Updated 6/27/2026

Introduction: A Verse Hiding in Plain Sight

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

This is one of the most quoted verses in the New Testament. It appears on church walls, in gospel tracts, and in evangelistic sermons around the world. Yet for all its familiarity, the verse contains a word that most readers pass over without realizing what it actually means—and that word changes everything.

The word is “sin.”

Most Christians read the verse as a statement about the Lord Jesus bearing sin in some general, abstract sense—He “became sin” the way a sponge absorbs water, taking on something foreign to His nature. But the word Paul uses is hamartia (ἁμαρτία), and if Paul were writing to a congregation steeped in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament widely read in the first-century churches—they would have heard something far more specific. Because in the Septuagint, hamartia is the standard translation of the Hebrew word chaṭṭāʾth (חַטָּאת)—and chaṭṭāʾth is the word the Torah uses for both “sin” and “sin offering.” The same word covers the offense and the sacrifice that bears it. The Septuagint says of the offering, in so many words, “it is a sin”—hamartia estin (Leviticus 4:21, 24; 5:9, 12 LXX)—where the Torah means “it is a sin offering.”

When Paul writes that God made the Lord Jesus “to be sin for us,” a reader steeped in the Torah would hear: God made Him to be the sin offering—the chaṭṭāʾth—for us. And that hearing unlocks a sacrificial logic that runs from Leviticus through Isaiah, through the Lord’s own words, to the cross, through the believer’s baptism, and all the way to the foundational doctrines of the faith. It is a logic that the church has largely forgotten—and recovering it changes how we understand what happened at the cross, what happens at baptism, and what is at stake in the life that follows.

The Chaṭṭāʾth: The Sacrifice That Bore the Name of the Sin

In Leviticus 4, the Lord gives Moses the legislation for the sin offering—the chaṭṭāʾth. The ritual is precise and deliberate. When a person sinned unintentionally and became aware of his guilt, he was to bring an animal—a bull for the anointed priest or the congregation, a male goat for a ruler, a female goat or lamb for a common person—the costliness of the offering corresponding to the weight of the offerer’s responsibility within the covenant community—to the entrance of the tabernacle. There, in the presence of the priest, the offerer was required to do two things.

First, he laid his hand on the head of the offering. This was not a casual touch. The laying on of hands—sāmak (סָמַךְ)—was a deliberate act of identification. By pressing his hand on the animal’s head, the offerer was binding himself to the sacrifice, declaring that this animal now represented him before God: this offering stands in my place; what is done to it is done concerning me and my sin. And the Torah shows what this identification effects, most visibly on the Day of Atonement, when Aaron lays both his hands on the head of the live goat, confesses over it “all the iniquities of the children of Israel,” and puts them “on the head of the goat” (Leviticus 16:21). The identification carries the sin to the offering; the offering bears what belonged to the offerer.

Second, the animal was slaughtered, and its blood was brought before the Lord. The priest applied the blood according to the prescribed pattern—on the horns of the altar, at the base of the altar, before the veil—and the fat was burned on the altar. In the case of the priest’s or the congregation’s sin offering, the rest of the animal was carried outside the camp and burned with fire—a detail the writer of Hebrews connects directly to the Lord Jesus: “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:11–12). The offering was consumed. And through this consumption, the sin that had been identified with the animal was dealt with—not ignored, not overlooked, but borne by the substitute and removed.

The Torah states in its own words that bearing is what the sin offering does. When Aaron’s sons failed to eat the chaṭṭāʾth in the holy place, Moses demanded: “Why have you not eaten the sin offering in a holy place, since it is most holy, and God has given it to you to bear the guilt of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD?” (Leviticus 10:17). The chaṭṭāʾth is given to bear guilt. That is its stated function—bearing, not punishment. Nowhere does the Torah call the offering guilty; nowhere does it say the animal is punished; the categories, from first to last, are bearing, cleansing, and removal. And on the Day of Atonement the point is made structurally: the two goats—one slain, one sent away bearing the sins into the wilderness—are together presented “as a sin offering,” one chaṭṭāʾth in two movements (Leviticus 16:5). The bearing-away of sin is not an addition to the sin offering. It is intrinsic to what the sin offering is.

