Someone I know was concerned about a family member who said that penal substitutionary atonement wasn’t biblical.  It concerned her.  In that moment all I could really say was that, no, it is indeed biblical, that Jesus Christ did take the punishment we deserved on the cross so that we could be saved.

But the more that I thought about it, the more I felt like doing a deep dive into this doctrine.  And this blog post has been a long time coming — ie: the reading, the research, the writing and rewriting etc has taken a long time! 

What is penal substitutionary atonement (PSA)?  Here are the definitions:

Penal: refers to the penalty or punishment that was due to humanity for our sins.

Substitutionary: referring to Jesus voluntarily going to the cross and dying in our place as our substitute.

Atonement: the doctrine that God has reconciled sinners to Himself through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ.

PSA is the doctrine that Jesus Christ bore the punishment for our sins on the cross as our substitute, satisfying God’s justice, allowing for the just forgiveness of sins and enabling reconciliation between God and us. Jesus bore the penalty of sin for humanity by dying on the cross.

“Atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation.” [1] His death on the cross brings us reconciliation! Because our sin nature was crucified on the cross with him.

I read through the arguments against PSA – and there are a lot of different atonement theories out there!  And at the end of it all, I think that there is a poor understanding of who God is and who we are.

This blog post is going to dive into that first, before talking about PSA itself.

Who is God?

Many Christians do NOT want to discuss God’s wrath or His anger.  And I mean His just wrath, His just anger.  And many more Christians do not want to talk about hell either.  Why not?  Because they don’t understand who God is.  The Christian cultural view today is wrapped up in 3 words:  God Is Love. And that isn’t wrong. But God is all His attributes.  He is Mighty, He is Holy, He is Just, He is Love, He is Power, He is Pure and so on.  Love isn’t greater than holiness or his justice.  They are equal.

In his Institues of the Christian Religion, John Calvin says in Chapter 1.1 “Our wisdom…. consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”  Knowledge of God and self.  When we understand these two matters, everything else will make more sense. 

So, we should ask:  do we know who God is?  As I said above, all his attributes are God in equal measure. Let’s look at two of them: 

Love:  John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Holy: Isaiah 6:3 “And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’”

Or consider Moses’s experience in Exodus 33.  Moses and God have been talking – Moses has asked God to teach him His ways so that he would know Yahweh more. God assures Moses that He will be with him wherever Moses goes.  Then Moses says, in what feels like an impertinent way, “Now show me your glory.” (v 18).  Bold request!  God tells him that He will make His glory pass by Moses, but Moses would not see God’s face – “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”  That’s significant. God’s holiness is totally other.  No human can see God’s glory in all its glory!  No human can withstand the totally overwhelming intensity of God’s pure holiness!   God protects us – it’s for our good.  God puts Moses in the cleft in the rock, covers Moses with His hand (that’s protection) as He passes by, and then removes His hand so Moses could see His “back”.  This is called anthropomorphic language because God is Spirit, and does not have a face or a back or hands etc.  God reveals Himself to us using human language so that we can understand who He is.  Moses – and we – cannot behold God’s “face” – that is His 100% pure holiness!  By only seeing God’s “back”, it’s like God showed Moses a certain degree of His glory and holiness. What Moses could humanly absorb.   To see another’s face is to know a person. Our faces reveal the most about us – about our character, mood, personality and more.  But we cannot know God in His fullness!  

So, here is our transcendent, utterly holy, utterly pure, all powerful, infinite, totally “other” God.

Who Are We? What is Sin?

Then here is us. We go back to Genesis 1 and 2 and look at the crowning act of creation when God created male and female in His image.  God made us to reflect Him. To show to the world around us who God is by how we act, talk, and more.  We were created as ambassadors on this earth.  And created to worship and glorify Him.  Adam and Eve were created perfectly.  They had it all!  They had a perfect garden in Eden to live in; they had perfect communion with the God of the universe.  They were given dominion over creation.  They had it all.  But….it didn’t last terribly long.  Satan entered the picture, and enticed Eve into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree.  Eve (and Adam!)  doubted what God said as the truth. They saw, they desired it, they took and ate it.  Essentially, they wanted to usurp God’s place over them as Creator.  They decided they could define what was right and wrong.  And thus, our first parents plunged the entire human race into sin.  And in that moment, things broke. We went from freedom to slavery to sin. Death entered every cell of our bodies and all of creation. And suffering became the universal human experience. [2]    Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man {Adam}, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…”  Every human being since then has been conceived and born in sin.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

And sin deserves death.  Let’s define sin.  An acceptable definition is “Sin is any failure to conform to the law of God in act, attitude, or nature.” 

Sin is rebellion against our Creator.

1 John 3:4 – sin is lawlessness – “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”

Romans 2 – Paul tells us that the law and its requirements are written on our hearts – in our consciences. “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.”

