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

In our own criminal justice system, when someone gets handed a sentence, and it may be severe, but we say "he earned it". That's wages.

Correct!

Yet you can refer to him as he serves his sentence as him "paying his debt to society".

We need to build our theology off Scripture, not Western legal jargon, which may or may not make any sense. We should not build our understanding of the heart of the gospel off of modern colloquialisms.

If an arsonist burns my house down, no amount of jail time for him is going to repay to repair my house. His punishment does not pay his debt. It does not make restitution for what he owes.

Stott makes perfect sense to me.

Objectively, he does not make sense. Are you admitting that penal substitution relies on equating wages and debts?

Referring to the wages of sin and then saying we owe a debt we cannot pay is perfectly correct and should be obvious to anyone.

If I say to you "You have earned $1000 as wages from your employer, therefore you owe your employer $1000" you would absolutely tell me that I was not making any sense.

What are those little statements you put in supposed to mean?

Those "little statements" are verse from the Word of God. All of them show punishment/death being paid from God to humanity, not from humanity to God.

One, this trashes your own idea that somehow all the problems that come on sinners are because of some kind of natural process rather than God's direct punishment.

I have never claimed this. I have said that sin is self-destructive AND that it deserves punishment from God. I have refuted the idea that sin ONLY produces destruction because God punishes it.

Two, to the extent it does not happen to us it must be because it has been displaced, removed, washed away, forgiven while upholding God's righteousness and so on.

First of all, we are punished for our sins. We are exiled from Paradise and God's presence, consigned to physical death, children of wrath, etc. The wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness (Romans 1). Secondly, the priority of justice is that we are punished, not that God needs to punish something. When a murderer commits murder, the priority is the murderer is punished, not that the state punish someone. If someone gouges out your eye, they do not burden you with the obligation to gouge out someone's eye.

to the extent it does not happen to us it must be because it has been displaced, removed, washed away, forgiven while upholding God's righteousness and so on. In other word, some type of substitution, or the "debt" was paid by someone else.

You are being very vague about mechanics, but then demanding that those mechanics be referred to by a very specific theory of atonement called penal substitution, which has very defined requirements.

 

Describing Jesus' death as making payment (the word "redemption" literally means the payment of a price to free someone from bondage) is the most popular metaphor in the New Testament.

 

"Why did Jesus have to pay the wage for our sin by dying on the cross?"

Do you mean:

-Why did Jesus PAY THE DEBT for our sin by dying on the cross?

-Why did Jesus RECEIVE THE WAGES of our sin by dying on the cross?

One of these questions makes sense. The question as you have asked it makes zero sense.

I can address the sacrificial system in another post.

Jesus' death is not substitutionary. See the attached chart.

 

If you receive $1,000 as wages, does that mean you are paid $1,000, or that you need to pay $1,000?

 

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When I say "Wages are not paid. They are received," I mean (and I think this is quite clear, but sorry if not) that my wages do not refer to money that I pay. It refers to money that I receive. Obviously, my employer paid the wages to me - but that is the whole point. God pays the wages of death/punishment to humanity - not the other way around.

I could have written "my wages are not something I pay. My wages are something I receive."

The Lord Jesus received sin's wages on our behalf.

Amen. The difference between Biblical atonement and penal substitution, though, is that "on our behalf" in the Bible is not substitutionary. It is not in our place so we don't suffer it. His death is with us and for our sake.

I am drowning in the river of death. Jesus jumps into the river, grabs me, and pulls me out. He was in the river of death with me and for my sake.

Only Jesus receives the wages of sin unjustly as an innocent party, and so justice requires those wages be returned - that death be reversed - hence the resurrection. The resurrection is divine justice reversing his unjust death. Jesus' death is not unique in that he dies. We all die and are in fact called to die with Christ. Jesus' death is unique in that he alone dies truly unjustly as an innocent and divine party, thereby his death merits the reversal of death, hence the resurrection.

See the following list of strong statements about Jesus' death that contradict penal substitution.

 

God ordains events in which injustices and sins take place without Himself being unjust or authoring sin.

Statements of God "striking" and "bruising" Jesus are not sufficient to show that God is justly punishing him. See places like Psalm 44.

We have not dealt falsely with Your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
And our steps have not deviated from Your way,
Yet You have crushed us in a place of jackals
And covered us with the shadow of death.

The language of God "crushing" and "covering with the shadow of death" is used of those who are innocent and unjustly suffering.

God "crushed" and "struck" Jesus in the same way he struck Abel, Stephen the Martyr, Joseph (your own example), Naboth, etc.
He "struck" them by ordaining that they would be unjustly killed. The writer of Hebrews says that we have been brought near to "Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12)" The blood of the covenant which has been shed is the blood of an innocent person who has been unjustly murdered, like Abel except better than Abel. Peter says that we were purchased with "with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ(1 Peter 1)" not guilty blood shed by just punishment or vengeance. All the emphasis is on the innocence and purity of the blood.

Only innocent deaths merit the reversal of death, and only Jesus can be the truly innocent party.

I can conceive of nothing more wonderful than this: that God Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ, should willingly suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen mankind as the penalty for sin so that God might be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus (Romans 3:26)

I can conceive of something far more wonderful than that: the atonement that is actually in the Bible. The one that includes Jesus rising from the dead, which is nowhere in your post. That I was dead in my transgressions and sins, already a child of wrath (Eph 2). But Jesus was crucified so that I could be co-crucified with him (Gal 2). Though we were under the same sentence of condemnation and mine was just, his was unjust (Luke 23). Justice demanded the reversal of his unjust death, "The justice due to him was with God" (Isaiah 49:4) and he rose from death so that I could be raised with him, for he was "raised for our justification" (Romans 4).