[Intro - single low fingerpicked guitar, voice entering close and grave]

[Verse 1 - the preacher and the sermon, plainspoken, mournful]
There was a preacher down in Albany the winter of '05
He opened up to Second Corinthians and read it like a man alive
He said the Father made the sinless Son to be our very sin
And then he said it harder still, he said a sinner, said it plain
And he would not soften it
No, he would not soften it

[Verse 2 - the doctrine, bodily and concrete]
Made sin is more than a debt set down in a book
He bore it in the body, in the flesh, and in the blood
He bore the shame His people earned and wore it on His face
He bore their grief until it broke Him in the garden ground
He bore the wrath of God Almighty in His body on the tree
But the rebellion He would never bear
His will stayed bowed to the Father to the end

[Chorus]
He said made sin
He said made a sinner
And he meant it in the body and the blood, and not a mark in a book
He meant the wrath and the shame of it, and never the rebellion
But they would not hear him through
No, they would not hear him through

[Verse 3 - what they did with the words]
They cut one sentence from the hour and they sent that sentence out
And the sentence did the traveling while the sermon stayed behind
A sentence with no sermon round it is a knife without a handle
And they passed that knife from hand to hand for twenty years

[Chorus]
He said made sin
He said made a sinner
And he meant it in the body and the blood, and not a mark in a book
He meant the wrath and the shame of it, and never the rebellion
But they would not hear him through
No, they would not hear him through

[Verse 4 - the dead man]
He went on home some years ago with the lie still on his name
And no breath left in him to ever answer it
A man cannot rise up out of the ground to tell you what he meant
So the stone says one thing and the whisper says another
And the whisper has outlived the man

[Bridge - the vindication, cello swelling]
The Puritans wrote it in the margin of the Bible that they carried
A sinner, not in himself, but by imputation
Old dead men said the very thing the Albany preacher said
And we shelved them and we praised them and we named our children for them
The only difference was the dead men could not be reached
And the living one could

[Final Verse - the campless turn, B in it]
I stood too near his memory and the door closed on me too
I would not call him a heretic, so they made me one instead
But I will say it where he cannot, I will say it for the both of us
He preached the gospel, and they buried him for it
He said made sin, he said made a sinner
And both of them were true

[Outro - voice and guitar, a low harmony entering]
Made sin
Made a sinner
He told the gospel truth
And they would not hear him through
But I will hear him through