How was Jesus Christ made of God to be sin for us? Even so as if himself had committed all our sins; that is, they were as really charged upon him as if himself had been the actor and committer of them all. “He hath made him to be sin,” not only as a sinner, but as sin itself. Some, indeed, will not have Jesus Christ our Lord to be made sin for us. Their wicked reasons think this to be wrong judgment in the Lord. It seems, supposing that because they cannot imagine how it should be, therefore God, if he does it, must do it at his peril, and must be charged with doing wrong judgment, and so things that become not his heavenly Majesty. But against this duncish sophistry we set Paul and Isaiah, the one telling us still, “the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” and the other that “God made him to be sin for us.”
But these men, as I suppose, think it enough for Christ to die under that notion only, not knowing nor feeling the burden of sin and the wrath of God due thereto. These make him as senseless in his dying, and as much without reason, as a silly sheep or goat, who also died for sin, but so as in name, in show, in shadow only. They felt not the proper weight, guilt and judgment of God for sin. But thou, sinner, who art so in thine own eyes, and who feelest guilt in thine own conscience, know thou that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God in flesh, was made to be sin for thee, or stood sensibly guilty of all thy sins before God, and bare them in his own body upon the cross.
God charged our sins upon Christ and that in their guilt and burden. What remaineth but that the charge was real or feigned? If real, then he hath either perished under them, or carried them away from before God. If they were charged but feignedly, then did he but feignedly die for them, then shall we have but feigned benefit by his death, and but a feigned salvation at last — not to say how this cursed doctrine chargeth God and Christ with hypocrisy, the one in saying, He made Christ to be sin; the other in saying that he bare our sin; when, in deed and in truth, our guilt and burden never was really upon him.
