“On Jesus Christ, the New Adam Who ‘Became Sin’”

Ad Thalassium 42

Q. How is it that we are said to commit sin and know it (1 Jn 1:8), while the Lord became sin but did not know it? How is it not more serious to become sin and not know it, than to commit sin and know it? For the Scripture says, For our sake God made him become sin who knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21).

R. Having originally been corrupted from its natural design, Adam’s free choice corrupted along with it our human nature, which forfeited the grace of impassibility. Thus came sin into existence. The first sin, culpable indeed, was the fall of free choice from good into evil; the second, following upon the first was the innocent transformation of human nature from incorruption into corruption. For our forefather Adam committed two “sins” by his transgression of God’s commandment: the first “sin” was culpable, when his free choice willfully rejected the good; but the second “sin”, occasioned by the first, was innocent, since human nautre unwillingly put off its incorruption. Therefore our Lord and God, rectifying this reciprocal corruption and alteration of our human nature by taking on the whole of our nature, even had in his assumed nature the liability to passions which, in his own exercise of free choice, he adorned with incorruptibility. And it is by virtue of his assumption of this natural passibility that he became sin for our sake, though he did not know any deliberate sin because of the immutability of his free choice. [notes say that Maximus later in the Opusculum retracted any notion of Christ having a gnomic will that may be read into this passage]

Therefore the Lord id not know “my sin”, that is, the mutability of my free choice. Neither did he assume nor become my sin. Rather, he became the “sin that I caused”; in other words, he assumed the corruption of human nature that was a consequence of the mutability of my free choice. (me: this is opposite what a Protestant, whose name I wont mention, former Maximosophile tried to teach. He said Christ personally committed and was culpable for all the sins in the world.) For our sake he became a human being naturally liable to passions, and used the “sin” that I caused to destroy the “sin” that I commit. Just as in Adam, with his own act of freely choosing evil, the common glory of human nature, incorruption, was robbed-since God judged that it was not right for humanity, having abused free choice, to have an immortal nature-so too in Christ, with his own act of freely choosing the good, the common scourge of our whole nature, corruption, was taken away.

I think Maximus is distinguishing between nature and person here. He assumed fallen, sin-leaning human nature, not personal responsibility, and through hypostatically choosing not to sin in ‘every way that we are tempted’, He conquered it’s power over us.

At the resurrection of Christ, human nature was transformed into incorruption because his free choice was imutable. For God judged that it was right for man, when he did not subvert his free choice, once again to recover an immortal nature. By “man” here I mean the incarnate Logos in virtue of the fact that he united to himself, hypostatically, the flesh animated by a rational soul. For if the deviance of free choice introduced passibility, corruptibility, and mortality in Adam’s nature, it only followed that in Christ, the immutability of free choice, realized through his resurrection, introduced natural impassibility, incorruptibility, and immortality.

…Accordingly he has driven sin, passion, corruption, and death from human nature, and the economy of Christ’s philanthropy on my behalf has become for me, once fallen through disobedience, a new mystery. For the sake of my salvation, Christ, through his own death, voluntarily made my condemnation his own, thereby granting me restoration to immortality. (!!!!!)

In many ways, I think, it has been shown in this brief discussion both how the Lord became sin but did not know it, and how humanity did not become sin (me: pah, total depravity) but did commit and know sin-both the deliberate “sin” which man committed first, and the subsequent natural “sin” to which the Lord submitted himself on humanity’s account, even when he was completely free of the first kind of sin.