Featured Just how does the wrath of god be appeased if no penal Substitution?

@Martin Marprelate. My responses below. Although I don't think you have responded yet to my challenge that you are confusing payment and punishment. Let me know if I missed it somehow.

You seemed to be suggesting that Christ's suffering was unjust, and the analogy with Joseph was to show that although the suffering was unjust from the man-ward side, it was not so from God's side. We appear to be in agreement on that point, so there is no reason to pursue it further. If one presses analogies or typologies too far they always fail. I was not suggesting that Joseph is a case of penal substitution.

Not sure what you mean by "it was not so from God's side." All I'm saying is that God was not unjust even though He ordained such unjust actions would happen, against Joseph and Jesus.

But your argument seems to be that someone suffering unjustly can make atonement for sin. That is not either logical or Scriptural. In 1 Peter 1:18-18, Peter reminds us that we were '...redeemed.......with the precious blood of Christ,' not by the injustice of His suffering.

Bit of a problem with you putting the philosophical/logical cart before the Biblical horse. The Bible explicitly states that Jesus atones for our sin through his unjust suffering. If we don't understand how that works, tough. We trust what the Bible says while our minds catch up to understanding it.

I have given you quotations from theologians all throughout history on how the unjust sufferings of Christ bring about our redemption, and how the injustice of his suffering is central to their atonement mechanism, so I would encourage you to reread those quotations. Here is my own summary of the logic of the atonement and justice relationship:

Due to God’s gracious covenant, justice requires restoration for damage suffered by innocent parties. humans have totally and severely damaged themselves by their own sin (God is not damaged by our sin. In the case of sin against God, sin is an offense that damages the offender). God desires to enact restoration for this destruction, but humans are not innocent, they are guilty. There is none righteous, not one. So the question is: How can a just God, a covenant God, enact restoration for guilty humanity’s self-destruction? Answer: God becomes a human in the person of Jesus Christ, lives completely innocently (or righteously) and therefore merits the covenantal blessings by which humanity’s destruction will be restored. Jesus then voluntarily endures all of humanity’s sinful destruction against himself by suffering crucifixion at the hands of all humans on the cross. Jesus therefore merits restoration for all of humanity’s sinful destruction, for he alone has suffered sin’s destruction as an innocent party. This restoration manifests in His resurrection, when “God raised our Great Shepherd up from the dead through the blood of the eternal covenant (Heb 13:20).” So the correct response to the question “Why did Jesus die?” is: in order for all suffering and death to be repaired by God in accordance with his justice, all suffering and death had to be endured by a perfectly innocent and righteous person (for only innocent persons have the right of restoration for wrongs suffered) and only Jesus qualifies as that perfectly righteous person.

Divine justice is therefore satisfied in the resurrection as the reversal and reparation of all the sin that Jesus unjustly suffered on the cross. Jesus dies under the unjust judgment of humans, and is raised by the just judgment of God. Jesus’ reward, or inheritance, of the covenantal blessings applies to the rest of humanity if by the power of the Holy Spirit we participate in His death (through remorse) and participate in His resurrection (through repentance). So the gospel is not that “God substituted Himself to satisfy His own wrath,” which is not Biblical terminology.

I agree with you, but that does not alter the case that in verse 23, God is described as 'the One who judges righteously' and Christ 'bore our sins in His own body on the tree.' That we should imitate His patient suffering is true, but that will not get us right with God, and if it could it would be salvation by works. What saves us is Christ satisfying the justice of God by bearing our sins on our behalf on the cross.

God judges justly in that he raises Jesus from the dead. Justice is satisfied in the resurrection as the reversal and restitution of Jesus' unjust suffering on the cross, and the fulfillment of God's covenantal promises.

But Abraham's seed is not Israel - it is Christ (Galatians 3:16) and the nations will be blessed through Him (Galatians 3:28-29).

Yes, precisely. But that brings up a whole host of questions for Paul's audience, namely, "If Jesus is the fulfillment of God's covenantal promises, then how has God been faithful to Israel?" This question is a central question Paul is addressing in Romans, Galatians, and 2 Corinthians.

This is a whole new can of worms and I don't want to mess the thread up by discussing eschatology and dispensationalism with you. But I see no reason why Christ's sufferings should satisfy the justice of God simply because they were unjust. All that would do is to increase His righteous anger against the perpetrators. But it is actually God Himself who set forth Christ as a propitiation (Romans 3:25-26) - a sacrifice that turns away wrath. Our sins were laid upon His sinless shoulders, and He made satisfaction to God for them whilst upholding His righteous law (Romans 3:31).

Yes, propitiation means wrath aversion, or if wrath has already been carried out (as with Israel and the exile) wrath reversal. The purpose of wrath is to cleanse God's good creation of corruption. When we sin, we become corrupt, and we either must be wiped out by God's wrath, or purified by innocent blood shed on our behalf. The effect of the innocent blood is to reverse or purify corruption. That's why everything was sprinkled with blood in the OT to make it clean. Jesus' blood purifies us, so wrath is unnecessary to cleanse God's good creation.

Notice that in all sacrifices dealing with sin, the sinner himself, and not a representative of the offended party, slays the ritual sacrifice. If a ritual sacrifice was supposed to communicate vicarious punishment, we might expect that the priest would be the one to slay the sacrifice, as a demonstration of God’s wrath punishing the animal instead of the sinner. But this is not what happens. It is always the sinner himself that slays the sacrifice, before the anointed priest sprinkles the blood. See the following ten examples from those sacrifices that deal with sin: In a Burnt Offering (Lev 1:5, 1:11) the sinner slays the sacrifice. In a Peace Offering (Lev 3:2, 3:4, 3:13) the sinner slays the sacrifice. In a Sin Offering (Lev 4:4, 4:14, 4:24, 4:29, 4:33) the sinner slays the sacrifice. The priest slays the animal if it is a corporate sacrifice, on behalf of the congregation (of which he is a member), and he does this after slaying a sacrifice for his own sins. When the priest slays a sacrifice on behalf of the congregation, he does so as a representative of Israel, a community of sinners. Recall that he is wearing the mantle with the emblems of the twelve tribes on it. The priest slays the animal as a representative of sinners in need of redemption, not as a representative of the one offended by sin.

 

Jesus paid the debt owed to God, by tasting physical death and eternal separation that all lost sinners will in hell.[/QUOTE]

To continue the debt illustration, you would be saying, "Mike paid the debt Bob owed by tasting the prison sentence that faces all those who fail to pay their debts." But you see why this is nonsense? Mike going to prison does nothing to pay the $100,000 debt! Punishment does not pay debts!

Prior to being saved, I am dead in my trespasses and sins, a child of wrath, exiled from paradise and the presence of God. And you come along and tell me that Jesus suffered hell for me. So what? How does that solve my problem at all? If I am dead, my need is resurrection! The only thing that will solve my problem is if Jesus can die a death that merits the reversal of death. He does this by living righteously and dying an unjust death, so that justice will demand the reversal of death in his resurrection. He then will apply that to me by the Holy Spirit, so I can die and rise with Christ and in Christ. If I reject the gift of Christ through the Holy Spirit, then I will continue to be dead in my sin, a child of wrath, into the everlasting. Hell is a continuation of my corrupt state into the everlasting. Recall that the first mention of hell is not as punishment, but the result of sinful Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Life in Genesis 3, thus condemning themselves to live forever in sin.