Did Christ Die as a Sinner upon the Cross?

"Some say that when Jesus died, he bore our 'actual' sins in his body on the cross. Others believe that Christ only bore the 'penalty' for sin. Which view represents the truth of the matter?"

Some prominent theologians contend that when the Lord languished upon the cross, he literally bore our sins in his body, so that in reality, Jesus actually died as a "sinner." Martin Luther, a prominent Protestant reformer, taught that the Old Testament prophets foretold that "Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer, that ever was or could be in the world." He alleged that the Lord lost his innocence at Calvary, and died as a sinful being (213-215).

A Lutheran scholar has written that "it is Scriptural to say that God did impute the guilt of man to the innocent Christ" (353; emphasis added). A Presbyterian writer, James M. Boice, asserted that when Christ died upon the cross [tree], he "violated the law — through no fault of his own — [and] he became technically guilty of all of it [the law]" (460).

Advocates of this view often cite passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 9:28, and 1 Peter 2:24 to support their argument. For example, this latter text affirms that Christ "his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree." But Peter's declaration can hardly mean that the Lord actually became a sinner while upon the cross. In the same epistle, the apostle already declared that Jesus died as "a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19).

What, then, explains these passages? They involve a common biblical figure of speech known as metonymy. In this figure, the speaker names a subject when, in fact, they mean something associated with the subject. Any good textbook on sacred hermeneutics (the science of Bible interpretation) will provide ample evidence and illustrations of this figure of speech (see Dungan 282-284).

Here is an example. In describing certain sacrifices offered under the Levitical code in connection with the priests' consecration, Moses instructed: "But the flesh of the bullock, and its skin, and its dung, you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin-offering" (Exodus 29:14). Note the final expression in this text — "sin-offering." In the Hebrew Bible, the term is simply "sin" (see ASVfn).

The root form means to "miss (a mark), fall short." It occurs about 595 times in the Old Testament, and in about 40% of these instances it metaphorically denotes a "sin-offering" (Ernst Jenni & Claus Westermann 406-407). Thus, because the context clearly indicates that a sacrifice is in view, virtually all translations render the original word as "sin-offering" in the Exodus text. That is clearly the meaning of the expression (cf. Leviticus 10:17).

Using similar language, Paul writes: "Him [Christ] who knew no sin he [God] made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The expression "made to be sin" likely signifies, "made to be a sin-offering," in harmony with the common Old Testament idiom.

J.H. Thayer offers an alternate meaning, yet one still consistent with the Lord's sinless nature. He saw the metonymy as using the "abstract for the concrete," meaning: Though Jesus knew no sin (i.e., he was sinless), God nonetheless allowed him to be treated as if sinful (31).

Peter's statement, that the Savior "bore our sins" (1 Peter 2:24), does not suggest that the Lord carried the "guilt" of human sin in his body personally. Here the term "sins" conveys the sense of "the penalty of sin" that justly was due us.

A passage from Jeremiah illustrates the proper meaning. In his lamentation over the fall of Jerusalem, the prophet wrote: "Our fathers sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities" (Lamentations 5:7; cf. Ezekiel 4:4). The offspring did not bear the guilt of the previous generations; they merely were suffering the consequences of earlier rebellion.

When the writer of Hebrews declares that Christ will "appear a second time, apart from sin" (9:28), he certainly did not imply that Jesus, at the time of his death, became a "sinful" person by assuming the guilt of others. Earlier the writer had emphatically declared that the Savior was "without sin" (4:15). Thus, the meaning of 9:28 is this. When Christ comes again, it will not be to provide a redemptive plan for sin. The first coming achieved that. The second coming will be for judgment (9:27).

The Scriptures do not teach that Christ died as a sinner. That theory is an error that results from not understanding the figurative language used in the sacred writings.