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| Who killed Jesus? |
Just as a good question can
provoke thought and stimulate conversation, so too can a poor one mislead and
steer us off in the wrong direction. Today I want to challenge what
has been the predominant atonement theory within the Western church for the
last five hundred years. I hope that from looking at scripture and asking some
different questions that together we might develop a better understanding of
the cross.
The atonement
theory which I am speaking of is known by the term penal substitution theory
(PST) or penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) and goes something like this.
Man’s sin was the cause of a divine dilemma and a dichotomy existed between the
love and justice of God in that because of His great love, grace and rich
mercy, He desired to forgive us for our sins. Yet because He is also holy and
just, the wrong that was done against Him could not go unpunished. On the one
side of the coin God wants to redeem us while on the other side He needs to
condemn us. PST tells us that God solves this dilemma and satisfies both His
love and His justice by imputing our guilt onto Christ and Jesus then, in our
place, bears the punishment dished out by the Father that we deserved. At the
same time, Christ’s righteousness is then credited to us. This transaction is
accepted as a full payment for mankind’s sins and satisfies both the wrath and
the righteousness of God. The blood of Jesus assuages the anger of God the
Father, the penalty for sin (death) has been paid and God can then forgive us
and the relationship between man, Father and Son can be restored.
Although an
earlier form of satisfaction theory was first developed and can be seen in the
work of the 11th Century scholar Anselm of Canterbury, this view as I have
described it above is credited to John Calvin in the 16th Century. It quickly
gained popularity among the Reformers and went virtually unchallenged in the
Protestant church for over four hundred years until the release of Gustaf
Aulen’s book in 1931 called Christus
Victor. Even today, many people are simply unaware that alternate
understandings of the atonement even exist. Calvin’s ideas have continued to be
taught through the ages by men like John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and John Piper
(as well as by a whole host of people who are not named John). But before I get
into what I believe to be a more plausible view of the atonement, let us
examine a little more closely some of the reasons that penal substitution
crumbles when its foundations are tested.
So what’s wrong with Penal substitution?
Firstly, I
would like to raise some scriptural objections against the theory. One of the
main ideas with PST is that God, in His holiness, cannot look upon sin.
Habakkuk 1:13 is often quoted (in part) which says:-
You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on
wickedness.
It is even taught that when Jesus cried out on the cross, “My
God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”, that the Father had momentarily
abandoned His Son. Yet this idea already creates a problem for us in that the
Bible teaches us that Jesus is exactly like the Father and reveals His express
image to us1. Colossians 1:15 tells us that the Son is the image of
the invisible God; that means that God the Father is not a little like Jesus,
He is exactly like Jesus! So one has to ask, if the Father cannot look upon sin
or at sinners, how can Jesus? Is He less holy that He could befriend tax
collectors, Samaritans and prostitutes? Technically speaking, if Jesus was too
holy to look upon sin, then He would have had to raise Himself from birth and
live somewhere isolated from humans. Jesus was even accused in His day of being
a friend of sinners2. So which picture of God the Father is true?
The one that PST gives us or the one revealed in Jesus? Going back to the
Garden of Eden, who was it who hid from whom and who was it who sought the
other out? In reality, scripture IS the story of God dealing with and seeking
out fallen humanity. Yes, there was a veil that separated God’s manifest
presence from people living under the old covenant but that was for their
sakes, not God’s. In Luke 15 where we read the parable of the lost son Jesus
portrays God as a Father who runs toward his returning son and greets him with
kisses and an engulfing hug. This son would have been covered in dirt, the smell of pigs still emanating strongly from his body and clothes, something that would have repulsed Jesus’ Jewish listeners. Even so,
the external would have been nothing in comparison to the internal mess the son
had made for himself. Yet the father ran to him, he rejoiced and celebrated,
not in private but by throwing a party with loud music and food.
So let’s revisit those two scriptures where God appears to turn
His head away from His Son and see if we can view them with new eyes in a way
that helps us to see things differently. As a reminder, the first verse that I
mentioned was Habakkuk 1:13 which said:-
You are of purer eyes
than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.
That may seem like a pretty solid case for PST except that it
is not what the whole verse actually says, this is the whole of verse 13:-
You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on
wickedness. Why do You look on those
who deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person
more righteous than he?
