The Relationship Between the Word of God and Sin

Here’s another facet of Christ being made sin for us that may or may not be part of the deal! It’s just a thing I noticed that I thought might have more depth to it.

Romans 5:13 says, “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”  Romans 3:20 says, “for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” And for the capper, Romans 4:15 says, “for where there is no law, there is no transgression.” In other words, if there is no word of God, no law of God, there is no sin.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. If God never said anything, there would be no sin, and thus, there would be no faith.

But God did say something! “Don’t eat from that tree” was one of the first things He said. Adam and Eve ate from the tree, showing no faith and committing sin.

So, Galatians 3:21 says that Scripture has concluded all under sin. The link between God’s word and sin is tight. No God’s word? Then no sin.

Jesus Christ is described by John as being “the Word made flesh.” The appearance of Jesus Christ is a revelation of the righteousness of God apart from the law (Romans 3:20-22). The mere appearance of Jesus Christ put people in a spot!

Believe Him or be guilty of sin! Rejecting Him was rejecting the righteousness of God, a more full revelation than just rules written in stone. This was the living Word of God.

John 12:48 quotes Jesus talking, “He that rejects me, and receives not my words, hath one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”

Whatever Christ said is the Word of God, it becomes the standard, the law by which humans will be judged. Serious stuff.

So, how does this relate to Christ being made sin for us in 2 Corinthians 5:21? Probably not at all! It’s just a little tangent my head went off in.

Jesus was a revelation of the righteousness of God, He is the Word made flesh, the living righteousness God revealed by words in the law.

The appearance of a word from God gives the potential for sin. We eliminated the potential by making it real. We rejected God’s word and were made sinners.

Jesus Christ confronts each of us with that choice. Faith is by hearing. Satan’s temptation is always based on “Did God really say?”

If there is no word there is no sin. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh. If there is no Jesus Christ there is no sin. Any revelation from God is righteousness, any bad response to that is sin.

There is a powerful link between the two. The only way God could have made humanity and have them not sin is if He refused to reveal Himself in any way! That would defeat the entire purpose of creating humanity. Dogs maybe, but not humans.

This has nothing really to do with 2 Corinthians 5:21 really, but the thought intrigued my brain. The Word gave us a choice. We chose wrong and brought sin into existence. The same Words is made flesh specifically to take away the sin of the world. There’s coolness here.

2 Corinthians 5:21 and Our Old Man Being Crucified with Christ

According to 2 Corinthians 5:21, Jesus Christ was made sin for us. There are probably depths of meaning to that phrase. I went into some of them earlier, but here’s another aspect that might play into it. This is not a fully formed thought, but more of an idea expressed as well as I’ve thought it through so far!

Whatever happened in Christ being made sin for us, it certainly implies a deep identification between Christ and sin. This was no surface treatment, some superficial band aid treated flesh wound. This was a deep, fully satisfying identification with sin.

Most commentaries when dealing with 2 Corinthians 5:21 go to the Calvinist explanation and Substitutionary Atonement. Christ took our exact place on the cross and died so we don’t have to. Our sin was imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteous deeds were imputed to us.

If you read the verse though, you will clearly see that none of that is said.

Although Substitutionary Atonement might have some truth in it, it’s not a satisfying explanation of all that went on, mostly because it does not deal much with the resurrection.

In fact, many verses seem to contradict this Atonement theory. Romans 6, for instance, contradicts it in almost every verse. Romans 6 says that the believer by faith was crucified with Christ, buried with Him, and raised up with Him to newness of life.

This was no substitution in our place, Christ dying instead of us; this was all believers being there with Him. Which brings me to my point about Christ being made sin for us. Check out Romans 6:6

knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Notice that our old man was crucified with Christ. Our “old man” is a term Paul uses to describe our sin nature. Because of our old man being crucified with Christ, Ephesians 4:22 says to put off the former conversation of the old man, put off that old life that was dealt with with Christ. Colossians 3:9 says the believer has put off the old man with his deeds.

Our sin nature, not just the sins we did/do, but our sin nature was crucified with Christ. When Christ was made sin for us, perhaps the sin He was made is deeper than just bad things we’ve done. It’s an actual joining together with who we are as humans, being identified fully with us, so that when He died, believers died with Him, and more specifically, our old man was crucified with Him.

Romans 6 goes on to say that because our old man was crucified with Christ, a new life is now available that does new things. The body of sin is done away with, so now we are no longer the servants of sin, but can now yield our members of our body as servants of righteousness.

