148 II. CORINTHIANS 5, 21.

is of special interest, as presenting in a concise form the testi- mony of the Spirit on that all important subject. lie made him icho hnew no sin to he sin for us. The Greek here is, Tov fx-q yvovTa afxapriav vTrep rjfxCjv afxapTLav CTrotT^crev. Our Lord is presented as one whom God contemplated as free from sin and yet he made him sin. Others understand the fxrj yvovra as referring to Christ himself, as one having no consciousness of sin. Others again, to the necessary judgment of believers, he whom we know was free from sin. One or the other of these modes of interpretation is supposed to be necessary, as the apostle uses fXYj and not ov ; the one being, as the grammarians say, the subjective, the other the objective particle of nega- tion ; the one denying a thing as it appears to the mind, the other denying it simply as a fact. In either case the thing here asserted is that Christ was without sin. This was one of the indispensable conditions of his being made sin for us. Had he not been free from sin, he could not have taken the place of sinners. Under the old dispensation the sacrifices were required to be without blemish, in order to teach the necessity of freedom from all sin in him who was to bear the sins of the world. See Ileb. 4, 15. 1 Pet. 2, 22. Ijohn 3, 5. He was made sin^ may mean either, he was made a sin-offering, or, the abstract being used for the concrete, he was made a sinner. Many of the older commentators prefer the former explanation; Calvin, and almost all the moderns adopt the latter. The meaning in either case is the same ; foi* the only sense in which Christ was made sin, is that he bore the guilt of sin; and in this sense every sin offering was made sin. Hence in the Hebrew Scriptures the same word is used both for sin and a sin-offering. This is the principal ground on which the explanation of d/xaprta here in the sense of a sacri- fice for sin is defended. The reasons, however, against this explanation are decisive. 1. In the Scptuagint the Hebrew word for sin, when it means a sin-offering, is always rendered by d/xaprta in the genitive. It is always " of sin," or " for sin," {iv^pX d/xapTtas), Lev. 5, 9. 14, 19. Num. 8, 8, and never simply " sin," as here. 2. The use of the word in the ordinary sense in this same clause, ' He made him to be sin who knew no sin.' It must have the same meaning in both cases. 3. The antithe- sis between " sin " and '' righteousness." He was made sin, we are made " lighteousness." The only sense in which we are made the righteousness of God is that we are in Christ re- garded and treated as righteous, and therefore the sense in