PONDERING DEATH - THE REMOVAL OF SIN

PONDERING DEATH

The Removal of Sin

DID JESUS PAY FOR OUR SINS 

 

Let me begin with a synopsis of what I’m trying to say in this essay:

Did Jesus Pay for Our Sins – Synopsis

This theological reflection challenges the popular Penal Substitution Theory of atonement—the belief that Jesus was punished by God in our place to satisfy divine justice. While affirming the essential nature of Christ’s sacrifice, I propose a more relational and restorative view of atonement grounded in Scripture.

Key arguments include:

• Forgiveness vs. Payment: True forgiveness cannot be based on punishment. If Jesus fully paid for all sins, then universalism or limited atonement logically follows—both problematic in different ways.
• Suffering ≠ Punishment: Not all suffering is punishment. Innocent people, including Jesus, suffer without being guilty.
• God’s Desire for Relationship: Atonement is not about legal debt or appeasement but about restoring fellowship between God and humanity. Jesus came not to satisfy wrath, but to restore what was broken.
• Jesus as the Sin Offering: Drawing from Leviticus and Isaiah 53, the text argues that Jesus was a sin offering (not "sin" itself), bearing the consequences of sin without becoming guilty.
• God Did Not Abandon Jesus: Psalm 22 is reinterpreted to show that God did not actually forsake Jesus on the cross; rather, Jesus was expressing the anguish of all who suffer unjustly.
• Atonement as Divine Gift: Atonement flows from God's grace, not from a transactional demand. It is rooted in God’s decision to be with us in Jesus—living, suffering, and dying to restore communion with His creation.

Ultimately, the essay offers a vision of atonement centered not in wrath or retribution, but in love, identification, and restoration. Jesus did not purchase forgiveness; He embodied it.

 

  STOPPING DEATH - THE REMOVAL OF SIN

   Let me state at the beginning that I believe Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was essential to our being forgiven for our sins.   

    “…and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”  Hebrews 9:22b (ESV) 

   “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”  Romans 5:11 (ESV)

   “For there is no distinction:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”  Romans 3:22b-25

 Long Held Beliefs

   I’ve found that long held beliefs are the most difficult to reconsider, especially popular long held beliefs.  We feel comfortable in them and once accepted it is difficult to give up both the comfort and accept the idea that we could have been wrong.  I know that change is difficult for me and I believe it is for you also.  But a reexamination of our faith is good for us.  It helps us to be sure of our long held beliefs and their verity.

   One of those long held beliefs that need reconsideration is the “Penal Substitution Theory.”   Generally, that theory says that when Jesus went to the cross God charged Him with our sins (He became guilty of our sins) and God punished Him for them (because sins have to be paid for!).  The punishment Jesus received was what we were supposed to suffer.  Jesus suffered that punishment so that we did not have to and therefore He “paid” the penalty for our sins.  While He was on the cross and guilty of our sins, God turned His back on Jesus causing Jesus to suffer separation from His Father.   Defining the theory, Jim McGuiggan says, “We humans have sinned against God, our sin demands punishment by God, Jesus Christ stands as our substitute, God punishes him and we go free from the punishment because God punished Christ.”

There are several passages that are used to justify this teaching:  Here are a few of them.

1.       Isaiah 53;  God laid our sins on Jesus is interpreted to mean that Jesus became guilty of our sins

2.       Psalm 22;  Jesus gave the cry of dereliction as God turned His back on Him (Because, it is taught, God cannot look on sins)

3.       Romans 6:23  Sin(s) must be paid for

4.       1 Peter 2:22ff; Jesus bore our sins on the tree (cross) and by his wounds (through the punishment he received) we have been healed.

5.       2 Corinthians 5:21; God made Jesus to be sin/sin filled/guilty of sin

6.       Others we will look at during this study.

 NOTE:  If all the sins of all the sinners were transferred off them and onto Jesus and He was punished for those sins to the full extent of the law and thus paid for those sins, we have to conclude either:

1.      Everyone will be saved – Universalism – because Jesus died for ALL (See 1 John 2:2) or

2.      Jesus actually died for just a limited number of people and the rest have no hope of salvation because they were born specifically to spend eternity in hell.  This is “Limited Atonement” and the worst face of Calvinism and Reformation doctrine.

