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"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

There is in theology a doctrine called "atonement." It is a broad idea with many facets, the idea of which is how God brings back people to Himself. When one studies this teaching, included in it are ideas of reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, justification, sacrifice, and propitiation. Various "theories" have been developed over the centuries as to how atonement works, usually emphasizing one aspect over the others, in an attempt to explain God’s working in our salvation.

Most of us do not get bogged down in the theories. We look at various texts and explain the words as we talk about God bringing us back into fellowship with Him and us (see Ephesians 2:11-22). But sometimes we haven’t been careful in how we state things, in particular to the idea of Jesus bearing our sins. This aspect of atonement is known as "the substitution theory" and some add to this the idea of "penal substitution." There is a debate starting to grow over this particular idea. While we will not get into details of the debate, the way we state some things have some problems attached to it.

The idea is that Jesus took my place and paid the debt for my sins, something I have said many times. A number of songs we sing highlight this such as "He Bore It All." Yet some questions are raised. How did Jesus bear our sins? Were our sins transferred to Jesus? Did He then become a sinner? Was He punished by God, innocent as He was? These questions might confuse us knowing what some scriptures say. I have heard some preachers, men who I respect, casually state that Jesus in some sense became a sin, implying that He was a sinner. It is here that we need to be careful by what we are saying.

Paul wrote, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…" (2 Corinthians 5:21). What did Paul mean by this? The context deals with the ministry of reconciliation, God reconciling us to Himself in Christ. Did Jesus become a sinner? The Contemporary English Version (CEV) states it this way: "Christ never sinned! But God treated him as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God." This certainly leaves an impression that Jesus became a sinner in some sense, but is this what Paul had in mind? The New Living Translation (NLT) however translates it this way: For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sins…" That certainly puts a different light on the matter. Both the NIV and TNIV have a footnote: "to be a sin offering." Is a sin offering a sinner, or full of sin?

Let’s take a look at Leviticus 10:17. Remember that sin offerings were to be pure and without blemish to be acceptable. The context deals with the sin and death of two of Aaron’s sons. Aaron and his other two sons were to offer a sacrifice. Moses states in part: It is most holy; it was given to you to take away the guilt of the community be making atonement for them before the Lord." Numbers 18:1 also says: "You, your sons and your ancestral family are to bear the responsibility for offenses connected with the sanctuary, and you and your sons alone are to bear the responsibility for offenses connected with the priesthood." What we see here is that "Aaron and his sons are given the responsibility to bear the sins of the people, whether it’s sin in general or sins against the tabernacle itself. There is nothing to suggest that the sins of the people are transferred to the priests so that the priests become guilty" (1). The point is that neither Aaron nor his sons became guilty of someone else’s sins, though they had there own. As priests, they bore the iniquity in the sense that they offered up the sacrifice. They carried the sins in the context of the offering. Sin isn’t transferred but forgiven.

Jesus is the great High Priest. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet he did not sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is also the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). He was the unblemished sin offering offered to God. We needed someone to bear our sin, that is, to be a sin offering so that we could attain forgiveness. Jesus was the sin offering to God. Leviticus 16 addresses the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. What we see is two goats. One is offered as a sin offering on the altar. The other has the priest laying his hands on it and confessing the sins of the people. It is then led out into the wilderness "bearing" the sins of the people. It did not become a "sinner." "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed’" (1 Peter 2:24).

When Jesus bore our sins, He did not become a sinner but an offering to God. But He took my place, didn’t He? And wasn’t He punished for my sins? I think this is were the substitutionary theory has problems. Maybe it is the way we express it. The Law of Moses opposed the idea of punishing the innocent for the sins of others (Exodus 23:7; Deuteronomy 24:16). Punishment and suffering are not the same thing. Punishment implies guilt. Jesus entered a world under punishment, already guilty (see Genesis 3). The innocent suffer when punishment comes on the guilty (see Amos 4). Innocent children starved and died because their parents were being punished for their sins. The innocence were not being punished but were suffering because of the actions of others. The cross was not punishment for Jesus but innocence suffering as a sin offering because of the actions of others. We were under punishment or sentence and needed a sin offering to free us from sin, to be forgiven and reconciled to God (see Hebrews 10). Jesus did this as the pure, unblemished and innocent Lamb of God.

What about the wrath of God? Again, as we look at the sin offering, it or He appeased the wrath of God. The word propitiation deals with appeasing God’s wrath (see 1 John 4:10). "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Propitiation is a difficult word to grasp and most modern translations have "atoning sacrifice" or something close. Sin has brought humanity under God’s wrath. Notice the connection with sacrifice and offering. Sin is serious business and while we could do nothing about it, God could, in Christ.

Now I’ve said all this because we need to think about what we are saying. "Jesus took my place" in the sense of transference of sin really isn’t the idea of the cross, though that is what we might imply and not mean by stating that. "He paid my penalty" in the sense of punishment likewise isn’t what is in view. (There goes some great sermons). In Mark 10:45, the word "ransom" or "rescue" is used. That means to pay a price to free a prisoner, slave, or kidnapped victim. In this case, it would be as the sacrificial lamb. When He bore our sins, He carried them as the High Priest and when He offered Himself, He did so as the innocent Lamb of God. A sin offering is different from a sinner. All this is something to think about. Having said for so long that Jesus took my place or was a substitute for me will be difficult to change. Still it leads to forgiveness and reconciliation. The price has been paid, what we call redemption. But the price was that of the offering. Remember, David would not offer up anything that did not cost him (1 Chronicles 21:24). This is yet another aspect of atonement.

How we say things will influence what others hear. Some have seen this penal substitution as divine child abuse. Interesting how people can draw conclusions, isn’t it? "Wives submit to your husbands" has become some form of slavery. "Judge not that you may not be judge" now means do not judge anyone or anything. It is difficult enough to communicate (as you can tell by this article), but sometimes we just make it more so. We need to think about what has been written, what we sing, and how we say things.

George B. Mearns

(1) Jim McGuiggan, "Sin-bearing and sacrifice," www.jimmcguiggan.com