MADE TO BE SIN | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 11.

“MADE TO BE SIN.”

THIS is what the apostle says Christ Jesus was made for us. He became not an offering for sin, not something else in the place of sin, not something to buy sin, but “Him [Christ] who knew no sin He [God] made to be sin on our behalf.” 2 Cor. 5:21, R.V.

It will help us to understand this wonderful truth if we will consider for a little man's primitive condition and fall. When man came from the hand of the Creator, he was “upright,” “very good,” created in “righteousness and true holiness.” Righteousness ruled in him. He was its willing servant. Nay, more, he was the expression of the righteousness, the righteousness, the trueness, of God in human flesh. And had he lived ever in obedience to the primal law of his being, his whole life would have been righteousness incarnate, or, in plainer English, righteousness infleshed. So he would have been on earth the highest revelation of God; the Righteous One.

Sin is “missing the mark;” it is the changing of that which is good; it is the crooking of the right lines of God’s truth; it is the perversion of righteousness; it is the endeavor to turn the current of beneficence from the longing and needy to self and self-interest; it is the contraction of the life into selfish grasping and hoarding instead of its expansion in all noble deeds; it is “all unrighteousness;” it is “the transgression of the law.” When man chose these, and so yielded to the service of sin, he became sin’s slave. Righteousness departed from him, and sin became incarnate, infleshed. And man, the most glorious of God’s earth works, instead of remaining the expression of God’s righteousness, became in his purposes, his conduct, his character, the expression of sin. He became identified with sin, a veritable part of its realm, its kingdom. Loving sin, choosing sin, God counts him what he chooses to be,—sin.

“Sin, when it is finished [“full grown,” R.V.], bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. Man, therefore, as he had identified himself with sin, was doomed to death, sin’s inevitable fruitage. In order that he might demonstrate God’s love and save man, Jesus took man’s place. “The Word became flesh.” The Son of God became incarnate, infleshed, as flesh is since it fell under sin’s dominion. He took upon Himself sin and its fruitage, for man’s sake. As man in his rebellion identified himself with sin, so Christ, to save man, identified Himself with sin even unto death. “For He [God] hath made Him [Christ] to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

All this is further taught in the sacrificial system—in what are generally called “sin-offerings,” but which are literally “sin.” So of the bullock offered for Aaron and his sons it is said, “It is a sin-offering.” The marginal literal rendering from the Hebrew is “sin.” See Revised Version. The same Hebrew word, chattath, is used in Ex. 29:36; 30:10; Lev. 4:3, 8, 20, 21, 24, 25, 29, 33, and many other places. In every case, as the type of Christ, the offering was counted sin. When the sinner came with his offering, he placed his hand upon the head of the beast without blemish, emblem of the spotless Lamb of God, and confessed that he was a sinner and worthy of death; by his confession he yields up his sins and transfers them to the offering, which stands for him as identified with sin, and is counted sin. The consumption of that offering is the taking away of his sin, and the sinner is counted righteous.

All this is but the shadow of the simple literal truth in Christ Jesus. He gave His life for all from the foundation of the world, and, tho manifested in these last times for us, it is the blessed truth for sinners of all ages. Christ, the spotless Lamb of God, is the Sin-bearer for each individual sinner. “Thou shalt make His soul [asham, sin] an offering for sin.” “He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.” Isa. 53:10, 12.

But He did it all that “we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Eternal Righteousness became incarnate where sin reigned; suffered all that sin deserved; tho deserving of nothing that He suffered; overcame sin where sin had perverted all; brought the cosmos of light from the chaos of darkness, and so triumphed over all the power of sin, in order that every soul who would trust Him might eternally triumph with Him.

O, it seems as tho every soul would respond to such wonderful, mighty, saving love!