Transcript & Slides: Penal Substitutionary Atonement

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Penal Substitutionary Atonement

By David Feddes

Penal substitutionary atonement. That is a mouthful, but it is a very important phrase that describes the heart of the gospel. As we think about penal substitutionary atonement, let's begin with a song: "In Christ Alone."

That's a song that's loved by many, so much that people on hymnal committees wanted to include it in newer hymnals.

That caused a bit of a problem because there was a large denomination that wanted to include "In Christ Alone" in their new hymnal, but they wanted to revise it. They wanted to revise the phrase that said, "Till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied." They wanted it to read instead, "Till on that cross, as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified." Who could object to the love of God being magnified?

But the authors of the song said they would not make that change and they would not allow their song to go into that denomination's hymnal if they wanted to change the wording and get rid of "the wrath of God was satisfied." The hymnal committee discussed it, and they decided that they would not include that song in their hymnal because they could not stomach the phrase "the wrath of God was satisfied." This is a denomination that also believes that "love is love" and that "all roads lead to God" and "the cross was to show how loving God is."

Saved from wrath

The Bible says, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9-10). The book of Romans says very early on, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the unrighteousness and ungodliness of those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18). Then it tells us the solution, the only solution to the wrath of God: the wrath of God must be satisfied.  The idea that the wrath of God was satisfied by the death of Jesus is what the phrase "penal substitutionary atonement" means.

We're going to turn to a passage of the Bible, Isaiah 53, which Jesus himself and the authors of the New Testament used to explain what it meant that Jesus had died for his people.

I want to highlight several of the phrases that appear in Isaiah 53: "He was pierced for our transgressions...  the punishment that brought us peace was upon him." That punishment had to happen, and somehow that punishment brings us peace because it's been laid on him. "The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all... the Lord makes his life a guilt offering.... he will bear their iniquities... he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." You see how there is a great substitution taking place and a great punishment taking place that somehow rescues those who are being saved. That is what is meant by penal substitutionary atonement.

Cross’s impact

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.

When we ask what really went on at the cross of Jesus, we might answer with the historical facts. That's certainly worth doing: reading through the Gospels, reading about the plotting and the various evil people who were involved, and reading about the terrible sufferings of Jesus—the details with the whip and the crown of thorns, and the terrible nails piercing his hands and his feet, and his thirst. Reading the historical details of the death of Jesus is very important, and we should put ourselves in that story, realizing our place and our need for Christ. But another way of looking at it is saying, "Now, what was God doing in all of that?" There are a number of ways that can be answered. 

God shows his love for us at the cross. The Bible says that many times. For some people, that is the meaning of the cross: that somehow or other, God is showing that he's a very loving God, and he would rather just suffer what's wrong with the world than go on without us. So, he shows his love at the cross.

Another thing that we know about the cross is that Jesus defeats Satan and death. Some take that to be the core meaning of the cross. In Latin, Christus Victor—Christ triumphant. At the cross, Jesus is dealing with Satan and winning a victory over him--and that's true, Jesus did that.

Another aspect of the cross is that Jesus shares in our suffering. He knows what we're going through. Anything that we're going through, he's been there. He's been mocked, he's been shamed, he's been tortured, he's gone through death. So, it is a very comforting fact that Jesus shares in our suffering and has been like us in the lowest points of our life. For some, that is the very core message of the cross.

Then there is Jesus' example. His example of love stirs our love. The purpose of the cross is to get people loving again in light of such inspiring love in the life and death of Jesus Christ. Sometimes that's called the moral influence theory of the atonement—that at the cross the loving God provides such an uplifting and inspiring and heartbreaking example of love that you just can't help loving in the presence of such love.

So, all these are important dimensions of the cross's impact: God showing his love, Jesus defeating Satan, sharing in our suffering, and giving us an inspiring and life-changing example of love. These are all true--but none of these are the whole truth. All of them put together are not the whole truth. In fact, none of these are the central truth of the cross. Each of these stands only because of the central truth of the cross, and the central truth of the cross is that God provides us with penal substitutionary atonement.

Cross’s impact

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.
• God provides us with penal substitutionary atonement.

