5:21. “He made him to be sin”:
obviously St Paul does not mean that Christ was guilty of sin; he does not say
“to be a sinner” but “to be sin”. “Christ had no sin,” St Augustine says; “he
bore sins, but he did not commit them” (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 68, 1, 10).
According to the rite of atoning
sacrifices (cf. Lev 4:24; 5:9; Num 19:9; Mic 6:7; Ps 40:7) the word “sin”,
corresponding to the Hebrew ašam, refers to the actual act of sacrifice or to
the victim being offered. Therefore, this phrase means “he made him a victim
for sin” or “a sacrifice for sin”. It should be remembered that in the Old
Testament nothing unclean or blemished could be offered to God; the offering of
an unblemished animal obtained God’s pardon for the transgression which one
wanted to expiate. Since Jesus was the most perfect of victims offered for us,
he made full atonement for all sins. In the Letter to the Hebrews, when
comparing Christ’s sacrifice with that of the priests of the Old Testament, it
is expressly stated that “every priest stands daily at his service, offering
repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ
had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right
hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his
feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are
sanctified” (Heb 10:11–14).
This concentrated sentence also echoes
the Isaiah prophecy about the sacrifice of the Servant of Yahweh; Christ, the
head of the human race, makes men sharers in the grace and glory he achieved
through his sufferings: “upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and
with his stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5).
Jesus Christ, burdened with our sins
and offering himself on the cross as a sacrifice for them, brought about the
Redemption: the Redemption is the supreme example both of God’s justice—which
requires atonement befitting the offence—and of his mercy, that mercy which
makes him love the world so much that “he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). “In the
Passion and Death of Christ—in the fact that the Father did not spare his own
Son, but ‘for our sake made him sin’—absolute justice is expressed, for Christ
undergoes the Passion and Cross because of the sins of humanity. This
constitutes even a ‘superabundance’ of justice, for the sins of man are
‘compensated for’ by the sacrifice of the Man-God. Nevertheless, this justice,
which is properly justice ‘to God’s measure’, springs completely from love,
from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love.
Precisely for this reason the divine justice revealed in the Cross of Christ is
‘to God’s measure’, because it springs from love and is accomplished in love,
producing fruits of salvation. The divine dimension of redemption is put into
effect not only by bringing justice to bear upon sin, but also by restoring to
love that creative power in man thanks to which he once more has access to the
fullness of life and holiness that come from God. In this way, redemption
involves the revelation of mercy in its fullness” (John Paul II, Dives in
misericordia, 7). (Saint Paul's Letters to the Corinthians [The Navarre
Bible; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005], 155-56)
