CHRIST TOOK UPON HIM OUR SINS.
THIRD. But thirdly, CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR TAKES UPON HIM OUR SINS. This is another step in the work of our redemption. 'He hath made him to be sin for us.' Strange doctrine! A fool would think it blasphemy, but Truth hath said it. Truth, I say, hath said, not that he was made to sin, but that God made him to be sin—' He hath made him to be sin for us' (2 Cor 5:21).
This showed us how effectively Christ Jesus undertook the work of our redemption—He was made to be sin for us. Sin is the great block and bar to our happiness; sin is the procurer of all miseries to men both here and forever. Take away sin, and nothing can hurt us, for death temporal, death spiritual, and death eternal are the wages of sin (Rom 6:23).
Sin, then, and man for sin, is the object of the wrath of God. If the object of the wrath of God is the most dreadful, then is his case most dreadful? Who can bear, who can grapple with the wrath of God? Men and angels cannot, and the whole world cannot. All, therefore, must sink under sin, but he who is made to be sin for us; he only can bear sins, he only can bear them away, and therefore were they laid upon him—'The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all' (Isa 53:6).
Mark, therefore, you shall find that God made him to be sin for us because 'that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.' He took our flesh, he was made under the law, and was made to be sin for us, that the devil might be destroyed, that the captives might be redeemed, and made the righteousness of God in him.
And forasmuch as he saith that God 'hath made him to be sin,' it declares that God's design and the mystery of his will and grace are in it. 'He hath made him to be sin.' God hath done it, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. There was no other way; the wisdom of heaven could find no other way; we could not by other means stand just before the justice of God.
Now, what remains is that we who are reconciled to God by faith in his blood are quit, discharged, and set free from the law of sin and death? Yea, what encouragement to trust in him when we read that God 'made him be sin for us.'
Quest. But how was Jesus Christ made of God to be sin for us?
Answ. Even so, as if he had committed all our sins, they were as really charged upon him as if he had been the actor and committer of them all. 'He hath made him to be sin,' not only as a sinner but as sin itself. As the sin of the world that day, he stood before God in our stead. Some, indeed, will not have Jesus Christ our Lord to be made sin for us; their wicked reasons think this to be wrong judgment in the Lord; it seems, supposing that because they cannot imagine how it should be, therefore God, if he does it, must do it at his peril, and must be charged with doing wrong judgment, and so things that become not his heavenly Majesty; but against this dunces sophistry we set Paul and Isaiah, the one telling us still, 'the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all'; and the other, that 'God made him be sin for us.'
But these men, as I suppose, think it enough for Christ to die under that notion only, not knowing nor feeling the burden of sin and the wrath of God due to it. These make him as senseless in his dying and as much without reason as a silly sheep or goat, who also died for sin, but so as in name, in show, in shadow only. They felt not the proper weight, guilt, and judgment of God for sin. But thou, sinner, who art so in thine own eyes, and who felt guilt in thine own conscience, know thou that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God in flesh, was made to be sin for thee, or stood sensibly guilty of all thy sins before God, and bare them in his own body upon the cross.
God charged our sins upon Christ, and in their guilt and burden, what remained but that the charge was accurate or feigned? If confirmed, then he hath either perished under them or carried them away from before God; if they were charged but feignedly, then did he but feignedly die for them, then shall we have but feigned benefit by his death, and but feigned salvation at last—not to say how this cursed doctrine charges God and Christ with hypocrisy, the one in saying, He made Christ to be sin; the other in saying that he bare our sin; when, in deed and in truth, our guilt and burden never was really upon him.
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