I'm going to talk about what those three words mean: penal substitutionary atonement. Then we will revisit the overall impact of the cross in light of penal substitutionary atonement.

Penal(ty)

• Punishment is fair retribution.
• Sin is too serious to overlook.
• Sin defies God’s holy majesty.
• God’s wrath is right and fitting.
• God cannot deny who He is.
• Holy love must be satisfied.

First, the word "penal." It's the word that is the beginning of the word "penalty," which gives you an idea of what it means. Or we speak of the penal system. What is the penal system? It's the system that punishes. The penal system is the prison system, and you go there as a punishment for things that you've done. So, the first thing that we need to think about with the word "penal" is that it refers to fair retribution.

Punishment is fair retribution. What does that mean? Well, some people use punishments to change character or to help people improve, but a purpose of penal punishment is to punish whether or not it makes an improvement in the person's character. Its purpose is to punish, to cause someone to suffer the consequences of wrongdoing.

There are other ways of looking at the penal system in our time, to say that it's mainly there to reform people. But if reforming people could be accomplished by unimaginable tortures and a 40-year prison sentence, would that be a right thing to do? C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment." The humanitarian theory of punishment is that you inflict pain or punishments or penalties in order to get people to change their character. But that simply is not the case. You need to punish on the basis of justice. What do they have coming to them? It would be totally unjust to say, "I think I could change their character if I just tortured them a little more or did this or that." The purpose of punishment is to inflict a fair penalty. There may be other ways God even will use disciplines or let us go through things in our life that are not intended as punishment, but as a way of molding our character. But that's a different thing. When we're talking about penal substitutionary atonement, we're talking about the fact that punishment is fair retribution. It's payment for something that's done wrong. The punishment has to fit the crime. It's not just restorative.

Another aspect of this, to believe in this truth, is that sin is too serious to overlook. Some folks will object, "Those people who talk a lot about atonement and about the cross of Jesus being necessary for God to forgive us--what's with that? God tells us to forgive, period. Why won't he do what he tells us to do? If God tells us to just forgive and let it go, why doesn't God just forgive and let it go?"

Well, God doesn't just forgive and let it go. When he revealed himself, Moses asked to see his glory on Mount Sinai. God revealed something of his glory while hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock. God proclaimed his name: "The Lord, the Lord, the merciful and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished." That was part of the revelation of the name of God. It's who he is. Love, mercy, compassion--and the guilty don't go unpunished. Sin is just too serious to overlook.

People who have objections to the doctrine of atonement usually choke on it at this point. "Sin isn't that serious," they say. "It's not that big a deal, and it can simply be overlooked." 

Why does God tell us to let go of what people have done wrong to us, and yet he insists on sin being punished? Maybe it could be explained with one short sentence: he's God and we're not. He is the one who is offended by every sin and to whom everybody is responsible. The only reason he can tell us to let it go is because he made provision for it to be let go. The very cross that is necessary for him to let it go is necessary so that all of his followers can also leave it there—the resentments, the unforgiveness. Leave it at the cross. But sin is just too serious to say, "Hey, we're just going to act as though it never happened."

Very often in the Old Testament, God would talk that way. He would say, "If you repent, then even if you lived a wicked life and turn, you will live. I don't desire the death of anyone, so turn and live." When that was stated in Ezekiel 18, the Lord said, "And now you're going to say that the way of the Lord is unjust. Is it not you who are unjust?" People would object, "The way of the Lord is unjust if a wicked person could turn to God and then be forgiven and move forward with their life." God said it's not unjust for him to forgive a wicked person who repents, but the question always lingered: Why isn't it unjust? He's leaving sins unpunished.

In our time, we object to the fact that God might punish sins. There was a time when people would object, "He's not punishing sins. What's wrong with him?" The Bible revealed that God was leaving sins committed beforehand unpunished because he had a plan for how to deal with those sins (Romans 3:25-26).

Sin is too serious to overlook. One of the main reasons sin is so serious is that sin defies God's holy majesty. It is an offense against the Creator. It is an offense against the one who is too holy and pure to look on sin, the one who is perfection itself. Every sin is a sin against him, and being a sin against him makes it awful—supremely awful. We don't begin to understand the seriousness of sin until we know the majesty and the beauty and the glory and the power of God. Until we know something of God's character and something of his splendor, we don't understand how awful it is to go against him.

