evangelists with regard to the baptism of Jesus. It is only as sinless that Christ can, in Paul’s view, bear the sins of others. That the merits of the (at least relatively) righteous could be used for the benefit of the sinful was a belief current in Judaism; see Bousset-Gressmann, pp. 198 f., 387. Paul develops the thought in terms of an exchange: Christ was made sin, that we might become God’s righteousness. It is important to observe that the words Paul uses are words describing relationships