“HE HATH MADE HIM TO BE SIN FOR US"
“HE HATH MADE HIM TO BE SIN FOR US"
BERNARD BURT The Testimony 1984 p.17
Introduction THE SCOPE of this article is to consider some of the effects of the Edenic curse, "sin in the flesh"; the nature of Christ and his relationship to Adam; to examine what the Scriptures teach about the kind of sacrifice which Jesus offered; and to seek to answer the question, "How was Christ made sin?". The writer has made a deliberate attempt in this article to avoid the use of such phrases as ’sin in the flesh’, ’human nature’, ’sin’s flesh’ and ’Adamic nature’. These phrases and their counterparts from the opponents of the Christadelphian position have been the subject of a verbal battleground for over 100 years, some of it verging on strife "about words to no profit". Let there be no doubt, however, that the position which the writer holds and which this article sets forth is that which is outlined in clauses 3-10 of the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith.
Eastward in Eden
It is necessary first of all to examine the teaching of Scripture upon the original state or nature of Adam in order that a contrast may later be drawn with his condition after his sin. The Scriptures show that, when first in Eden, Adam was: not "afraid" of Deity (Genesis 3:10); "very good" (Genesis 1:31); "upright" (Ecclesiastes 7:29); without "sorrow" (Genesis 3:17)* not a sinner (Romans 5:12); not subject to death (Romans 5:12); and without sense of shame (Genesis 2:25). After the events recorded in Genesis 3:1-6 it is undeniable that there was a dramatic difference in relation to some of these particulars; and in fact, if the straightforward testimony of the Scriptures is to be faced up to, it will be seen that in all these matters there was a deterioration after Adam had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. While some of these details are not of great importance with regard to the subject under consideration, others are pivotal to a correct understanding of the atonement.
Death by sin The Genesis record demonstrates beyond argument that a physiological change did take place in Adam and Eve. Before the transgression they were naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:25); as a result of it their sense of shame was such that they felt obliged to cover the nakedness which before had been of no consequence (Genesis 3:7-10). Here then was a new characteristic which they had acquired. Now in the normal processes of procreation acquired characteristics are not transmitted to the next generation. A man who has a highly developed conscience will not necessarily beget a son endowed with the same attitude. Yet this sense of shame which had been awakened in Adam was transmitted to subsequent generations. Now if the Scriptures are taken at their face value, death in the human race came about in the same way: "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men..." (Romans 5:12).
Death for Adam was not the inevitable consequence of a corruptible nature with which he had been created; it was the "wages of sin" (Romans 6:23), and this death-stricken nature "passed upon all" his descendants, for "Adam...begat a son in his own likeness, after his image..." (Genesis 5:3). So "death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression" (Romans 5:14). The newborn babies who were overthrown at the flood died because they were "in Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:22), that is, because being descended from him they had inherited the "death" which came upon him in consequence of his sin.
"In my flesh dwelleth no good thing"
Some opponents of the Christadelphian position have argued that "Children are not born sinful, but they need to be taught to behave properly. Human nature is morally neutral...". (E. Brady, The gospel that is never preached (Nazarene Fellowship Publication, p. 2.) If this theory is true then at least some children of godly parents, having been taught to behave properly, ought to have lived sinless lives; but the Scripture says that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God". By contrast with the above, untrue statement, another writer has observed: "The sane mind perceives something radically wrong with human nature, something which is manifested early in its growth. The two-year-old child raises its fist in frustrated anger when a restraining hand gripping his trousers withholds him from the coveted object". The truth of the matter is set forth in Romans 7:1-25, where Paul says: "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). Here is no ’moral neutrality’, but a condition where, despite the apostle’s desire to "do good", he found that "evil is present with me" (Romans 7:21). It has been argued that in this chapter Paul was writing of his position before baptism, when he was "in the flesh" and a persecutor of the saints. But this will not do, for not only do the Scriptures indicate that Paul was zealous and single-minded in carrying out what at that time he believed to be right (Acts 26:9-10), but this explanation simply does not fit the facts of the chapter. Firstly, from verse 15 onwards the chapter is in the present and not the imperfect tense; secondly, a careful examination ,of the verses concerned will reveal that the term "flesh" as used in Acts 26:18-25 is synonymous with "my members" in Acts 26:23; and thirdly, analysis of this section of Romans shows that the following terms are set in opposition to each other:
[Romans 7:14-25 to Romans 8:1-6]
