This, therefore, must cease for ever, unless the Son of God will put his shoulder to the work; but, blessed be God, he hath done it—‘When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.’
CHRIST TOOK UPON HIM OUR SINS.
THIRD. But thirdly, CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR TAKES UPON HIM OUR SINS. This is another step to 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, therefore, showeth us how effectually 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 for ever. 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, then is his case most dreadful; for who can bear, who can grapple with the wrath of God? Men cannot, angels cannot, 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, and you shall find that the reason why God made him to be sin for us was, ‘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 declareth that the design of God and the mystery of his will and grace was 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 but 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 to be sin for us.’
Quest. But how was Jesus Christ made of God to be sin for us?
Answ. Even so as if himself had committed all our sins; that is, they were as really charged upon him as if himself 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. He was 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 duncish sophistry[4] 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 to be sin for us.’