And over the whole system stands the verse that explains it: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls” (Leviticus 17:11). God is the giver of the atoning blood, not its recipient. The chaṭṭāʾth was never a fee rendered to God by the sinner; it was the provision God Himself gave by which the sinner was cleansed. There is no creditor at the altar—only the God who provides the means of atonement and the offerer who receives it.

What makes the chaṭṭāʾth unique among the Levitical offerings is the extraordinary fact embedded in its name. The Hebrew word chaṭṭāʾth means both “sin” and “sin offering.” The same word. The Torah does not use one word for the offense and a different word for the sacrifice. It uses a single word for both—because the offering was so thoroughly identified with the sin it bore that it was called by the name of the sin. The offering was not merely offered for sin. It bore the sin’s own name. The identification was total.

This is precisely what Paul is describing in 2 Corinthians 5:21. God made the Lord Jesus—who knew no sin—to be the chaṭṭāʾth. He was so thoroughly identified with the sin of the world that He bore its name. He became the sin offering in the fullest Levitical sense: the spotless Lamb upon whom the sin of the world was laid, who bore it in His own body, and whose death on the altar of the cross dealt with it once for all.

And 2 Corinthians 5:21 is not the only place Paul uses the idiom. In Romans 8:3, God sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin”—and the phrase “on account of sin” is peri hamartias (περὶ ἁμαρτίας), the Septuagint’s standard formula for the sin offering, the very phrase Hebrews uses when it quotes the Psalm: “in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure” (Hebrews 10:6, 8; Psalm 40:6). Paul speaks the chaṭṭāʾth twice: in Corinthians the Lord Jesus is made sin—made the sin offering; in Romans He is sent peri hamartias—as the sin offering—and in that sending God “condemned sin in the flesh.” The offering hidden in plain sight in one letter is hidden in plain sight in the other. And that condemning is itself sacrificial, not retributive: the word is katakrinō (κατακρίνω), a true judicial verdict that is genuinely carried out—but carried out as the bearing-away of sin and the bringing of the flesh to its end in the death of the sinless offering, not as retributive suffering exacted from an innocent. Mark the verdict’s object: God condemned sin, not the Son. Sin received in His death its judicial end; the verdict was real, and no penal seam runs through it.

Isaiah’s Confirmation: The Servant as the Guilt Offering

The Prophets confirm what the Torah established. In Isaiah 53:10, the Father makes the Servant’s soul an ʾāshām (אָשָׁם)—a guilt offering: “When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.” The ʾāshām is the companion offering to the chaṭṭāʾth—and of all the offerings, it is the one whose distinctive logic is reparation. The trespasser did not merely bring the offering; he made restitution for the damage his trespass had caused and added a fifth to it (Leviticus 5:16). The ʾāshām is the offering that repairs. Together, the chaṭṭāʾth and the ʾāshām cover the full scope of the Servant’s atoning work: the sin is borne away, and the damage is repaired. Not a debt paid to a claimant—Scripture names no recipient—but a wrong borne and a breach made whole, at the cost of the offering itself.

Isaiah 53 describes the same sacrificial logic that Leviticus legislates. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6). “And the chastisement for our peace” is mûsār (מוּסָר)—the language of fatherly discipline that fills the Proverbs: “whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:11–12)—and the phrase itself is ordered toward shalom: peace, wholeness, restoration. This does not make the suffering light, nor does it deny that the judgment is heavy; it identifies the suffering’s orientation as restorative in purpose rather than retributive as an end in itself. The Servant’s suffering is not pain demanded so that justice may be satisfied; it is the discipline by which peace is made. The laying of iniquity upon the Servant is the prophetic counterpart of the laying of hands on the sin offering. The Lord did not merely permit the Servant to suffer. He laid on Him the iniquity—actively, deliberately, as the sin was laid on the head of the chaṭṭāʾth. And the chapter’s verbs are the offering’s verbs: He has borne (nāsāʾ, נָשָׂא) our griefs; He shall bear (sābal, סָבַל) their iniquities—the same bearing the Torah assigns to the sin offering and the scapegoat (Leviticus 10:17; 16:22).