Sin is a universal human condition.  Everyone has sinned. And Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death…”

In view of the utter holiness of our Great and Awesome God – our sin – cosmic sin, offended His holiness. Sin is abhorrent to God!  Sin separates us from our Holy God.  We are no longer able to stand in His presence as Adam and Eve once did.  After they sinned, they were evicted from Eden – away from God’s immediate presence.  And to this day, we are separated from Him because of our sin.

The Bible doesn’t simply smooth over sin. In fact, the Bible consistently takes sin with a deadly seriousness.  Think of the sin of Lot’s wife, of Nadab and Abihu, Uzzah, and Ananias and Sapphira.  They died.  But we want to downplay it.  We say things like, “I’m basically a good person. Sure, I sin. But I’m not evil or wicked.”  Where does this come from? We look at sin and punishment from a purely human perspective, instead of in light of God’s holiness. We want to underestimate our sin, call them blunders and mistakes.   

John Piper says, “Where God is small and man is big, hell will be abhorrent – indeed, absurd – and the cross will be foolishness.”  [3.1] Exactly! We think our sin is only slightly offensive. Because we forget to reckon with a holy, holy, holy God!  What is the problem?  We don’t merely sin against one another. Every time we sin, we sin against God. Evil isn’t what we do to each other first and foremost, evil is the indignities done to God. Instead of directing all our love, all our desires, all our enjoyment toward God, we direct it everywhere else.  This is treason, my friends.  Piper says, “And since God is of infinite worth and beauty and greatness and honor – infinite- the failure to love and treasure and enjoy him above all things is an infinite outrage worthy of infinite punishment.” [3.2] Of course, if man is big and God is small, this doesn’t make sense.   But if we see God as He truly is – and we see ourselves as we truly are…it makes sense!

David sings in Psalm 14:3 “All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”  And then Paul quotes it in Romans 3:12, “All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Piper writes, “The outrage of the human race is not humans killing humans. That’s not the outrage of the human race. The true outrage is humans exchanging the glory of the immortal God for anything less. That’s who we are. We are outrageous, treasonous, God-belittling, self-exalting rebels against God.” [3.3]

Because of this – all humanity is condemned.  We deserve God’s eternal condemnation – we deserve eternal punishment in hell.  We are legally guilty before God. Our debt to God is immeasurably high!  God has never and could never sin.  He can’t stand to look upon sin. We need to know how horrific our sin is; we need to sense just how great, glorious and holy our God is. We cannot celebrate our salvation without understanding our condemnation.  Just hearing the news that we are saved without what we’re saved from is cheap grace. We need a radical solution!  

Judgment

We deserve to be judged. And as it stands, we don’t deserve eternal life.  But God is love, right? Why can’t He just “forgive and forget”? He loves us, doesn’t He?  He’s all powerful – why is this a problem? Why such harsh language?  “My God is a God of love and could never send anyone to hell.” Yes, that’s what we hear today, don’t we?

Imagine though, if this holy, just, righteous, perfect God didn’t judge. If He didn’t hold us accountable for our sins and rebellion, then who would be responsible? God?  Well, that doesn’t sound right!

If He didn’t judge evil, what would this communicate about the nature and character of God? Imagine a judge letting a murderer go free because the person was “sorry” and promised never to do it again. The judge wants to show love and mercy. Would the victim’s family be satisfied? No, they wouldn’t.  What do they want? Justice. The murderer needs to pay for what he did. God’s wrath against sin is just. His is a perfect, holy, righteous wrath and anger. Our anger is often spiteful, an infantile, emotional explosion of rage.  God’s wrath is His controlled expression of justice. And someone has to pay.

In Psalm 79:8. Asaph pens these words: “Do not hold against us the sins of past generations.”  Or in the CSB “Do not hold past iniquities against us…” Don’t count our sins against us and apply the appropriate judgment! Don’t treat us according to what our sins deserve. Mitch Chase writes:  “HORROR. We don’t even really know the breadth and depth of our sinfulness. We are more sinful than we realize! If God were to do this – we’re done for. Who can stand before the perfect justice of an unimpeachable righteous Judge?” [4]

What to do? We desperately need forgiveness.  And God made a way.  He took it on Himself in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ – who would be and is our substitute.  We committed high treason. Someone has to pay.  Enter penal substitutionary atonement.

I’m aware this was a heavy, depressing subject. Truly, we don’t like to look at our sin and at God’s wrath and judgement.   But to truly and fully appreciate the forgiveness of our sins, and the salvation Christ earned for us, we need to know the bad news first.  But, next blog post, I’ll dive into what PSA is, the history of it, why it’s biblical and the amazingly good news that it is for us sinners!

Grace and Peace

[1]          Grudem, Wayne; Systematic Theology, pp. 568

[2]          Smiley, Caroline; Course “Knowing Christ – Atonement”, through Proclaim Collective

[3.1.2.3]              Piper, John; article “The Evil That Stuns Heaven”

[4]          Chase, Mitch; article on his blog, “The Rush of Heavenly Mercies”