Featured How Christ Was "Made Sin"

Feeling much better today, thank you. My wife had the stomach flu, and I think I had a mild version of it.

To do a complete study of hamartia in the LXX would require far more time than I have right now. I will say that such a study would have to include prepositions (such as in Romans 8:3), clauses, etc. All you have done is state the bare idea that hamartia can mean "sin offering" in the LXX. I'll agree with that much, but how often? I doubt that it means that across the board. And again, NT usage rules.

Just one example. Isaiah 59:2 in the LXX has both hamartema for iniquities and hamartia for sins. Why both? Poetic? Are they synonyms? Neither can mean "sin offering" in that context. See what I mean? It's not a simple, "count the times" study.

Not rejecting it--just don't have time to properly study it out. I'm just drawn in whenever I see Greek.

I wouldn't do that--would I??

1. Why just the NT?
2. Not understanding. Christ bore our sin. Sin separates from God. Why the complicated theological parsing?

Frankly, I've followed these discussions occasionally, but never wanted to get into them--I don't say they are not fruitful. Don't have time for much more than this today. Lots of work to dive into!

 

Then, how can anyone truthfully say it's incorrect ?

 

Romans 3:23. 'For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' Falling short is one aspect of missing the mark. But in fact hamartia has a wide semantic range as you will find if you look it up in a Greek lexicon. However, you cannot show me where it means 'sin offering.'

No it isn't, and we don't agree, as well you know. Christ the sinless one is made sin; we the sinful ones are made righteousness in Him. Our sins were laid upon Him and He experienced the condemnation and the punishment of them; His righteousness is imputed to us that we may be freed from that condemnation and punishment (Romans 8:1etc.).

No it isn't.

No you are not. See above.
[QUOTER] The difference is I am saying Paul is using a legitimate, although archaic to the 1st Century, definition that the people in Corinth would be familiar with via literature.[/QUOTE]
You are saying that Paul would be bamboozling the people of Corinth by using the same word with two different meanings in the same sentence.

 

Looks like that will make some preaching that will ring your joy-bells.

'Reckoned" a transgressor and a sinner or "numbered with" the transgressors,
before and on the cross, but was not a transgressor and a sinner, just "reckoned" one, or countered as one, by others.

 

I am not being obsure at all. If you believe that the Lord Jesus was made a 'sin offering,' then either you believe that He 'knew no sin offering' which makes no sense, or you believe that Paul was bamboozling the Corinthians by using the same word with two diffferent meanings in the same sentence. Which is it?

I know that you say you do.

I note that hamartia is used in the LXX in reference to sin offerings (over 100 times). [/QUOTE] So does the second appearance of hamartia mean 'sin' or 'sin offering' in your opinion? If the former, as you say here, how do you define the sin that our Lord was made?

Aristotle wrote around 100 years after the great Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. He wrote that a tragic hero should be a good man, brought down by a single fault or 'tragic flaw.' I believe he used the word hamartia Thus, in Shakespeare, Othello is a great man brought down by his suspicion of his wife Desdemona, and Macbeth is brought down by his listening to his wife. In Greek tragedy, many heroes are brought down by hubris, self-sufficiency or a pride in one's own ability that causes one to ignore the gods. Thus Oedipus is a good man brought down by by hubris when he ignores the advice of his wife/mother Jocasta and Teiresias the blind seer (pun intended).

So to Aristotle, hamartia was a general word for any sin, error or disobedience that caused one to fall short or miss the mark set by the gods.

You may very well be right. After 50 years, I don't remember. That seems to be the etymological meaning of the word. But Homer was writing 300 years before the Tragedians and 400 years before Aristotle. Words change their meaning over time.

Yes, I agree. Anything that misses the mark or standard of God's righteousness.

So you don't understand the second usage of hamartia to mean sin despite what you wrote above. Thank you for clarifying. There is a vast difference between a 'sin' and a 'sin offering.' Surely even you can see that?

Not at all. 'Error' or 'disobedoence' work fine for me. As I said before, the semantic range of hamartia is rather large. Do you want me to copy and paste a Greek lexicon to save you looking it up? It is a general word for sin. But any sin is to miss the mark of God's righteousness unless you use the word as 'Weight-watchers' do and define it as eating a cream bun

Absolutely not as you know perfectly well. Where have I stated that the Lord Jesus ever 'missed the mark'? Nowhere at all.

Of course I do. You need to stop being silly, not to say, offensive.

