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

Well, on another's behalf can be an act of proxy.

 

You cannot simply declare that someone killed Christ who was not directly involved. In order to make a connection for someone who did not directly do the deed it has to be by imputation.

Yeah...that's...that's exactly what I said. I think it is Scriptural to use imputation that way.

The connection is that Jesus was taking on the wrath of God and the just punishment that we deserved because of our sin that we can be said to have been there.

No. That is a complete non sequitur. Again, your argument is "I am guilty of the death of Christ, therefore Jesus is guilty of my sin." That is a total non sequitur. It just does not follow at all.

You have a theology that has no meaning as far as Jesus death being an actual remedy for our sin.

This simply is not true. Again, think of Bob drowning in the river (the river of sin and death). Jesus jumps into the river and grabs Bob, and pulls him out.

Your statement is like saying "Jesus jumping into the river has no meaning as an actual remedy for Bob's plight." That is clearly not true. You are just choosing to ignore the problem and solution narrative as I have described it.

 

Arthur, I think we're going in circles here. Without some aspect of penal substitution you do not have the gospel. There are no churches that officially reject penal substitution that are sound. There is no school or denomination that rejects it and is sound. You are all over the place and flounder about with nuanced objections and play word games and then repeat this over and over. People can read these discussions and decide for themselves. If you have a new idea or an additional argument let me know. We have exhausted all arguments and thoughts currently presented.

 

So, you think Irenaeus, Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Damascus, Anselm, John Macleod Campbell, and CS Lewis were unsound and did not have the gospel? Even today, prominent atonement scholars who affirm penal substitution will say that it is not a necessary component of the atonement - the atonement and the gospel can be explained without it.

Notice that when Jesus confronts Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus, he says "Why are you persecuting me?" You would say "Jesus, that is impossible, Paul wasn't physically there at your crucifixion." But Jesus would say that Paul's sins are direct persecutions against himself. Similarly, notice what logic Jesus uses in Matthew 25 in the parable of the sheep and the goats. "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me" even though the literal incarnate Jesus was not actually there. Notice again that Jesus says the scribes and Pharisees of his day are guilty of the blood of Abel and of Zechariah, two people who were alive hundreds or even thousands of years earlier (see Matthew 23). But this is not imputation of sins from a guilty person to an innocent person. This is saying that sins against innocent people are all sins against Christ, because Christ is the true innocent one, and without Christ there wouldn't be any basis for someone claiming innocence.

I think one question that may be beneath some of your objections is "if my sin is not imputed to Christ, then where does it 'go'? How is it gotten rid of?" My answer is that your sin is destroyed ultimately when you physically die. That is when sin is "condemned in the flesh" (Romans 8:3) and that your "body of sin is done away with" (Romans 6) and "he who has died is freed from sin." How is our sin done away with? We have to die. We have to die and rise again with Christ.

 

Not necessarily. What is essential in salvation is that we come to Christ. It could be as simple as the testimony that you realize Christ as Lord. That does not change the theology or the truth of how your sins are taken care of by Christ. That's why sometimes you will see preaching in the new testament that looks like it is simply "Jesus is Lord" or "This man was the Christ". But that in no way changes the necessity of penal substitution as the truth and center of the gospel.

Here again, you are exact when you want to be in interpreting scripture and loose when it suits you. Paul persecuting Christ was because he wrecked havoc on the church, not that he participated in the crucifixion. Speaking of that, this is proven by you other thread where you try to make the gospel into "you crucified Christ". The examples you give of sermons by Peter are only when he was preaching to those who crucified Christ. The narrative changes when preaching to gentiles. Paul wasn't told he crucified Christ, neither was Cornelius or the Ethiopian eunuch. Nor the people at Mars Hill. Nor the people in Galatians, nor the Romans living in Rome.

