Featured 2 Corinthians 5:21 doesn't support penal substitution (reposted)

I believe you misquoted Genesis 3:15.
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

The enmity is between the woman (the Israel of God) and Satan because the Promised One is coming through that line.
The Promised One crushed Satan's head and Satan, but the heel of the Promised One.
Note: John alludes to this in the Revelation when he talks about the woman and the dragon.

Jesus committed to the plan that He, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit made before the foundation of the world. God used Satan, just as He said.

In all of this, Jesus acts as our propitiatory substitute. It is right there is scripture when you read the Bible. If you cannot see it then there is nothing for us to say to each other. You will forever be dancing around the scriptures to avoid what is placed before you.

 

So, Jesus could just as easily pulled out a debit card and drawn out the payment from his bank account rather than die like a condemned sinner since he didn't receive our punishment for our sins. Perfect, holy, Jesus did something He didn't have to do since there was no punishment involved.
This is the conclusion I take from your statement.

 

Good. You seem to be coming around. You have Jesus having to suffer to pay our debt. And our actual sins contributed to putting him to death. And this occurred because of God's decree in the divine jurisdiction. And our sins our a contribution and cooperation with the Romans and the Jews in killing Jesus - which we penal substitution advocates sing songs about almost every week, songs written by other penal substitution advocates.

 

Not at all. You deliberate try to put it in a way that slanders the mystery of how the Father and Son handled the idea of God's holiness and sense of justice (and wrath against sin) and turn it into something that sounds almost trivial. Be careful here. It was not deserved or just for Jesus at all.

Yes. Scripture adequately shows that and you showed that in your earlier post.

Could it be possible to conclude that the proper interpretation of this could be that "something is displaced upon him so that it does not fall on us"?
Look. If you or anyone who might stumble upon this is interested here is a pretty good link, not from someone I usually read, who seems to explain what is really going on here.
Baptist Catholicity and Penal Substitutionary Atonement — Center For Baptist Renewal
I think everyone has said all everyone on here knows to say at this point and I think we won't accomplish anything by continuing to restate our beliefs. This article just shows that others are doing it too. And the article they are refuting comes from sources, both their schools, and the website, that are questionable.

 

Ezekiel 18:4, ". . ..the soul that sinneth, it shall die. . . .
Romans 6:23, ". . . For the wages of sin is death; . . ."
Mark 10:45, ". . . to give his soul a ransom . . . ."
Isaiah 53:12, ". . . he hath poured out his soul unto death: . . .

 

You dance around both.
In Genesis 3, man is not mentioned. The enmity is between the Serpent (Satan) and the Woman (The Israel of God, The line of the Promised One). From the seed of the woman comes the Promised One (Jesus) who does bruise (strike) the head of Satan. Satan does not "crush" a heel. Satan bruises/strikes the heel. How would a serpent crush something? That's a poor translation you picked.

The passage shows you how Jesus takes the strike that you and I deserve. That's substitution.

You dance around 1 John 2 and the term "propitiation" which indicates Jesus received what we deserved and paid the price for our sins in full.
You claim universal propitiation and then you turn around and deny it since you deny that those who go to hell have had their sins paid for. You contradict yourself and it doesn't even bother you. Then you expect others to ignore your contradiction and keep telling us that substitution is not found in the scriptures despite the fact that it is expressed in both the verses you have chosen.

If you wish to hold to a contradiction that is your prerogative, but don't tell everyone else that they hold a view that isn't taught in scripture.

 

See the bold. In your statement you show us that Jesus is our substitute.

 

I think you will find they are. Ask anyone in business.

If no one pays the wages they cannot be received QED.

 

Yes. But penal substitution advocates say a lot and are numerous. The words you use are sometimes the exact words of Socinus. He said a lot too. And so do you. It takes 5 minutes on the internet to find out that most people believe Sproul misspoke in his quote about Jesus hearing the words "God damn you", yet you try to make that into the official definition of penal substitution.