Because sin defies God's holy majesty, it also arouses his wrath. His wrath is right and fitting. God does not have temper tantrums. When we consider our wrath or our anger, we might be angry because we just didn't have a meal lately, or we're just having a bad day, or we're grumpy, or we're just an ill-tempered person, or things provoke us that really shouldn't. But God's wrath is right, and his wrath is fitting. It's appropriate. It is part of his perfection. Good is against evil. Good will fight evil. Good is angered by evil. When you're not angered by evil, there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with God. He's angered by evil because God is supremely good. Because he's supremely good, and because evil arouses his wrath, we can't just say, "Well, why doesn't he let bygones be bygones?" 

God cannot deny who he is. "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Because God is light, he will always be against darkness. "God is love" (1 John 4:16). Because God is love, he will not say, "Hatred and cruelty and meanness--those are just fine; I don't mind." God can't deny who he is. "God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). Those who take him lightly are going to be wiped out by his very wonderfulness. 

God is righteous. God is just. God is love. God is! And he's not going to modify himself. He can't. God is all-powerful and can do all that he wishes, but God can't not be God. He can't undo who he is. "If we deny him, he also will deny us... for he cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). God cannot deny his own character or change it to suit us. It can't be done. He is who he is. 

This means that if sinners who cause God's anger are ever to have a relationship with him, God's holy love must be satisfied. It must be satisfied in a holy manner and in a loving manner. God can't neglect who he is; therefore his way of associating with and saving sinners has to be true to his own character. His character must be satisfied. The way that comes about is through substitution. 

Substitutionary

• Substitute can suffer our penalty.
• Substitute must be sinless human.
• God the Son became human for us.
• Trinity of love provides substitute.
• God in Christ bears our penalty.

God has decided that a substitute can represent us, and that the one who represents us can take our penalty in our place. A substitute can suffer our penalty. You may wonder how that can be. We're in a pretty individualistic culture, but even in our individualistic culture, it's possible to think of some situations where one person suffers or deals with troubles because of another.

An individual does something bad or harmful. Let's say an adopted child throws a baseball through a window. The parents are going to take care of the situation. They're going to pay for the damage. The very choice to adopt in the first place is saying, "I'm taking that child with whatever woes and troubles come with that child, as well as with all the good and the joys that come with that child, but I'm taking it all on myself."

Or think in terms of business. A company decides to buy another company. What happens when you do that? Well, you get all the assets and everything you wanted in acquiring that company--but you also get all of its debts and all of its problems. You've made an acquisition, and now you're stuck with its debts and problems because you said, "That company's mine." When you do that, therefore, you've got to deal with all those problems.

Whether adopting a child or buying a business, substitution can occur where you become linked with someone else and become responsible for their problems. Those are just small hints of one person taking on responsibility for another. In substitution, Christ takes on responsibility for sinners he wants to save.

Now, what kind of substitute do we need? Our substitute must be a sinless human. The medieval theologian Anselm wrote a book title Cur Deus Homo? which means, Why the God-Man? Anselm said we have to have a substitute who is both God and human. We need a substitute who is without sin.

The Bible makes it very clear that having a substitute who himself had all the problems we have isn't going to do us any good. If he's going to take our sin out of the picture or deal with it and make us right with the Father, he's going to have to be sinless himself. The Bible says, "In him is no sin" (1 John 3:5). In Jesus there is no sin. He was like us in every way except for sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Our substitute had to be sinless, and he had to be human because in order to represent us, he had to be one of us. So he became one of us in the manger at Bethlehem. God the Son became human for us.

Sometimes the doctrine of substitutionary atonement might be preached or taught in a rough and simplistic way. Whether or not preachers are at fault in the way we communicate, sometimes those who hear this teaching object, "That sounds an awful lot like divine child abuse. You're going to save the world by turning God into an abusive father with his beaten-up son as the abused child." That's a serious objection for many people who detest the doctrine of atonement. As I said, sometimes part of the fault lies in those of us who are trying to communicate what's going on at the cross. But maybe part of the fault lies with those who want to make a straw man out of a beautiful and true doctrine and just give it its worst possible meaning.