Romans 6 seems to describe exactly what’s going on in 2 Corinthians 5:21 in actual life practice. This is no theory; this is newness of life through the power of the Gospel.

When Christ was made sin for us, this must have something to do with our sin natures being crucified with Him. A total identification with even the worst of who we are. By taking this sin nature on Himself, dying, and then being resurrected, He completely dealt with the sin and opened a way for us to be made new spiritual creations in Christ Jesus capable of finally doing right.

Through this Gospel, the believer is actually made dead to sin, released from the enslaving power of sin, and now capable of doing righteousness.

I may not be able to explain all the ins and outs of what’s going on in the Gospel or in 2 Corinthians 5:21, but I know for sure it has to at least be saying this!

2 Corinthians 5:21 and Christ Being Made Sin for Us

Reconciliation with God, being brought back into a right standing with Him, is only through the work of Jesus Christ, The Gospel: the fact that His body was broken and His blood was shed for us, that He was buried, and that He rose again.

God does not have to be reconciled to us, He never went anywhere. We are the ones who resisted and ran away (think of the parable of the Prodigal Son). We need to be brought back into right standing with God, that’s what reconciliation is.

This reconciliation was accomplished through two things according to 2 Corinthians 5:21:

1) Christ being made sin for us

2) We were made the righteousness of God.

Christ being made sin is a bizarre idea! Scripture states clearly that Jesus Christ never sinned Himself. 2 Corinthians 5:21 itself says it, “He who knew no sin.” Jesus Christ did not have experiential knowledge of sin, He never did any.

1 John 3:5 says that in Christ there is no sin and that Christ was manifested to take away our sin, which seems to be saying very similar things as 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Hebrews 4:15 says that although Jesus can sympathize with our weakness being tempted like us, yet He never sinned.

The sacrifices of the Old Testament pictured this as well. They were to bring animals that had no defect or flaw, representing the without spot or blemish character of Jesus Christ.

The Bible makes it clear that Jesus never sinned and was not a sinner. This is what makes “He was made sin for us” so amazing.

I have heard some say that this means Jesus became a sinner, so that God looked upon Jesus as though He were the one who did all the sin. Although I get the logical conclusion that is being made here, I do not see this taught in the Bible. God is not an idiot. He knows Jesus didn’t rape babies and kill pregnant women, etc. That makes no sense to view it that way.

We are not told that Jesus was made a sinner; it says “He was made sin for us.” There is a difference.

Here are a few other verses that speak of what Christ did with our sin:

1 Peter 2:24, which points back to Isaiah 53:10-12, says that Christ bore our sins. He took them up, carried them up. This word “bore” is used as one who carries something up to the altar to be presented, which is interesting! Christ bore our sins on the cross, He took them up there, as though to the altar. The cross being the altar perhaps.

Isaiah 53:10 also says His soul was made an offering for sin. The presentation of Himself as the sacrifice on the altar (the cross), was an offering for sin. Verse 12 says he poured out His soul unto death and “bore the sin of many.” Bearing the sin is linked with the presentation of His body and soul as an offering for sin.

Some actually interpret “He was made sin for us” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 as saying “he was made a sin offering for us.” Although a certain case can sort of be made for that, I don’t think it holds the parallelism with we were made the righteousness of God. There are a few other reasons to not take it that way as well, so I am not convinced to go there.

Hebrews 2:17 says Christ was made like His brethren in order to be a sufficient High Priest, and by doing so He made propitiation for the sins of the people. There’s an identification with us in our humanity, bearing our sin is perhaps part of this identification?

Hebrews 9:26 says Jesus came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. If He is the one who is bearing our sins to the cross, bringing them to the altar, and then presenting His own body and soul as the offering for that sin, He then rises again, showing sin and its wage were dealt with fully. This sacrifice was sufficient to put away sin.

The conclusion so far goes like this:

In order to reconcile sinners to God, Jesus Christ was made sin for us. This at least means He bore our sins and it also means he did something with them. He took them out of the way and dealt with them through the sacrifice of Himself.

There’s one more aspect of Him being made sin for us that I want to get into that I think is pretty cool. But I’m already too long on this one, so wait until next time!

2 Corinthians 5:21 and Reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:21 is a popular verse. People tie many doctrines to it, most of which don’t appear to be in the verse at all!

For instance, MacArthur’s Study Bible references it a lot, maybe more than any other verse in the Bible. He uses it in relation to imputed righteousness and lots of stuff about Substitutionary Atonement and other Calvinist philosophies.

