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SERMON XII.

CHRIST MADE SIN FOR US.

(Lincoln's Inn, Trinity Sunday, June 11, 1854.)

2 CORINTHIANS V. 21.

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.'

THIS verse is commonly interpreted by the addition of a word. He hath made Him to be a Sin OFFERING for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. You will not suspect me of objecting to the word which this paraphrase introduces. I have endeavoured, for many weeks past, to show you that the revelation of God is the revelation of a Sacrifice. And though I have maintained that sacrifice is entirely independent of sin-that the most pure and perfect state we can conceive, is the state of which sacrifice is the Law,-I have contended, as strongly, that nothing but sacrifice can take away sin. This was the subject of my sermon last week. We learnt from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Sin lies much deeper than the offences and transgressions which are the outward manifestations of it; that it has its seat in the Conscience. The legal sacrifices, the

Epistle taught us, were good, as means of doing away with transgression, of restoring the offender to his right position as a member of the divine commonwealth. But sacrifices of this kind, he said, were totally inadequate to take away Sin, for they could not reach the conscience. The sacrifice of a Son who came to do His Father's will, who entirely gave Himself up to do it, did reach the conscience; it did take away sin. How rightly then may this sacrifice be called a Sin-Offering! What possible objection can any reader of Scripture raise against such an expression?

But this is the very reason why we should be most careful not to alter the language of the

substitute for it language of our own.

Apostle, or to

We have seen

what errors men have fallen into, in their attempts to conceive the nature, and object, and effects of sacrifice. We have seen how much it has been the design of God's revelation of Himself to deliver us from these errors, by setting forth its true relation to Him and to man, to the perfect righteousness and to the creature who has wandered from that righteousness. We have seen with what carefulness Evangelists and Apostles have brought out before us one and another aspect of this offering, contrasting it with the counterfeit notions which men had devised for themselves.

This is, evidently, one of the passages which is to instruct us in the character and effects of the Divine Sacrifice, which is to show wherein it consists, and for

what end it was presented. How dare I, then, put in the phrase which I want to have explained, as if I understood it sufficiently without the Apostle's help? To make me know what God's Love to man was, how He reconciled the world to Himself, St. Paul says, He made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin. That I may not be forced to inquire what these wonderful words import, I coolly and deliberately take all the force out of them. He sets me before a startling antithesis, that I may meditate upon it. I destroy his antithesis as if it were an idle figure of speech, and insist that the same word should mean two different things in two different clauses of the same sentence. Could you bear to see any writer who was not an Apostle, whom you did not recognise as a canonical writer, treated after this fashion? Would you not say to his interpreter, 'Either the man whom you undertake to expound is 'not worth your trouble; he is one who uses words at 'random, he does not understand himself; or else you are behaving most unfairly and irreverently to 'him; you are not grappling with his thoughts, but 'putting yours in the place of them'? Is the case altogether changed because we are listening to a man who is uttering, as we believe, the oracles of God; because he is speaking of the question which most of all concerns us, and on which we are most liable to make mistakes? Are we at liberty to play with his modes of speech just as we please, to thrust in among them

any inane tautological formula,-as if for the very purpose of escaping from the truth which he would make known to us?

No one can seriously think over these words, He hath made Him to be sin for us, which knew no sin,' without feeling that the paradox which is in them is meant to be in them; that the Apostle purposed to force it upon our attention; that if he could have avoided it he would; but that he had no way of avoiding it, without mangling and distorting the message which he was appointed to deliver. If you read over the memorable passage with which this sentence winds up, beginning with those words in the second chapter, in which he speaks of his ministry as a savour of death unto death, and of life unto life; in which he declares that he does not corrupt the word of God, but that as of sincerity, as of God, in the sight of God, speaks he in Christ; you will scarcely persuade yourselves that he ended with a mere verbal contradiction which was to surprise us, and which he expected us to find some easy method of explaining away. Between these two points of his discourse, he has been speaking of the ministration of righteousness and the ministration of condemnation; of the glory that was under a veil, and of that which was unveiled, and therefore might be presented with plainness of speech; of renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty; of commending himself by the manifestation of the truth to every man's conscience

in the sight of God. He has been declaring that all must be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ; that if he is beside himself it is to God, that if he is sober it is for their cause; that the love of Christ is constraining him, because he thus judges, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again. He had just been gathering up all that he had written, all that he had ever spoken to the Corinthians, in the words, All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.' The verse before us is the climax of these vehement protestations, of this appeal to God's judgment, of this declaration of God's will to men as accomplished in Christ, of this earnest exhortation to men not to refuse the gift which has been bestowed on them. Can you seriously believe that at this moment he adopted a phrase to describe the work of his King and Redeemer, which was strange and ambiguous, either from carelessness or through the paltry vanity of a rhetorician?

No, my brethren, this is doing just what the Apostle

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