The context of Habakkuk 1:13 is around the prophets dismay at
what was going on in his day. The wicked were prospering at the expense of the
poor and the righteous. Habakkuk was crying out to God asking Him why God who
is holy was seemingly sitting by idly and letting this happen. God’s answer to
Habakkuk reveals that He was at work all along just not in the way that the
prophet might have expected Him to be. In truth, God sees everything; in the
opening chapter of Job He even has a conversation with Satan. Verse 6 says that
there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD
and that Satan ‘also came among them’. If there was anyone you think that God
could not look at, it would be him.
The other verse to look at is Matthew 27:46 where Jesus
famously uttered the words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Many
believe that the Father briefly turned His back on His Son in the moment that
our sins were laid on Him. Jesus becomes the picture of God’s love while the
Father becomes the image of God’s justice and wrath. However, if we fail to
realize that Jesus was quoting from Psalm 22 when He hung on the cross we are
certain to miss the intention behind His words.
David’s Psalm is clearly about Jesus, verse 1 is the sentence
that Jesus quoted on the cross, verses 7 and 8 reveal that the Christ would be
derided by His enemies which is what we see in Luke 23:35, verse 16 says that
His hands and feet would be pierced and verse 18 predicts that lots would be
cast for His clothes. It is after verse 18 though that the tone of David’s
Psalm turns from one of despair to hope and praise. It is verse 24 in
particular that I want to highlight.
“For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the
afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him, He
heard”.
We can be sure that Jesus knew the rest of David’s Psalm when
He quoted the first verse from the cross; including verse 24, many of those
around Him would have known it as well. In fact, the very next thing that Jesus
uttered was a confident, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit”3.
To drive this home, just before going to the Garden of Gethsemane
“Indeed the hour is coming, yes, and now has come, that you
will all be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet, I am
not alone, because the Father is with Me.”
This is why Paul could say that “God
was IN Christ reconciling the world to Himself”4. Jesus reflected
the Father’s image on the cross just as He did in the rest of His life. One can
speculate as to why Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, perhaps the reality
of what was happening reminded Him of David’s words or perhaps He said it to
encourage those around Him. Maybe it was simply said to fulfill what was
written? Whatever the reason, we can with confidence declare that there were no
conflicts of interest within the Godhead at work but rather complete union
between Father and Son in every moment just as there always has been. He was
not alone because the Father was with Him.
God was actively involved in the
redemptive work of the cross.
The idea that the purpose of the cross was to appease the wrath
of God could lead one to conclude that the death of Christ primarily satisfied
a need in the Father but the Bible tells us a different story. John 3:16 does
not say “For God was so angry…” but
rather “For God so loved…” This verse
tells me that the atonement was about something other than wrath appeasement.
It was neither divine child abuse nor the actions of a neglectful parent
abandoning His child but rather a rescue mission that the Trinity undertook in
order to save as many as would believe. “For God so loved that He killed…”? No, Peter makes it abundantly
clear in Acts chapter 2 that wicked men killed Him (Jesus) but God raised Him
up5. “For God so loved the world that He gave…”? Yes, He knew what would happen as did Jesus but this was a
price that they were willing to pay to bring us back into union with them.
This
is why Paul says that God was IN Christ reconciling the world to Himself6.
Isaiah 50:6-9 tells us a similar story of Father and Son
together on the cross:-
I gave my cheeks to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those
who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help Me; Therefore
I will not be disgraced; therefore I have set My face like a flint, and I know
that I will not be ashamed. He is near
who justifies Me, who will contend with Me? Let us stand together. Who is
my adversary? Let him come near Me.
Interestingly, the punishment that
Jesus suffered on the cross that we have attributed to God in the penal view of
the atonement; scripture not only flips on its head and attributes to man but
actually predicts that we would think that it God was doing it! Not only
that but we also preach that God hid His face when Jesus cried out while
scripture once again says that it was us who hid our faces from Him! Isaiah
53:3-5 says the following:-
He is despised and
rejected of men; a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him
stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our
transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our
peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed.
Jesus, speaking to the chief priests and the elders in Luke
22:53 described the crucifixion as “your hour, and the power of darkness”. God in the persons of the Father and the Son is not both the
punisher and the punished, the violent and the sufferer, the killer and
the martyr. Far from it! He is the Savior and the Lamb,
the Afflicted and the Healer, the Martyred one who conquers death and rose from
the grave!
In my next post we will continue to explore PSA.
1 – Hebrews 1:3.
2 – Matthew 11:19.
3 – Luke 23:46.
4 - 2 Corinthians 5:19.
5 – Acts 2:23-24.
6 – 2 Corinthians 5:19.
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