The verse is put in the middle of a section talking about believers being ministers of reconciliation. It’s the last verse of the chapter, but chapter 6 continues the idea of presenting the Gospel to people.

The verse clearly has to do with the means by which God through Christ accomplished the goal of reconciliation, “who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (5:18). Verse 19 gives the view of God the Father, “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

Christ reconciled us to himself and God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ. I’m guessing the “us” of verse 18 are believers. The “world” refers to all creation. The Gospel wasn’t just to reconcile believers, but potentially to reconcile everyone in the world, but also to provide the means for the fallen world to be reconciled to its Creator.

Something like that.

How was all this done? Verse 21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

“Reconciliation” means to bring someone back into favor. It’s a financial term and has to do with money changers. You give a certain amount of money in one currency and their job is to reconcile it by giving the equal amount in another currency. In this case, since people are tainted by sin and hostile to God because of it, God is the prime mover, He is the one who acts to provide a way for people to be brought back into His favor.  We love Him because He first loved us, kind of thing.

The Greek word for “reconciliation” is only used two other times in the New Testament. Romans 5:11 speaks in a similar manner to 2 Corinthians 5:21 and is worth a mention.

“More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Reconciliation is due to something that Christ did. This is a consistent point.

What was it that Christ did to reconcile us, to bring us back into favor with God? He who knew no sin was made sin so we might become the righteousness of God.

There’s a lot of stuff in those words! We’ll get into it next time.

The Only Nationalism a Christian should be Part of

In 1 Peter 2:9, Peter describes believers in the New Covenant as, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.”

This is all pretty cool, but the phrase that caught my eye was “a holy nation,” or in the KJV “an” holy nation. That bugs me because “holy” starts with a consonant and I learned very early on in school that “an” is only used in front of a word starting with a vowel.

Anyhooo, a holy nation. First word is “holy.” Holy means separate, a called out people. Different from those living around them. A people like Israel was supposed to be. Israel who shucked their separateness at every turn and desired to be like the Gentile nations around them, even borrowing their gods and religions.

Believers today are supposed to come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing like Israel was supposed to. Holiness is a forgotten Christian virtue. Christians by every measure are just as worldly as the world around us.

We could use some work on the holiness.

Peter isn’t just talking about individuals being holy, but all believers together being a holy nation. The word “nation” is the Greek word ethnos, a word meaning a congregation, a company of people, a tribe, nation, or people group. It’s typically translated as “Gentiles.”

“Gentiles” are the nations other than Israel. Believers, those indwelt by the Holy Spirit and part of the Body of Christ, are a nation, separate from the worldly nations around us.

All New Covenant believers are a nation. When you think of your national identity, what comes to mind? Probably your nation of residence. Murica.

We are citizens of heaven. We are citizens of a new nation: the Body of Christ.

Again, imagine if this were true! I mean, it is true, but imagine we lived like it was. How would our lives look?

Most people around us are cranked up in politics. Everything is political these days. People are obsessed with their nation, making it great again and so forth.

Lots of anger, fighting, and arguing over these national issues.

We’re supposed to be a separate nation, not conformed to this world or the peoples in it. We’re separate, living by the laws of a different King.

Yet the institutional church continually gets involved in politics, getting tied more and more to worldly affairs. When the church gets mixed up with nations and governments; the church loses.

The Antichrist will tie religion and government together into an unstoppable by humanity force. This should be a clue to us! But it isn’t. We just get sucked into it because “everyone is doing it.”

Come out from among them and be separate. We live for a different King, a different citizenship, and for a new nation. I imagine this would result in a different looking life if we actually came alive to it.

Short Ways to Think About Humility

“If you were truly humble, you would not bother about yourself at all.”

The author of this quote described the character of the humble person: they graciously receive compliments without awkwardness or letting it go to their head knowing that all goodness in them is from God. They do not fear others or themselves as they have complete confidence in the power of God.

New Testament conversion is about the believer already being dead. Your life is gone, hid with Christ in God. I decrease/He increases.

If this were true, I mean, it is true, but if we lived as though it were true, if we applied it fully as truth, wow, would our lives be different.

I got in two arguments this past week. In both cases I, of course, think I was right. The other person is obviously wrong. If this were not the case I would not waste my time arguing.

Yet why do I need to be proven right? What would those arguments have sounded like if I were dead?! If I were humble and no longer bothering about myself? What if I approached those arguments as though the other person was the only one who mattered?

