The sin offering of Christ

Calvinistic doctrine teaches the idea of “substitution,” or that Christ took on our sins when He died on the cross. Passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:21 are used as proof: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” A ramification of this doctrine is also erroneous. It says that now that we are saved, God does not see us, but He only sees Jesus; Jesus stands in our place. However, we are righteous because of God’s forgiveness of our sins, not because Jesus is our righteousness in any substitutionary way or by Jesus’ righteousness being imputed to us.

Jesus certainly did not sin (Hebrews 7:26-27; 9:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19). But He was our sin offering. This was prophesied in Isaiah 53:10: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” Hebrews 10:1-18 makes the same case of Jesus being our “sin offering.”

Galatians 3:13 is another passage that people have misapplied: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” When you read, “for it is written” and you look to the cursing applied to those hanging on a tree (cf. Deuteronomy 21:22-23), you know it has nothing to do with Jesus taking on our sins! Furthermore, it cannot mean that Jesus literally became a curse in the sense that His work and character were displeasing to God, because the contrary doctrine is taught everywhere in the New Testament. If we understand sin as something one does (James 4:17; 1 John 3:4), we should know sin is not something you “take on” (Ezekiel 18:20). If you know Jesus is/was without any sins (1 John 3:5), you know that you cannot understand any verse to be saying He became sin! You know then you have to look “deeper.”

That Jesus died “for” us means that He died on our behalf. None of us could ever die for our our sins or for the sins of others; therefore, Jesus was not our substitute.

Kyle Campbell