A Ministry of Reconciliation (5:18–21)
Excerpt
The reason trespasses are not credited to our account is that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (v. 21*). The fact that Christ had no sin is well documented in the New Testament. He was tempted as we are “yet was without sin” (Heb 4:15); one “set apart from sinners” (Heb 7:26). The NIV had no sin is actually “knew no sin” (ton mē gnonta hamartian). The verb ginōskō (to know) denotes personal acquaintance with something. Christ did not possess the knowledge of sin that comes through personal experience. He did not sin either in thought (“in him is no sin,” 1 Jn 3:5) or in action (“he committed no sin,” 1 Pet 2:22).
The rest of verse 21 is theologically elusive. The first problem is to determine the sense in which Christ was made … sin for us. There are three major approaches. One approach is to understand made … sin as “treated as a sinner.” As our substitute, Christ came to stand in that relation with God which normally is the result of sin, that is, estranged from God and the object of his wrath (Barrett 1973:180). The second approach is to identify made … sin with Christ’s assuming a human nature. Through the incarnation Christ was made “in the likeness of sinful man” (Rom 8:3). The final approach is to interpret verse 21 sacrificially as “made to be a sin offering.” This draws on the Old Testament notion that God made the life of his servant a guilt offering (Is 53:10).
On the whole, this last interpretation seems the likeliest one. The equivalent Hebrew term hatta’t can actually mean either “sin” or “sin… More
Belleville, Linda L. 2 Corinthians. Vol. 8. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996. Print. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series.
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