And the Servant consented. “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). The Lamb went willingly to the altar. The sin offering was not dragged to the cross against His will. He submitted—silently, voluntarily, in perfect obedience to the Father’s purpose.

The canonical line runs straight: from Leviticus through Isaiah to the cross. The chaṭṭāʾth of the Torah is the Servant of the Prophets is the Lord Jesus of the Apostolic witness. One offering, one sacrifice, one Lamb—bearing the sin of the world, identified with it so completely that He was called by its name.

The Lamb Announced at the Jordan

Between the Prophets and the apostles stands the testimony of the Lord Jesus Himself—and it begins, remarkably, at the water.

When the Lord comes to John to be baptized, John announces Him in the Torah’s own categories: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Notice where this announcement is made: at the Jordan, at the place of baptism. The offering and the rite of identification meet from the very first day. The Lamb who will bear the sin of the world is named beside the water into which sinners are going down—as though heaven were declaring, at the outset, that the offering and the entering-in belong together.

And the Lord Himself is baptized—not for sins of His own, for He had none, but, in His own words, “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). In the water, the sinless One identifies Himself with sinners; He takes His place among those He came to bear. This is the first half of a reciprocal identification that will govern everything that follows: at the Jordan He identifies with us in the waters of baptism; at our baptism we identify with Him in His death. The Lamb steps into our place at the river; the sinner steps into the Lamb’s death at the font.

The Lord also names Himself as the Servant of Isaiah 53. On the night He was betrayed, He said: “For I say to you that this which is written must still be accomplished in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For the things concerning Me have an end” (Luke 22:37). He quotes the Servant song of Himself—numbered with the transgressors, identified with the sinners, the ʾāshām of Isaiah’s prophecy walking to the place of offering. And He states the purpose in the language of costly deliverance: “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The chaṭṭāʾth of the Torah, the Servant of the Prophets—announced at the Jordan, confessed at the table, accomplished at the cross.

The Laying on of Hands: What Baptism Actually Is

If the Lord Jesus is the sin offering—the chaṭṭāʾth—then the question every reader of the New Testament must ask is: where is the laying on of hands? In Leviticus, the sacrifice was not appropriated apart from it. The animal could be spotless, the altar prepared, the priest standing ready—but without the offerer’s hand on the head of the sacrifice and the confession of the sin, there was no identification, and the offering stood there unappropriated by that man. The offense remained on the offerer.

The Lord Jesus is the spotless offering. The altar of the cross has received the sacrifice. The blood has been shed. The provision is complete. But the offering must be appropriated—received, entered into, identified with.

Paul tells us where the laying on of hands occurs in the New Covenant: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–4).

Baptism into the Lord Jesus’ death is the New Covenant act of identification with the sin offering. When the believer goes down into the water, he is laying his hands on the head of the chaṭṭāʾth—declaring that this sacrifice is his sacrifice, this death is his death, this offering bears his sin. The identification is total: “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5). The word “united”—symphytoi (σύμφυτοι)—means grown together, organically joined, fused. The believer is not merely associated with the sin offering. He is fused to it—identified with it as completely as the offerer’s hands on the animal’s head identified him with the chaṭṭāʾth.

