3. If we look at the verses that precede we shall see that St. Paul's thoughts, as always when he treats of these great themes, were dwelling on the identification of Christ with sinful man. " One died for all, therefore all died," he says (verse 14) ; and those who are " in him " are new creatures, reconciled to God and living " not unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again." Hence it would seem that the phrase " made to be sin " must be understood in the light of this thought of identification. We may, perhaps, paraphrase the words thus : — "Jesus Christ, though sinless, identified Himself with us in our sinfulness, in order that we, though sinful, might be able to identify ourselves with Him in His righteousness."
Now this identification of Christ with sinful men is due to His intense sympathy. There was a time in our Lord's life on earth, we are told, when He met a man coming out of the tombs, whom no man could bind, " no, not with chains." That man was " possessed by an unclean spirit." Of all men upon earth, you would say that he was the one between whom and the pure and holy Jesus there must have existed the most thorough- going repugnance. What Pharisee who shrank from the filthy and loathsome words of that maniac could have experienced one- thousandth part of the inward and intense loathing which Christ must have experienced for the mind that those words expressed ?
2 COR. V. 21 225
For it was into that He looked ; that which He understood ; that which in His inmost being He must have felt, which must have given Him a shock such as it could have given to no other. He must have felt the wickedness of that man in His inmost being. He must have been conscious of it, as no one else was or could be. Now, if we have ever had the consciousness, in a very slight degree, of evil in another man, has it not been, ujp to that degree, as if the evil were in ourselves ? Suppose the offender were a friend, or a brother, or a child, has not this sense of personal shame, of the evil being ours, been proportionably stronger and more acute? However much we might feel ourselves called upon to act as judges, this perception still remained. It was not crushed even by the anger, the selfish anger, and the impatience of an injury done to us which, most probably, mingled with and corrupted the purer indignation and sorrow. Most of us confess with humilia- tion how little we have had of this lively consciousness of other men's impurity, or injustice, or falsehood, or baseness. But we do confess it ; we know, therefore, that we should be better if we had more of it. In our best moments we admire with a fervent admiration — in our worse, we envy with a wicked envy — those in whom we trace most of it. And we have had just enough of it to be certain that it belongs to the truest and most radical part of the character, not to its transient impulses. Suppose, then, this carried to its highest point. Cannot you, at a great distance, apprehend that Christ may have entered into the sin of that poor maniac's spirit, may have had the most inward realization of it, not because it was like what was in Himself, but because it was utterly and intensely unlike? And yet are you not sure that this could not have been, unless He had the most perfect and thorough sympathy with this man, whose nature was transformed into the likeness of a brute, whose spirit had acquired the image of a devil ? Does the co-existence of this sympathy and this antipathy perplex you ? When we consider we see that they must dwell together in their highest degree, in their fullest power, in any one of whom we could say, "He is perfect; He is the standard of excellence." Diminish by one atom the loathing and horror, or the fellowship and sympathy, and by that atom you lower the character ; you are sure that you have brought it nearer to the level of your own low imaginations; that you 2 COR. & GAL. — 15
226 THE SINLESS MADE SIN
have made it less like the Being who would raise you towards Himself.^
^ Love is a principle essentially vicarious in its own nature, identifying the subject with others, so as to suffer their adversities and pains, and taking on itself the burden of their evils. It does not come in officiously and abruptly and propose to be substituted in some formal and literal way that overturns all the moral re- lations of law and desert, but it clings to the evil and lost man as in feeling, afflicted for him, burdened by his ill deserts, in- capacities, and pains, encountering gladly any loss or suffering for his sake. Approving nothing wrong in him, but faithfully re- proving and condemning him in all sin, it is yet made sin — plunged, so to speak, into all the fortunes of sin, by its friendly sympathy. In this manner it is entered vicariously into sacrifice on his account. So naturally and easily does the vicarious sacrifice commend itself to our intelligence, by the stock ideas and feelings out of which it grows.^