There are 64 comments.

1. Coolidge
   Joseph Stanko

   @JosephStanko

   

   1:13 PM EST ⋅ Dec 23, 2015

   Benjamin Glaser: It was necessary that Christ take on a fallen human body for the sacrifice to be real and effectual unto salvation. (2 Cor. 5:21).

   That is a difficult verse to understand:

   21 God made him who had no sin to be sin

   What can that mean?  How can someone “be sin?”  I think the footnote in the NIV provides a clue:

   Or be a sin offering

   I looked this up in my Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and the footnote further explains that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the one Paul likely learned from childhood) “sin” is a shorthand for a Levitical “sin offering.”  That reading makes sense to me:

   God made him who had no sin to be a sin offering

   Compare to 1 Peter 18-19:

   You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, 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.

   Christ is the perfect sin offering because he is the “lamb without blemish or spot,” unstained by either personal or original sin.

2. Thatcher
   Bryan G. Stephens

   @BryanGStephens

   

   1:18 PM EST ⋅ Dec 23, 2015

   The idea of inherited debt is weird to an American. It used to be quite common.

   And debt could well mean you owe a lifetime for work.

3. Inactive
   Midget Faded Rattlesnake

   @Midge

   1:35 PM EST ⋅ Dec 23, 2015

   Joseph Stanko:

   21 God made him who had no sin to be sin

   What can that mean? How can someone “be sin?” I think the footnote in the NIV provides a clue:

   Or be a sin offering

   I looked this up in my Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and the footnote further explains that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament… “sin” is a shorthand for a Levitical “sin offering.” That reading makes sense to me

   Oddly enough, I intuitively associate “God made him who had no sin to be sin” with the harrowing of Hell, entering into the state of separation between man and God so as to break its power over us.

   The “Pulpit Commentary” in this online verse lookup includes the following:

   He hath made him to be sin for us; rather, he made; he speaks with definite reference to the cross. The expression is closely analogous to that in Galatians 3:13 …Christ has been “made a curse for us.”… Many have understood the word “sin” in the sense of sin offering (Leviticus 5:9, LXX.); but that is a precarious application of the word… We cannot, as Dean Plumptre says, get beyond the simple statement, which St. Paul is content to leave in its unexplicable mystery, “Christ identified with man’s sin; man identified with Christ’s righteousness.”

   Picturing a sin offering or scapegoat makes some sense, but perhaps there is meant to be mystery in such a simple statement, suggesting much because its explicit meaning is paradoxical.

4. Thatcher
   Bryan G. Stephens

   @BryanGStephens

   

   1:39 PM EST ⋅ Dec 23, 2015

   I find if I can accept the mystery of God’s Grace, that even *I* can be forgiven, then any other mystery is acceptable.