Here the two movements of the one offering come into view—the same two movements the Day of Atonement displayed in its two goats. The first movement: the sin is laid upon the offering. The Lord Jesus, the spotless chaṭṭāʾth, bears the sin, carries it into death, and cleanses it by His blood. And the proof that the bearing was sacrificial and not personal is that He rose free of it: He was “offered once to bear the sins of many,” and He will appear “a second time, apart from sin” (Hebrews 9:28). He carried the sin into death and rose without it—the sin borne away, not retained. The second movement: the offerer is brought into the offering’s death. “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin” (Romans 6:6–7). The old man—the flesh-governed identity that produced the sins—is brought into the death of the chaṭṭāʾth and crucified there. The word “done away with” is katargeō (καταργέω)—rendered inoperative, abolished, brought to nothing. The sin offering was consumed outside the camp; the old man is consumed in the cross. And the result is freedom: “he who has died has been freed from sin”—and the word “freed” is literally “justified,” dikaioō (δικαιόω). The one who has died with the sin offering has been declared righteous—released from sin’s claim because what sinned has been brought to death.

Peter states both movements in a single verse: “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Sin borne by Him; death undergone by us; and the outcome named in Isaiah’s word—healed.

Baptism, then, is not a mere ritual, not a human tradition, and not an optional add-on to a prayer of faith. It is the New Covenant laying on of hands—the God-ordained act by which the sinner identifies himself with the sin offering, enters into the death of the chaṭṭāʾth, and is freed from the sin that was borne by the Lamb. It is not the blood itself—the offering alone atones—but it is the God-given way in which the believer enters and confesses union with the death of the Lamb. Without it, the offering stands unappropriated—the sacrifice complete, the blood shed, the altar satisfied of nothing because it was never owed anything, and yet the offerer still standing at a distance, his hands never laid on the head of the Lamb.

The Offerer Who Refuses

The Levitical logic is precise: without the laying on of hands, there is no appropriation. The sacrifice could be perfect, the priest ready, the altar prepared—but if the offerer refused to approach, refused to lay his hands on the head of the offering, refused to confess his sin over it—the chaṭṭāʾth stood there unappropriated by him. The provision was complete. The appropriation was refused. And the offense remained on the offerer.

This is the situation of those who hear the gospel but refuse to respond in repentance, faith, and baptism. The Lord Jesus has offered Himself once for all as the sin offering for the world. The provision is universal—“through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Romans 5:18); “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The chaṭṭāʾth has been slain. The blood has been shed. The altar of the cross has received the Lamb.

But the offering must be entered—through repentance toward God (the confession of sin), faith in the Lord Jesus (the turning toward the offering), and baptism (the laying on of hands, the identification with the offering’s death). And here a careful distinction must be held, for two opposite errors threaten. The one who refuses does not fall outside the atonement itself—the offering is objective, accomplished once for all, for all; it does not become real when believed, and it does not become unreal when refused. There is no second offering, and the fire of Gehenna atones for nothing. What the refuser stands outside of is present saving participation: the gift unreceived, the union unentered, the old man unsurrendered. He remains outside reconciliation as participation, outside the cleansing of the conscience, outside union with the Lord’s death, and under wrath—not because the offering is insufficient, but because he has refused to enter it. His sins have not been confessed over the offering; his hands have never touched its head; and so he remains answerable for his deeds before the righteous Judge, who “will render to each one according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6). The judgment of the Age to Come will deal with those deeds, and it will remove the flesh he refused to surrender in this age—the same flesh already crucified in the offering of the Lord Jesus, now removed involuntarily by the fire—and it will do so upon the ground of the cross that was finished long before, for even that judgment adds nothing to the offering and provides no atonement of its own.

This is why Paul writes with such urgency: “We implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:20–21). The appeal is not “be aware that God exists.” The appeal is “be reconciled”—come to the altar, lay your hands on the offering, enter into the death of the chaṭṭāʾth willingly, in this age, while the entering is a gift and not a fire. The provision is finished. The appropriation is urgent.

Justified from Past Sins—But What About the Present?

The gift of justification applied at the moment of faith and baptism covers the sins that lie behind the believer. Peter says exactly this when he describes the believer who has stopped growing: he “has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins” (2 Peter 1:9 NKJV, literally “the cleansing of his former sins”). The cleansing received at conversion is the cleansing of the former sins—the sins that lie behind. The guilt is removed. The record is wiped out. That justification rests on the offering that is perfect and once for all, and the gift, once given, is not revoked.

