Featured 5 Biblical Corrections to Penal Substitution

I can go to the grocery store WITH and FOR my wife. But I cannot go to the grocery store WITH and INSTEAD of my wife. The NT consistently describes Jesus dying WITH and FOR us. This excludes INSTEAD (which is what you need for substitution).

 

"Christ pays sins wages." Anyone who has ever had a job knows this makes no sense. Wages are not something that we pay; wages are something we earn. If you think this distinction does not matter, then go ahead and ask your employer to change the word “wages” to “debts” on your paychecks from now on and see how it works out. Owing and earning are opposite sides of the economic metaphor. Thus, we do not owe death to God. We earn death for our sin. I’ve heard some preachers today quote the popular Tom Hanks movie “The Green Mile” when a character says, “We each owe a death, there are no exceptions.” But that is just not what the Bible says. The Bible says we have all earned death. And we all justly receive the death we have earned when we suffer our sin’s consequences in this life and finally when we physically die. Our suffering and physical death is not a payment to God for our sin, and does not atone for our sin. Our atonement is in this: Jesus has voluntarily interceded to receive the wages of our sin along with us by suffering and dying on the cross. But he, being without sin, has received these wages undeservedly and unjustly by the hands of sinners. Justice therefore demands that these wages be taken back, and that Jesus’ suffering and death be undone, reversed, hence Jesus’ resurrection.

The Bible never mentions any such thing as a debt of punishment, yet according to penal substitution, the payment of humanity’s debt of punishment is a (the?) central meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. penal substitution is thus formulated to fulfill a priority of justice that simply does not exist.

2 Corinthians 5:21

Many scholars, from the early church and today, including many who support penal substitution, argue that the phrase "the Messiah became sin" means that "the Messiah became a sin offering." A sin offering is a ritual in which a guilty sinner slays an unblemished sacrifice so that the innocent blood shed would purify the offerer of his guilt and sin. This is what happens at the cross, when sinners put to death the unblemished Messiah, but his shed blood purifies sinners from their sin.

Furthermore, NT Wright's argument is very helpful on this verse: In the second part of the verse, the phrase “the righteousness of God” does not mean “the righteousness of Christ,” which would refer to the Messiah/Son’s legal status of righteousness. The “righteousness of God” refers to God’s covenant faithfulness to bless all nations through Israel. When Paul says, “we become the righteousness of God,” he is saying that the people of God, the Church in Christ, has become an outworking, demonstration, and manifestation of God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises. Paul is not talking here about the imputation of Christ’s legal status of righteousness to us.

If Paul is talking about a demonstration or manifestation rather than an imputation in this second part of the verse, it follows that he is doing the same thing in the preceding half of the verse, in which he says “God made him who knew no sin to be sin”. Paul is not saying that our sin or guilt was imputed to Jesus, but that the sinless man Jesus was made into an outworking, demonstration, and manifestation of our sin. This certainly describes the cross. The cross is the greatest sin in human history, in which all sin against God and all sin against Man are inflicted upon the God-Man Jesus Christ. No sin that any of us has ever committed is greater than the sin we committed when we crucified Jesus. The worst aspect of any one of our sins is that it contributed to the death of God’s Son. On the cross, Jesus was made my sin. He was made into a demonstration of every human’s sin. Why? So that through Jesus’ resurrection, God would show His faithfulness to his covenantal promises to restore the earth from sin’s destruction.

So here is a paraphrase of the verse: God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be made a manifestation of sin on our behalf, so that we sinners could, in Christ, become the manifestation of God’s covenant faithfulness. As NT Wright says, “God made [the Messiah] to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might embody God’s faithfulness to the covenant.” (Paul and the Faithfulness of God p.20)

 

Agree. And Jesus suffers death unjustly, so that justice would enact the reversal of his death in his resurrection. Justice is satisfied in the resurrection as the divine reversal of the unjust human verdict. This is why Peter says that Jesus, while suffering unjustly, “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.” Jesus fully trusted that the just judge would reverse the unjust judgment. Jesus' innocence and unjust death requires that justice enact the reversal of death via his resurrection. On the cross, Jesus suffers all of our sin’s destruction as an injustice, so that justice will be satisfied by the restoration of all things through the power of His resurrection. Jesus dies under the unjust judgment of humans, and is raised by the just judgment of God.

 

Are you saying that God cannot ordain unjust events?

 

I am not sure how anything in this verse, or anything in what you have said, refutes the notion that Jesus died unjustly. Jesus willingly suffered an unjust (undeserved) death.

1 Peter 2:18-25, for one example, explicitly states that Jesus' death was unjust.