Q&R: “How did Jesus ‘become sin’? Brad Jersak

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Question:

What does Paul mean when he says, “Jesus became sin for us”?

Response:

Strange, isn’t it?

The verse you are referring to is 2 Corinthians 5:21, where most translations say something like, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (NIV).

Before we try to tackle a passage that makes such an obscure and puzzling statement, it is best to begin with what Christian theology has been firmly convinced of and made central to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” The historic and apostolic Christian consensus is that Jesus is the fully human, fully divine Son of God, begotten of the Father from eternity and born in time to the virgin Mary. And in Trinitarian lingo, Jesus Christ is God the Son, co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit,… and here’s the pertinent point to your question: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), “The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End,” according to Revelation 1.

With that in mind, when we think of the Cross of Christ, we reject any notion that he ceased to be other than who is always was, is, and will be. We affirm his unchanging human and divine nature, even in death.

If those affirmations are true (as PTM takes them to be), then we simply cannot read 2 Corinthians 5:21 literally, as God the Father somehow actually transmuted Jesus into “sin” (whatever that even means!). I’ve laid out the “why not?” above in stark contrast.

Why does it say he became sin?

Most English Bibles try to be accurate, so if they start with a super literal word for word, wooden rendering of the verse, it would go like this: “The [One], not having known sin, he [God?] made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” In our Greek New Testaments, the same word for sin (hamartia) is used twice. So it makes perfect sense to translate the same words as ‘sin’ both times…

Until it doesn’t. Make sense, I mean. Theologically. It really makes no sense at all. In fact, affirming a literal sense of this verse would be formal heresy (a word we don’t use lightly).

But then how do we understand it? One view is that it’s not that Jesus was literally transformed into sin or that he somehow became a sinner. Rather, he was condemned to death and died on a cross as if he were a sinner, according to the reckoning of those who killed him and of the crowds who beheld him there. Some there would have judged him as guilty and worthy of death; others, in ignorance, may have thought, “Well, he must have done something, because cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13).

That may work, because the logic is that Jesus was reckoned guilty (but was really righteous) so that we (who are really guilty) would be reckoned righteous. Similarly, he who was rich became poor (for our sakes) so that we who were in poverty might become rich through our union (see 2 Corinthians 8:9). The principle here is exchange through union. That is, Christ united himself to humanity in his Incarnation and in that union, he assumes our broken condition and we assume the wholeness of his identity.

Fair enough. That’s good Pauline theology. And he may be doing that in this odd verse. But there is a second possibility:

Sin or Sin Offering?

Some English Bibles subtly alert us to Paul’s use of the Old Testament, where the word hamartia could be (and was) translated either sin OR sin offering. The NIV does insert a footnote after the second occurrence of ‘sin’ and at the bottom of the page, clarifies, “or sin offering.” The NLT (New Living Translation) makes it overt in the verse itself: “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

Is that a leap? Are they overextending the translator’s right to interpret texts for us if the words aren’t there in the Greek manuscript? Not in this case. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the common word for sin (chatta’ath) also means “sin offering.” So when Jewish rabbis translated books like Leviticus into Greek (the Septuagint), they would likewise use hamartia for either sin or sin offering. Paul knows this.

Jesus as Our Sin Offering

What would it mean for Jesus to be our “sin offering”? In fact, what was a “sin offering”?

Let’s do a quick review of the five types of offerings in the Torah. Take the following as a grossly distilled summary from an ignorant Gentile who is not a Hebrew scholar or Jewish historian.

The first three sacrifices were voluntary, the last two were mandatory:

  • 1. The burnt offering: a bull, bird, or ram without blemish, offered as worship or devotion.
  • 2. The grain offering and drink offering: cake or bread made of grain, flour, oil, and salt and wine, offered as gratitude for God’s provision.
  • 3. The peace offering: an unblemished animal and/or grains or breads, also given as a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fellowship followed by a shared meal.
  • 4. The trespass offering: a ram offered at the tabernacle/temple to atone for unintentional sins, cleansing from defiling sins or physical maladies.
  • 5. The sin offering: offered at the tabernacle/temple in atonement for sin or cleansing from defilement (for specific sins, known sins, unknown sins, or defilement. Depending on the person and the sin, it could be a young bull, a goat, a dove/pigeon, or fine flour. But there were specific rituals using the sprinkling of blood for cleansing ((Leviticus 4:1-5:13; 6:24-30).

How was Jesus a Sin Offering?

If Paul intends for us to see Jesus as our ‘sin offering,’ how so?

First, the sin offering is not an offering of appeasement to allay God’s wrath. It was an honest confession of one’s sin, one’s need for cleansing from defilement, and a demonstration of one’s willingness to receive forgiveness.

Second, the bull or goat or bird was given to the priest who would then ritualized the gift into an offering, sprinkling the blood or pouring it out, not to punish the animal or as a substitute for sinner. No. The blood poured out had a cleansing effect on the defiling effects of sin.

The book of Hebrews makes it clear that the sacrificial blood of bulls and goats couldn’t bring about a permanent solution to human sin. It was insufficient and impermanent to solve the human condition and effectively remove our sin stains.

But if Jesus provides himself as a sin offering, I would interpret that in a specific way that recognizes that he was the unblemished love offering, which love for us extended even to his death on the Cross, and that such self-giving, radically forgiving, other-centered love could indeed cleanse us of sin, wash away our shame, remove our guilt, and even heal us of the defilement of death. In being our sin offering, Jesus was able to make us righteous ‘by his blood.’ And by ‘his blood,’ we mean by his love in willingly laying down his life for us, which is to say, extending forgiveness, healing and liberation even as we shed his blood in violence.

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