Featured The Biblical Basis for Penal Substitution

I recognize that the Savior suffered. That is a given.

What I find remarkable is a certain weakness of expressions found that regard in some manner the suffering of Christ was forensically different and as such in some manner a payment.

I recognize that others suffered, and although the crucifixion was incomparably painful, there were others that did, were, and would suffer in exactly the same manner under Roman rule. There was not "special" to performing a crucifixion for one criminal was no better than any other to the Roman soldier.

Therefore, what is the single element associated with the forensic work of the cross that makes it remarkable?

The answer must contain that it was done to God, the Creator, the Sustainer who allowed the humankind to so badly treat Him. It shows authority over every thought, emotion, and sensory input and output such as humankind cannot control.

His thoughts had to allow humankind to strike and abuse Him, were before He would move pass without even their knowledge as if He had disappeared to reappear latter. That God would suspend such thoughts of revenge and wrath was done with meaning and purpose. He was meanly man handled in ways never before allowed and learning.

His emotions had to be placed in full check were, before, none had been allowed to successfully launch an emotional barrage of hate against him. When humankind attempted to stone Him, such were stopped, immediately. When some would seize Him, they fell back at his word. When they would display scorn and ridicule, He would pronounce woe. However, at the immediate hours leading up to the cross, He must experience and endure the emotional attacks, in just the same manner as the physical attacks, by allowing such to occur, and learning.

His sensory input and output must also need to be opened and able to be violated. It was not mere words from those that attacked, for He had heard such before, but the tone of the voice, the facial sneer of the mock, the body language of those who would contend that they were doing God approved work (smitten of God and afflicted). Such is beyond the physical, and impacts the very chemical makeup of the human.

He endured such suffering, but that suffering was not payment owed.

1) It was experiential that God would know every aspect of humankind as a humankind even suffering.
2) It was specific for specific areas - wounded, bruised, chastised... for specific areas in which believers find need.
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(imo) Christ did not forensically suffer for payment, rather suffered for learning and example. That the believer may also know that the suffering they experience is a mark of identification and a fellowship with the Savior the world does not comprehend.

Such suffering will bring understanding, stability, wisdom, and purging of this world and worldly. This is (imo) the thinking that Paul expressed also by stating:

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. (Philippians 3)​

 

agedman said: ↑
Here is a bit of problem with what came AFTER the lamb slaying.
1) It was not a part of the live lamb but after the death. It is a picture of (the roasting of the lamb) the decent into hades and paradise the Lord took after death. [\quote]
To which you said:

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According to Paul, He descended. The ancients considered that the keeping place was divided into two separate compartments (this was expressed by the Lord, too) One was Hades or Paradise, the other Sheol or Hell.

I would state that the Lord descended into Hades (Paradise) taking the thief with Him.

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You are correct. I had my Scripture opened to a wrong passage.

I would not disagree with anything stated.

What my contention is that there are some that blend the suffering to the point of making such suffering as important as the blood atonement. However, that is not the picture presented in either the Exodus, nor any other sacrifice in the OT tabernacle. No "living" animal was tortured to death.

Propitiation was by the blood. The blood is the primary and "absolutely vital importance" of the Cross.

In this I consider that we agree.

I think that I disagree in labeling (especially Hebrews 9:27-28) an expression of penal substitution, but of the singular one time sacrifice that fulfilled the requirement of the Law. Christ made no "payment" to God or the devil, fulfilled the Law God established.

Christ "fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law" (Romans 8).

Forensic (I like that term better than Penal) has the thinking that the actual pulling of the hair, the whip lashes, the mashing of the crown of thorns, the nails driven through the hands, and other such things done brought some "substitution" for the believer. That there was some payment that had to be made in a physical suffering manner to fulfill or pay the demand of God or the devil.

As I stated, the crucifixion was in itself not uncommon in the Roman world of justice. The whipping, and the mockery were also not uncommon. What WAS uncommon was to whom it was done.