"I am carnal" (Romans 7:14) "the law is spiritual" (Romans 7:14) "evil is present with me" (Romans 7:21) "I would do good" (Romans 7:21) "the law of sin...in my members" (Romans 7:23).. . "the law of my mind" (Romans 7:23) "body of...death" (Romans 7:24) "inward man" (Romans 7:22) "the law of sin" (Romans 7:25) "the law of God" (Romans 7:25) "flesh" (Romans 7:5, Romans 7:18, Romans 7:25; Romans 8:1, etc.) "Spirit" (Romans 8:1, etc.) "carnally minded" (Romans 8:6) "spiritually minded" (Romans 8:6) An examination of these phrases in the context in which they occur in this section in Romans shows that even after his conversion Paul suffered from an internal conflict, and that the desires and impulses of his "flesh" or "members" were interfering with the accomplishment of "the good that I would". This is entirely consistent with the tenor of the rest of Scripture which, far from teaching that "human nature is morally neutral", testifies that "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts..." (Mark 7:21); "And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Galatians 5:24); "...the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (Ephesians 4:22); "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away oihis own lust, and enticed" (James 1:14); "whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" (James 4:1). It is important to notice the way in which the term "sin" is used in Romans 7:1-25." Sin" is depicted as a powerful enemy who was "dead" (Romans 7:8) until a commandment was given by God, whereupon "sin revived", "deceived me, and by it slew me" (Romans 7:9-11). This implies that as soon as the commandment was known, impulses which were contrary to it arose within Paul "working death" in him. This was not the situation of Adam and Eve in the garden (where the temptation came from without), and is a further indication of the change brought about in man by the first sin.
Adam and Jesus The statement in Genesis 3:20 that Eve was the "mother of all living", together with the unambiguous declarations in Genesis 7:1-24 that all flesh died except those in the ark, effectively disposes of all grounds for speculation that there might have been creatures other than Adam and Eve involved in the origins of the present human population of this planet. The genealogy of Luke 3:1-38 traces the ancestry of the Lord Jesus back to the first man, Adam, thus establishing his physical relationship through his mother with the human race. Because he was "born of a woman" there can be no doubt that Jesus was a son of Adam, as we all are. Yet because he was miraculously begotten of God by the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary there is a contrast to be drawn as well as a comparison to be made, and the two key passages in which Adam and Jesus are set in juxtaposition (Romans 5:1-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-58) do both of these things. It is in determining where there is likeness and where there is difference that one of the most difficult and controversial areas of this subject lies. The nature of Christ This will first be considered by setting out two sets of passages, the one demonstrating the likeness between Jesus and ourselves, and the other the differences:
Like ourselves:
"made in the likeness of men" (Php 2:7) "in all things...made like unto his brethren"
(Hebrews 2:17-18) "as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself... took part of the same"
(Hebrews 2:14) "touched with the feeling of our infirmities"
(Hebrews 4:15) "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh" (1 John 4:2) "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3) Different from ourselves:
"being in the form of God" (Php 2:6) "the express image of His person" (Hebrews 1:3) "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26) "without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19) "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" (John 8:46) "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) The above passages, which are a representative selection, show that there are two strands of teaching concerning Jesus in the Scriptures. The one emphasises his affinity with "his brethren" (to what degree this "likeness" extends has yet to be examined), while the other demonstrates his separateness from them and his affinity with his Father. These things are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory, but any attempt to comprehend the teaching of Scripture about the nature of Jesus which fails to give due weight to both will be unbalanced.
Taking the human aspect first, it is necessary to establish whether the nature of Jesus was like Adam when he was created or like Adam after his expulsion from Eden. When Adam was created he was pronounced "very good" (Genesis 1:31). When Jesus was called "Good Master" he replied, "Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God" (Luke 18:18-19). Moreover his experiences were utterly unlike those of Adam in the Edenic state, for the Lord was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3); he experienced weariness (John 4:6) and hunger (Matthew 4:2; Matthew 21:18); he wept at the hardness of the people’s hearts (Luke 19:41) and at the grief of his friends (John 11:35); and in the garden he lamented, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" (Matthew 26:38). What then of his temptations? The key verse in this connection is Hebrews 4:15, where the record makes two important statements: 1. he "was in all points tempted like as we are"; and 2. he was "without sin". Those who teach a Trinity or a pre-existent Christ cannot really believe (1), whilst the Unitarian or the modernist who denies the virgin birth cannot adequately account for (2). Only by accepting all the implications of passages such as Luke 1:35 can the reality of Jesus’s temptations and his unique sinlessness be comprehended and believed. This is not just an interesting point of doctrine; it is vitally important to the subject, because Hebrews 4:15 teaches that Jesus’s temptations were like the temptations we experience from day to day, and not simply like that which Adam underwent in the garden.