But the believer does not stop sinning at conversion. The flesh—the self-governing disposition that corrupted and ruled the soul—is still present, still active, still producing the thorns that compete with the new life the Spirit is cultivating. And for ongoing sin, the provision is not a second justification but ongoing confession and cleansing: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Initial justification cleanses the old record and brings the believer into a new standing in Christ; ongoing confession does not create a second justification, nor repeat the offering—it applies the same once-for-all blood to the believer’s continuing walk. The blood of the Lord Jesus is sufficient for every sin—past, present, and future—but it must be applied. Initially through repentance, faith, and baptism at conversion. Continually through confession and repentance throughout the believer’s walk.

This is the ongoing priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father: “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2). Notice that John does not say “if anyone sins, all is lost.” He says “we have an Advocate.” The provision for falling short is built into the very structure of the New Covenant, because the Father knows that His children are learning to walk—growing from infancy to maturity, being transformed from glory to glory, stumbling along the way as every child does. The Lord Jesus does not stand at the right hand of the Father waiting to condemn the one who falls. He stands there as Advocate—the living Priest who ever lives to make intercession, who pleads the sufficiency of His own finished offering on behalf of the one who confesses and returns. The chaṭṭāʾth was offered once for all on the cross. But the Lord Jesus lives to apply that offering continually as the believer confesses and repents. The offering does not need to be repeated. The application is ongoing.

And the scope of the offering extends beyond those who have already received it: “not for ours only but also for the whole world.” The chaṭṭāʾth was slain for all. The blood is sufficient for all. The provision reaches all. The question is not whether the offering is large enough. The question is whether the offerer will come to the altar, lay his hands on the head of the Lamb, and receive what has already been given.

The Hebrews 6:1–2 Connection: The Sacrificial Sequence as the Foundation of Christ

The Levitical sin offering provides the interpretive key to one of the most important passages in the New Testament—the foundational doctrines listed in Hebrews 6:1–2. The writer of Hebrews names six “elementary principles of Christ” that constitute the foundation of the faith: “repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of judgment of the age” (Hebrews 6:1–2 literal).

These six doctrines are not a random theological checklist. When read in the light of the Levitical sin offering, they are the sacrificial sequence itself—the ordered steps by which the offerer approaches the altar and enters into the atoning work of the chaṭṭāʾth.

Repentance from dead works—the offerer turns from the sin that brought him to the altar. “Dead works” are the entire output of the flesh—not merely the obvious sins of the flesh, but everything the old self produces apart from the Spirit, including outwardly religious activity that proceeds from the carnal mind rather than from the life of God. As Paul says, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8). The offerer repents—turns away from the whole regime of dead works that separated him from God.

Faith toward God—the offerer turns toward God in trust, believing that the offering God has provided is sufficient. Faith is the posture of the offerer who approaches the altar, not in his own righteousness, but in confidence that the chaṭṭāʾth will bear his sin.

The doctrine of baptisms—the plural baptismōn (βαπτισμῶν) encompasses the washings and immersions of the sacrificial system, fulfilled in the New Covenant in the believer’s water baptism (identification with the Lord Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection) and Spirit baptism (incorporation into the one Body by the Holy Spirit). Both are part of the foundational experience of entering the faith.

The laying on of hands—and here a distinction must be drawn carefully, for the type and the apostolic practice are two different gestures, moving in two different directions. In the Levitical type, the offerer lays his hands on the offering: identification with the sacrifice, fulfilled in baptism into the Lord’s death, as this teaching has shown. In the apostolic practice, hands are laid on the believer: the Holy Spirit received and gifts imparted (Acts 8:17; 9:17; 19:6; 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6). The first moves from the offerer to the offering; the second moves from the Lord’s servants to the offerer. They are not the same act under two names, and Hebrews rightly lists baptisms and laying on of hands as distinct foundations. But they stand in a God-ordered sequence, and the consecration of the priests displays it: Aaron and his sons were first washed with water, and then the anointing oil was poured upon the head (Exodus 29:4, 7). Washed, then anointed. Baptized, then endued. The believer first lays hold of the offering in the water; then hands are laid on him, and the Spirit equips the one who now belongs to the royal priesthood.

