Featured The Penal Substitutionary Satisfaction by Jesus Christ in "The Council of Peace" from Eternity Past.

It's both. On of the big problems with our criminal justice system nowadays is that we have gotten away from the idea of debt and justice in real terms and have done like you mention - where the purpose can't be restitution or just due punishment but must be looked at as a deterrent only, or in the case of some, therapy and reeducation or rehabilitation. The fact is, we have an inherent understanding that crime needs to be punished simply because it isn't right. We despise a judge who doesn't do this because he can't see any purpose.

 

You may have hit on the core issue here. I do believe that there is an aspect of this where the sin must be punished. And in the civil courts this is also true. This does not mean that you remove all mercy. You should not spend 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread - but the basic idea of retribution for sin is sound. And if you want to say the Reformers took this idea into account in their day and we still think the same way - you are probably right.

God's wrath is averted in us because of Christ's dealing with our sin. It is not always explained totally in scripture. In John 3 you have that whosoever believes on Jesus will be saved. Those who refuse still have the wrath of God abiding on them. But God gave his only son so that the belief would be saving. It means that something was actually done by His only Son - in order that belief in Him would save you. If someone says that Jesus' atoning work can be looked at truly as separate from our repentance and belief and mean by that they are already saved by the atonement without believing then I think they go too far. And in the same way, if someone does not explain that Jesus actually took care of our sin in order for any other benefit to be ours then I think they are failing to fully explain this also.

There are reformed theologians who say that the concept of our unity with Christ and the idea of our dying with Him and being raised with Him to walk in newness of life is neglected in reformed teaching. I actually agree with them for what my opinion is worth. But I am thankful for the teaching that points out my personal sin and offense to God and the fact that Jesus truly atoned for my actual offenses. I think penal substitution is sound teaching.

 

I'm just talking here. Not trying to make a theological argument so take it for what it's worth. But I do believe that our revealed knowledge of God shows us that it is in his nature to tend to want to punish sin. It's also in his nature to want to show mercy. And it's also true that he he perfectly righteous and just and wants us all collectively to know that. So you have all these thoughts about which are difficult for us to deal with as humans. And I'll tell you something. The Reformers were the ones who first started looking at this in detail apparently, in relation to our sin, and the work of Christ and I think they should be applauded for it.

 

For sure. Ninety percent of how we think is from subconscious ideas absorbed through our culture and environment. It is very humbling and troubling when you really think about it.

For me, there is no reason I need to have you punished. In the case of God, since he is in charge of the whole moral universe and the determiner of "how things are" I would say it's different. You punching me is an injury to me and no one else. I can flat out forgive with no problem. If I am God, and I see that you as a nobleman in 150AD have attacked your neighbor, killed the men and enslaved the women, no, I should not just forgive you. And I'm using that illustration because you made a good point earlier. In some of the early church writings, this kind of thing was done and discussed as if God could indeed over look and forgive this. But I think that the reason is the high view they had of rulers, not an enlightened view of the love and mercy of God. Forward to 1600. Men, at least in western culture were starting to say '"No, that is unjust and we don't care who you are". The thought patterns were starting to change. The actions of the nobleman I mentioned to me are an outrage to the universe whereas in 150AD, unfortunately, they believed a nobleman had every right to do such a thing.

It is unjust. And invalid usually. That is why there is so much in the Bible about the uniqueness of Jesus and how he had to be sinless and fully God and fully man. And why scripture says God was able to be just and yet justify sinners. And it is why it is so difficult to put into words that fully explain what happened in the atonement. But vicarious atonement is what God wanted to do.

 

“We use that terminology commonly when we say someone in prison is paying a debt to society.”

Precisely - our common terminology is wrong. We should not use our common terminology to interpret Scripture. A person in prison is not paying their debt to society. That is not the purpose of punishment - which is the whole point.

If the murderer of my daughter goes to prison, how many years does it take before my daughter is restored to me?

Or let’s just stick with debt. If someone owes me a measly $20, how much prison time will it take to get me my 20 bucks?

Again, penal substitution confuses the biblical priorities of retribution and restitution.