Adam’s temptation in Eden was from an external source:" The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat" (Genesis 3:12). Temptation for us can arise in the same way, as it did with Joseph (Genesis 39:7), or we can conceive it in our heart as did Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:4). It is crucial to a right understanding of this subject to establish whether or not this latter source of temptation existed within the Lord Jesus in the days of his flesh. Since the wilderness temptation of Jesus is considered elsewhere in this special issue, attention will be given in this article to other occasions in his ministry where the Gospels make it clear that he underwent times of temptation and trial. The inspired apostle applies to the Lord the words of Psalms 40:1-17: "Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared me...Then said I, Lo I come...to do Thy will ? God" (Hebrews 10:5-7). In the Gospels Jesus shows that this was indeed his purpose: "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father Which hath sent me" (John 5:30); "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me" (John 6:38). There can be no doubt that Jesus did do the will of his Father—the Scriptural testimonies to this demonstrate the fact beyond argument—but equally conveyed by the above citations from
John 5:1-47 and John 6:1-71 is the point that he had a will of his own which was contrary to the will of his Father He did not "seek" (in the sense of perform) his "own will", he did not come to "do" his own will but it was there nevertheless and was the cause of a conflict within him which, just occasionally, the Gospel writers permit us to see. "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name" (John 12:27-28, RV mg.). Here was real conflict The context is not some external temptation (although he met with such and overcame time and time again); it is a declaration to his disciples of his impending death. Yet the very declaration of God’s will triggered in his mind the thought that he must suffer as no man had ever suffered if that purpose was to be accomplished. He shrank from the contemplation of it; his will was to seek deliverance from it So strong was the "trouble" in his mind that he actually gave voice to the desire; but it was expressed as a question: "Father, save me from this hour?", and was met with an immediate rejoinder, based, as were all his responses to temptation, upon the Scriptures and the purpose of God. The greatest struggle of all was in Gethsemane, and here again the conflict of wills is evident in the pages of the Gospel records. In his prayers in the garden his own will was manifested more fully than anywhere else in the New Testament, and received its most total and crushing defeat. For an analysis of his prayers the reader must be directed elsewhere. (Elwyn Humphries, The problem of sin’s origin (out of print), p. 8.) Suffice it to say at this point that careful consideration of them will show that the first prayer began with an appeal to the Father, on the basis of Scripture, that "the cup" might be taken away from him; and that, following the most agonising battle that has ever taken place in the mind of a man, by the time the third prayer was uttered his own will had been completely subjected to the Father’s. When records such as these are taken into account, with such passages as are quoted under the heading ‘Like ourselves’, above, there seems to be no room for doubt that the same desires to satisfy self and to reject the will of God as are present with us were present in the Lord in the days of his ministry. There was a conflict, a tension in his mind between the will of his Father, which he had learned, and his own will. It is not possible to explain on the basis of his Divine begettal the existence in him of a will which was at times clearly contrary to the will of his Father. The only possible explanation for it is that it was in him as a result of his being born of a human mother. The Son of God
Turning now to the fact that Jesus was the "only begotten of the Father", what effect did this have upon him? and in what respects was he therefore different from the rest of Adam’s descendants? This again has been an area of controversy, both inside and outside the Christadelphian community, with tendencies to go beyond the factual teaching of the Word of God.
Psalms 22:1-31 is undoubtedly Messianic, and many prophetic details can be clearly seen in it; but what about the following: "Thou art He that took me out of the womb: Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mothers breasts. I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art my God from my mother’s belly" (Psalms 22:9-10)? Or Isaiah 50:1-11: "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned" (v. 4)? These passages at least strongly suggest that the Father instructed His Son from the earliest days. Certainly by the age of twelve Jesus had attained a remarkable degree of "understanding", and knew not only Who his Father was, but that he must be about his Father’s business (Luke 2:49). All this is no more than reasonable; if God has commanded earthly fathers to teach His ways diligently to their children, how much more would He do this for His Son? There could be no possibility of Jesus committing a sin through ignorance. In the light of passages such as Hebrews 5:8-9 and Luke 22:44 there can be no doubt that the Lord had to "learn obedience", be "made perfect" and resist "unto blood, striving against sin". We take nothing away from his victory in subjecting his own will to the will of his Father when we note that in the garden there appeared "an angel...from heaven, strengthening him", for this was the greatest battle of all, and every source of human help had failed him (Luke 22:43-45). The sacrifice of Christ
Analysis of a recent preaching leaflet which examines the beliefs of 36 sects of the apostasy reveals that of 21 defined doctrines which are rejected by Christadelphians as being unScriptural only five are believed by all 36 groups. (Arthur Armstrong, There is a worldwide family. Available from the author, or from Sis. R. Turner, Wolds Drive, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GA.)