However you want to say it, God became human for us. God the Son became human for us. If you're a Christian and are well instructed in Christian teaching, you know that it is impossible for God the Father to be inflicting something on the Son as though the Father and the Son are totally separate and unrelated. The Father and the Son, in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, are one. Connected with the doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine of inseparable operations, which means that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are never doing separate things where one is at odds with the other. Rather, the operations are inseparable. Whatever the Father is doing, the Son is doing, and the Holy Spirit is doing. The three are always acting as one.

So, the idea that the Father would be abusing the Son is a very misguided idea. The Father determined from before the foundation of the world that penal substitutionary atonement was how he was going to save fallen sinners whom he loved. The Son, before the foundation of the world, determined that he was going to do the Father's will, that he would go to the cross because he loved his people and wanted to save them. The Holy Spirit was involved in all of this—in the conception of the Son and in the offering of the sacrifice of Jesus. The Trinity of love provides the substitute.

This means that we've got to get the idea out of our head that the Father is really, really, really mean, and he's really, really, really harsh--but lucky for us, Jesus turns out to be nice. What a relief! God the Father is mean, but nice Jesus steps in for us, he endures the blast rage and helps us to get on the good side of that mean, mean Father.

There's a certain amount of pagan thinking in that. If you read Homer's writings about the Trojan War, Agamemnon and the Greeks are having a terrible problem with sailing, and the boats are not getting where they need to be. The Greeks determine that one of the gods is mad at Agamemnon. So, what do they do? Agamemnon sends for his daughter, and they kill the daughter as a sacrifice. The weather improves, and the voyage to Troy goes very well. Some might suggest, "That's kind of what God is doing. God the Father is like Agamemnon, killing his own child so that the weather gets good and other purposes can be accomplished."

But the Bible teaches us that it is the God of love, who loves his own Son and loves other people in his Son, who brings all of this about. Jesus did not come into the world and go to the cross to change the Father's mind. "God so loved the world that he sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). In giving Christ, God was giving himself. That is part of what the doctrine of the Trinity means: that when God does anything in Christ, the Father himself in in action.

2 Corinthians 5 says, "One died for all... God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men's sins against them. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God." That's one of the clearest statements of penal substitutionary atonement that you can find. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. God made him to be sin who had no sin, and God did that so that we could be righteous and have the righteousness of God. God in Christ becomes our substitute.

Don't think of it as God being like a mean father in a really foul mood. If a grumpy father doesn't want to hit the kids, he might kick the dog instead to vent his rage. That's the way sometimes, in our folly, that we think of these things: God in his wrath deciding, "I'm just going to redirect my wrath at somebody else." No. If you really understand it, God turned the wrath against sin back upon himself and bore the horror in himself.

God in Christ bears our penalty. To talk about God as an abusive father is quite a different thing than to say that God took everything into his own self and suffered for us. The Son suffered on the cross, but the Father was also involved. Any of you who's ever been a parent and had a child suffering--was that easy? Do you think it was easy for the Father to offer up his beloved Son who is forever one with him.

Atonement

• Cross is satisfaction by substitution.
• Jesus fulfilled Day of Atonement.
• God forgives without overlooking sin.
• Jesus’ suffering is sufficient for all.
• Penal substitutionary atonement surpasses human understanding.

Now let's think about atonement itself. The cross is satisfaction by substitution. God's character is satisfied. His holiness is satisfied. His love is satisfied. His purity and his majesty are satisfied by him doing for us what we can't do for ourselves, by God the Son becoming our substitute, bearing his own wrath against sin as our substitute and as our representative.

The Old Testament had many situations in which God revealed what he was going to do in a future time to save his people from sin. There was the whole system of animal sacrifices. The book of Hebrews says that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, but they were given as a picture of what God was going to do in Christ. There were a number of those sacrifices. I just want to highlight briefly the Day of Atonement, what Jewish people call Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was once a year. On that day, they would lay hands on two goats. One goat died, had its throat slit, was slaughtered. Its blood was spilled. As for the other goat, they would put their hands on that goat, and then the goat, called the scapegoat, would be sent out into the desert, far, far away from the Israelite camp.

