Mr. Clean

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB

Who knew no sin – Once upon a time Adam knew no sin.  That doesn’t mean Adam didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.  Adam knew true from false.  He knew the difference between obedience and disobedience.  But he knew all of this in principle, not from personal experience.  All of that changed when he accepted the suggestion of his ‘ezer kenegdo to take the fruit of the Tree.  After that he had a different awareness of sin – a personal, existential awareness.  Sin was no longer a hypothetical.  Now it was experiential.

Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded.  For Yeshua sin remained a hypothetical possibility but it was never an existential reality.  Yeshua clearly knew what sin was like.  He could have described it as one describes any observable reality.  But He did not personally experience it.  He was sinless.

So what does Paul mean when he says that God made Yeshua to be sin on our behalf?  How is it possible to make someone experience the personal reality of something without violating the canons of free choice?  A woman who is raped experiences sexual contact but not because she chooses to.  Can God make Yeshua experience the existential reality of sin without forcing sin upon Him?  What kind of God would do such a thing?

Perhaps the answer to this riddle has more to do with our ideas about sin than it has to do with the power of YHWH.  Perhaps we need to recall the elements of the sacrifices in order to understand Paul’s cryptic language.

When an animal was offered as a sacrifice, it had to be the best of the best.  Sacrificial requirements included “without spot or blemish” as a symbol of purity.  This symbolic representation was an external recognition of the need for internal blamelessness.  But, obviously, no animal sins.  Sin requires moral consciousness.  Therefore, no animal presented for sacrifice could be sinful.  Nevertheless, the sin of the one making the offering was transferred to the animal in order for the sacrifice to be effective.  In other words, the animal was made to be sin, not because the animal experienced sin but because the offering transferred the sin from the offender to the sacrifice.  The Hebrew concept of sin is much more like a substance that attaches itself to the offender than it is like an inner, psychological state of being.  Sin is like dirt.  It can be washed away through proper religious actions.  It isn’t like chromosomal structure which cannot be  altered no matter what we do externally or internally.  There is a way to change the pollution sin brings.  There is no way to change our DNA.

When Paul says that God made Yeshua to be sin, he uses the imagery of the sacrifice.  The pollution of sin is transferred from the offender to Yeshua, just as it was transferred to the spotless animal.  Neither Yeshua nor the animal experiences sin as a personal reality, but both experience the consequence of being polluted.  Sin attaches to each and each pays the price.  That is why Paul can say that Yeshua was made sin on our behalf.  It is our polluting dirt that is rubbed on to Him.  The sin that was sticking to us is now sticking to Yeshua and since it is no longer clinging to us, we are clean (righteous).  In this sense, it is absolutely true that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb.  We come out spotless.  He comes out dirty.

There is only one way to wash off the kind of “dirt” associated with deliberate sin.  That one way is to be washed clean by Yeshua.  He has the only effective means of removing this kind of dirt.  It comes at a great price because the dirt doesn’t go down the drain.  It goes onto Him and He accepts the consequences of this pollution.

We learn two very important facts about sin.  First, we learn that it can be cleaned up.  No sin is so indelible that it can’t be washed away.  This is especially important for those of us whose past lives are riddled with moral failures.  Secondly, we learn that the idea that sin is an inevitable and inherent element of our very nature implies that we can’t be cleaned through any process of transference.  That has terrible corollaries, not least of which is that I am worthless before God until God changes my spiritual DNA.  Now why would Yeshua willingly accept all my dirt unless He saw value in me before I was washed?  How would my understanding of who I am change if I realized that God Himself sees me without the dirt before I am washed and that’s why He is willing to wash it off?

Topical Index:  sin, sacrifice, transfer, 2 Corinthians 5:21