Yes, but the scribes and Pharisees are being shown that they are the same as those who killed Abel and Zachariah. Read the whole chapter and it clearly explains that Jesus is singling out the scribes and Pharisees because of their attitude towards Jesus and all the while they are claiming that they would not have done that had they been living in that time. You are mixing this up with the truth that there is a unity between us and Christ and his teaching that the way to help Christ is to help each other.

Sure. But those are sins against innocent people. You saying that a sin done against an innocent person means that you helped crucify Christ makes no sense - without the idea of him bearing our sins. You are part of a dangerous heresy that seeks to separate the work of Christ from our actual sins and make this work into some kind of an example only. The more sophisticated you claim to be in theology the more it shows your true spirit. For an early church father, engrossed in protecting the divinity of Christ, or the Trinity or watching the battle between the forces of good and evil play out one can see how you may only see snippets of them looking into the concept of penal substitution. And we do see that. As for C.S. Lewis, I love the guys writing but realize he never claimed to be a theologian and if anything he reminds me of what Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, that when you see people like Lewis, or Wesley, or Baxter, with theologies full of errors, yet are obviously saved, it is one of the best arguments for the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, Calvinism in other words.

 

You are part of a dangerous heresy that seeks to separate the work of Christ from our actual sins and make this work into some kind of an example only.

This is clearly false. Again, just returning to my illustration of Jesus jumping into the river to pull Bob out. Jesus is clearly not "just an example" in doing that.

Were you not there in Adam, eating of the Tree of Knowledge? Are your sins not a partaking with Adam of the tree? The Bible says they are, even though Adam lived thousands of years ago.

So why do you have such a hard time accepting that you were there with all the rest of sinful humanity shouting "crucify him"?

Here is another example: the writer of Hebrews says that Moses "considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. (Hebrews 11)" How could Moses participate in the sufferings of Jesus, given that Jesus lived thousands of years later? And how could the Egyptians be said to be reproaching Christ, when they lived thousands of years earlier?

Paul says that his own suffering is "filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." Why is Paul saying that the affliction of himself is the affliction of Christ? Does he not know that he is living years after Jesus died and rose, and therefore people cant afflict Christ anymore? Why does he again say elsewhere that he is "carrying about in his body the dying of Jesus?"

 

The breakdown in your analogy is that your illustration falls short in that in the case of the river, Jesus intervention has nothing to do with who he is (God and man and sinless and so on). And falling in the river is completely non moral and involves no need for propitiation or judgement, it's simply a dangerous situation for a primate. In addition, and you do this a lot, you defend yourself by using this illustration to defend a charge that had nothing to to with your illustration. The fact is, those of you who deny penal substitution try to turn what happened at the cross into an example rather that it actually accomplishing something. That is why guys like C.H. Hodge specifically mention that aspect when explaining the atonement - and explaining what it is not.

Of course. I can't promise it because I haven't read everything, but I have never heard one who hold to penal substitution deny that.

 

I don't. And have already said so. But the way I was there is because that is where Jesus took the guilt and punishment of my sin upon himself because of the preplanned redemption that occurred at the cross. I hope that I would not have been one of the one's in the mob but rather like the disciples or relatives of Jesus who were saddened by the event even though they didn't understand what was occurring there. It is amazing though that even members of the mob were offered repentance.

Because of the solidarity and the unity of God's plan of redemption for Israel through Moses and then all of us through Christ. Moses was a type. There is nothing there saying that Moses crucified Christ. You have serious issues.

Because as when Paul was saved, there is a unity such that we who have been saved by the suffering of Christ can also join in suffering for Christ. Paul was, in a proper sense, proud of the marks he carried on his own body because of following Christ and of the loss of everything else. "I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him..."
Arthur, you seem like a nice guy. I would get out of whatever church you have been going to as fast as you can and just start going to a good, normal church, Calvinist or not, that still preaches the gospel. And get in a good Sunday school class with an attitude to learn the basics. You are in trouble.

 

I can well understand that you feel the need to use such exalted language towards me, but there is no need. "Sir" will do nicely.