That it was done to Christ is a picture of what the believer may also endure. There is no experience of the believer that Christ does not have intimate understanding.

According to this next statement by you, you would disagree.

Let's look at a single passage for example of what I mean.

Using Issiah 53 one sees a timeline approach to the life on this earth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.​

3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.​

Those verses I take as pre-cross. I realize that some blend the suffering spoken as of the cross, but there is seemingly a progression from birth that takes place in which the whole ministry of Christ is displayed as unattractive, sorrow filled, a man despised, and not esteemed.

Isaiah continues:

But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities; (
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.​

Do not take the "crush" as something greatly physical, but that of oppression, as one who is "crushed" by evil. There is no account that the Lord was "crushed" as is commonly defined when one is slain by the weight of an external object. The "crushing" was the weight of evil, that which (imo) rent His heart in two, causing the blood to fill the thoracic cavity

More to the point:
The piercing, crushing, chastening, scourging, were all blood letting in effect.

As the God/man the blood that was shed is what fulfilled the Law. Not the pain, not the sorrow, not the events, and all that is certainly part of the events, rather it is specifically the responsibility of the blood.

In no way do my statements diminish the sorrow the Christ endured and the pain and the events picture that which believers may also endure.

But the suffering ALONE is not redemption nor is it other than the process in which redemption came to pass. It is the mode of blood letting that was the suffering that is the propitiation.

Again, I refer back to the sacrificial system of the OT. At no place was there inhuman treatment given to a sacrifice prior to its appointed death.

I consider the passages such as the Luke mentioned, a manner of statement that the cross was necessary for the transition back or entry back into glory. It is not a statement of "physical/forensic" suffering, but as one might say, "It pleased God that I suffered death to find myself in heaven." Suffer in this case is experiential, to be acted upon, to be affected - usually in a bad way by but in this case for the good.

Christ had to experience the cross in order to again enter heaven.

Ok, we are in agreement, and, in some areas, disagreement.

I look at the blood as a fulfillment requirement of the law, that there was no "payment due" as part of that law. The law demanded judgment. That demand was met.

Under "penal substitution" there is also the benefactor limit often suggested by some in the Reformed camp.

Not to stretch the topic too far away from the OP, but I don't see the fulfillment of the Law's judgment as conditionally limited. When Christ's blood was spilled, it was placed on the door posts and lintel of the whole world (so to speak). Not just upon those of a specific grouping.

 

One point I neglected that relates to the OP.

John states that the sacrifice by God was "His only begotten Son." His first born.

God did not "substitute" but fulfilled the requirement. All the OT did was substitute while looking forward to a more perfect sacrifice.

In a way, then, the OT offered "forensic (penal) substitution" while the NT offers perfect redemption.

 

Is what, "the ancients considered," found anywhere in the word of God? Where does the word of God speak of Sheol and or Hades being divided into compartments?

I believe Jesus died and his soul was in Hades, Greek for Sheol I assume being Peter said David was not speaking of himself but of the fruit of his loins, Christ, when he said my soul shall not be left in Sheol in Psalms 16:10.

Nothing to my knowledge in the word of God implies Paradise is or was remotely close to Sheol and or Hades. I do believe, the lowest parts of the earth and the heart of the earth, equate to Sheol and or Hades, which equate to the death.

Before the death and resurrection of Jesus born to the virgin Mary those who had died of whom God had called were, when dead said to have died in faith. Today when one who has been called dies, he is dead in Christ.

Lazarus in Luke 16 is I believe, Eliezer the servant of Abraham, whom Abraham wanted to make his heir for he had no children. Jesus is telling those he was speaking with, Eliezer / Lazarus died, in the bosom of the Abraham. That his relationship to the God was the same as Abraham's at death. He also died in the faith that Abraham had died in. The coming of the seed (singular) of Abraham in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.


The rest of that post I agree with. Also Christ is the door and it was his blood put on the door that will allow the world to go through. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.