2 Corinthians 5:21 - Glossy Imputations
The Irenaeus Irony
One ironic twist of delving into the mechanics of 2 Corinthians 5.21 and the calls of blasphemy is the use of Irenaeus’s quote about heresies. Irenaeus was an Early Church father who wrote extensively against heresies that sought to infiltrate the Church’s basic doctrines about Christ and His redemptive work. In many of the current articles that equate the literal reading of 2 Corinthians 5.21 with outright blasphemy, one can find the following quote:
Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:2 as quoted in D.R. McConnell’s A Different Gospel, Updated Edition at xv)
While there is nothing inherently wrong with Irenaeus’s statement, it’s ironic to find it used against those who take the literal reading of “He made Him sin.” Why so? In his third volume, Irenaeus says this:
For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that might receive the adoption of sons? (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.19) (emphasis added)
It appears that Irenaeus, himself, would have been castigated as an outright blasphemer today.
The Issue - Imputational Gloss
He Made Him Sin - 2 Corinthians 5.21
Jesus did not literally become sin; sin was symbolically imputed to him. (D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, Updated Edition at 125).
On the cross, God treated Christ as if He had committed all the sins of every sinner who would ever believe, so that He could treat believers as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life.” (John MacArthur, The Gospel of the Apostles, 2000) (emphasis supplied)
“[God] made Him to be sin for us.” This verse is impossible to explain adequately without understanding the concept of imputation that lies at the heart of Paul’s teaching on justification. Because Scripture repeatedly stresses the utter sinlessness of Christ—including right here in the very verse we are considering. Only if Christ was “made sin” by imputation can the full sense of this text make good sense. (Phil Johnson, Pyromaniacs Blog at Back to 2 Corinthians 5.21)
The core issue surrounding the blasphemy epithets (see prior post) concerns the doctrine of imputation, a theological gloss emphasized in the Reformation that is smeared over the actual words of the text. Imputation speaks of the idea of a forensic or judicial decree, but not the real deal. Accordingly, “He made Him sin,” is true only with the gloss rubbed in - God treated Jesus as sin, but He did not make Him to be sin in reality - and the actual words alone, well, that’s just plain blasphemy to some (which begs the question, “Did Paul blaspheme the Lord in 1 Cor. 5.21?”).
This idea of imputation doesn’t make just a pit stop at 2 Corinthians 5.21, but its reverberations quake all throughout the rest of the Word. Before heading into the text, we thought we’d demonstrate how this gloss, smudged on 2 Corinthians 5.21, ripples across the board distorting the coherent content and drama of our redemption:
Not Abandoned in Hell (Acts 2.27)
In this series, we examined the actual words of Acts 2.27 and fleshed out this translation:
for you will not abandon my soul in Hades, neither will you give your Holy One to see destruction (Smythean personal)
If we apply imputational gloss to 2 Corinthians 5.21, then we necessarily have to apply it to this verse (see prior post: utter blasphemy to say that Jesus took on sin nature or went to hell [hades]). Given that Acts 2.27 is a quote from Psalm 16.1, we’d also have to glob imputation on that psalm. And as Psalm 16 references several other psalms, we’d have to also dress those up with imputation goo and yada, yada, yada (notice that neither Acts 2.27 or Psalm 16.1 were written by Paul and are therefore outside of his “teaching on justification”). Of course, we could massage it some and say that “hades” does not mean Hades as Jesus spoke of it, but then we’d have to find some other kind of gloss to apply to Luke 16 (the rich man in hades) and destruction in Psalms and Job 33.28.
Ephesians 4.9: Where’d He Get Those Keys?
In this essay, we demonstrated that “he descended” means that Jesus descended into hades. In Revelation 1.18, Jesus speaks to John on the isle of Patmos and says, “I have the keys of death and of Hades.” With imputation, we’d have to turn it into something like, “I have the keys of death and of Hades … well, not really, but they’ve been imputed to me.” (And when he says, “I was dead,” you’d have to consult your local theology professor to ask, “Was it real or was it Memorex imputed death?”)