3.      If Jesus paid for all the sins of all the sinners HOW could God punish anyone with eternal hell?  If all the sins are paid for then they ARE paid for!

 Some preliminary issues

There is a vast difference between suffering and punishment:

    Punishment ought always to contain some sort of suffering, even if it’s only the loss of a few hours of television.  Dictionaries concur in the definition of punishment and all that I’ve read say something along the order of:    a: suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution b: a penalty inflicted on an offender through judicial procedure.  (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)  On the other hand, suffering in and of itself does not carry the idea of punishment.

   We know it is not only the guilty who suffer.  There are many biblical cases where we see innocent people suffering.  One clear case is found in 2^nd Kings 6:26ff; the king of Israel was walking on the wall in the city of Samaria.  He heard a woman complaining and asked her what it was about.  She explained that the day before she had made a deal with another woman concerning their children.  The women agreed to boil the woman’s son and eat him and the following day they would boil the other woman’s son.  The problem was, according to what the woman was telling the king, the other woman refused to give up her son.

   The baby/child who had been killed, boiled and eaten was clearly innocent.  We know that babies cannot sin because they are not able to tell the difference between right and wrong and choose the wrong.  We also know that babies are not guilty of their parent’s sins.  “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer (in the sense of “dying for the sins of the father” not in the “because of” sense) for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”  Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV)

   The baby obviously suffered, but was not being punished.  The baby was suffering because of the guilt of its parents and the punishment God was giving to them.  Other babies and children suffered because of the siege, even if we are not told of them.  Because people were going hungry it is obvious that babies and children were also going hungry, even though they were not guilty of sin.  They were suffering because of sin, but they were not being punished because they were not guilty of any sin.

   We know, don’t we, that when a doctor cuts off a gangrenous leg he is not punishing the one whose leg is being removed, but that one is still suffering.  When I was working with the church in northern Michigan a young woman gave birth to a baby with Spina Bifida.  Before that child was five years old he had gone through more than one hundred serious operations.  None of his obscene suffering was because of his sin nor was he being punished. 

   Punishment has to do with guilt.  The guilty are punished, at least when they are caught.  Punishment also has to do with the law or with law.  It’s part of the reap what you sow idea.  Note Romans 5:16b (ESV) “For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation…”  I think we all get this idea.  But, in addition to this, we need to understand that punishment does NOT result in forgiveness.  One who is punished for a crime and suffers to the full extent of the law concerning that crime is not forgiven.  He has paid for the crime. 

   The man who murders another and is sentenced to twenty-five years in prison is not told “we forgive you” when he comes out after paying for his crime.  He couldn’t care less if you forgive him or not.  He paid for his crime as the law required.  To many, it doesn’t really matter if you forgive them for their evil deeds or not.  They were set free because they had PAID for their crimes and once the payment was made forgiveness was excluded.

    In addition, payment for crimes committed does not result in relationship.  A criminal does not, by the very fact that he is paying for his crimes, draw close in relationship with the warden.  (More on this below)

 God always intended to forgive us:

   Because of who and what God is, infinitely holy and totally righteous, we have looked at Him as one who MUST punish sin; that being so, we sometimes think that God could totally obliterate us because we are so sinful and He is so holy.  We forget that God knew about us before we were ever created – 1 Peter 1:20.  He knew we were going to sin and sin badly.  He even knew we were going to try to kill Him – Acts 2:22-23 – yet He created us anyway.  Why would He create us unless He planned to forgive us?

   1 Peter 4:8 (ESV) 

    “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”

   The God who is the creator speaks to us about our responsibility to love and He tells us what love does – it covers a multitude of sins.  Love does this!  We know the scriptures tell us that God is love and Peter tells us what love does.  I think it’s clear that God always intended to forgive us.