You haven't asked me to. But I repeat, hamartia is a general word for sins; therefore it covers sins of omission and commission, sins of the body, of the tongue or of the mind, one-off sins, besetting sins - anything that falls short of God's standards. If you can think of a sin that does not fall short of God's standards, just let me know.

You misunderstand totally, and, I suspect, intentionally. There was no unrighteousness in Christ. This is one area where we agree.

You are misunderstanding - deliberately since I have explained repeatedly over at least five years. Christ was not made a sinner; He was made sin. What does that mean? I have repeatedly quoted Isaiah 53:6 and 1 Peter 2:24. All the sins of His people were laid upon Him and He bore them as if they were His own. You are acting as if this is something new, something unheard of before. But you know perfectly well that my view is one that has been, and is, held by millions of Bible-believing Christians, though evidently not by you.

 

@JonC
Will you please add the quotation marks to your post above as I find it difficult to make sense of it?

 

No. I am saying that the One who never sinned, who never 'missed the mark' of God's righteousness became the very essence of sin when all our 'mark missings,' all our sins and iniquities were laid upon Him, and that this was done 'for us.' The apostle is writing, 'Not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.' This seems to be beyond you. 'Sin' is being compared with 'righteousness.' Why aren't you insisting that we are made a 'righteousness offering' of God?
But Christ is made sin; we are made righteousness, and the righteousness of God at that, in Him. Take your earthbound, 'literal' spectacles off for a moment and look again with spiritual eyes, because this is the most wonderful thing that could be imagined! That God Himself, in the Person of Christ should bear our sins and the curse attached to them to the cross and pay the awful penalty for them that the law demands.

Well, I Peter 2:24 comes to mind immediately. .I might add that Peter quotes from or references Isaiah 53 in vs. 22, 23 & 25, so it was obviously in the mind of the Holy Spirit when Peter wrote the verse.

No, you are doing that.

Yes it is. 1 Peter 2:24.
But tell me: Galatians 3:13 tells us that Christ became a curse for us. How, literally, does anyone become a 'curse'? Or do you believe that He became a 'curse offering,' whatever that might be?

To prove that you would need to have read every piece of Greek literature ever written. Somehow I doubt you have done that.

Had he wished to do that he would have written prosphera peri hamartias, which actually means 'sin offering, as the writer to the Hebrews did, or maybe even have shortened it to peri hamartias as the writers of the LXX appear to have done. But to say that 'God made Him who knew no sin offering to be a sin offering for us' makes no sense.

If it was not done to Christ, then we are all still in our sins. If our sins were not imputed to Him, then He didn't bear them; if He didn't bear them then God is not propitiated towards us; if God is not propitiated towards us, then we are still under the curse of Gal. 3:13.

May I encourage you, and any others patient enough to wade through this correspondence, to read my post #8 All through our Lord's sufferings, the concept of substitution runs like a wonderful golden thread.

I shall be busy over the next two weeks, with sermons (where I shall be teaching the blessed doctrine of Penal Substitution), Bible studies, prayer meetings and fellowship meetings. Therefore I will not have much time to give to the BB. But this is too important a matter to leave, so I shall return to it when I have time.

 

This is garbage and unworthy of any reply. You know exactly what I believe and you know that my belief was shared by Bunyan, Whitefield, Spurgeon and a host of other great men whom you have just slagged off as being blasphemers. Shame on you!

 

I can't believe that you are asking me AGAIN to give my reasons for translating hamartia as 'sin.' I have given you several reasons three or four times on this very thread. Before I waste my time re-writing what I have already given you, will you please promise not to ask me for them again if I do so? I am very busy and don't have time to spare.

With reference to taking hamartia literally, I translate it as 'sin.' With reference to 'metaphorical' interpretations, are you not aware that the Bible is choc-a-bloc full of figurative language, including metaphors? Or do you believe that King Herod was a canine with a bushy tail (Luke 13:32), that a man really does have to enter his mother's womb a second time and be born (John 3:4) and that communion bread really is our Lord's body (Mark 14:22 etc.)?

As well as metaphors, the Bible contains metonymies, syndoches, similies, allegories, ellipses, brachology, zeugma, euphemism, litotes, meiosis, irony, epizeuxis, anacolutha and hyperbole, not to mention constructio praegnans.

In short, there is figurative language all over the Bible. 'This finds its explanation partly in the inability to describe heavenly things in literal language, partly in the Oriental's preference for plastic and pictorial representation, and partly in a desire for variety and literary beauty' Louis Berkhof: 'Principles of Biblical Interpretation.