What does it mean that God made Jesus to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21)?

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though GOD DID BESEECH you by us; WE PRAY YOU in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. FOR he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." What a message! God now beseeching you to be reconciled to Himself, because He once on the cross took up with Christ the question of sin. There and then His judgment of it fell upon Christ, so that now whoever believes in Him stands before God in all the value of that work by which God has been glorified and sin put away. God's righteousness, and His estimate of that work, are seen not only in His taking Christ out of the grave into glory, but by His putting the believer in Christ in the very same place before Him that Christ now has. In death on the cross He took our place, in life now before God He gives us His place. What righteousness and what love!

Verse 21. "For He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin," etc. We have now, in this closing verse, a bold and emphatic statement of the ever-blessed truth which forms the basis of this marvellous negotiation between the God of all grace and those who consent to sit down at His feet in Jesus, and receive His words (Deut. 33:3). Two things are here contemplated by the Spirit: the positive work of God, and its definitive intent; and in connection with these we have the Lord Jesus and His work presented to us under two entirely opposite aspects, though morally the truth is one. He is represented first as having been made "sin," and secondly as being personally and eternally the "righteousness of God." And first, let us carefully distinguish between being made sin and being made a sinner.* A sacrificial substitute is of necessity distinct from what it represents, and the more strongly marked this difference is, the more exactly is the idea of vicarious expiation realized, which is that innocence suffers in the place of guilt. Under the law a clean beast was the appointed means of showing forth at once, both the principle of vicarious satisfaction, and the insufficiency of anything that man could lay upon God's altar to make an effectual atonement for his soul. For while contrasted in its moral condition, the substituted victim must in nature be identical with what it represents. The language here employed by the apostle receives an ample illustration from the detailed account recorded for us in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus of the sacrificial ordinances of the annual day of atonement. Because the offered victim had transferred to it on that great day the whole measure and variety of Israel's sins, it was made by that act to be, in the eye of the Avenger, the thing it bore, and from which it had its sacrificial name. So is it also with our divine Redeemer and His passion. For the suffering of death He was made a little lower than the angels, but before the hour of His mortal pains arrived, He had lived, and borne, and wrought, and spoken, in such sort as to prove Himself to be in truth the Holy One of God. From beneath, as well as from above, this witness had been borne to Him whom men alone despised (Mark 1. 24). Jesus was made sin for us, when having accepted at the Father's hands the cup which crowned the measure of His perfect obedience, He, by the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God. For upon the Lamb, thus self-devoted, but of old ordained, God laid in His good pleasure the iniquity of us all. Things that He knew not were then laid unresisted to His charge, and in the completeness of His character as our Substitute, He appropriates the burden then imposed, confessing what He knew not as His own. For us God made Him to be sin; putting on Him who knew no sin the thing which makes as naturally what we are; and treating His well-beloved Son, for our sakes, as if He were indeed the very thing which then in our stead He bore.

We must be on our guard also against the fallacious idea sometimes grounded on this verse, that Christ was made sin absolutely and in a final and determinative sense. If so, sin would, of course, be altogether at an end; the evil existing in the world must be called by some other name; and of those at least who call upon His name it would be true that they have no longer any sin — a conclusion expressly contradicted by the Holy Ghost (1 John 1:8, 10). The precious doctrine which we are considering is the portion and resting-place of faith alone, and faith in its very nature seeks in its great Object what it has not in itself. The doctrine of vicarious imputation is a contradiction of all natural experience, because it originates with Him whose thoughts are not as our thoughts. He who knew no sin was made sin for us, who know that in ourselves, that is, in our flesh, there dwells no good thing. But our Substitute is not to be confounded with ourselves. And as with sin, so also with its opposite. God, who made the Just One to be sin for us, did so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We shall examine presently with more attention the import of these blessed words. Let us here notice only that God's righteousness is the exactest opposite to human sin, and as an inseparable attribute of God can be manifested only in one who is Himself divine. Now the Father and the Son are one, and God was in the Christ whom men refused. Of the works which the Just One wrought in the days of His humiliation, when as the Son of man He fulfilled for our sakes all righteousness, He disclaimed all separate praise. "The Father which dwells in me, He does the works" (John 14:10), are words which not only express the perfection of His human nature as the obedient glorifier of His Maker — thus separating Him morally from Adam and his seed (Rom. 3:23); but show also that all that the acceptable Man did was the work also of God. God's righteousness is never out of or apart from Christ; and the faith which unites the pardoned sinner to the Just One, who once suffered in his stead, makes him as truly the righteousness of God in Him, as he was personally dead in trespasses and sins before he knew the power of his Saviour's name. By imputation the Deliverer stood, for the fatal hour of sacrifice, beneath the weight of all His people's sin; by the just award, therefore, of the God to whom that Sacrifice was offered, they are now designated according to the character of Him who is their new and endless life.*

