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

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by Arthur King, Aug 28, 2023.

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  1. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    The point is that I don't pay my employer wages. Wages is not money I owe my employer. Wages and debts are completely different things. Wages are received/earned.

    This is so not complicated.
     
    #81 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
  2. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    Two illustrations to help you:

    1) Biblical atonement is like this: A Judge declares that you owe a debt of 1 billion dollars next week, or you will go to prison. You have no way to pay the debt. But the Judge offers to pay the debt himself on your behalf.

    But penal substitution is different. According to penal substitution, the Judge sentences you to the electric chair. The Judge then volunteers to go to the electric chair instead of you, in your place, so you never have to. Penal substitution advocates will insist that Jesus paying a debt on your behalf and going to the electric chair in your place are equivalent in terms of the priorities of justice being satisfied. But that is not the case in the Bible. The Bible does not equate payment and punishment (restitution and retribution are distinct priorities of justice in the Bible).

    2) Biblical atonement is like this: You crash into your neighbor’s car and do $1,000 worth of damage. Your neighbor is angry. Your insurance company, “Jesus Insurance”, pays your neighbor $5,000 on your behalf, and your neighbor is no longer angry (he is propitiated), he fixes his car, and he ends up with a surplus.

    But penal substitution is different. According to penal substitution, you crash into your neighbor’s car and do $1,000 worth of damage, your neighbor is angry, but then your neighbor demands that he either do $1,000 of damage to your car, or the insurance company provide a vehicle of equal worth to his own to which he can do $1,000 of damage. His anger can only be propitiated if it is exhausted on your car or a substitute car of equal worth to his own. The neighbor doesn’t just want a debt of restitution, he specifically demands a so-called “debt of punishment” in which he can fully exhaust his anger (even though no such debt of punishment would actually fix his car).

    According to penal substitution, Jesus pays our so-called “debt of punishment”. But in the Bible, there is no such thing as a “debt of punishment”, and what Jesus pays is our debt of obedience in order to make restitution to repair what was broken by our sin.
     
    #82 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
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  3. JonC

    JonC Moderator
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    You are reading your theory into the passage. The passage offers two prophecies. The Serpent crushes Christ at the heel, Christ the Serpent at the head. You are taking one part, ignoring the other.

    We see this a lot with Penal Substitution theorists.

    There are no passages that present Christ as suffering God's punishment in our place. But you "find" it.

    Here you invent a definition for"propitiation'. The word DOES NOT mean "receiving what we deserved and paid the price for our sins in full".

    The word means a sacrifice or offering by which wrath is avoided.

    Your largest error, however, is not identifying the subject of the verse.

    You need to learn to read. I don't mean this snarky. I'm sure you are able to read posts, books, and such. But you are very lazy and careless in your reading of Scripture. You need to learn to read the Bible.

    Here is an example of your carelessness -

    I never claimed universal propitiation. I said that Christ is the Propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Christ is the Propitiation for every person who has ever lived, and will ever live.

    That is not universal propitiation. Only those in Christ escape the wrath to come. It is speaking of Christ.

    Do you understand verbs, nouns, subjects of sentences, etc.?
     
    #83 JonC, Aug 31, 2023
  4. Martin Marprelate

    Martin Marprelate Well-Known Member
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    Please don't be silly.
    When you receive your paycheque with wages on it someone, presumably your employer, has paid it to you.
     
    #84 Martin Marprelate, Aug 31, 2023
  5. 37818

    37818 Well-Known Member

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    Death do to sin is earned.
     
    #85 37818, Aug 31, 2023
  6. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    That is the whole point. "Wages" in Romans 6:23 and "2 Peter 2:13" means punishment/death is something that is paid from God to humanity. Punishment/death is not owed to God as a debt that humanity pays Him. What humanity owes God is not death, but obedience. Sin (disobedience) is a lack (debt) of obedience.

    So when John Stott says in The Cross of Christ, to defend penal substitution, that Jesus “paid sin’s wage” on our behalf, that is the exact opposite meaning of the biblical text. It's nonsense. It reverses the whole economic metaphor - and this is important for good atonement theology.

    Romans 6:23
    "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

    Death paid from God to man, not from man to God.

    2 Peter 2:13
    "But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong.

    Punishment paid from God to man, not from man to God.

    Romans 12:19
    "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord"

    Vengeance paid from God to man, not from man to God.
     
    #86 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
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  7. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    Yes! Earned. Not owed. So when Jesus suffers death, he is unjustly suffering something he has not earned, for he is sinless. Justice therefore demands that his wages be taken back, that death be reversed, hence the resurrection. Boom. You are getting it.

    The resurrection is the divine reversal of the unjust human verdict. He was killed by the unjust judgment of humans, and raised by the just judgment of God. Justice satisfied in the resurrection as the reversal of his unjust death.
     