One of these is that Jesus’s death was a substitutionary death. This information is not given as an argument for or against this view of the sacrifice of Jesus, but it is interesting to note that those who have rejected the Christadelphian position on this subject are not moving to a unique doctrinal position but are adopting a view which appears to be almost universally held by the apostasy.
It has been argued that the animal sacrifices under the Law were offered upon a substitutionary basis. One author wrote of the "law of sacrifice under which a sinner was delivered from death by the offering of an innocent, spotless creature in his stead".( E. Brady, The Norris Confession (Nazarene Fellowship Publication, p. 19.) However, there are several flaws in this concept.
Firstly, since death came into the world as a result of sin (Romans 5:12) those Israelites who offered sacrifice for every sin they committed ought never to have died, whereas it is manifest they were as subject to death as any people. Indeed, the apostle testifies that the Law could not bring life (Galatians 3:21).
Secondly, the purpose of the sin offering is never defined as the payment of a debt (an essential part of the substitutionary view), but it was to "make an atonement" (Leviticus 4:31), which was done by the shedding of the blood (Leviticus 17:11). Now the Hebrew word kaphar (atonement) means ’to cover’. The sin offering did not therefore discharge a debt, it merely provided a covering for the sin until a better sacrifice could be offered. Under the Law those better sacrifices were the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement, but the apostle shows in Hebrews 9:1-28 and Hebrews 10:1-39 that even these sacrifices could not "take away sin"—a fact demonstrated to Israel by the law of the scapegoat.( Bernard Burt, "Forgiveness", current series in The Bible Student, Vol. 14.) The concept that the animal sacrifices were substitutionary breaks down completely, however, as soon as the burnt offering is considered. In this sacrifice, with its associated meat and drink offerings, the Israelite declared that he joyfully desired to love the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, and his neighbour as himself. (John Allfree," Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not", series in The Bible Student, Vol. 13 and Vol. 14 No. 1.) The offering of the burnt offering did not exempt the Israelite from this obligation; indeed, if a disputed word can be used in its proper context, it represented in all its symbolic details his intention to do so. Similarly, the peace offering typified the restoration to fellowship with God of the Israelite whose sin had been covered by the blood of the sin offering and who had expressed his desire to rededicate himself to God’s service by offering a burnt offering.
It can be clearly demonstrated that the Lord Jesus was the antitypical sin offering, burnt offering and peace offering, and our understanding of his sacrifice ought to be based on the Old Testament teaching on the subject unless there is clear evidence in the New that the basis was different. This aspect of the subject is examined more fully in another article in this special issue.
Made sin for us The effects of sin in Eden, the nature of Adam and that of Christ, and the particular significance of that nature in respect of the sacrifice of Jesus having been considered, it now remains to examine the apostolic statement that Jesus was "made...sin for us". This occurs in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where it is rendered in Rotherham’s translation: "Him who knew not sin in our behalf He made to be sin, that we might become God’s righteousness in him". The statement that “he knew not sin" accords perfectly with that of Hebrews 4:15 that he was "without sin"; but there is a force and significance in this passage which cannot be missed if it is set out in two columns:
God made him who knew not sin …… to be sin on our behalf in order that we (who do commit sin)…… may become the righteousness of God in him.
Here is encompassed the purpose of God: that in Christ many might "be made righteous"; and the means of its accomplishment: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). In seeking to understand the meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:21 it is important to distinguish between things that differ. In saying that Jesus was "made...to be sin for us" Paul is not referring to the fact that "the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6), or that "his soul" would be "an offering for sin" (Isaiah 53:10), although both these prophetic statements found fulfilment in Jesus’s sacrifice. Furthermore, this verse does not teach that Jesus committed sin; if it did it would contradict the emphatic testimonies of other Scriptures.
What it does confirm is that which this study has shown, that the Scriptures consistently teach that Jesus experienced in his flesh all the temptations and trials which we experience, being "in the flesh". As a result of his steadfast devotion to the will of God all these temptations were overcome and the victory was wrought by God in Christ, "reconciling the world unto Himself. His life "in the flesh" was the pattern for us, who, having been "planted together in the likeness of his death", and having reckoned ourselves "dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord", should "have (our) fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life" (Romans 6:5, Romans 6:11, Romans 6:22)