 Law cannot bring reconciliation

   Romans 3:20 (ESV) 

    “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

   It’s not a question of who works the law in order to bring about salvation.  For instance, Jesus keeps the whole law, doing exactly what God says He should do – being obedient unto death, even death on the cross – and then, according to the law, He offers Himself as a sacrifice and His obedience to the law takes away our sins.  The scripture above tells us that works of the law will justify NO ONE.  Whether we do them or Jesus does makes no difference.  Works of the law will not justify anyone.

   Justification, Redemption, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Atonement are not about getting rid of sins (even though they are[1]).  They are about Restoration of Fellowship

   One of the problems with the idea that sins are paid for is that payment is a law matter.  A murderer sent to prison for 20 years, pays for his crimes and never has to establish a relationship with the warden.  Paying for a crime does not necessarily bring about friendship with the Warden; neither the criminal nor the Warden cares one way or the other if they have a relationship with each other.  God, on the other hand, is striving to have a relationship with us.  That is what He is looking for.  While it’s true, God is not going to allow us to live impenitent and still maintain a right relationship with him, just getting rid of sins is not what God is looking for.  He is looking for more, much more than that!  God wants to have a relationship with us.  He wants us to be restored to the family.  We are His children and He is our Father.

   Remember that it was asked of God, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”  So it’s clear that God is a judge.  When He judges, however, He is judging as a Father, not as a Jurist.  “He created us as sons and daughters (Luke 3:21, 38 and note Acts 17:24-29) so when we rebelled and ‘left home’ it wasn’t a court judge we were leaving or a code of ethics we were abandoning, it was our Father.”  (Jim McGuiggan; The Dragon Slayer pg 101)  Imagine God saying something like, “You broke my law.  I loved that law.  It is such a wonderful law.”  Of course the Law is good – Romans 7:16 – but any parent who really loves his children is not worried about his words being ignored or even fought against.  No.  That parent is concerned about his heart being broken and the relationship with his child left in shambles.

   Of course God is not going to give up His morals, ethics or requirements in order to have a relationship with us – remember the “Rich Young Ruler” who bent his head and walked away after Jesus told him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life?  Jesus loved him, but He didn’t change the protocol in order to keep him.  There were requirements and the young man needed to face up to and accept them in order to have what he wanted.  He refused and walked away, so he never enjoyed a right relationship with Jesus or His Father.

   How long Adam and Eve lived in the garden prior to eating the forbidden fruit is anybody’s guess, but that they ate it and began to drift from a right relationship with God is obvious truth.  As man continued to sin he continued his drift and was going in the opposite direction from that which God had created him to begin with.  God created us so that we might have fellowship with Him.  He created us as sons and daughters; note that Luke 3:38 tells us that Adam was the son of God.  A parent wants to have a relationship with his children and that’s exactly what God wanted/wants too!  Fellowship was broken and God was working it all out so that the fellowship would be restored.  He wasn’t working things out so that His law might be obeyed, even though He required it.

   David told God in Psalm 51:16-17 

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
   you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

   David understood that God wanted the heart; He wanted a right relationship with His son.  Once David gave that to God He also gave Him the sacrifices called for in the law.  He gave those because he loved God.  Remember Jesus told us, “If you love me keep my commandments.” 

   The whole first chapter of Isaiah speaks of the broken relationship God had with His sons and daughters.  They had rebelled and run from Him.  He wanted them to come back and reason together.  Restore the relationship first, because all the sacrifices they were giving were worthless without the right relationship.

   What is so amazing about the relationship with God is that He is the One who was doing all the seeking.  He is the One who was working out all the details in order to bring about reconciliation.  He is the One who sent His Son to restore the relationship we once had with Him.  We were enemies and He sent His Son to make us friends (Romans 5:10).  We were weak and Christ died for ungodly us (Romans 5:6).  We were sinners and Christ died for us (Romans 5:8) washing us clean.