Again, I refer you to Psalms 37:23-25. Perhaps you would like to tell us to what historical incident Psalm 44 refers?

My points was (and is) that the Lord Jesus directly referred Zech 13:7b to Himself (Mark 14:27). And the point I was making from that is that it was God Himself who killed the Lord Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53:10). Now you may believe that God is unjust, but I don't. No other person beside the Lord Jesus has ever been sinless; therefore the remarkable thing is that God spares anyone. But the Lord Jesus was and is sinless. Therefore for God to kill Christ would indeed be unjust, except that Christ is federally united to His people (cf. for example Hebrews 2:11). He entered this union voluntarily for the special purpose of freeing them from bondage to Satan Have a read of Hebrews 2:14-15. It is my intention to work this out in more detail in due course in a separate thread.

No. The Bible wants us to see the death of our Lord as absolutely and totally unlike the death of Abel. As I wrote before,

Amen! The blood of Abel cried out for justice (Genesis 4:10); the blood of Christ speaks of reconciliation (Ephesians 2:13).

Hebrews 12:24 doesn't say that at all. '.... To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.' Better things! That is, different things, not the same things.

If you really think this, and it is not just a pathetic attempt at a rhetorical flourish, then you simply have no conception as to what Penal Substitution is.

Paying a price can be penal (eg. Exodus 22:1). Moreover, our sins are often described as debts (Matthew 6:12, NKJV). If the Lord Jesus pays the price for our iniquities, which He does, that is penal substitution: He suffers; we don't.

Isaiah 53:6b. 'And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' 1 Peter 2:24. 'He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.' Our sins, and the curse attached to them (Gk. xulon, 'tree,' instead of stauron, 'cross') were laid on Him and He bore them, and the punishment of them (Isaiah 53:5). So how were our sins laid upon Him? 2 Corinthians 5:19 speaks of God not imputing our sins to us, so it seems reasonable to suppose that 2 Corinthians 5:21 refers to our sins, and the guilt of them, being imputed to Him and His perfect righteousness being imputed to us (1 Corinthians 1:30; cf. 2 Peter 1:1).
I wrote:
The Passover lambs were a type of Christ. Were they killed unjustly? 'The LORD will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.'

I quoted from Genesis 22:8, long before the Passover. But you did not answer my question. I look forward to you doing that in your post on the Passover.

 

Saul was persecuting the body of Christ, the Church (c.f. Acts of the Apostles 26:9-15; Galatians 1:13 etc.).
It is true that all sins are sins against God (Genesis 39:9; Psalms 51:4) because they are against His commandments, and it is true that the Lord Jesus was bearing my sins when He suffered on the cross, but to say that one of my sins was the direct persecution of Christ is a stretch.

 

This terminology is new to me.
What is the title for the contrasting view of penal substitution?

 

I just call it Biblical Atonement. I'm not one for "models" "theories" etc. I believe the biblical categories of covenant, redemption, ransom, mediation, propitiation, justification, purification, sanctification, participation, death and resurrection, baptism, communion, etc are sufficient.

 

Interpretation of many of these terms is what divides men. Clarity is needful. I think it was you who brought up "penal substitution," a term that has not been discussed in my circle of friends and which requires elaboration. It is why I asked.

 

Sorry for the delay. Work.

The breakdown in your analogy is that your illustration falls short in that in the case of the river, Jesus intervention has nothing to do with who he is (God and man and sinless and so on).

This is not true. The reason Jesus can pull Bob out of the river of death (resurrect from death) is because he is perfectly innocent and divine. Justice demands the reversal of his unjust death, and it is impossible for the privation of being (evil) to hold the source of being (God) in its power. The resurrection necessarily follows from Jesus' innocent and unjust death, as well as his divinity. As Peter says in Acts 2, it was "impossible for death to hold Jesus in its power."

And falling in the river is completely non moral and involves no need for propitiation or judgement, it's simply a dangerous situation for a primate.

