The Apostle has just said: “For Christ we beseech you, be reconciled to God.” He hastens to add that this reconciliation is possible and easy, because God has taken the initiative and prepared the ways. The thought assumes, therefore, this paradoxical turn: By a sublime condescension on the part of God, the Just One becomes sin, in order that sinners may become justice. Here again there is, properly speaking, no substitution of persons, but solidarity of action. Sin is not transferred from men to Christ, but it proceeds from men to embrace Christ as the representative of human nature, just as the justice of God is nor transferred from Christ to men, but proceeds from Christ to embrace men, when the latter, by filial adoption, are clothed with the divine nature [Rom 8:14-17]. This idea is more clearly expressed in the second sentence, for we become the justice of God only in Christ; that is to say, only in so far as we are united with him; but the two parts of the phrase are parallel and are intended mutually to explain each other. The Apostle, in using the general terms “sin” and “justice,” does not employ exactly the abstract for the concrete, which would not be suitable here; he means to express a collective idea. Jesus Christ, as the Head of the human race, whose cause he represents and whose interests he includes, personifies sin; he is made “sin for us,” not in our place, but for our advantage; for, by making himself a joint partaker of our fate, he associates us with his destiny; thus, being made sin for us, he causes us to be made the justice of God in him. Jesus is neither a sinner nor sin, personally, but as a member of a sinful family, with which he identifies himself [Rom 8:3]. It is in the same sense that he is made a ‘curse,’ [Gal 3:13-14] like the branch of an accursed tree. Similarly, on account of our union with him who is justice itself, we participate in his ‘justice.’ Jesus, being by his nature impeccable, cannot be made a sinner by his contact with sinners, while our moral union with the Just One par excellence renders us really just ourselves. And this justice, because it comes from grace and not from us, is rightly called the “justice of God.”