   Look at what Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:15;

“…and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves

but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

    We were heartless, wicked, rebellious sinners and God sent His Son to bear our wickedness going to the cross with it so that we might no longer live for ourselves but for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.  This is reconciliation.  God never wanted our sacrifices –He wanted US!  Had we remained in a right relationship with Him there would never have been a need for sacrifices.

   Now back to the original point:  God wants to have a right relationship with us, but that cannot be gotten through works of the law, so atonement had to come in another way; a way that was not a banking/law/payment and repayment issue. 

 God Came

   Before we can truly get a grip on what the atonement is we have to understand something about the lengths God was willing to go to give us the gift of salvation.  Philippians 2:1ff gives us the great truth that God was willing to be less than He was[2]  in order to bring about the atonement.  He emptied Himself, thinking that being equal to the Father was not something that He had to hold onto.  In fact, in my pitiful understanding of things, He could not hold on to that equality and still become a man, which is what He did.  He became a man because God always intended to live with us.  This – THIS AND NOTHING ELSE – is the culmination of all that God has planned for us, the eternal purpose of God – it is to LIVE WITH US!!!

   God came to be one of us.  He was born of one of us and nursed at the breasts of a human mother.  He sat at the table with His earthly family and ate whatever meals Mary provided.  He went into the carpenter shop and learned how to measure, saw, plane, nail and build.  My guess is, He smashed His thumb a time or two, because that’s what we would have done and He was one of us.  As a child, He surely fell down many times and skinned His knees.  He played with the other children and wrestled with His brothers.  He went to synagogue and took His turns at reading the scrolls.  As He grew He increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

   This was not just an ordinary man (even though He was), but it was God in the person of Jesus Christ.  God came.  He came to share humanity with us.  He came to be one of us.  And when He came into the Jewish world of that first century He came into a world that stood condemned by God.  They were under condemnation because of their wickedness.  And though He was not personally guilty of the nation’s sins, He did not hold Himself aloof from them as if He were better than they. 

   John was in the wilderness teaching people to prepare because God was coming and many were listening and responding.  One day Jesus came and as the line formed for baptism, Jesus joined the line.  When His turn came, John tried to refuse, but Jesus told him it was essential that He be baptized in order to fulfill all righteousness.  The nation was called to repentance and their response to that was baptism.  Jesus joyfully joined them in that baptism.  He was ONE OF THEM.  And what was required of them He accepted and met the requirement.

   Shortly after that we are told of His fasting and hunger and testing and temptations.  Jesus went through the trials and overpowered sin and Satan.  It wasn’t with a wave of the hand that He overpowered them; it was with His heart.  His love for us and for the Father was too deep and too strong to allow Him to give in to the temptations sin and Satan threw before Him.

   Eventually, in the upper room, God got down on His hands and knees and washed our feet.  In our arrogance we refused to humble ourselves and stood proudly trying to outdo our friends and fellows.  God stripped down and wrapped a towel around Himself and gently washed our filthy feet, telling us if we have seen Him we have seen the Father.  Whatever Jesus/God did the Father/God did.  God came and showed us that true life is a life filled with humility and service.  But it is even more than that.

   From His knees in the upper room He refused the twelve legions, gave in to the beating, the spitting, the crown of thorns, the nakedness and shame.  He accepted the nails through His hands, feet and the rough hewn cross.  He allowed Himself to be hung there, displayed shamefully for all to see.  He heard the heckling, the laughing and the ridicule.  He knew the pain His mother was going though as she stood at His feet watching Him die.  “Woman, behold your son.  Son, behold your mother.”  And He watched His mother walk away with John’s arm on the shoulders of Mary where He would have liked to have had His own.

   This is God.  This is the length to which God would go in order to give us what He has eternally planned for us.  We need to understand that the sacrifice of Jesus was not something done just on the cross.  It began long before when He emptied Himself and became a servant among men and that servant hood continued long past the time when He bowed His head saying, “It is finished…” 

We look at the cross and think, even proclaim, “What a TRAVESTY!”  But it wasn’t!  It was a grand, glorious gift.  It was God pouring out His life for His love and we are His love.  This is obedience; this is sacrifice; this is being a servant; this is glory; this is love; this is our God!

