Be reconciled to God (v. 20). Two things need to be noted. First, the verb is passive. It is not that we must reconcile ourselves to God--as would be the case with the Greeks or Romans vis-à-vis their gods. Rather, we are to be reconciled, that is, to accept what God has already achieved. Second, the gospel minister's job is not to bring about reconciliation but to announce what has already occurred. In a real sense, he or she is the town crier or herald proclaiming a news item of earth-shaking significance. In fact we take on the role of the herald each Christmas when we sing the well-known lines by Charles Wesley: "Hark! The herald angels sing, `Glory to the newborn king, / Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!'"

But what we recount in song Paul proclaimed in earnest. For all that remains for humankind to do is to receive what God has effected. Yet how can they receive it unless they have heard about it? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them (Rom 10:14-15)? "How beautiful . . . are the feet of those who bring good news!" (Is 52:7). The demand for heralds remains a pressing one today. For the need is still as desperate and the news just as vital.

The reason trespasses are not credited to our account is that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (v. 21). The fact that Christ had no sin is well documented in the New Testament. He was tempted as we are "yet was without sin" (Heb 4:15); one "set apart from sinners" (Heb 7:26). The NIV had no sin is actually "knew no sin" (ton me gnonta hamartian). The verb ginosko (to know) denotes personal acquaintance with something. Christ did not possess the knowledge of sin that comes through personal experience. He did not sin either in thought ("in him is no sin," 1 Jn 3:5) or in action ("he committed no sin," 1 Pet 2:22).

Verse 21 is theologically elusive. The first problem is to determine the sense in which Christ was made . . . sin for us. There are three major approaches. One approach is to understand made . . . sin as "treated as a sinner." As our substitute, Christ came to stand in that relation with God which normally is the result of sin, that is, estranged from God and the object of his wrath (Barrett 1973:180). The second approach is to identify made . . . sin with Christ's assuming a human nature. Through the incarnation Christ was made "in the likeness of sinful man" (Rom 8:3). The final approach is to interpret verse 21 sacrificially as "made to be a sin offering." This draws on the Old Testament notion that God made the life of his servant a guilt offering (Is 53:10).

On the whole, this last interpretation seems the likeliest one. The equivalent Hebrew term hatta't can actually mean either "sin" or "sin offering" (as in Lev 4:8-35). Also, the logic of verse 19 almost demands it. If our debts are not posted to our account, it is because someone else has legally assumed them--much as the scapegoat did on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16) and the guilt offering did on other occasions (Lev 4--5). This is why God can make overtures of friendship toward those who are otherwise his enemies.

 

If the exact point of "made sin" is lost to us, the thrust is clear. So closely did Christ identify with the plight of humanity that their sin became his sin. In the final analysis this is not so different from the idea in 1 Peter 2:24 that Christ himself bore our sins in his body up onto the tree. Paul may well be thinking of Isaiah 53:12, where the servant of the Lord is to be numbered with the transgressors and bear the sin of many.

In identifying with our sin, Christ paved the way for us to become identified with the righteousness of God. The genitive can be subjective ("the righteousness that God gives"--that is, a righteous character), objective ("the righteousness we have before God"--that is, a right standing) or possessive ("the righteousness that God possesses"--that is, we share the righteousness that characterizes God himself). In Paul's writings the noun dikaiosyne typically is used of character. It is not merely that we acquire a right standing or do good works; we actually become righteous--although the latter may well presume the former. This is no legal fiction. For in Christ (or perhaps "through Christ," en auto) we truly assume his righteousness, just as Christ assumed our sin (Brown 1978:169).