I said he was drowning in the rive due to his own sin, which is a moral problem. I can add to the story that God told Bob not to try to jump over the river, because he would fall in and drown, but then Bob disobeyed and jumped into the river. Then Jesus jumped in, grabbed Bob, and pulled him out. Still not penal substitution.

those of you who deny penal substitution try to turn what happened at the cross into an example rather that it actually accomplishing something.

Some who deny penal substitution do this. I am not doing it.

 

But the way I was there is because that is where Jesus took the guilt and punishment of my sin upon himself...

No. The way you were there was that your sins contributed to killing him. You killed him, but God raised him.

Jesus is the stone that was "rejected by men (like you and me) but chosen and precious to God." (1 Peter 2:4)

You and I were Peter, who denied him three times. You and I were the disciples who fell asleep when we should have been praying. You and I were the Roman cohort that scourged and abused him. By our sins, that is what we participated in. Every sin we commit is a vote to "crucify him."

As Jesus presnts in the parable of the vineyard, God is the Father of a murdered son. Murdered by you and me and all sinners.

Moses was a type. There is nothing there saying that Moses crucified Christ. You have serious issues.

Hebrews says that Moses suffered with Christ. He suffered the reproaches of Christ. The people who reproached Moses reproached Christ. The point is that the divine jurisdiction rules that those who persecuted Moses persecuted Christ himself. Just as Paul is charged with persecuting Christ himself, even though his deeds were years after the fact.

 

See all the parallels between Luke's depiction of Stephen's death and Jesus' death. Luke clearly wants us to see Saul/Paul as contributing to the death of Christ by his contribution to the death of Stephen. This is exactly why Jesus says to Paul "Why are YOU persecuting ME?"

See, the problem is that penal substitution advocates don't see sin as inherently destructive, so it doesn't register how our sins could actually be the destructive acts in Christ's death. Sin is just an abstract violation of God's law that deserves punishment on penal substitution. How could an abstract violation of a law actually kill someone? It can't. The only resultant destruction on sin for the penal substitution advocate comes from God's punishment upon sin, and so that must be the thing that puts Christ to death.

Here is the Biblical sequence:

1-We kill Christ by our sins
2-We participate in Christ's death through confession and remorse
3-We participate in Christ's resurrection through repentance.

 

You say "Again, I refer you to Psalms 37:23-25. Perhaps you would like to tell us to what historical incident Psalm 44 refers?"

No idea what you are trying to point out with Psalm 37. Psalm 44 has no definitive historical setting.

My point remains. Language of harsh treatment from God such as "crushing" or "striking" etc is not sufficient evidence of just punishment upon the guilty. It is also used of innocent people suffering unjustly.

Job is another big example. Job uses language of harsh treatment from God all over the place, and yet we know he is a righteous man who is not suffering recompense for a specific sin. We know that Satan is tormenting him (within God's sovereign permission).

Job 6
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me,
Their poison my spirit drinks;
The terrors of God are arrayed against me.

Now you may believe that God is unjust, but I don't. No other person beside the Lord Jesus has ever been sinless; therefore the remarkable thing is that God spares anyone. But the Lord Jesus was and is sinless. Therefore for God to kill Christ would indeed be unjust, except that Christ is federally united to His people

God is not unjust. God sovereignly ordains events in which injustices and sins take place, without himself being unjust.

The Bible consistently uses language of God "crushing" and "striking" people who He has ordained to suffer unjustly.

God struck Christ by ordaining that he would be unjustly murdered by sinful human beings.

No. The Bible wants us to see the death of our Lord as absolutely and totally unlike the death of Abel.

Haha this is a complete misreading of the text. The point is that Jesus, just like Abel, was unjustly murdered and his blood was shed. But Jesus' blood speaks infinitely better than Abel's, because Jesus' blood is infinitely more pure, Jesus being perfectly righteous and divine. Jesus' blood cries out for justice just like Abel's, but cries out infinitely better. Again, all the emphasis is on his blood being pure and spotless.

