Did Christ Become Sinful on Our Behalf? - by Jeremiah Johnson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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It is a Calvinist/reformist perspective that the Father punished Jesus instead of us, a doctrine called Penal Substitutionary Atonement. We discuss this problematic doctrine here. We assert that the Father did not punish Jesus for our sin. Nor did Jesus pay for our sin.

Why?

The OT sacrifices were never regarded as sinful. The Jews never punished the animals. They never looked at the animals as substituting for them. The Jews never regarded the sacrificial animals as payment for their sin. The blood, and it alone, was regarded as the effective agent regarding their sin. Jesus's spilled blood was exactly the same. The OT sacrifices were typology pointing to Christ. He was the sacrificial Lamb of God whose spilled blood washed us of our sin. His blood alone is sufficient to propitiate for us.

Further, he carried our sins to the Cross like one would carry out a sack of garbage. He was our burden-bearer: 

1Pe. 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

So if we rightly regard Jesus as our sacrifice, the One who carried away our sins to the cross (Col. 2:14), we no longer need to think the Father punished Him. Think about it. If the blood is sufficient no punishment is necessary.

The verse in question is 2 Corinthians 5:21: 

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The author will claim that this means Jesus was imputed with our sin. We disagree. Let's look at some of the words. It says God made Him to be sin. "Made" is the word poieó, which means I make, manufacture, construct. The literal Greek is 

The (one) having not known sin for us sin he made... 

The man Jesus was constructed, made for a purpose. Not imputed. He was "made sin" to reconcile us to God, which is what we read just a couple of verses before:

2Co. 5:19...God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ... 

Further, poieó has many shades of meaning in the Greek. One that caught our eye was this:

to (make i. e.) constitute or appoint one anything...

Poieó (made) is the same word used here:

Ac. 2:36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

Jesus was appointed to the position of sin, and he was appointed to the position of Lord and Christ. Nothing about His nature changed. The Father basically said, "Go, here's your position." Therefore, His position on earth was sin.

We certainly cannot say that Jesus was imputed with being Lord and Christ. Therefore, He was also not imputed with our sin.

If Jesus was not imputed with our sin, and if He did not substitute for us, then what is the meaning of 2Co. 5:21? He was indeed positionally appointed to be sin, but crucially, the verse does not say He was made to be our sin. Many Christians tend to read themselves into Scripture, assuming everything is about them. 

This might be a mistake.

We think it possible that Paul was actually discussing His incarnation as much as His sacrifice. That is, Jesus' position as a man. Here's what we mean:

Ro. 8:3-4 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

All the same concepts are here that are also in 2Co. 5:21, expanded with some additional information. One thing leaps out at us: "In the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering." This is very interesting phrasing. This is where our speculation about Him being made sin leads us.

In this scenario it isn't about our sin at all, but rather His position. He was appointed to being incarnated in the likeness of sinful man to offer himself as a ransom for many. Therefore, we think "He was made sin" means "he was made in the form of sinful flesh."

Let's retranslate:

2Co. 5:21 God appointed him who was unacquainted with sin to the position of a sinful man, for our benefit...

Admittedly this is speculation, but we think it solves a lot of doctrinal problems if it's true.

Lastly, the author manages to quote only one Scripture passage besides the subject verse. We must deem this Bad Bible Teaching.

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In the lead-up to the Truth Matters conference in October, we will be focusing our attention on the sufficiency, authority, and clarity of Scripture. Of our previous blog series, none better embodies that emphasis thanFrequently Abused Verses. The following entry from that series originally appeared on April 3, 2017. -ed.

If you wanted to find one verse that encapsulates the glorious truth of the gospel, you couldn’t do much better than the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Describing God’s reconciling work Paul writes, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

That verse gets to the heart of the good news of the gospel—Christ’s substitutionary death on our behalf. (Jesus' death on the cross was not substitutionary, it was sacrificial. He died to spill His blood, and the blood washes away every sin:

He. 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

He did not substitute for us, He died for us.)

And it gives us the confidence that Christ’s righteousness will be imputed to us. (His righteousness was not imputed to us, we were made righteous by Him:

Ro. 5:19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

We are actually righteous by faith:

Ro. 9:30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith.

The author seems to think that the Blood was not actually effectual, that we are somehow still in our sins but for Jesus obscuring the Father's line of sight. But no Bible verse tells us such a thing.)

 

It depicts the blessed reality of both those great doctrines—that when God looked at Christ on the cross, He saw us; (??? Where does the Bible say this?)

and when He looks at us now, He sees His Son. (??? Where does the Bible say this?)

Can you imagine a greater promise or a richer blessing?

And yet, buried in that verse is a short phrase that often trips up Bible students. Worse, this phrase has become a playground for heretics and charlatans. By manipulating these few simple words, they pervert the character and nature of Christ, and pollute the gospel. (The author will now embark on a completely useless and irrelevant rant about other teachers.)

Here’s the phrase, in its context: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Those three little words seem innocuous. But in the hands of a man like Kenneth Copeland, they can unleash a world of blasphemous error. Copeland is effectively the leader and the face of the Word-Faith movement, which is the primary proponent of the prosperity gospel. Copeland was the chief disciple of Kenneth Hagin, and has expanded Hagin’s family tree of heresy through his mentoring relationships with Benny Hinn, Joseph Prince, and many others.

Copeland and many of his acolytes teach that the short phrase “to be sin” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 indicates that Christ actually became sinful on the cross. They say it wasn’t merely the penalty for our sins that He took on Himself, but all the sins themselves, exchanging His divine and righteous nature for the nature of Satan.