    #87 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
  8. JonC

    JonC Moderator
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    He has a good point. Wages are received. They are earned and owned by the person doing the work. The debt is on the employer, not the employee.
     
    #88 JonC, Aug 31, 2023
  9. 37818

    37818 Well-Known Member

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    Death do to sin is earned.
     
    #89 37818, Aug 31, 2023
  10. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    this is not only not found in scripture but it is a logical fallacy. The failure in your point is that Jesus unjustly suffers death. Since Jesus chose to pay the wage for our sin it remains just and right. Your fallacy is found in assuming it is unjust without considering all the facts.
     
    #90 Revmitchell, Aug 31, 2023
  11. 37818

    37818 Well-Known Member

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    No amount of right living can satisfy earned death do to sin.
     
    #91 37818, Aug 31, 2023
  12. 37818

    37818 Well-Known Member

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    Jesus received the wage, as paid to Him in full per John 19:28! This was completed before His physical death.
     
    #92 37818, Aug 31, 2023
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 31, 2023
  13. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    You say, "The failure in your point is that Jesus unjustly suffers death."

    The Bible explicitly states that Jesus' death is unjust. See 1 Peter 2:18-25, the longest NT commentary on Isaiah 53. In fact, it says that Jesus' unjust suffering "finds grace with God." If Christ did not unjustly suffer, there is no grace for us.

    Just because death was voluntarily chosen by Jesus does not make it just. If I voluntarily choose to suffer the electric chair instead of a murderer, that is still unjust.

    "Since Jesus chose to pay the wage for our sin..."

    Chose to EARN the wages for our sin. See my other comments on this. Wages are EARNED. Jesus cannot pay wages. Jesus can pay our DEBT, which is the opposite of a wage.

    Again, it is this insistence on the part of penal substitution advocates to flip the economic metaphors of Scripture exactly in reverse.
     
    #93 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
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  14. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    PREACH.

    Payment and punishment are two separate priorities of justice. Restitution and retribution - two different things.
     
    #94 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
  15. Arthur King

    Arthur King Active Member

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    Note to self: NEVER hire a penal substitution advocate to do my finances, as they will constantly confuse WAGES and DEBTS, and insist that wages are something I need to pay.
     
    #95 Arthur King, Aug 31, 2023
  16. taisto

    taisto Well-Known Member

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    Ask yourself "Why did Jesus have to pay the wage for our sin by dying on the cross? Why not use a debit card? Why is Jesus repeatedly referred to as "the Lamb of God?" Is a sacrifice a substitute for the one for whom it is sacrificed?

    There is no doubt in scripture that Jesus sacrifice is substitutionary to pay off the unreconcilable debt that we owe for our sins and therefore reconcile us with God through Christ Jesus our Lord.

    If you cannot see this in scripture then I pray your eyes would be opened. I can do no more than point out scripture to you.
     
    #96 taisto, Aug 31, 2023
  17. DaveXR650

    DaveXR650 Well-Known Member

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    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. Yet you can refer to him as he serves his sentence as him "paying his debt to society". This shouldn't be that difficult. Stott makes perfect sense to me. Two of you guys on here are floundering in this and you have to revert to word games to divert attention from that fact. 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.
    What are those little statements you put in supposed to mean? And then Jon thinks it's a winner? You put up three verses indicating death, punishment and sin properly put on men by 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. 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. In other word, some type of substitution, or the "debt" was paid by someone else. And you are clearly dealing with an element of wrath, therefore you can use the term penal. Penal substitutionary atonement.
     
    #97 DaveXR650, Aug 31, 2023
  18. JonC

    JonC Moderator
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    Jesus had to pay the wage we earn for our sin?

    Scripture states that the wages of sin is death. We earn death. Jesus suffered this wage for us.

    Who are you saying Jesus killed?
     
    #98 JonC, Aug 31, 2023
  19. taisto

    taisto Well-Known Member

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    Jon, you are avoiding the definition of propitiation which shows you substitution. Second, when the Passover Lamb was slain and it's blood smeared on the door frames was it not a substitutionary death for the lives of the firstborn? The Bible tells us that we who are Christians are the firstborn of God. It tells us that Jesus is the Lamb of God. Jesus, at the Last Supper, tells us that he is the Lamb who substitutes for us, the firstborn. We eat the Lord's Supper in remembrance of this.

    It's all right before your eyes.

    Now, you never tell us what your tradition is, which you refer to as "traditional Christianity." Jon, what is your tradition that you have been steeped in?
     
    #99 taisto, Aug 31, 2023
  20. taisto

    taisto Well-Known Member

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    In your version, Jesus could have taken out his debit card and paid off the worlds debt without ever dying. The Bible never expresses the payment for sin in that fashion, yet that is precisely what you are attempting to do.
     
    #100 taisto, Aug 31, 2023
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