Ver. 19.—God was in Christ. I.e.,
as the Son by oneness of Essence. So Ambrose and Primasius. Hence S. Ambrose (de Fide ad Gratian, lib. iii. c. 5) says
that God, i.e., everlasting Divinity,
was in Christ, and Christ reconciled the world because He was God. Secondly and
better: “God was in Christ,” i.e.,
through Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Thirdly, Cajetan takes it:
God reconciled to Himself the world in Christ, or the world that believes in
Christ. But this seems forced and harsh.
Not imputing their
trespasses unto them. Not
imputing but freely forgiving their trespasses, not by imputation of the
righteousness of Christ, as the heretics think, but by a real infusion of it.
So Chrysostom and Anselm.
Observe the Hebraism. (1.) When the Scripture says that God imputes or
does not impute sin, it does not mean that He acts against the reality of
things, for so would God be false, but rather, since the judgment of God is
most pure, He regards things and sins as they truly are. (2.) The same appears
from the fact that the whole law, and consequently every sin against the law,
depends on the judgment of God, i.e.,
on the eternal law which is in the Mind of God. (3.) And the chief reason is
that all remission of sins depends on the forgiveness of God: but to forgive is
not to impute; for sin, belonging to the sphere of morals as an offence against
God, is removed by forgiveness, which equally belongs to the moral world. But
the generous goodness of God infuses, together with this forgiveness, grace,
charity, and all virtues, that we may be adorned with them as real gifts of
God, may be justified and become worthy of the friendship of God.
And hath committed unto us
the word of reconciliation.
He hath given us the duty of preaching the word of God, by which we are to
reconcile men to God, as was said at the last verse. By metonymy, word may be put for the reality as sign
for the thing signified. In this way the word of reconciliation would be
reconciliation itself, or the power and ministry of reconciling men to God.
Ver. 20.—We pray you in Christ’s
stead, be ye reconciled to God. As Christ’s ambassadors, even as if Christ
were entreating you by us, we implore you to give up your wills to be
reconciled to God. See what diligence, what energy, what zeal the Apostle
displays in his endeavours to convert the Corinthians.
Ver. 21.—Him who knew no sin.
Experimentally, says S. Thomas, Christ knew no sin, though by simple knowledge
He did, for He did no sin.
Hath made Him to be sin for
us. For us, says
Illyricus, who were sin; because, he says, sin is the substance and form of our
soul. But to say this of ourselves is folly, of Christ blasphemy. (1.) The
meaning is that God made Christ to be the victim offered for our sin, to prevent us from atoning for our
sins by eternal death and fire. The Apostle plays on the word sin, for when he says, “Him who knew no
sin,” he means sin strictly speaking; but when he says, “He made Him to be sin
for us,” he employs a metonymy. So Ambrose, Theophylact, and Anselm. In Ps.
40:12, Christ calls our sins His. (2.) Sin
here denotes, says S. Thomas, the likeness of sinful flesh which He took, that
He might be passible, just as sinners who are descended from Adam are liable to
suffering. (3.) Sin, in the sense of
being regarded by men as a noteworthy sinner, and being crucified as a
malefactor. So the Greek Fathers.
Of these three interpretations the first is the more full,
significant, and vigorous, and the one more consonant with the usage of
Scripture, which frequently speaks of an expiatory victim as sin. Cf. Hosea
4:8; Lev. 4:24 and 21; Ezek. 44:29. The reason of this metonymy is that all the
punishment and guilt of the sin were transferred to the expiatory victim, and
so the sin itself might seem to be also transferred to it. In token of this the
priest was accustomed to lay his hands on the victim, and call down on it the
sins of the people; for by the hands are signified sinful actions, which are
for the most part executed by the hands, as Theodoret says in his notes on
Leviticus 1. Therefore the laying of hands on the victim was both a symbol of
oblation and a testimony of the transference of guilt to the victim, showing
that it was expiatory, and that it bore the sin itself, with all its burden of
guilt and punishment. In this way the high-priest on the great Day of Atonement
turned a goat into the wilderness, having imprecated on it the sins of the
whole people. Cf. Lev. 16:20.
That we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him.
(1.) That we might be made righteous before God, with the righteousness infused
by God through the merits of Christ. So Chrysostom. He says righteousness and not righteous, says Theophylact, to signify
the excellency of the grace, which effects that in the righteous there is no
deformity, no stain of sin, but that there is complete grace and righteousness
throughout. (2.) The righteousness of God
was Christ made, in order that its effects, or the likeness of the uncreated
righteousness of God, might be communicated to us by His created and infused
righteousness. So Cyril (Thesaur.
lib. xii. c. 3). (3.) Christ is so called because God owes not to us, but to
Christ and His merits, the infusion of righteousness and the remission of our
sins. Cf. Augustine (Enchirid. c.
41). Cf. also 1 Cor. 1:30. Heretics raise the objection that Christ was made
for us sin, in the sense that our sin was imputed to Him and was punished in
Him; therefore we are made the righteousness of God, because it is imputed to
us. I answer that the two things are not parallel; for Christ could not really
be a sinner as we can really be righteous, nor does the Apostle press the
analogy. He only says that Christ bore our sins, that we through Him might be
justified. Moreover, Christ actually was made sin, i.e., a victim for sin (this is the meaning of “sin” here), and
therefore we truly become the righteousness of God. So easily and completely
can we turn the tables on these Protestant objectors. (Cornelius à
Lapide, The Great Commentary of Cornelius À Lapide, 8 vols. [4th ed.;
trans. Thomas W. Mossman; Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908], 8:80-82)