Resurrection of the dead—the offerer walks away from the altar alive. The sin was dealt with in the death of the offering; the offerer lives because the offering died—and because the offering rose. In the New Covenant, this corresponds to the two outcomes within the one resurrection hour—“the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice”—the resurrection of life for the faithful and the resurrection of judgment for the unfaithful and ungodly (John 5:28–29 literal).

Judgment of the age—the Greek phrase rendered “eternal judgment” is more precisely krimatos aiōniou (κρίματος αἰωνίου)—judgment belonging to the age, age-long judgment. This is the eschatological fulfillment of the entire sacrificial pattern: the judgment that falls in the Age to Come on everything that the sin offering was meant to address. What was not dealt with voluntarily through the offering will be dealt with in that judgment—the unsurrendered flesh removed in the divine fire, upon the ground of the one finished offering, which even then is neither repeated nor supplemented.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:11 that “no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” The foundation is Christ—and Hebrews 6:1–2 tells us what that foundation looks like when it is laid in a person’s experience. It is the sin offering sequence: repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of hands, resurrection, and the judgment of the age. Christ is the foundation because He is the chaṭṭāʾth. Everything else—the gold, silver, and precious stones, or the wood, hay, and straw—is what is built upon that foundation in this present age, and it will be tested by fire at His appearing.

Conclusion: The Identification That Changes Everything

The full force of 2 Corinthians 5:21 can now be seen: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

The identification runs both ways, and it is total. He is identified with our sin; we are identified with His righteousness. He becomes the chaṭṭāʾth; we become the righteousness of God—in Him. The last two words carry the mechanism: not righteousness credited to us from a distance while we remain what we were, but righteousness entered by union—the old man crucified with the offering, the new man raised with the risen Lord. He bore the name of sin so completely that the offering was called by the sin’s own word; the believer, fused to Him in baptism, comes to bear the name of righteousness so completely that Paul says we become it. He took the sin’s name; we take His. Nothing in this is commerce, and no one is paid: the sin is borne away by the spotless offering, the flesh that produced it is brought to death by union, and the offerer walks away from the altar bearing a new name.

This is what the blood accomplishes. Not the settling of an account—for there was no creditor at the altar, only the God who gave the blood—but the cleansing of the offerer and his clothing in the righteousness of the One who bore his sin. The Lord Jesus did not merely take something from us. He brought us into Himself: His death our death, His life our life, His standing before the Father our standing. He was made chaṭṭāʾth; we are made the righteousness of God in Him. And this identification, accomplished once for all on the cross, is entered personally through repentance, faith, and baptism—the New Covenant laying on of hands by which the sinner is fused to the Lamb and receives what the Lamb secured.

The sin offering the church forgot is the very foundation on which the church stands. The Lord Jesus is the chaṭṭāʾth—the offering that bears the name of the sin it carried, the Lamb whose death dealt with the offense once for all, who carried the sin into death and rose apart from it. And every believer who has been baptized into His death has laid hands on the head of this offering, entered into the death of the chaṭṭāʾth, and been declared righteous—not on the basis of his own works, but on the basis of the spotless Lamb who was made sin so that sinners might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The altar is prepared. The offering has been made. The blood has been given. The question that remains is the same question that has always faced the offerer at the entrance of the tabernacle: will you come? Will you lay your hands on the head of the Lamb? Will you enter into His death, so that His righteousness becomes yours?

The provision is finished. The Lamb lives. And the invitation is open.

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”—2 Corinthians 5:21