But while the Godhead of the Saviour is everywhere attested by the Spirit, and shines brightly and steadily for faith through all the varied manifestations of that "grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" which it is the believer's wealth to know (2 Cor. 8:9), and never more vividly than when hanging on the cross, the point of the apostle's teaching in these words is the exhaustive completeness of God's great work of propitiatory reconciliation through the dying obedience of His Son. In the brevity of the statement its great force consists. When God made Him to be sin for us, all that by divine propriety of speech could be thus designated was objectively contemplated by the eye of Him who is the Judge of all, as He looked down upon His dying Christ. It is a positive act, a new and strange work, and which never could be wrought a second time, that the Holy Spirit here attests; and the terms which He employs are evidently chosen with a special reference to the magnitude of that which is described. God made the worlds by Jesus Christ, and will create them yet again; He made also Him who knew no sin to be sin in our stead (amartian epoiesen). No language can express more forcibly both the absoluteness of His will who did not spare His Son, and the natural and perfect spotlessness of Him who came to do it. Had there been in the man Jesus any thought or natural capacity of sinning, God could not have made Him to be sin. Such speech would then be both superfluous and untrue. He does not make us sinners. What we are by birth, and inheritance He suffers to appear in practice to our own confusion, and then lays upon the holy and blameless One the iniquity of us all. Let the tried half-believer, who with a thoroughly awakened conscience may be toiling in spirit under the weight of his own sins, consider well these gracious words, and learn quickly the first lesson of an acceptable obedience by consenting to the will of God. He has wrought this wondrous thing. Shall we refuse or hesitate to own His hand? He has transferred sin from sinners to the Just One; shall we dispute the fact because of its contrariety to our thoughts? Nay, He has both done it, and done it for our sakes, that by wisely considering His work we may learn to know and love the God with whom we have to do.

Nor has love's great sacrifice been made without a worthy end. If God's beloved was made sin by Him, it was that we might become (hina hemeis genometha) the righteousness of God in Him. Let us first notice a significant distinction which exists between the words which the apostle is here taught to use when speaking of the Saviour on the one hand, and on the other of the fruit of the travail of His soul — a distinction but imperfectly expressed in our translation. When he demonstrates the imputation of our sin to Christ, the strongest possible term is employed, in order to impress the completeness of the sacrificial transfer of all our burden to the Lord: "He made Him to be sin for us." But when the result is in contemplation, there is a change also of expression; it is not said "that we might be made,"but "that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." We are not made, or constituted substantively, any other thing than that we naturally are. Our guilt is indeed transferred to Him, but not in the same sense His worthiness to us. We cease to be guilty in the sight of God, but does He cease to be the Just One? By imputation we are as He is, but in living fact He only is the righteousness of God. We become so by our faith in Him. Sinners are sinners, whether saved or lost. A saint is a sinner saved, since by virtue of the faith which joins him to the Saviour, he is become by imputation what his dead and risen Sponsor personally is. Now in name, in action, and in everlasting truth, the Lamb of God is equally the righteousness of God.

Two or three preliminary remarks will help to the understanding of this scripture. First, it is essential to notice that the apostle is speaking of man's state, not of his guilt. This is seen from verse 14, "If one died for all, then were all dead." Secondly, the verse refers to a direct action of God in relation to Christ: "He hath made Him to be sin for us"; and the word "made" in this clause is entirely different from that so rendered in the next clause. "Made" must be retained in its full and proper force in the first instance; in the second, it is more properly rendered "become" - "become the righteousness of God in Him." It is therefore beyond a doubt that the apostle is setting forth that solemn transaction on the cross when God caused the judgment due to man's sinful estate and condition to fall upon Christ. That He also bore the sins of His people at the same time is blessedly true, but it is not the aspect of His death here presented. All were "dead," as the consequence and fruit of sin (Rom. 5:12); and Christ came and "died for all," offering Himself as a voluntary victim to bear all that the glory of God required in judgment. He was thus "made sin," fully identified by God with the state of those for whom He suffered. None but One, let it be reverently said, who was intrinsically holy, and none but He, who was more than man, could either have so offered Himself, or have borne such unsparing judgment. And never, let it be added, did His perfections, His devotedness to the glory of God at all costs, His wholehearted obedience, His grace, and His unquenchable love shine forth so resplendently. Up till this moment He had always been in entire communion with His Father, and in the unbounded sense of His delight; now He endured the hiding of God's face, and yet unfalteringly and perfectly, yea, divinely, He accomplished the whole of God's will in this new place, and under these new circumstances. It was indeed the climax of the perfection of His ever-perfect obedience; and hence in His death He furnished the Father, as is often said, with a new motive for the expression of His love. "Made sin" then is to be confined to what Christ endured on the cross from God, to whom He had presented Himself for this purpose, on account of our state and condition. And it is this truth which formed the essential foundation of the glorious ministry of reconciliation. There had been a preparation for this: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." (v. 19.) Since, moreover, Christ was no longer here, and had charged him with the mission, the apostle could proclaim himself an ambassador for Christ, "as though God did beseech by us"; and consequently he went forth everywhere beseeching men to be reconciled to God. In this blessed mission he could tell them of the immutable basis which God Himself had laid in the cross of Christ for their reconciliation; and on which all who bowed to the message might become the righteousness of God in Christ. Such would be the response of God to the One who had been made sin for His glory. His first answer to it (for therein is His righteousness displayed) is seen in the place Christ now occupies at His right hand. "If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." But He was made sin for us, and on this account all believers will be the eternal expression of God's righteousness in Christ. Nothing short of this would satisfy the heart of God in response to the work of His beloved Son, or fully declare His righteousness. It is the moral state of the new creation, where old things have passed away, and where all things have become new - the unhindered display of the glory of God.

