01/10/2026
Did you know that it is false and heretical to say Jesus became a sinner on the Cross? Yet, many non-Catholics believe what the Father saw on the Cross is sin that He turned His back and poured out His punitive wrath on Jesus.
The whole of 2 Cor 5:21 says…
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Firstly, Jesus is both divine and human. He is holy and cannot be made a sinner. There can be no compatibility of what is holy and sin. Otherwise, there will be a point where the full communion of the Holy Trinity became broken. CCC 603 says “Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin,…”
In saying “he assumed us”, the Catechism meant Jesus took on flesh to be like us who are sinful yet he is without sin just as 2 Cor 5:21 says “who knew no sin”. If this is the case, how should we understand “he made him to be sin”? Here, we need to live out the teaching on reading Scripture from the heart of the Church.
When commenting on this passage, St. Augustine of Hippo, an early Doctor of the Church, asserted that under the Old Covenant, sacrifices for sin were called sins:
“therefore having no sin of His own; nevertheless, on account of the likeness of sinful flesh in which He came, He was called sin, that He might be sacrificed to wash away sin. For, under the Old Covenant, sacrifices for sin were called sins. And He, of whom all these sacrifices were types and shadows, was Himself truly made sin.” – The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Chapter 41
In other words, “he made him to be sin” is a Jewish language of sacrifice just like how it was described in Lv 4:25-26 and Ex 29:14. It means Jesus took on flesh or was incarnated to be the ultimate sin offering. Isaiah 53:10 prophesied the Suffering Servant saying “He [meaning God] makes himself [meaning the Messiah] an offering for sin.”
The Greek “hamartia” translated as “sin” in 2 Cor 5:21 is often used to refer to “sin offering” like Lv 4:33 and Is 53:10. It’s against this Old Testament backdrop that Paul speaks of Jesus as being “made sin.”
The false interpretation on the first half of 2 Cor 5:21 leads to further error in understanding the second half concerning “righteousness”. This became known in Protestant teaching as the “Great Exchange” where the Father imputes our guilt on Jesus whose righteousness was made to cover our sins. The further claim is underneath, we still remain to be sinners and God just chose not to look at our sins.
Catholics reject this error because it would make God unjust in declaring an innocent person to be guilty and in calling a person righteous while remaining intrinsically sinful inside. Martin Luther is believed to have compared this to how dung heaps in the countryside would be covered with pure white snow. The dung heap remains, but it is no longer seen.
Jesus did not become a sinner on the Cross that God had to look away. God was not punishing Christ on the Cross. Instead, Jesus became incarnate to be the sin offering – our Paschal Lamb (1 Cor 5:7). The holy died for the unholy (Rom 5:6). His sacrifice is God’s act of mercy and not a punishment – “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
What God has made clean we are not to call unclean just as Naaman was made completely clean after heeding the prophet Elisha. Remember that in Christ we are renewed and have become a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). Jesus did not die just to make us feel brand new. The truth is Christ really made all things new.