 What is Atonement?

   Atonement does not seem to have much, if anything, to do with the punishment of sins[3].  While it’s true, God does punish for sins, it is not true that punishment is what God wants to give.  What He wants to give is His love centered in forgiveness.  God is full of grace and has a deeply generous heart that comes to us most fully in and as the man Jesus Christ.  It was and is through the life (faithful life), death and resurrection of Jesus that this grace is fully realized (John 1:14-17). 

   Atonement is totally, from beginning to end, a gift from God.  He initiated it; planned it; promised it; executed it; and brought it to fruition (1 Corinthians 2:9; Romans 5:6-11).  We did not send Jesus; did not consider how bad sin really was/is; did not understand the whole idea of atonement.  In fact, we are told that if atonement was fully understood we (the rulers of Paul’s day, but we were surely involved in the whole sordid mess) would never have killed Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:6-8).

   Atonement is found in a Son who gave His heart totally to His Father.  Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”  The hearts of the Father and the Son were completely aligned with each other.  What the Father wished from the Son the Son gave and gave it without bitterness, but rather gave it with joy.  It included death, even death on the cross.  This, of course, is what any of God’s children should have been willing to give, but we were distracted by sin and he (sin) turned our heads to the world and away from our Father.  Sin attempted to sway the Son also, but He was having none of it.  Instead, the Son “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

   But what does it mean that He condemned sin in the flesh?   

Here’s my take on it: Jesus, the man, became one of us and thus was part of the world of turmoil, sin and death.  Sin appeared to have the reigns and man was obediently following along, until Jesus.  Jesus was told by sin to do this – Jesus said no.  He was told by sin to do that – Jesus told him no.  Over and over (often people think the only time Jesus was tempted was in the wilderness with Satan) sin tempted him to sin and each time Jesus told sin no.  He was telling sin that it had no right to rule, that sin had usurped the right and man had followed obediently without any real consideration (Romans 3:10ff).  Jesus, through his own fleshly obedience (demonstrating that neither the flesh nor sin was all powerful) to God condemned sin as a usurper, showing it that it had no right to rule.  The obedience of Christ gave to the Creator everything that He wanted when He created man to begin with.  He did not come as God and condemn sin, but rather as man/flesh and condemned sin.  And it was in this condemning as He gave God His due that he represented us (because He was one of us) to the Father as people who wanted to give Him what He wanted.  He didn’t pay for sin; he condemned sin, taking away its rule.

   This is atonement.  His sacrifice, given in obedient death, was the atoning sacrifice that washed sins from our souls.  We were/are forgiven as we offer ourselves to God through the adoption found in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:5-7).

 But sin has to be paid for

   This is where we make a critical error.  We draw conclusions from passages quoted that are not necessarily correct conclusions and we build doctrines from those conclusions.  One example of this is the cry of dereliction Jesus gave on the cross – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” –  and we say, “You see.  God turned His back on Jesus.”  The problem with this conclusion is that we ignore the meaning of the Psalm altogether.

   Psalm 22 begins with that cry, but it ends by saying that is only how it appears and that God would NEVER turn His back on His faithful one(s).  Look at verse 24:

For he has not despised or abhorred
   the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
   but has heard, when he cried to him.

   Jesus made the cry telling them/us that they were laughing and chiding, thinking that God had turned away from Him and believing that the punishment they were attempting to put on Jesus was something that God was doing.  The whole while Jesus was saying and believing that God would NEVER turn His back on Him.  Jesus was the only one who ever gave to God exactly what He wanted.  There was no sin in His life, no deceit found in His mouth.  He was perfect in His obedience to God, giving the Father NO reason to turn His back on Him.  Instead, He was telling those at the foot of the cross that no matter what it looks like (yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted – Isaiah 53:4b) the Father would never hide His face from His faithful one(s). 

