“Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)
Did Christ in bearing our sins become sinful himself?
God forbid!
He died “THE JUST” for the unjust, I Peter 3:18.
2 Corinthians 5:21 declares “He was made sin,” it does not say he was made a sinner or sinful, and that is evident by the qualification “WHO KNEW NO SIN,” never EVER became personally acquainted with it, nor tainted by it.
What a glorious mystery this is that although He was made sin, (not practically, but by imputation), yet He “KNEW NO SIN”.
I Peter 2:22 declares him as that one “Who did no sin.”
I John 3:5 says, “And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; AND IN HIM IS NO SIN.”
Some would point to 1 Peter 2:24 as proof that Christ did more than bare our sins, transposing the inspired Word to mean that in some sense our sin was put IN Christ, rather than on him.
However, the first part of the verse says that He BORE our sins. The word is used of bringing the sacrifice to the altar, Isaiah 53:12.
“In His body” refers to the fact that He did it as a man, in His body which God had prepared for him (Hebrews 10:5), but in no way means that He became tainted with, or that our sin was somehow put IN Him.
To say that Christ became a sinner, or sinful, even through the sins of His people is to make Him what He was not nor ever could be. To say that his flesh was contaminated by our sin and so to become sinful to justify God in punishing Him is to deny Him as the perfect Lamb of God, WITHOUT blemish and without spot.
What? Christ at enmity with His Father, He whose will was ALWAYS in perfect harmony with His Father’s will – Luke 22:42?
God forbid!
Our Lord was made sin by imputation, God the Father laying ON Him the charge of sin that we deserved. In so doing, He never became a sinner, polluted by it, nor even guilty of it, although claiming it as His own.
On the contrary, it was because He was perfectly just, the sinless LAMB (1 Peter 1:19), that He was capable of suffering FOR the unjust. Even as no suffering was due to HIM, so the merit of what He suffered (full justification, pardon, and reconciliation of His people to God) was justly imputed to them at His death, not by merit, but by GRACE!
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JIM CASEY SERMON PREACHED BLESSED IMPUTATION | BILL PARKER SERMONS PREACHED ON SUBSTITUTION | |
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He was a perfect Man in a world of imperfection—a Man of sorrows from Bethlehem's manger to Calvary's cross—a suffering Man from the virgin womb of Mary to the virgin tomb of Joseph of Arimathea—a Man tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin. There was no sin in Him at any time, yet sin was His by imputation. He knew not sin by impartation or infusion; but the whole accumulated sin of the election of grace was laid by the Father upon Him, and borne by Him into the land of eternal forgetfulness.
Now let us go on to say a few words relative to His incarnate humiliation. "He was made sin." And who made Him so? The Father made Him to be sin for us. He hath made Him to be sin for His Church, in a vicarious sense, as a Representative, a Substitute, a Daysman, a Surety; so that He who made Him to be sin, charged on Him all the sins of all His Church to the end of time. Do look for a moment, in confirmation of what I here state, at Isaiah 53., where you find it recorded, "The Lord hath laid upon Him"--not put in Him, mind that--"the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquities of us all." Who are the "us?" His sheep. "We all like sheep have gone astray"--the iniquity of the sheep. The "we" is the antecedent to the "us;" so that the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of all the sheep. Therefore He said, when He came forth into the world in His vicarious character, "I lay down my life for the sheep." (John 10:15)
"Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity." God imputed iniquity to Christ, and that double imputation that we have in the second epistle to the Corinthians, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him," (2 Cor. 5:21)
"Now He hath made Him sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." And here we have the doctrine of a "double imputation!" and, as it has been said, if it were not a double imputation, it would be ineffectual for all Christ's righteousness must be imputed to me, and all my disobedience and sin must be imputed to Him! and then,
Here is the grand mystery. All our sin laid on him. "I am black but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." (Songs 1:5) Christ says, "Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins." He freely took them upon himself. All our sins were made his by imputation--no other way.