Now this same liberty of access is proclaimed, but the ground of it is an already accomplished work: "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." The main feature of atonement is here very clearly given; and the force is made plainer by the contrast of words and thought. In the same sense was Christ made sin for us as that in which we are made righteousness; and as the sin was the sin of man, so the righteousness is the righteousness of God. Moreover, as it was not in Himself that He was made sin, for He knew none; so not in ourselves are we made divine righteousness, but in Him. The antithesis in all this no one can doubt to be designed; and it makes evident the meaning of the whole. Christ who knew no sin was identified with it upon the cross; we as the fruit of His work, in our place in Him, are identified with the righteousness of God. In Him dying upon the tree is seen the sin of man; but the righteousness of God is seen, wonderful to say, in sinners being accepted in the Beloved.

There is a profound depth in verse 21 that defies all our feeble attempts at explanation. That God should make Christ to be a sacrifice for sin might be explained in terms of those Old Testament sacrifices that furnish a type of His sacrifice. But that God should make Him, who knew no sin, TO BE SIN for us baffles all explanation. Again, we might offer some explanation of how we are justified, of how righteousness is imputed to those who believe. But how we may in Him be MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD is beyond us. Sin wholly characterized us, and all that we were He was made when He died on the cross. Righteousness wholly characterizes God, and that which He is we are made in Christ.

The words "for he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin," show the bearing of His holy life as proving Him to be a suitable victim to take our sin upon Himself, because He knew it not; and those which follow, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in him," in making this the result of His having "been made sin," show that God's righteousness is exhibited — in reference to His having borne it, and all the consequences of it, in death and judgment — in setting Him at His own right hand, and also in giving us a place morally before Himself, according to the value of that which has been done for us. For when all the punishment of our sin had been gone through fully by that holy One, the righteousness of God must of necessity respond to it in this way, in taking Him out of the grave, placing Him, and us in Him, beyond the reach of the effects of the sin He had so borne.

Here is the first of these truths, in connection with the apostle's ministry, which form the subject of these chapters. God was in Christ (that is to say, when Christ was on earth). The day of judgment had not been waited for. God had come down in love into the world alienated from Him. Such was Christ. Three things were connected with and characterised this great and essential truth: reconciling the world, not imputing transgression, and putting the word of reconciliation into the apostle. As the result of this third consequence of the incarnation, the apostle assumes the character of ambassador for Christ, as though God exhorted by his means, he besought men, in the name of Christ, to be reconciled to God. But such an embassy supposed the absence of Christ; His ambassador acted in His stead. It was in fact based upon another truth of immeasurable importance, namely, that God had made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, in order that we should be made the righteousness of God in Him. This was the true way to reconcile us, and that entirely, to God, according to the perfection of God fully revealed. For He had set His love upon us where we were, giving His Son, who was without spot or motion or principle of sin; and making Him (for He offered Himself to accomplish the will of God) sin for us, in order to make us in Him — who in that condition had perfectly glorified Him — the expression of His divine righteousness, before the heavenly principalities through all eternity; to make us His delight, as regards righteousness; "that we should be the righteousness of God in him." Man has no righteousness for God: God has made the saints, in Jesus, His righteousness. It is in us that this divine righteousness is seen fully verified — of course in Christ first, in setting Him at His right hand, and in us as in Him. Marvellous truth! which, if its results in us cause thanksgiving and praise to resound when looking at Jesus, silences the heart, and bows it down in adoration, astonished at the sight of His wonderful acts in grace.

This needs examining, for we find our Lord Jesus was made sin for us, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him," 2 Cor. 5:21. This must be distinguished from simply justification, it is vastly more than that. Nor is it the imputation to us of the righteousness Christ ever wrought in His life here. Blessed and perfect as all His ways were, He ever magnifying the law, and making it honourable, yet clearly that could not be imputed to us, seeing we are told in Gal. 2:21 "if righteousness come by the law then Christ died in vain." No legal righteousness then is ours in grace before God, but Christ Himself "is made to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," 1 Cor. 1:30. It is then what God has made Christ personally to be to us. It is a new thing since the cross, not anything our Lord did, but what He now is, being made such by God. This does not detract from either His life or His death; rather it shows what His life and death must have been to God, that God should thereupon constitute Him God's righteousness. So in Phil. 3:9, Paul says, "not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith."

Then it was that God "made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Now it is evident that if we are made in Christ — in the Christ who died and rose again — the very righteousness of God, there can be no longer before Him that which is obnoxious and distasteful to Him. It cannot be any longer a grief to His heart to look down upon us, but the exact reverse. Christ was identified with us and our sin under the judgment of God. We are identified with Him and His acceptance as risen from the dead.