   The idea that God would punish Jesus is antipodal to all that God stands for.  He makes laws that state that you CANNOT punish a son for the father’s sins and you CANNOT punish a father for the son’s sins (Ezekiel 18:20; Deuteronomy 24:16).  He tells us that He HATES hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:18).  Could God do what He hates and what He has set laws against? 

Consider this

Look at Amos 4:6 to the end.  God is telling the Israelites that they were in sin and separated from Him, therefore He was punishing them.  His purpose in the punishing was not just penal, but was meant to bring the people back to Him.  Note what He says in verse six and others:

“I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,

and lack of bread in all your places,

yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD.

 He repeats that “yet you did not return to me” phrase at least four times in the chapter letting us know that the punishment they were undergoing had a purpose other than penal.

Surely during the time of the Amos four punishment there were babies born.  We know there were babies then (2 Kings 6:24ff) and they were born into a world that was suffering punishment for the sins of the people/nation.  What were the babies guilty of?  The only biblical answer has to be NOTHING.  They were innocent babies, but they were suffering none-the-less.  Surely they cried day and night because of their hunger.  Had they been able to speak real words they could have rightly made the cry of dereliction also:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Is this not reasonably so?  And if they could have made the cry, would that have meant they were guilty of something or that they had become “sin” for their parents?  Or could it mean that they had entered a world of judgment, a world full of sins and the consequences of those sins so that even guiltless they were doomed to suffer those consequences?  Was God angry at the babies?  Was His wrath centered on them?  Or were they, while innocent and free from any sin, suffering the consequences of being born into a broken world? 

Jesus entered into just such a world.  The pangs of hunger and colic, chills and fever were just as much a part of the life of Jesus as they were any other innocent baby.  As He grew He knew the frustrations of life in poverty.  Surely he felt the sting of other children calling Him names because they had heard that Jesus was a child born out of wedlock or at the very least conceived before she and Joseph had their wedding feast.  He was rejected by those He came to save and was eventually crucified, suffering the extreme indignity of having His own creation work together to put Him to death.  Is this not the ultimate example of just how far our fallen world was/is; the world that Jesus entered in order to bring about our salvation?

A few hours prior to the cross He found Himself in the garden praying that the cup might pass from Him.  What was that all about?  He knew He was going to die.  He knew He came to die and just shortly before the garden episode He said that it was time for His glorification (John 12:20-26) and that meant death on the cross.  Why, knowing His purpose, would He ask that the cup pass from Him?  It seems clear to me that it was His humanity.  He was flesh.  He was suffering the same kind of things that we would suffer if it were us in that precarious position.  We would be screaming, “I don’t want to do this!”, even if we had every intention of going ahead with it.  How many of us who have faced heart by-pass surgery have cried out “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” and yet we went ahead and had the surgery anyway?  As in the garden, the same thing took place on the cross.  It was His humanity crying out, “Take me down from here.  Stop this madness.  Oh, dear God stop the pain!  Why have you forsaken me?”   We ought to note that if Jesus had the guilt of our sins on His shoulders and was being punished for them then the answer to His question would have been obvious!  Why have you forsaken me?  Because you are FULL OF SIN!  But that WAS NOT the case.

Jesus entered this world in order that He might bare the wrath of God.  It wasn’t God’s wrath against Jesus, His innocent son – think again about the babies of Amos’ time – It was the wrath of God against a world gone mad with sin.  Jesus came to shed His blood and once shed He offered that up to God.  But the blood offered could not have been tainted with sin, even if it was imputed sin.  If the blood was tainted then it could not have been an acceptable blood offering.  Blood offered for sins had to be innocent blood.  Look at Hebrews 9:11-14.  Jesus entered into the Holy Place with His own blood – v11 – and that blood was innocent, without spot or blemish – v14.  Had He taken our sins upon Himself, or had the Father imputed them to Him, then the blood offered would have been tainted and the sacrifice unacceptable. 

