Meditation on the Crucifixion

Many expositors like to speak of “the cup” mentioned by Jesus in his garden prayer as meaning “the wrath of God.” We must remember that the same evening Jesus had already defined the “cup” as “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28 ESV).

In Matthew the mention of these cups are only a dozen verses apart. Surely they are meant to be interpreted as one. The cup for Jesus is his mission to shed his blood to death as our sin-offering sacrifice to God.

We are too shallow and easy-going with the cup of remembrance in our religious services. We partake of a tidy, tiny cracker, and sugared juice. The cup of the upper room was to represent the hot, salty life-blood of Jesus that began to flow down his face, onto his tongue, in the garden, and ended in his death on the cross. This was not the cup of easy religious ritual. It was the wrestling of his will to yield up all his life’s blood to the imminent death of the cross.

The garden prayer was Jesus wrestling with his feelings of fight or flight. He could choose to flee from all of that pain by heading eastward away from Jerusalem. Or, he could remain in the garden of prayer and fight against his fleshly desire to flee from pain and death. His love chose the way of pain for our salvation from death.

The fight produced a blood-sweat of anxiety in our Lord. He cried out with a natural abhorrence of pain. He had already taught his disciples how he “must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and raised again the third day.” The moment was holy, and the emotions were real, as Jesus prayed “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matthew 26:42) 

How different this night was from our modern religious ceremonies of the tiny bread and tiny cup!

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Hebrews 5:7-9 ESV.

...He went away and prayed.

The same expositors who incorrectly interpreted this cup of the garden into the rejection of God for his Son, like to claim that Jesus became sin itself. They quote Second Corinthians 5:21. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). Some even seem pleased to shock their parishioners with the claim that Jesus was sin itself. They entirely ignore the qualifying words of Paul, “who knew no sin,” in the same verse. They purposefully ignore the logical impossibility that “no sin” equals “sin.” Jesus knew no sin, so He could not “become sin.”

There is no need for such a rookie mistake here. In the sacrificial law of Leviticus the spotless, innocent, and harmless lamb that “became” the sacrifice was called “the sin” in the original Hebrew as a shorthand for “the sacrifice for sin.” The proper translation of “sin” here in Second Corinthians 5:21 is “sin-offering,” as it is also in Romans 8:3. Paul used the word the same way as his fathers for the past 1400 years. The Greek word "sin" was translated as "sin-offering" (i.e. the opposite of sin) over 100 times in the standard Greek translation, called the Septuagint, that was popularly used since 200 B.C.

Considering the stringent requirements for a lamb to qualify as a perfect sacrifice, no Jewish scholar would claim a lamb became a sinner. God instructed that the sin-offering remain holy before and after its death. It even had to be eaten in a holy place (Leviticus 6:26).

In fact, God straightforwardly declared that it was the death of the sacrifice that mattered. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life (Leviticus 17:11 ESV). The blood makes atonement by the life that is lost. That is how atonement works. That is what atonement is. The apostle John wrote, "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin" (I john 1:7).

The sacrificial law given by God focused upon the penalty for sin, and not the sin itself. Sin was a deed done in the past; it was the present condemnation for past sin that mattered. The just payment for sin was death.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul was marveling that the one sinless man in all human history should still have to suffer death, because death is the punishment for sin. Jesus did not deserve death. Thus Jesus fulfilled the pattern of the Old Testament sin-offering whereby the innocent died for the guilty.

The truth is that he was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). As Peter also taught, Jesus suffered death in the flesh as “the righteous for the unrighteous” (I Peter 3:18). But Calvinist Reformed theology teaches that Jesus was made unrighteous so that we may be forgiven. Their teaching is contrary to both holy scripture and common sense. No one ever became clean by washing in dirty water.

On the night of his arrest Jesus taught the disciples that “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” This is what Paul taught in I Corinthians 11:25. So let’s interpret Scripture with Scripture and Paul with Paul. Paul taught that Jesus redeemed us by the shedding of his blood during the Passover when all the lambs paid the price of death for the sins of the offerors. Paul even called Jesus the "Passover lamb" in 1 Corinthians 5:7. The key idea of a sacrifice was the death of a substitute, not God venting his wrath.

By the way, the English Standard Version Bible adds the word "lamb" to the Greek single word "Passover" because Paul was speaking of a sacrifice, not just a holiday. This is exactly the same Jesus Paul was writing about in 2 Corinthians 5:21, but they omitted the word "sacrifice" there. Paul is obviously using the same pattern of speech dealing with the same subject of Jesus as a sacrifice! Jesus "became the sin-offering."

I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 1 Corinthians 10:15-16 ESV.

If Jesus "became sin," who would want to have a part of that? Sin is what we are leaving behind.  Jesus taught that the communion cup ("common" meant shared) was a remembrance of “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” 

Our cleansing from sin was always in the context of "the blood of Christ" in apostolic writing, but Reformed writers emphasize "wrath" and "judgment" and make Jesus to "become sin." Jesus died for us when his blood was "poured out" (i.e. died), the just One for the unjust sinner, and Jesus directly taught that this act brought forgiveness. He did not talk about "wrath" because the cross was the opposite of wrath. The cross is the avoidance of future wrath (Romans 5:9).

Paul wrote, O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified (Galatians 3:1 ESV). Don't we believe in the Savior who died for us on the cross, who died because we sinned and not Him? But this "wrath-atonement" teaching discounts the shed blood of Christ with a alternate atonement paid by Jesus in "spiritual suffering from the wrath of God."

At first it sounds good that Jesus "became sin" because it seems he is on our level so that he can forgive us. Instead, sadly, this teaching only provides a substitute sinner instead of a sinless substitute who had the virtue to atone for others.

Someone will say, "This guy does not understand 'imputation'." But I do understand it.

In the old days the Gospel was described as penal substitution, that is, our penalty placed upon a substitute. Sin is a personal act of rebellion. As such it can never be imputed. Only the penalty can be imputed.

Reformed soteriology has replaced the meaning of "substitution" with the definition of "identification" in the discussion of the cross. Jesus identified with us by his true incarnation and experiences of human temptation to sin. But that identification stops short of sin. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15 ESV).

As Paul discussed in the book of Romans, the world’s problem was being under the condemnation of death, so Jesus dying in our place made perfect sense. Jesus "becoming sin" is without any sense. The apostolic teaching was that Jesus “tasted death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). Jesus died "for" sinners, not "as" a sinner.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7 ESV).

Blog #20250413