Jesus fulfilled the Day of Atonement. Those two goats portrayed what Jesus would do. No one thing can portray all that Jesus does, but those two goats portrayed that the death and the blood would atone for sin, and that God would carry our sins as far as the east is from the west. When that goat went out into the wilderness, it was like Christ going outside the camp and bearing our sins with him, and then bearing them further and further and further away, never to be held against us again. The death of the one goat and the distance that the other goat carried the sin away is a picture of what Jesus fulfilled and does for us. 

God forgives sin without overlooking sin. I said earlier that God can't just overlook sin. He is just. Sin had to be dealt with, and God did deal with it. Romans 3:25-26 says,


That is the problem that only the wisdom of God could solve: how to be just and still justify sinners. We are so unlike God. We want one or the other: "God, punish everything. Punish, punish, punish," or "You're unfair, God. You're love. Let everything go. Come on, be a little more laid back. Take it easy." God is just: he will punish sin. God is the justifier: he will punish sin in a way that he takes it on himself instead of venting it on you and me. God forgives without overlooking.

Jesus' suffering is sufficient for all. That presents us with a question: If the penalty for sin is eternal punishment and separation from God, how can somebody in six hours on a cross take care of an eternity's worth of punishment for billions of people? That's one of those mysteries we're never going to figure out, except this: Christ is not only man, but he is God the Son.

Do you ever wonder why Jesus couldn't be more brave when he was headed for the cross? There have been a lot of people in history who were facing death and faced it more calmly than Jesus. He was sweating blood the night before and praying, "If there's any possibility, remove this from me." Jesus wasn't just thinking about the crown of thorns or the nails. He was thinking about all the sins ever committed laid on him, and then somehow bearing all of the terrible wrath of the divine nature against all the sins of billions of people. That's what Jesus bore, not just the physical tortures that we might see in a movie like "The Passion of the Christ," where you get almost grossed out by the terrible things that happened to Jesus physically. They were terrible physically, but Jesus' suffering covers the sins of the whole world because as the Son of God as well as the Son of Man, he bore all of our sins at once and endured the punishment for them.

This is a mystery. Penal substitutionary atonement surpasses human understanding. But do not let the fact that it's a mystery or surpasses human understanding mean that it doesn't matter and that you really don't have to understand anything about it. I began by talking about a song where people wanted to change just a few words. That is how you ruin a church: by eliminating the substitutionary atonement of Jesus and then yammering on about the love of God or our obligation to love others.

Yes, the love of God is beautiful, and we're called to love others. Some will say, "Well, the gospel is just this: love God above all and your neighbor as yourself." Sure, do that a while and you'll be fine. You love God above all, right? You love your neighbor as yourself, right?. What a joke! You don't have a perfect track record of loving like that. If that's the gospel, we're all damned. Love God and love others is the law--and what a good law it is! But it is still law, not gospel. We're doomed if all we're going to do is say, "Well, I'm going to love God above all and love my neighbor as myself," because we've all failed miserably in that. So don't be fooled by these false explanations of the gospel that remove the blood of Christ and the wrath of God and just say, "Well, God loves everybody, now you go out there and do that too." That kind of "gospel" doesn't change anybody, and it sure doesn't save anybody.

Though penal substitutionary atonement is a mystery and we can't fully explain it, we need to embrace what the Bible explains about it. In the Bible, God may sometimes be talking to us in baby talk down at our level. I'm sure there are mysteries to atonement that go far beyond my ability to understand and certainly beyond my ability to explain—vastly beyond. But we need to know these very central and clear statements that God has revealed to us.

If you're an objector who says, "Yeah, well, I still don't like the sound of that doctrine--and this, this, and this is what's wrong with it," I would just observe this: some who object the most or find it most difficult prefer to keep things simple when it suits them. They don't want to deal with anything complicated. "Don't give me big words like penal substitutionary atonement. Give me a nice simple word like love. I want to keep it simple." Then, when they trot out insults like "God as the cosmic child abuser," they might say, "Don't bother me with words about the Trinity or the inseparable operations of the Trinity. Don't bother me with talking about the hypostatic union between Jesus' human nature and divine nature."