 

   Look at these passages: 

“knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”  (1 Peter 1:18-19).

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”  (Ephesians 5:1-2).

   If Jesus was contaminated with our sins He could not have been blemish or spot free nor could He have been a fragrant offering to God.

   This makes sense yet, we rebut, Jesus became sin – 2 Corinthians 5:21 – for us, we are told and He couldn’t become sin without taking our sins upon Himself or having them placed on Him – Isaiah 53:6.  In what sense did Jesus become sin?  Here was the only man who ever fully obeyed God and we are told He became sin.  Doesn’t this strike you as odd?  Could it be that the way we translate that particular verse is the problem rather?  The word(s) –  ἁμαρτίαν –  from which the translators get “sin” is in other places translated “sin offering.”  The Greek Old Testament takes the word as it’s used in the Corinthian letter and makes it/them “sin offering.”  Note:  Leviticus 4:21 and 24; 5:12 and 6:17.  In each case the same word(s) is translated sin offering rather than sin.  Yes, it is context that determines how the word is translated, but there is nothing in 2 Corinthians 5 that tells us we should translate it any differently than sin offering, especially in light of the Leviticus passages and Isaiah 53:10. 

   Take a look at Leviticus 10.  The chapter opens with Nadab and Abihu being burned up for sinning by offering strange fire before the Lord and ends with Eleazar and Ithamar sinning for failing to eat the sin offering in the Holy place.  But note what is said of the sin offering and Eleazar and Ithamar: 

"Why have you not eaten the sin offering in the place of the sanctuary, since it is a thing most holy and has been given to you that you may bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord ?

   They were told to eat the sin offering in order that they might BEAR THE INIQUITY of the congregation and thus MAKE ATONEMENT for them before the Lord.  In what sense would they have BECOME sin by eating the sin offering?  In what sense would they have become guilty of the sins of the people by eating the sin offering?  It seems clear to me that they WOULD NOT become either!  In fact, prior to making the annual atonement for the people the priests were told to make a sin offering for themselves (see Leviticus 16) so they might be righteous and holy before the Lord when they made the sin offering for the people.  In this sense they were as Jesus was, innocent!  Their sins were forgiven before they gave an offering for the people’s sins.  And when they bore the sins of the people, by eating the sin offering, there is no hint that they became guilty of the nation’s sins.  Nor is there a hint that God turned His back from them or that He forsook them. 

   Now, is any of this Leviticus stuff easy to get a grip on?  No.  As I read it and try to put it all together I end up getting lost in the details.  At the same time, however, I see some things that are simple:

1.       The priests eating the sin offering and thus bearing the sins of the people did NOT make them guilty of the people’s sins

2.       The goat, who symbolically had the sins of the people put on him and thus bore their sins, did not become guilty of the people’s sins

3.       The word translated “sin” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is that same word that is translated “sin offering” in many places in the book of Leviticus and, to me, it makes more sense to say He was a sin offering than to say He became sin, which makes no sense to me at all.

a.       Note Romans 8:3 (NASB) “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,”  See the foot notes in the ESV and RSV

b.       The great Isaiah 53 prophecy tells us that Jesus would be an offering for sin: 

“Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
       he has put him to grief;
  when his soul makes an offering for guilt,” v10 ESV

   So here’s what I think I’m saying:  Just as the babies of Amos’ day came into the world and bore the judgment of God against the sins of the people, so Jesus came into the world and bore the judgment of God.  It was NOT just on the cross that Jesus bore that judgment however; He bore it by just entering into the fallen world.  Remember Hebrews 5:8:  “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…”  His suffering was more than just whips and nails and it began at birth when He emptied Himself of His equality with God and became a servant among men.  From the moment of His birth He was bearing our sins and, because he never sinned, He was capable of bearing them all the way to death on the cross.

