Subverted Scriptures 3

He became sin, the Word of God says or so it is paraphrased. 2 Cor 5 :21. says that God made Him (Christ), who knew no sin,   to be sin for us that we may become  the righteousness of God 

But what does the phrase made sin mean?

Naïve literalism is always the bane of the evangelical.

In this instance I submit that literalism subverts the meaning of the passage.

Joyce Meyer and others, chiefly as far as I know of the Word of Faith stable of preachers, have offered the fantastic and in my serious opinion blasphemous scenario that Jesus literally became sin. Like the medieval Catholics who they despise but so closely resemble, they need to over do the suffering, to turn the dying Christ into something hideous. In the late Middle Ages we see great tortured crucifixes covered with blood both in carving and painting. We Protestants affect to condemn such things but when our mental pictures are the same it make no difference.  Of course these preachers go further and ignoring that Jesus said "It is finished:"  John 19:30, have him being tortured in Hell, as if the cross really were not enough. Meyer speaks passionately of "My Jesus"  in regard to the fantasy character being so treated  Yes, that is her Jesus. I will concede this, but it is not the Jesus of Holy scripture.

The logic of the matter is that if Christ became sin then he became a sinner, for sin cannot be reified. It is a relationship, not a  thing. It cannot be separated out into some kind of black scum as in the episode of Star Trek the Next Generation  in which Tasha Yar was killed by such a black scum consisting of all the hate fear and rage of those  people it had encountered it. But reification is itself another bane of the naïvely  literalistic.

For if Jesus literally became sin He literally became a sinner,

If He became sin He rebelled against God,  so clearly was not God, so his death not only did not save Himself it did not save us.

What then does the term mean?

The NIV which I use as part of my Greek Interlinear quietly adds a footnote  to the word sin in this passage. This note is or "sin offering."

This is totally correct. Whatever the faults of the NIV this is not one of them.

Of course the term could be interpreted as "took the place of sin to bear its punishment."  But that is the same thing as "sin offering" when it comes to simple practicality.

Jesus the sinless lamb of God suffered in our place AS a sinless Lamb of God and not, dare I say it, as a filthy pox ridden goat.

So. A scripture is subverted. Some run with then and confirm the computing dictum GIGO (garbage in- garbage out)  by producing blasphemous nonsense which, as a reductio ad absurdam of the passage clearly shows not that the passage is in error but their  reading of it is  when it leads to such nonsense.

But alas, that is how most heresies arise. And as the ego of the heretic is usually invested in heresy, that is why heresies stay with us