 

Arthur, I just think you want to use common terminology as much as possible. You will have problems with this argument for 2 reasons. One, it is the purpose of punishment but you are right in that there is only so much we can do to mete out punishment. Some mass shooter gets 6 consecutive life sentences of course that is silly. It would be better to immediately execute him but that still does not "fix" anything. Two, according to most Reformers, they agree that even the slightest sin against an infinitely holy God cannot really be punished a sufficient amount even if we spent eternity in Hell. Their whole point is that we cannot bear suffering the actual just deserts of our sin.

I disagree there. For the sake of justice, if someone says defiantly that they refuse to pay then a weekend in jail would at least let everyone know that justice is important and that government is legitimate. Remember, toward the end of Romans this is discussed. A government that does not punish evil and reward good is illegitimate. How much more so if God doesn't do this.

 

Even Torrance doesn't go that far. He even maintains that the Father and the Son themselves reconciled us by Jesus willingly suffering and offering himself on the cross. Even if you say that the forensic transferring of sin goes too far in it's imagery you still have according to Torrance, Jesus submitting to the Father's judgment.

(By the way, I actually like reading Torrance, although he is difficult.)

 

At no point am I saying God or government should not punish evildoers. We should, to stop evil.

But that does nothing to pay for evil’s destruction. A dude could spend 20 years in jail and that jail time itself would never get me my 20 bucks.

When humanity sinned, what was damaged? Humanity. Not God. Humanity sinned and God lost humanity. God is not going to get humanity back by punishment. Punishment is going to stop evil’s destruction. Resurrection in Christ is going to save humanity from their deadness in sin.

 

I guess in a sense everyone has to develop in their own mind how they are thinking of all this. In the case of the $20 what you're saying works if you are talking about just the amount. But what if you are really dealing with defiance? If a judge tells you you must pay a $20 fine and you say you won't, as opposed to just not having the resources, you can technically stay in jail for ever - because of your defiance.

In the case of Adam and Eve you know how the common opinion of people in the world is that we're trying to make an awful lot out of a couple eating the wrong fruit. But what if, looking at the same incident, what you really have is knowing rebellion based on no real human need but a choosing to listen to Satan rather than God. You can't say that brought anything on themselves as a course of nature. They committed cosmic rebellion and suffered the loss of everything they knew. Even then they were shown a lot of mercy.

I'm afraid your description of all this would be more like if your dog escapes his fence and then you worry that now he's liable to get hit or something. There was way more going on than that. You have to decide whether these scriptures that warn of hell are real or not. And is this place real. Were the Reformers wrong when they said that there is a Hell to avoid?

I don't know for sure but from what other things the Reformers tended to say, I'm not sure there is any claim by them that each sin or every sin has to be punished a certain amount by God. The reason I say that is that most of them felt that because of it being sin against the infinite holiness of God there just wasn't any question of us actually repaying any sin. That's an argument they used for hell being eternal if I'm not mistaken. Maybe it's Owen's fault. He came close to using a similar argument in his arguing for a limited atonement with the Arminians who he referred to as universalists. In other words, he said that if the atonement paid for a given sin then that sin was paid for period. But even here he was referring to Christ paying it, not that we could actually pay ourselves. According to the Reformers the reason this is such a disaster to us is that we cannot possibly pay.

In other words, the concept of whether God is required whether he wants to or not to demand a certain payment for each sin is of no importance to this discussion. We know we are naturally under God's wrath. Hell is threatened by Jesus. He did something specific on the cross so that he can claim to be the only way to the Father. And like Jon said earlier, what is required of us is faith and repentance.

 

"You can't say that brought anything on themselves as a course of nature."

Absolutely we can! Human nature (the way we were created to be) is to love and obey God. Sin is therefore a violation of human nature. Sin is a disordering of human nature. Sin is a disconnecting of human nature from its proper end. Cosmic treason against God is necessarily cosmic treason against human nature.

"In other words, the concept of whether God is required whether he wants to or not to demand a certain payment for each sin is of no importance to this discussion."

It is important. The important thing is that obedience pays for sin. Punishment does not pay for sin, just like punishment does not pay for a monetary debt. Hell does not pay for sin. People are in hell because they have rejected Jesus' payment of obedience on their behalf.

I think your remaining question is about people who are intentionally malicious (all of us to some degree). It seems wrong to just call them "broken." But the reality is they have corrupted themselves and are a force of corruption in the world. They need to be punished in order to protect others and to show that their corrupt behavior will not be tolerated. And we punish them that they might repent. They need to undergo a death and resurrection process via confession and repentance to be freed from corruption and saved.