Here is Copeland in his own words:

The righteousness of God was made to be sin. He accepted the sin nature of Satan in His own spirit, and at the moment He did so, He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

You don’t know what happened at the cross! Why do you think Moses, upon the instruction of God, raised a serpent upon that pole instead of a lamb? That used to bug me! I said, “Why in the world do You have to put that snake up there, the sign of Satan? Why don’t you put a lamb on the pole?”

The Lord said, “Because it was the sign of Satan that was hanging on the cross! I accepted in My own spirit spiritual death, and the light was turned off . . . made to be sin.” [1]

Benny Hinn holds to the same erroneous doctrine. Hinn has declared that Jesus “did not take my sin; He became my sin. . . . He became one with the nature of Satan.” [2] Hinn embellished the point further one night on TBN:

He [Jesus] who is righteous by choice said, “The only way I can stop sin is by me becoming it. I can’t just stop it by letting it touch me; I and it must become one.” Hear this! He who is the nature of God became the nature of Satan when he became sin! [3]

Even Joel Osteen—who reigns in his Word-Faith proclivities just enough to maintain his mainstream popularity—teaches this spurious doctrine:

Not only did Jesus pay for the punishment for your sins, the Bible says He actually became sin. He took sin upon Himself and into His being so that you could take God’s righteousness upon yourself and into your being. It’s the great exchange. [4]

Over and over these charlatans corrupt the nature of Christ and poison the gospel with these repulsive lies. Make no mistake—these are not small or insignificant errors. Accusing the Son of God of becoming a sinner is a direct assault on His divinity. Moreover, it’s an attack on the very aspect of His nature that made Him a suitable sacrifice for our sins in the first place: His righteousness.

(Rant completed...)

In the Old Testament, the Lord specifically demanded a spotless, unblemished lamb as the sacrifice for sin (Exodus 12:5). Those sacrifices pointed ahead to Christ, who would serve as the one, true sacrifice for our sins. But His sacrifice would be worthless if He became sinful during His crucifixion. Not only would He have ceased to be a fitting sacrifice, He would have completely ceased to be God.

In his commentary on 2 Corinthians, John MacArthur explains that all of God’s Word testifies to the crucial truth of Christ’s sinlessness.

The impeccability (sinlessness) of Jesus Christ is universally affirmed in Scripture, by believers and unbelievers alike. In John 8:46 Jesus challenged His Jewish opponents, “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” Before sentencing Him to death, Pilate repeatedly affirmed His innocence, declaring, “I find no guilt in this man” (Luke 23:4; cf. vv. 14, 22). The repentant thief on the cross said of Jesus, “This man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Even the hardened, callous Roman centurion in charge of the execution detail admitted, “Certainly this man was innocent” (Luke 23:47).

The apostles, those who most closely observed Jesus’ life during His earthly ministry, also testified to His sinlessness. Peter publicly proclaimed Him to be the “Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14). In his first epistle he declared Jesus to be “unblemished and spotless” (1 Peter 1:19); one “who committed no sin” (2:22); and “just” (3:18). John also testified to His sinlessness, writing, “in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). The inspired writer of Hebrews notes that “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15), because He is “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens” (7:26). [5]

John goes on to explain that the most powerful testament to the sinless nature of Christ comes in His unbroken fellowship with the Father, summed up in the simple statement, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). John writes,

It is equally unthinkable that God, whose “eyes are too pure to approve evil” (Habakkuk 1:13; cf. James 1:13), would make anyone a sinner, let alone His own Holy Son. He was the unblemished Lamb while on the cross, personally guilty of no evil. [6]

So how should we understand the idea that God made Christ “to be sin on our behalf”? (Yes, what about that? The phrase "on our behalf" uses the Greek word huper, for the betterment (advantage) of... We find that word here: 

He. 6:20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.

Roughly corresponding to the Greek word is the Hebrew word maan, for the sake of, on account of... We find this word here: 

Is. 65:8 ...so will I do on behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all.

In both cases we can see that the words do not mean "in the place of." Jesus did not substitute for us, He died for our benefit.)

Isaiah’s prophetic words give us the answer:

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

On the cross, the Lord bore the punishment of our sins, not the sins themselves. (This is incorrect. The Bible says, 

1Pe. 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

He did not bear our punishment, He bore our sins as a burden.)

He did not exchange His divine nature for Satan’s, or accept any blemish that would render Him as anything less than our spotless Lamb and perfect sacrifice. As John MacArthur explains,

Christ was not made a sinner, nor was He punished for any sin of His own. Instead, the Father treated him as if He were a sinner by charging to His account the sins of everyone who would ever believe. All those sins were charged against Him as if He had personally committed them, and He was punished with the penalty for them on the cross, experiencing the full fury of God’s wrath unleashed against them all. (None of this is true. There is no verse that tells us the Father punished Jesus for our sins.)

 

It was at that moment that “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, . . . ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46). (Jesus was not complaining about being forsaken by the Father. He was pointing to Psalm 22 because it contains several messianic statements. Jesus in effect was telling people, "this is happening right now, before your very eyes."

 Further, Psalm 22 itself directly contradicts the Dr. MacArthur: 

Ps. 22:24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

 It is a perversion of the Gospel to suggest the Son was forsaken.)

 It is crucial, therefore, to understand that the only sense in which Jesus was made sin was by imputation. (Jesus was not imputed with our sin, because the Father did not punish Jesus. The blood alone is sufficient.)

 

He was personally pure, yet officially culpable; personally holy, yet forensically guilty. But in dying on the cross Christ did not become evil like we are, nor do redeemed sinners become inherently as holy as He is. God credits believers’ sin to Christ’s account, and His righteousness to theirs. [7]

Imputation is the key; if Christ was not fully righteous in His sacrificial death, we can’t be considered fully righteous in the eyes of God. If Christ wasn’t completely sinless, there is no hope of reconciliation for us.