Penal Substitution Refuted

Those who hold to the Penal Substitution Theory do not admit that their god is a cruel being. A god that is chained by a superior force which requires him to return evil for evil and hate his enemies, even though he taught us to do the opposite. A god that is bound by a demand for retribution, and not permitted to pardon and to forget, unless his wrath is appeased.

The theory is a result of our own violence being projected onto God. Because we rather stone Stephen who said, “you murdered the Just One”, and claim that Jesus instead was “stricken by God,” then to admit that Christ endured our wrath and violence. Our refusal to deal with our own violence caused us to imagine God to have inflicted the violence on Christ, when in fact we did. So we blamed God, and in turn we got the Penal Substitution Theory of the atonement.

It’s a theory that has it backwards: God is alienated by man’s sin and must be reconciled to man, when in fact we were alienated from God, and God reconciled man to himself. God was not like Molech who needed his wrath appeased through the barbarism of child sacrifice.

So what happened at the cross then? First, let’s see what the cross is not about:

1. The cross is not the appeasement of an angry and retributive God. 2. The cross is not where Jesus saves us from God. 3. The cross is not where Christ is punished instead of us. 4. The cross is not ugly. Rather: 1. God was in Christ reconciling the world. 2. The cross is where Jesus reveals God as the Savior. 3. The cross is where Jesus absorbs our violence and cries "Father, forgive them". 4. The cross reveals the beauty of divine love.

On the cross, sin was absorbed and recycled as forgiveness. For the earliest Christians, the story of salvation was entirely one of rescue. God descended into the depths of human estrangement to “ransom” his creatures from bondage to death, penetrating even into the heart of Hades.

Where did it go wrong?

The misunderstanding of what the “ransom” is plays a big role in why the Penal Substitution Theory developed. So when we think of a ransom we must not corner ourselves into saying Jesus ‘paid the debt.’

The early theologians wrestled with this concept. Who did Jesus pay? He couldn’t have paid the Father because God is not the slaveholder. He couldn’t have paid the devil, because He owed the thief nothing. The conclusion, then, was that the ransom was the “manu-mission fee” paid to release the slaves held in bondage in death’s household.

Jesus came “to give His life a ransom,” (Mark 10:45). The life of Christ, then, was the “ransom” price, given over to death itself. And death was the gate by which Jesus entered Hades and rescued its captives. By laying down His life He “paid the price,” even if there is no particular recipient for the fee.

So the confusion in the Penal Substitution Theory lies between the idea of ‘cost’ and ‘payment.’ At great cost Christ rescued us from satan, sin and death. But God didn’t require a payment before He could forgive. To believe that, would be a denial of who He is – God is all-powerful.

Payment is not forgiveness. You can’t give a free gift and require payment for it. Pardon is by definition the ‘excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty.’ By pardoning you ‘allow an offense to pass without punishment.’ So the cross was not a third-party punishment of sin so the criminal could go free, if you prefer legal language. That’s just victimizing the wrong person and doubling down on the injustice. Jesus simply paid the price of suffering as we crucified Him. Rather than God paying our debt in order to forgive, God cancelled the debt, (Col. 2:14).

This was the purpose of the Jubilee: The debts were forgiven and slaves were released. It is precisely this which Christ said He came to do; to proclaim “the year of the Lord’s favor,” (Luke 4:19). Note that the prophecy was fulfilled the very day Jesus proclaimed this. The liberation of the captives began the day Jesus launched his ministry, continued throughout his life when he scandalously forgave the lame man and the sinful woman etc., without punishment, and climaxed in His death and resurrection.

At the cross “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us.” How did He reconcile the world? By forgiving us. How did He forgive us? By not counting our sins.

The Bible talks about how Jesus died “for us,” it never says that Jesus died “instead of us.” And it definitely doesn’t say that God punished Jesus instead of us. This is how it was preached: "Him, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death...God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ,” (Acts 2:23, 36)

“And [you] killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses,” (Acts 3:15)

“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you slew and hanged on a tree,” (Acts 5:30)

“And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers,” (Acts 7:52)

Who punished Jesus? We did. Who poured wrath upon Jesus? We did. Not God.

The more you think about it, the sillier it gets. How is it that Christ’s suffering on the cross over the course of approximately six hours would be a sufficient substitutionary transaction equivalent to eternal conscious torment for all people?

Atonement

Over time the idea of appeasement crept in. The way the atonement came to be understood was something like “satisfying God’s wrath so that God could forgive.” But originally atonement meant just at-one-ment – to make one.

John the Beloved wrote that Jesus “is the hilasmos for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world,” (1 John 2:2). And Paul spoke of how God displayed Jesus “as a hilasterion by His blood,” (Rom. 3:25).

In many Bible translations the word is translated “propitiation,” which carries the idea of appeasement of wrath. Other translations translate it as “atoning sacrifice” – the sacrifice that made us one with God.

In the Septuagint, hilasterion primarily refers to the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant. And it is the word that the translators translated as “mercy seat” in Hebrews 9:25. This is a beautiful picture of how far God would go to extend forgiveness. He shed His blood and thus poured out mercy.

But what about Isaiah 53?

I'm glad you asked. “He is despised and rejected by men,” (Isa. 53:3) He was despised by who? By us. “We esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God,” (Isa. 53:4) We thought who was punishing Jesus? We thought God did. But we were wrong. We struck Jesus.

Now let’s continue reading in the Septuagint (the Bible the apostles read): “But he was wounded on account of our sins, and was bruised because of our iniquities,” (Isa. 53:5). Was He bruised instead of us? No. He was bruised because of us. “Because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death,” (Isa. 53:8). Was Jesus led to death instead of us? No. He died because of us. Or as KJV says: “for us.” “The Lord also is pleased to purge him from his stroke,” (Isa. 53:10

What? My KJV says: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.”

So which translation is correct? Even if the KJV is correct, it’s not proof that God punished Jesus instead of us. We have already seen that we bruised Jesus. So only in a secondary sense did God then bruise Him, because He foreordained it. And this was pleasing to God because that’s how He extended mercy; He cried “Father, forgive,” and not “Father, punish.”

It’s also worth noting that the meaning of the Hebrew word for “bruise” is uncertain, as expressed in the footnotes of the Bible.

Conclusion:

1. The cross is not what God inflicts on Christ in order to forgive, it is what God endures as He forgives. 2. He died for/because of our sins, not instead of us. 3. God did not kill Him. We killed him. 4. The cross was not a legal transaction. It was a cancellation of the record of death.