If you really think this, and it is not just a pathetic attempt at a rhetorical flourish, then you simply have no conception as to what Penal Substitution is.

Uh...this is exactly what penal substitution teaches, and it is in some of its foundational texts - that Jesus' blood is the guilty blood of sinners shed by the just punishment of God. Jesus' death is like Goliath's death on penal substitution - it is the deserved execution of someone who has defied God and offended Him. Take a look at Martin Luther from his commentary to the Galatians.

When He took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, Christ was no longer an innocent person. He was a sinner burdened with the sins of a Paul who was a blasphemer; burdened with the sins of a Peter who denied Christ; burdened with the sins of a David who committed adultery and murder, and gave the heathen occasion to laugh at the Lord. In short, Christ was charged with the sins of all men, that He should pay for them with His own blood. The curse struck Him. The Law found Him among sinners. He was not only in the company of sinners. He had gone so far as to invest Himself with the flesh and blood of sinners. So the Law judged and hanged Him for a sinner.

I am told that it is preposterous and wicked to call the Son of God a cursed sinner. I answer: If you deny that He is a condemned sinner, you are forced to deny that Christ died. It is not less preposterous to say, the Son of God died, than to say, the Son of God was a sinner.

Whatever sins I, you, all of us have committed or shall commit, they are Christ's sins as if He had committed them Himself. Our sins have to be Christ's sins or we shall perish forever.

You are right that there is vast inconsistency in the view here - penal substitution wants Jesus' death to be unjust when it suits them, and just when it suits them, and to be able to bounce back and forth between opposite meanings (Jesus is sinless but guilty, his death is just but also unjust, the blood shed is that of guilty sinners but also of the spotless lamb) whenever they need to in order to make the mechanism work.

Paying a price can be penal (eg. Exodus 22:1). Moreover, our sins are often described as debts (Matthew 6:12, NKJV). If the Lord Jesus pays the price for our iniquities, which He does, that is penal substitution:

Exodus 22:1 describes restitution, which can accomplish the priorities of retribution in the case of stolen goods. But in most offenses, especially grievous offenses, it doesn't work like that.

And the point that penal substitution tries to make is the opposite: that retribution accomplishes restitution, that is, that punishing my daughter's murderer will somehow bring my daughter back to me - which does not work at all.

Yes, Jesus pays our debts. His obedience pays for our disobedience. Sin is a lack (debt) of obedience, and Jesus pays it by his obedience in life and death. The currency paid is obedience, not punishment.

He suffers; we don't.

No, that is completely against the Christian gospel. The Lord Jesus says "Take up your cross and follow me." "He who does not take up his cross cannot be my disciple."

See attached chart.

Isaiah 53:6b. 'And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' 1 Peter 2:24. 'He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.'

Right. We killed him. Our sins contributed to Jesus' death. In God's divine jurisdiction of history, He charges us, by our sins, with the death of Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:19 speaks of God not imputing our sins to us, so it seems reasonable to suppose that 2 Corinthians 5:21 refers to our sins, and the guilt of them, being imputed to Him

Our sins are not imputed to us because we are a new creation. The old has gone, and the new has come. We died with Christ. One died for all, therefore all died. There is now no condemnation, because we have died with Christ, and he who has died is freed from sin.

Sin is not some sort of gas to be passed around. "Well gee, if my sin is not imputed to me, then it has to go somewhere, right?" Like it is some sort of liquid that if it is not in this bucket then it has to be in a different bucket.

The larger picture is that the Holy Spirit applies the promise, incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to believers. The "imputation" of Jesus' righteousness is a part of that, but not the fullness of what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit does not perform the symmetrical action of applying our sinful lives to Jesus. That would make no sense, and in fact destroy his divinity and his sacrifice on our behalf. So don't go there.

I will do future posts on the passover and the offering of Isaac. You are in for not just one treat, but two.