Paying for or Forgiving

   Going back to some of the earlier things I spoke of concerning criminals and them paying for their crimes.  If someone shot your wife/husband/son/daughter, was caught and sentenced to twenty years in prison and then paid that twenty years, would that mean you forgive/forgave them of the crime of killing your family member?  Does payment for crime equal forgiveness?  While it’s true, the murderer paid for the crime according to the law, but it has NOTHING to do with forgiveness.  Forgiveness is another matter altogether. 

   Our sins are forgiven not paid for.  Over and over God tells us He has forgiven us.  He does not say our sins are paid for.

   Think:  If Jesus went to the cross and PAID for sins, whose sins did He pay for?  “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”  1 John 2:2.  So, if He paid for the sins of the whole world then the whole world is now innocent.  Would it not be a slam against the sacrifice of Christ if God decided to go ahead and punish those for whom Christ had already paid?  If Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world then we have Universalism.  We deny that and believe there are some going to hell.

   On the other hand, if He paid for only a few people’s sins, we end up with Limited Atonement and that’s the worst face of Calvinism.  To believe that some people were born only for the purpose of going to hell is hellish in itself. 

   Jesus was a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world because He came into this world to be one of us and to offer to God that which we had not been able or, at the very least, willing to give to Him.  What He gave was complete obedience all the way from before His birth through the cross experience.  Death on the cross was only a part of the sacrifice of Christ.  He bore our sins from the moment He left the womb.

   The coming of Jesus did not mean that He purchased grace from God.  You CANNOT buy grace.  Grace is a gift.  We might say, but someone has to pay for a gift before it can be given away.  Perhaps, if we are talking about earthly gifts, but we are not.  When Jesus came He came FULL of grace and truth.  His coming, living, sharing, walking with us and dying on the cross was the gift and that included forgiveness.  “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing!”

Payment for Sin

   Another very real point is:  What is the payment for sin?  Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is DEATH.  How dead would that be?  Would it be a couple of days?  Parts of three days and three nights?  If that is the punishment/payment for sins then we could have paid that ourselves, don’t you think?  That’s what Jesus gave, if He paid for our sins on the cross, and we’re not talking about a few sins, but the sins of the whole world!  But that’s not what sin called for.  Sin called for death and eternal death is the obvious death that is spoken of.  Look at 2 Thessalonians 1:9;  (They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might). [I quoted only the verse - Be sure to read the context] So if Jesus paid for our sins then why didn’t He pay what we would have to pay if we chose to pay for them ourselves?  And besides, if Jesus paid for our sins, who did He pay?  God?  Satan?  It was Satan who was bringing the claims against humanity.  Did Jesus give Himself to Satan?

So, what have I said? 

   Jesus came and throughout His life and death He condemned sin in the flesh by exposing just how bad it really is.  Sin wanted to destroy God, but God in the person of Jesus was greater than our sins.  Instead of giving in to sin He obeyed His Father.  He loved us and His Father more than He loved the little pleasure He could have gotten from sin.  And following God in all things He told sin that it no longer had any rule and He condemned it, then, with His sacrifice, washed it away.  And when He died, He died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.  Then we die to ourselves (Romans 6) and are united with Christ, adopted into the family, and have an eternal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which is what God’s eternal plan and purpose was and is. 

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[1] Obviously sin had to be dealt with and we had to be cleansed from our sins.  Heaven is not a place where sin will be allowed to live, so sins had to be taken care of, but the taking care of sins was secondary to restoring our relationship with God.  This is what He was looking for and what was accomplished as our sins were being forgiven and washed away.  The Prodigal’s father ran to meet him and the son’s confession was brushed aside because it was secondary to the restored relationship.  Essential, yes, but secondary.

[2] This is not something I clearly understand.  Jesus was God being a man, being the man Jesus of Nazareth.  He emptied Himself to become that man, yet He was God at the very same time He was the man Jesus.  God cannot be less than God and yet He was a man and nothing more than a man.  As a man He was clearly limited, yet He was God.  Hmmm.   I’ve read what others who are much more intelligent than I say about this and yet still find the whole thing clear as mud.

[3] I’m trying to be gentle here.  I actually believe atonement has nothing to do with punishment for sins