Jonah 2.2 - Echoes of Jesus (Romans 15.3)
Here we showed that Jonah 2.2 (“I cried for help from the depth of Sheol”) is an echo of Psalm 18 which proves to be Jesus’s own words (see Romans 15.3). With imputational gloss, the verse would have to be re-worked in the mind to be saying something like, “I cried for help from what I feel like is the depth of Sheol. I wasn’t in Sheol. Never been to Sheol, but it sure felt like Sheol to me.”
Matthew 12.40: In the Belly of Hell
In our Matthew 12.40 essay, we took issue with Wayne Grudem’s idea that the sign of Jonah (“Just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the sea monster, so will the son of man be in the heart of the earth”) was really just a prophecy of a weekend retreat to heaven and back for Jesus. Slathering on the gloss reinvigorates Grudem’s teaching, but that brings us back to our original conundrum, “Why would Jonah have to endure 3 days and nights in ‘the belly of hell’ just so Jesus could tell the Pharisees that his weekend retreat with the Father would be three days?”
The Sign of Jonah -2 (Romans 15.9)
In the Sign of Jonah-2, we showed that Psalm 69.9 which says, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me,” were the first-person words of Jesus Himself. With the gloss on, Romans 15.9 (and Psalm 69.9) would have to be restated to say something like this: “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell - not in reality, but just forensically - on me.” Of course, since Psalm 69 references Jonah, Psalm 40, Psalm 32, etc., we’d have to find Mac (our resident virtual theologian) and ask him just how many verses would be affected by this single splotch and just how heavy we ought to make it.
Trouble in Paradise (Luke 23.43)
With Jesus’s “I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise,” the gloss could be applied, a la Grudem, to demonstrate that Jesus went directly to the Father and just hung out in heaven for three days before being resurrected. The verse, however, would have to be re-worked with regard to the thief because he couldn’t come to Paradise until Jesus was resurrected (see 1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 17). (We could say that “today” was a scribal error, but Mac would have to take that to the translator committees. He hasn’t done too well with them in the past.)
Luke 23.46 - Jesus’s “Geronimo”
With the gloss on, we could, in fact, keep the English versions of the verse and just throw out the God-breathed Greek. In Luke 23.46, Jesus says, “Father, I set before you, in your hands, the spirit of me” which is a quotation from Psalm 31.5 which includes the phrase, “You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me.” Glossed up, we could keep the English “into your hands I commit my spirit,” believing that Jesus took an immediate trip to the Father since he wasn’t actually sin (see above) and totally ignore the balance of Psalm 31 (that’s some heavy glossing there).
Psalm 40: No Self-Help Here (Hebrews 10.5-10)
Though the literal verses show that Psalm 40 consists of the first-person words of Jesus ( e.g., “he brought me out of the destroying pit”), the imputational gloss would really require an entire overhaul of Psalm 40 to escape its relationship with “He made him sin” as no figural reading could do. Maybe we could say that the “destroying pit” was some unmentioned pit in the Gospels that Jesus fell in during His earthly ministry. If that didn’t work, we’d have to go back to the same ‘ole “you forensically [or judiciously] saw me in the pit [I really wasn’t in the pit] and you forensically pulled me out … “ thing.
This imputation concept also brings into question the veracity of many of Jesus’s own statements, many of which we haven’t covered. For instance, when he was on the cross and said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was that for real or was he speaking forensically (“My God, my God, why have you [forensically] forsaken me?”). And if we say, “No, imputation doesn’t apply there,” why doesn’t it? If it applies to 2 Corinthians 5.21, who’s to say that it shouldn’t apply here too?
Unlike Phil Johnson, we do not see where “[o]nly if Christ was ‘made sin’ by imputation can the full sense of this text make good sense.” We see the verbiage of 2 Corinthians 5.21 as being just as God-breathed as John 3.3 (“ye must be born-again”). In the next few essays, we will demonstrate why 2 Corinthians 5.21 is as clear as glass.