To all Skeptics who love to point at this one: Scripture calls Jesus sinless, yet says He "became sin." So which is it?
The answer doesn't start in 2 Corinthians. It starts back in Exodus and Leviticus. Under the Law, a sacrifice had to be without blemish. Exodus 12:5 says the Passover lamb must be "without blemish, a male of the first year," and Leviticus repeats the same standard over and over (Leviticus 22:19-21). A flawed or sickly animal was disqualified before it ever reached the altar. It simply couldn't atone for anything.
That's the key to the whole question. Christ's sinlessness was never in tension with Him bearing sin. It was the qualification for it. Peter says it plainly, calling believers redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19). He had to be perfect before He could bear sin, not perfect instead of bearing it. A guilty man can't pay a debt of guilt he already owns himself.
This is also what's happening in Isaiah 53:6. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." That phrase, "laid on him," is the same language used for the Day of Atonement, when the priest laid his hands on the scapegoat and transferred the sins of the camp onto an animal that had done nothing wrong (Leviticus 16:21-22). The goat didn't become sinful. It carried a charge that was never its own. That's a transfer of guilt, not a transfer of character.
Paul spells it out: "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). "Made to be sin" is legal language, not chemistry. It means Christ was credited with our sin, not infected by it. Think of it this way: if a judge orders an innocent man's debt paid, that doesn't make the innocent man dishonest. The category here is judicial, not moral.
And that verse doesn't stop halfway. It's a two-way exchange. Our guilt went to Him, His righteousness comes to us. Neither side changes what they actually are. That's the whole point of Isaiah 53 in miniature. The same chapter that says "we have turned every one to his own way" also says "with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). The wound is real, the exchange is real, and the price was paid by someone who owed nothing.
So the "contradiction" only works if you assume "sin" can only mean a moral quality a person has. Scripture is using it here in its legal sense, a charge someone bears, the same way the spotless lamb never became a sinner just by standing in for one. Once you see that distinction, a sinless Christ bearing sin isn't a contradiction. It's the whole logic of the sacrificial system, brought home at the cross.