We may not like to think about what happened to Jesus when our sins were laid on Him, but without admitting this facet of His sacrifice, we miss the foundational reason for His taking on human flesh (Romans 8:3). We understand that Jesus bore our sins and their penalty, but what can be harder to accept is that Paul says Christ became sin. We will see this in II Corinthians 5:21:
Paul's words may be startling and uncomfortable, but they are true: God the Father made Christ to be sin! This doesn't mean God made Him commit sin. His life and nature were entirely flawless. But this says God made Him to be sin.
The instructions for sin offerings contain a detail that helps us to understand why Paul could make this statement. An interlinear Bible shows that in almost every verse in the Old Testament where a sin offering is mentioned, the word offering is supplied by the translators. It is not present in the Hebrew. This is because the word for sin offering, chatta'ah (Strong's 2403), is also the word for sin. This word has multiple meanings. It can indicate sin, a sin offering, guilt because of sin, purification from sin, or punishment because of sin. The same word is used to signify all those things.
In a sin offering, the animal became symbolic of the guilt incurred by sin; it suffered punishment because of sin; and it was also the symbolic purification from sin. This is why the same word is used for both sin and sin offering. The animal - the substitute - essentially became the sin needing to be atoned. When the high priest laid all the iniquities of Israel on the azazel, that second goat became sin.
One translation tries to soften what is said here by saying that God made Christ to be the offering for our sin. While that is true, it is not faithful to the text. The Greek word for sin here is not like the Hebrew word, which can also indicate a sin offering. In the Greek, sin simply means sin. When a sin offering is indicated, another Greek word must be included. But here, Paul means just what we read: God made Christ to be sin.
Truly, the role of the azazel was a dreadful one, but it was part of the work that only the Messiah could do, and which He had to do for there to be reconciliation with God.
We also saw that, rather than beginning with the uncertain meaning of the word, if we instead begin with what happens to the live goat, there is an abundance of clear scriptures that point to the Messiah. He was the one upon whom sins were laid, and who bore them. He was the one who became sin, who was sent away from the Temple, and who became a curse to satisfy the curse of being sent from God's presence, so we can come back into it.
This is how sins are removed - through Jesus Christ becoming sin and being separated from the Father for what must have seemed like eternity. Like the first goat, His sacrifice opened the way into the Holy of Holies. His sinless blood has given us access to and satisfied the Most High God. Like the second goat, Jesus also bore our sins. Through piercing, bruising, and wounding while hanging on a tree for hours outside the gate, our transgressions are removed as far as east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).