I'm not saying all of you have to be able to give me a definition of the hypostatic union and inseparable operations. What I'm saying is, "If you won't study these doctrines or can't understand them, then maybe you should zip your lip when you're starting to raise objections."

Some people, even some who are unbelievers, got their idea of Christianity from Sunday school as children. Then they got their ideas of more sophisticated thinking from atheists. They don't want to read an in-depth theology book, but they'll read a 400-pager by an atheist. They expect their thoughts that they got when they were a seven-year-old to stack up against what they're getting from a mature, intelligent, highly-armed opponent of the gospel. If you want to read the highly intelligent atheist, then read an intelligent theologian as well.

If you don't want to read the intelligent theologians, it's okay for you to hold on to the simple gospel. Hold on to the cross of Christ. Hold on to the love of Christ. But if you want to get all intellectual about it, then prepare for the ride, because there are bigger intellects than yours that have talked about these matters and can deal with them more than sufficiently. Believe the simple gospel, and dig deeper into doctrine if you can. But don't gripe that the gospel is too simplistic if you won't study the mysteries more deeply. At any rate, there are great mysteries. There are mysteries that are in the mind of God only, mysteries that nobody can understand. But there are also great Christian thinkers who have studied the doctrinal depths of the Bible and have gone a long way beyond what the straw-man objections to atonement would say. 

Well, enough about that. If you want to keep it simple, here's what penal substitutionary atonement means:  Jesus suffered and died to take the punishment we deserve. 

You might say, "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" Well, because there are a lot of objections and a lot involved in understanding various dimensions of this simple, core truth. But if you accept this core truth and embrace it and believe it, that is the heart of the gospel. Because it's the heart of the gospel, it is the key to embracing and enjoying all the other aspects of the gospel. When the Bible speaks about penal substitutionary atonement, that is the very center of what Jesus did at the cross.

Cross’s impact
Penal substitutionary atonement is central to everything else.

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.

J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God, has an entire chapter called "The Heart of the Gospel." The heart of the gospel is that Jesus bore God's wrath in our place so that we might live forever. That is center of the gospel itself, and it's the key to all these other wonderful aspects of the gospel.

It is in the atonement, supremely, that God shows his love for us. It's the key to knowing God's love. When the Bible says that God is love, it says, "God demonstrates his love for us in this: that Christ died for us." The atonement is central to the demonstration of the love of God. The Bible says, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." That's how you know the love of God. 

The greatest songs about God's love are songs about atonement. 

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned he stood,
sealed my pardon with his blood.
Hallelujah, what a Savior!

Guilty, vile, and helpless we,
spotless Lamb of God was he.
Full atonement, can it be?
Hallelujah, what a Savior!" 

We sing of the atonement, and we sing of the love of God. 

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing can for sin atone.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Thou must save, thou alone.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is the gospel. This is why we come again and again to the foot of the cross. The co-author of "In Christ Alone," Stuart Townend, wrote another song called "The Power of the Cross." 

This, the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us,
took the blame, bore the wrath.
We stand forgiven at the cross.

The last verse changes that just a little, and it's not a bad change because it doesn't eliminate the earlier statement.

This, the power of the cross:
Son of God, slain for us.
What a love, what a cost.
We stand forgiven at the cross.

 You want to understand the love of God? You cannot bypass the cross and the substitutionary atonement. 

Oh, love how deep, how broad, how high,
beyond all thought and fantasy,
that God the Son of God should take
our mortal form for mortals' sake.

For us to evil power betrayed,
scourged, mocked in purple robe arrayed.
He bore the shameful cross and death.
For us, gave up his dying breath.

That's how you know the love of God. "God shows his own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

Certainly, another dimension of the gospel is that Jesus defeats Satan and death at the cross. "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Hebrews 2:14-15). Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus triumphed over the powers and authorities at the cross.

This victory over Satan happens at the cross, but it doesn't happen in the way that even some great theologians portrayed it, or that a clever author like C.S. Lewis writes about in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (although I love that story). Fiction can't say everything about the truth. In that story, Aslan has to die in order to solve the witch's claim on the boy Edmund. Now, it's true that Jesus died to save us and to triumph over Satan, but it's not true that Satan ever had a claim on anybody. 

