Daily Bible Nugget #71, 2 Corinthians 5:21

The Nugget:

2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

My Comment:

Think you understand this verse? You don’t. Even if you’ve heard this verse all your life, you have been reading this verse or hearing it from gravely mistaken translations of the Bible. That is why we desperately need a new translation that is free from doctrinal error. We need a translation which is true to the Greek grammar, reflecting in English the distinctions clearly present in Greek pertaining to tense and mood of verbs, and devoid of a false salvation vocabulary derived from (dare I say it?) Roman Catholicism. The Protestant Reformers only began the Reformation, they did not finish it. In the matter of salvation vocabulary they accepted the Roman Catholic salvation vocabulary lock, stock, and barrel–as the expression goes. To follow truth, we must ever be reformed and reforming. We must be open to the careful discoveries of Greek grammarians and linguists and allow their findings to shed light on what we think we know or thought we knew. Truth is not decided by a majority vote. Truth is not determined by the creeds of Christendom. To hold up past statements of formulated doctrine as the last word that settles the matter is idolatry. We MUST take a continuing and fresh look at what the Bible says, not what others have said it says. This verse, 2 Corinthians 5:21, is perhaps the most egregiously mistaken translation of any verse in the Bible. Even on the surface what it states ought to raise eyebrows. How could the Holy Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, be “made sin”? The answer–He cannot. It is not necessary to translate the Greek text involved here as “made sin,” as has been done perhaps in all translations in every language since early times. The text should be rendered “took sin.” Furthermore, this verse does not teach the mistaken doctrine of the Substitutionary Atonement of Christ, nor does it properly teach the Penal Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement, though as mistranslated, it has been used as a chief proof text for these mistaken doctrines. So then, what does this verse teach? It teaches that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself as both Priest and Offering took, bore or carried our sins in what can be called the Priestly-Sacrificial Atonement. Christ’s blood shed at Calvary on the Cross most certainly is a far better sacrifice with far better results than represented in type by the blood of the Levitical sacrifices. The book of Hebrews plainly tells us that (see Hebrews 10:4, 11, for example). The blood of bulls and goats “can never take away sins.” What does the blood of Jesus do? The Bible in the New Testament declares His blood takes away sin, removes sin. Careful study will show that this takes place in this life, in the “here and now,” not in the future as an after-death experience. The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that we are to “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). Logical necessity in the light of Hebrews 12:14 absolutely requires that this holiness must be experienced in this life. An interesting fact of Greek grammar is that the verb “to make holy” has a form in the Greek language for the future tense, but the future tense for the verb “make holy” never occurs in the New Testament. Now notice the last half of 2 Corinthians 5:21, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Some of us remember the Gospel song, “There is Power in the Blood.” And the Bible declares there is. We have been living beneath our privileges in part because we have been taught false doctrine supported by bad translations. If you have read this far, this ought to be wonderful news, an encouragement in your Christian walk, and it ought to provide you once again the impetus to “Search the Scriptures” to see that these things are so.

For those who desire to DIG DEEPER into this subject:

(1) Consult the cross references given in Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible on page 1335 for 2 Corinthians 5:21.

(2) Consult the cross references given in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on page 1357 or in Logos 5 Bible software for 2 Corinthians 5:21.

(3) Lacking access to those two resources, consult the cross references for this passage as I have developed them as given below:

2 Corinthians 5:21. The usual translations of this verse create insuperable difficulties doctrinally, for surely Jesus Christ can never be made sin, for He is God, and is perfectly holy. The order of the Greek, made clear in Bagster’s The Englishman’s Greek Testament by its interlinear translation, reads: “For him who knew not sin for us sin he made, that we might become righteousness of God in him.” But this translation is incorrect. Dr. Malcolm Lavender properly translates: “Now the One not having experienced sin, He took sin in our behalf, in order that we might be made righteous by God, in Christ.” Dr. Lavender notes that the emphatic idea comes first: “Now the One not having experienced sin….” This phrase emphatically proclaims the impeccability of Christ: He not only did not sin, but he could not sin (He +*4:15n). Dr. Lavender rightly asserts, “Emphatically then, we do not have here a Christ made sin in any sense whatsoever—real, imputed, or mystical!” The rendering “made sin” translates εποιησεν, a form of poieō (S#4160g, Jn 5:29n). Dr. Lavender notes, “The verb poieō should be translated ‘took’ in this context, i.e., ‘He (Christ) took sin….’ This translation preserves the Oneness of God, the Deity of Christ, His Immutability and innate Holiness, together with the utter necessity of a perfect and blameless Sacrifice in order to access Deity! Note further on poieō: Mark uses lambanō in the sense of to take a wife (Mk 12:19). In the NT, the Majority Text, poieō is used in [other] parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels, in which it has the same meaning as lambanō, the regular word for ‘take.’ In Mk 3:6, they ‘were…taking (poieō) counsel…against’ Jesus. In Mt 12:14, they ‘took (lambanō) counsel against Him,’ [thus lambanō is] a basic word for take. In Lk 6:11, they sought ‘what they might do (poieō) to Jesus.'” Note further that Peter expressly states that Jesus “bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” 1 P 2:24. Thus Jesus took our sins, and bore our sins (He 9:28), but He was never made sin for us. Compare Is 53:4, 6. he hath made him. Is *53:4-6, 9-12. Da +*9:26. Zc *13:7. Mt 26:38. Lk 22:37. Ro +4:25. *8:3. Ga *+3:13. Ep *5:2. 1 P *3:18. 1 J *2:1, 2. sin. **FS121L5, Ge +4:7. 2 C 11:7g. Ex 29:14. 30:10. Le 1:4. 3:12, 13. 4:3, 21, 34. 5:11. 6:25. 8:14, 22. 9:2, 3, 15. 12:6. 14:19. *15:14. 22:19. +23:19. Nu 7:45. 8:8. 19:9. 28:15. Dt 21:23. 2 Ch 29:21. Jb 21:19. Ps 40:6. Ezk 40:39. 43:19. 45:22. for us. Ge 3:21. Ex 12:13. 28:38. 29:10. Le 3:2, 8. 4:35. 10:17. **16:10, 21. +=23:19. Nu *21:9. 28:30. 1 S 18:4. Pr 17:15. Is *53:10. 57:19. Mt +*1:21. Mk 10:45. 15:24. Jn 6:51. 11:51, 52. Ro 4:25. 5:10. 6:10. 8:32. 1 C **15:3. 1 Th *5:10. 1 T +*2:6. He +*2:9. 1 P **2:24. *3:18. who knew no sin. FS145, Jg +11:40. Ex 39:30. 40:10. Ps 69:4. Is *53:9. Mt 27:24. Lk +*1:35. Jn **8:46. %9:24. **14:30. 16:10. 19:4. Ac 22:14. He +*4:15n. *7:26. 9:14. 1 P 1:19. *+2:22-24. 1 J 2:29. *3:5. that we. ver. *17. 2 C 3:9. Ps 4:1. 22:31. 24:5. 85:11. 89:16. *98:2. Is 1:27. *45:24, 25. **53:5, 11. 54:17. Je +*23:6. *33:16. Da +*9:24. Zc 3:4. Mt 6:33. Jn 1:29. 13:10. Ro *+1:17. *3:21-26. 4:6. **5:19. *8:1-4, 10. **10:3, 4. 14:17. 1 C *+1:30. Ph *3:9. 2 P 1:1. in him. 2 C 12:2. Jn 17:23. Ro 16:7. Ep 1:3, 6. 2:13. 1 J 2:5.