God becomes sin?

[dismas337]

2 Cor. 5:21 reads “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin”. Sin, as I understand it, is “separation from God”. So according to Paul, God was made to be “separation from God”. I have always believed this to be the true “agony” in the garden. But I have never really fully understood the passage. I can understand how I can be separated from God, but *God *separated from God? I think I understand the ‘why’, but I struggle with the ‘how’. I assume that this has something to do with His descent into hell, but I am still having a difficult time with this paradox. If anyone can enlighten me, I would appreciate it.

 

[Jimdandy]

lakeland.org/kingdomtools/site/lakeland.org/resources/500000000019/1-56_IICor5_21Study_Guide_and_Mediation.pdf

 

[patrick457]

2 Cor. 5:21 reads “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin”. Sin, as I understand it, is “separation from God”. So according to Paul, God was made to be “separation from God”. I have always believed this to be the true “agony” in the garden. But I have never really fully understood the passage. I can understand how I can be separated from God, but *God *separated from God? I think I understand the ‘why’, but I struggle with the ‘how’. I assume that this has something to do with His descent into hell, but I am still having a difficult time with this paradox. If anyone can enlighten me, I would appreciate it.

In context, the verse would be in:

[T]he love of Christ compels us, because we have concluded this, that One died for all; therefore all have died. And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and was raised for them. Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we do not know Him in that way any longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!

And all these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, that God was was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We plead with you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. For He made Him who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we would become the righteousness of God in Him.

-2 Corinthians 5:14-21

The Haydock Commentary addresses it thusly:

Ver. 21. Him (Christ) who knew no sin, (who had never sinned, nor was capable of sinning) he (God) hath made 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 4:8 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 not 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 15: 28) God having laid upon him all our iniquities. (Isaias 53: 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)

 

[patrick457]

Cornelius Lapide meanwhile says:

Him who knew no sin. Experimentally, says St. Thomas, Christ knew no sin, though by simple knowledge He did, for He did no sin.

Hath made Him to be sin for us. For us, says Illyricus, who were sin; because, he says, sin is the substance and form of our soul. But to say this of ourselves is folly, of Christ blasphemy.

1.) The meaning is that God made Christ to be the victim offered for our sin, to prevent us from atoning for our sins by eternal death and fire. The Apostle plays on the word sin, for when he says, “Him who knew no sin,” he means sin strictly speaking; but when he says, “He made Him to be sin for us,” he employs a metonymy. So Ambrose, Theophylact, and Anselm. In Ps. 40:12, Christ calls our sins His.
2.) Sin here denotes, says St. Thomas, the likeness of sinful flesh which He took, that He might be passible, just as sinners who are descended from Adam are liable to suffering.
3.) Sin, in the sense of being regarded by men as a noteworthy sinner, and being crucified as a malefactor. So the Greek Fathers.

Of these three interpretations the first is the more full, significant, and vigorous, and the one more consonant with the usage of Scripture, which frequently speaks of an expiatory victim as sin. (cf. Hosea 4: 8; Lev. 4:24 and Lev. 4:21; Ezek. 44:29.)

The reason of this metonymy is that all the punishment and guilt of the sin were transferred to the expiatory victim, and so the sin itself might seem to be also transferred to it. In token of this the priest was accustomed to lay his hands on the victim, and call down on it the sins of the people; for by the hands are signified sinful actions, which are for the most part executed by the hands, as Theodoret says in his notes on Leviticus 1. Therefore the laying of hands on the victim was both a symbol of oblation and a testimony of the transference of guilt to the victim, showing that it was expiatory, and that it bore the sin itself, with all its burden of guilt and punishment. In this way the high-priest on the great Day of Atonement turned a goat into the wilderness, having imprecated on it the sins of the whole people. (cf. Lev.16:20)

That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
1.) That we might be made righteous before God, with the righteousness infused by God through the merits of Christ. So Chrysostom. He says righteousness and not righteous, says Theophylact, to signify the excellency of the grace, which effects that in the righteous there is no deformity, no stain of sin, but that there is complete grace and righteousness throughout.
2.) The righteousness of God was Christ made, in order that its effects, or the likeness of the uncreated righteousness of God, might be communicated to us by His created and infused righteousness. So Cyril (Thesaur. lib. xii. c. 3).
3.) Christ is so called because God owes not to us, but to Christ and His merits, the infusion of righteousness and the remission of our sins. cf. Augustine (Enchirid. c. 41). cf. also 1 Cor. 1:30.

Heretics raise the objection that Christ was made for us sin, in the sense that our sin was imputed to Him and was punished in Him; therefore we are made the righteousness of God, because it is imputed to us. I answer that the two things are not parallel; for Christ could not really be a sinner as we can really be righteous, nor does the Apostle press the analogy. He only says that Christ bore our sins, that we through Him might be justified. Moreover, Christ actually was made sin, i.e., a victim for sin (this is the meaning of “sin” here), and therefore we truly become the righteousness of God. So easily and completely can we turn the tables on these Protestant objectors.

 

[Todd_Easton]

Haydock’s Catholic Bible commentary suggests other possible interpretions of this verse.Ver. 21. Him (Christ) who knew no sin, (who had never sinned, nor was capable of sinning) he (God) hath made 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 diverse times called sins, as in 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 not 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)