Why 2 Corinthians 5:21 does NOT teach Imputed Righteousness

Catholic Dude said:

Please show specifically where the Greek arguments made were unfair or in error.

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You're so hostile to Protestants that it would be pointless.

Catholic Dude said:

That really shouldn't be your concern, unless you're going to be guilty of the Ad Hominem fallacy.

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I think I'll just take your suggestion that we look into this issue...and do some real research. No one takes seriously the notion that you get to hand-pick the only information that we are allowed to evaluate.

Does the Bible teach “imputed sin?” I dunno. But Is 53 does speak of the people’s sin being laid on someone else. I guess I’m not going to insist on calling this imputation, but it’s at least close. I think there’s a lot less Biblical support for equating humanity with sin. There are some references to “sinful flesh,” but still, taking “he made him to be sin who knew no sin” as a reference just to becoming human seems like bizarre exegesis.

So what does it mean to say that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God? Why the unusual wording “become the righteousness” rather than the more obvious “become righteous.” Presumably because he had decided to speak of Christ as being made sin. There’s definitely a parallelism there. Since it’s hard to imagine what it could mean to say that a human being is the same thing as an abstract idea such as righteousness I (along with most people, I think) understand it as an indirect way of saying that we were made righteous.

Is this imputed righteousness? I don’t think at this point Paul was specifying a particular theory of the atonement. However it does say that we are righteous “in him.” This is the common Pauline concept of being in Christ. So at the very least it says that our sins were laid on Christ, and because we are in Christ, we are made righteous through this.

My tendency is to look at Rom 6 as the most detailed explanation for how Paul thought this worked.

Paul certainly taught that our faith is reckoned as righteousness. This passage is at least closely related to that. Our faith in Christ and being “in Christ” are very closely related and arguably the same thing. So this passage could be reworded as saying that we are made righteous through our faith in Christ’s bearing of our sins. I.e. we are made righteous through faith.

So is this Christ’s righteousness imputed to us? I’m not a fan of that concept. Here’s what Calvin says on this passage: “ because we are judged of in connection with Christ’s righteousness, which we have put on by faith.” This goes beyond what we can read from this passage alone, because it depends upon Calvin’s view of the atonement. He believes that through our faith there is a “community of righteousness” between us and Christ. This is not a legal fiction. His righteousness — which in this context Calvin sees primarily as his obedience — is truly active in us transforming us. It isn’t properly speaking our own righteousness. It retains its character of being Christ’s, but it’s still active in us through our communion with Christ. So Calvin’s sees this verse in light of that understanding. He combines the exegesis that we are made righteous through faith in Christ’s death — which I think is a legitimate reading of the passage — with the idea that Christ’s obedience to the death is present in us through our union with Christ. Hence this passage ultimately refers to Christ’s obedience making us righteous through faith.

His commentary on this passage doesn’t use the term “imputed,” and I think that’s a potentially misleading summary of his idea of the community of righteousness. It’s important to understand that Calvin’s core concept of redemption is tied to our “mystical union” with Christ. This plays the same key role for him that legal metaphors do for some Lutheran expositors.

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If you try to look "community of righteousness" up in the Institutes, you'll find that different translations render it differently, e.g. communion rather than community.

From the artical's 5th

This isn't really a forensic category, for the defendant doesn’t reconcile with the Judge in a courtroom.

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Romans is about a courtcase with the sinner on trial and God being the judge. The defence is only that One (Incarnated) comes in as a replacement and the sinner goes free.
Your placing all (redemption, justification, reconciliation, identification) under the umbrella of one word 'imputation'.
To say that what is 'imputed' thru the death (by a forensic means) (whatever that means) is less important than 'infusion' of the union that is brought about from faith is just wrong. Jesus is the object of the faith and the enabler of faith and God reckons that faith as righteousness.
Phil 3:9 Being found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is out of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is out of God and based on faith,

anyway, I'll leave it at that.....

Catholic Dude said:

How do you equate humanity with sin? Sin isn't a 'thing', it's a defect or absence, like darkness being an absence of light or cold being an absence of heat.

I also don't see why it's bizarre exegesis when (a) Romans 8:3 does speak of the incarnation as Jesus becoming sin, and (b) the Church Fathers understood it this way as well.

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I was referring to your article. The conclusion about what it meant that Christ had become sin was “The ‘consensus’ among the Fathers on the meaning of “made sin” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is that it refers to “the Word was made flesh,” the Son becoming Incarnate”. Hence “becoming sin” seems to mean “becoming incarnate.” I.e. it equates sin with humanity. (Incarnate means becoming human). The issue isn't grammar. Presumably "becoming sin" means taking on our sin. I agree that this is one thing Jesus did. But to understand it as virtually synonymous with the incarnation implies a truncated concept of the incarnation.

I'm aware that some Christians actually have this kind of concept, but to me it's a big mistake. See Wright's book "How God Became King." It deals with precisely this problem.

[speaking of “become the righteousness of God”] That's a good question, even the question. What did you think of the claim that this refers to forgiveness-reconciliation? You seemed to not be a fan of the imputation of active obedience, so what's your alternative? Romans 6?

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The phrase “become the righteousness of God” doesn’t have a literal meaning. Grammatically it makes no sense. However a reasonable understanding would be that the person takes on the righteousness of God. How that works isn’t specified. It’s going to be understood according to the person’s understanding of how Christ works. Protestants who think he works primarily by imputation will see taking on the righteousness of God as an obvious reference to having righteousness imputed.

I gave you Calvin’s reading. He understands the passage as saying that we put on Christ’s righteousness through faith. He says “put on” rather than it is imputed to us, because his core concept of how Christ works is that through faith we have a mystical union with Christ, through which his righteousness becomes ours. I don’t think this is just imputation. His reference elsewhere to a communion of righteousness suggests that we actually participate in it, though it never becomes really ours. He sees the righteousness as in large part a result of Christ’s obedience. (He doesn’t use the term “active obedience.&#8221

This seems very close indeed to Rom 6. Rom 6 says that we die and are raised with him. Like Calvin, it is based on our union with Christ in faith. Paul says that Christ’s death and resurrection become ours through this union. Calvin has this extra focus on Christ’s obedience, but I still think the basic understanding is similar.

Catholic Dude said:

I often see Protestants (typically Calvinists / Reformed) quoting 2 Corinthians 5:21 to prove "the Imputed Righteousness of Christ," and yet when you take a careful look at the verse, it doesn't say anything of the sort.

THIS ARTICLE covers 2 Corinthians 5:21 and why it shouldn't be read as teaching Imputed Righteousness.

Please ONLY respond if you have actually read the article. Please stay on topic, i.e. 2 Corinthians 5:21, and don't go off on tangents.

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You lost credibility when you open with catholic/protestant comparisons.