How often does our ego and pride turn our otherwise rightness into evil? There are times when I actually am right and the other person is actually wrong. Remaining humble in that situation is difficult, about as difficult as being humble when I’m the one who is wrong!

Pride is everywhere. Self-pity is pride. Boasting is pride. Pride gets us on both sides.

To live a day with complete godly humility! What would that look like? Would anyone even recognize me?

False humility exists too. It looks humble and meek and lowly, but is actually done so people see you are humble and meek and lowly. It focuses on outward demonstrations of humility while the heart and mind are feeding on the glorious attention my humility gains me.

Humility has the sense of lowliness or littleness. The opposite would be the puffed up macho stuff, puffing your chest out and using your Power Walk, taking up as much space as possible forcing others to move out of your way.

Humility is not shame and cowardice. It’s a lack of self botheredness! Only a humble person would stand up for truth at personal cost. A proud person is not going to fight that battle if they will lose something.

Humble people will serve and love others, especially those that are “below” them according to external human judgments.

Humility is tough. It’s what is necessary to receive God’s grace since He resists the proud. Humility is also a part of the fruit of the Spirit (meekness). It’s all wrapped up with our relationship with God. The eternal, infinite God. A view of Him for who He is will definitely teach you how little you are and how dependent on Him you really are.

Littleness and lowliness are good one word summations. “Not bothering about yourself” is a good short summation of the practical outworking of what humility is about.

Thomas Merton on Sin, Faith, Salvation, and Hell

Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk. He is an interesting thinker. I obviously do not agree with much of what he says, but people who think often come up with things that make me think and thinking is good.

Here is a quote from his book Seeds of Contemplation that made me think:

The devil has a whole system of theology and philosophy, which will explain, to anyone who will listen, that created things are evil, that men are evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that men should suffer evil. According to the devil, God rejoices in the suffering of men and, in fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God has willed and planned it that way.

The people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy it, develop a notion of the spiritual life which is a kind of hypnosis of evil. The concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice of God, retribution, the end of the world and so on, are things over which they smack their lips with unspeakable pleasure. Perhaps this is because they derive a deep, subconscious comfort from the thought that many other people will fall into the hell which they themselves are going to escape. And how do they know they are going to escape it? They cannot give any definite reason except for the fact that they feel a certain sense of relief at the thought that all this punishment is prepared for practically everyone but themselves.

This feeling of complacency is what they refer to as “faith,” and it constitutes a kind of conviction that they are “saved.”

The 1% of Gods Left After Denying 99% of Gods

Richard Dawkins says the best way for a theist to understand an atheist is to understand that a theist doesn’t believe in 99% of all gods (Zeus, Allah, Baal, etc), and you think you have good reasons for denying their existence. The atheist just goes 1% more.

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

This quote is celebrated as being genius, more than likely because it’s a nice zinger. It succinctly states a point and sounds good. We like our sound bites.

Obviously, as a theist, I have an issue with it. Here are a few thoughts:

1. If I eliminate 999 gods and stick with 1 God while Dawkins eliminates 1,000 gods and has zero god, the difference between 1 and zero can be quite large. One seems pretty insignificant next to 999, but if the 1 is real, it’s a pretty big difference. For instance, a guy who has one life to live has massively more than a guy with zero life to live. A living dog is better than a dead lion.

2. When Dawkins watches the news and determines that a large percentage of the news is fake, does he eliminate all news? The fact that there are false gods is not a novel idea. The presence of false gods in no way logically necessitates no god. If Dawkins doesn’t buy 999 fake Rolexes, does that mean there is no real Rolex?

3. I own a business that deals in collectibles and old stuff. Anyone spending any time in the antiques market knows that knockoffs are plentiful. Anything of value has inspired fakes to trick people into giving them money. If a thing has no value, there are no fakes because it’s not worth the time and effort. Humans make fakes. The fact that humans have made multiple fake gods is merely evidence that humans believe there is value in gods. Odds are they are copying one real and valuable God. Otherwise there would be no incentive to do it.

Those are my thoughts. I admit up front I have not dissuaded one atheist. My points are not so much to convert an atheist as they are to help Christians think about this criticism.

It’s also amusing that he seems to only be attacking monotheists, which actually makes me more confident that monotheism is correct! I’ve never heard an atheist write a book about denying Zeus and his cohorts. There always seems to be just One God that troubles them.

It’s too easy to laugh and mock the atheist rather than think about what they are saying logically. Truth is real. It will show itself. True logic will never contradict truth. Don’t be afraid to think!