What penal substitution requires is this: Christ the sinless One took on Himself the penalty that should have been borne by man and others. That's from Ryrie's "Basic Theology". That's the simplest, briefest definition I can find. It's from a non-Calvinist, if that matters to anyone.

Penal Substitution Theory - the belief that in his death Christ suffered the penalty for our breaking of the law and died as a substitute in our place. (Penal, involving penalty or legal punishment.) From T.F. Torrance, "Atonement, The Person and Work of Christ. Torrance was modern, Barthinian, considered himself Calvinist but definitely not limited atonement.

I could go on but it's actually difficult to find brief, concise definitions. Edwards, Owen and other Puritans talk about it but those guys never heard of the word "concise". Even Billy Graham, in his book "Peace With God" takes a few pages to explain it. So I'm not going to define if for you here. The problem is that you can define "penal substitution" as a definition easily at the most basic level. But then guys like you come along and pick at various aspects that were not explained because they were not needed for the concise definition and pretend then that the "theory" is incomplete.

Here's what I mean. Because God is wrathful in regards to sin you come up with a false impression that takes away the fact that God devised the plan for our redemption and the motivation was love to us. The highest form of love was between the Father and the Son, which you falsely say is broken if penal substitution is true. (I admit, R.C. was not helpful with some of the things he said.)

Regarding God's wrath. It is mentioned multiple times in scripture. It flows from God's nature and is based on His sense of justice, which would be the right way of course. It is not like our wrath, which may be selfish, or arbitrary, or misplaced - but we can identify with the feeling somewhat so it was wisely revealed to us in scripture as an attribute of God.

Regarding God's justice. Jesus was unjustly executed. But it seemed right to God to have this happen. The unjust suffering of Jesus somehow satisfied the Father's sense of justice in making it consistent with His nature to forgive sinners like us, which in normal human interaction would appear wrong. To come along and snipe at this as some glaring inconsistency is ridiculous.

There is an interplay between all these things which we can't understand except to the extent they are revealed to us. We have sinned against God and ended up estranged from Him, unable to look upon Him without dying, unable to truly have close fellowship with Him and in some sense we ended up in Satan's kingdom. God, in His wisdom, has determined to use Jesus incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection as a means to solve all these problems at once. It seems that God could have simply destroyed Satan directly but that would not have helped us in our fallen state. But He is going to punish sin and He is going to destroy Satan and he is going to save people and He is going to do this while maintaining his own sense of justice and holiness. When you add it all together and try to give it a name, penal substitution seems like it works. To call it "theory" most likely borders on blasphemy. The penal substitution part is what you will end up with if you zero in on what this means directly to us as guilty sinners with no way back to God. That does not mean that Christ's death and resurrection did not do many other things like defeat Satan, undo Adams failure as our head, begin the renewal of creation, prove Christ as victor, serve as our example, prove God's love to us and so on. And zeroing in on us as individual sinners is not intended to diminish those other things as being unimportant. This is why looking at a historical figure or an Early Church Father and figuring that because in a certain writing they didn't go into one aspect but focused on another is so wrong if you are trying to disprove penal substitution.

 

So according to you, no one pays, the wages of sin in Romans 6:23, ". . . the wages of sin is death; . . ." Before I accepted Christ, I was told God did or He was not just. [1962]. Am I understanding you here?

 

Your argument makes no Biblical sense. How was "all things were now accomplished" before His resurrection?

τετέλεσται "Paid in full."

 

You will get nowhere with Jon. He is so dogmatic and stubborn that he will not listen to the scriptures on this topic. He thinks that we are all believing in a false gospel (HIS WORDS), when we hold to Penal Substitutionary Atonement (Which a majority of the people on this forum believe).

 

You have sinned. You deserve hell.
All humanity does not judge you. God judges you and finds you guilty of breaking His holy law. If you have no one who pays for your sin, you have no hope of heaven. If you have no sacrifice for your sin, you carry your own guilt and justly receive the punishment for your guilt. If you have no High Priest advocating for you before God, you have no hope.

If you don't know what I am talking about then I question if you have read your Bible.