wholly characterizes God, and what He is we are made in Christ.