When Jesus pays the ransom, the ransom is being paid to God the Father only. God the Father has a claim against us. Satan can accuse, he has no rightful claim on us. The defeat of Satan comes when Jesus crushes the power of sin over us and pays the penalty demanded by God; then Satan can't accuse us anymore. It's not that Satan has more power than God. It's not that God owed Satan anything before he could have us back from Satan. Satan has zero claim on us. God paid the price in Christ to God himself, and in doing so, he rescued us from Satan too. So we sing:

When Satan tempts me to despair
and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see him there
who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
my sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
to look on him and pardon me.

The victory over Satan is because God decided that he would look on Christ and pardon me. So, Satan can't tempt me to despair anymore. The cross, by making us right with God, is the key to victory over Satan, as well as the demonstration of the love of God. 

Another aspect of the cross: Jesus shares in our suffering. We sing, "What a friend we have in Jesus." We love how that song starts. And what's the very next phrase? "All our sins and griefs to bear." You don't have much of a friend if he hasn't borne your griefs. It's because he bears our griefs that he can be our friend and the one who identifies with us so closely.

Jesus' example stirs our love. "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21). The cross is an example--there's no doubt about that. I don't dispute it for a moment. But this example of love is cannot be separated from the atonement. It flows out of the atonement.

When you listen to explanations of the atonement, don't just pay attention to what they say. Pay very careful attention to what they don't say. If someone offers you a theory of atonement that is only about God somehow showing love but not dealing with sin or wrath, then you're not getting the gospel. If you get a version of the gospel that just says it's about Satan and getting rid of his grip on us, you're not getting the gospel. True, we need to be rescued from Satan, but Satan's not our biggest problem. I'm my biggest problem. Satan would have no opportunity to do anything if I were perfectly in tune with God. If I were in tune with God, Satan couldn't do anything to accuse me. I would be free. So, a gospel that's only about deliverance from Satan but not about how God delivers us from his own wrath—our biggest problem is always God. We need to be right with God, and if we were right with God, everything else would be fine. Then we are going to see God's love for us, then we're going to have that victory over Satan, then we're going to know that Jesus is our friend, and we're going to love as he first loved us.

In Christ alone, who took on flesh,
fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
scorned by the ones he came to save.
Till on that cross, as Jesus died,
the wrath of God was satisfied.
For every sin on him was laid.
Here, in the death of Christ, I live.

This is the gospel, the heart of the gospel, the only gospel: penal substitutionary atonement.

Prayer

We thank you, Lord, for the great love that planned our salvation from eternity. We thank you for the great gift of love in giving your own Son and, in giving him, giving yourself to us for our salvation. We'll never fathom the depths of your love or the horrors of the sufferings that you endured, Lord Christ, but we thank you today. We pray that you will melt our hearts with gratitude, with joy, with repentance, and with assurance of forgiveness, of being justified by faith in your blood, and of knowing that we are yours forever. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Slide Contents
By David Feddes

Song "In Christ Alone"

Original
Till on that cross as Jesus died
the wrath of God was satisfied.

Proposed revision
Till on that cross as Jesus died
the love of God was magnified.

Saved from wrath

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9-10)

Isaiah 53

^53:1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? ² He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. ³ He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

⁴ Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgress-sions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. ⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. ⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. ⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. ¹¹ After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. ¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide 
the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Sin bearer

He was pierced for our transgressions…
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him… the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all… the Lord makes his life a guilt offering… he will bear their iniquities… he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many. (Isaiah 53)

Cross’s impact

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.

Cross’s impact

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.
• God provides us with penal substitutionary atonement.

Penal(ty)

• Punishment is fair retribution.
• Sin is too serious to overlook.
• Sin defies God’s holy majesty.
• God’s wrath is right and fitting.
• God cannot deny who He is.
• Holy love must be satisfied.

Substitutionary

• Substitute can suffer our penalty.
• Substitute must be sinless human.
• God the Son became human for us.
• Trinity of love provides substitute.
• God in Christ bears our penalty.

Atonement

• Cross is satisfaction by substitution.
• Jesus fulfilled Day of Atonement.
• God forgives without overlooking sin.
• Jesus’ suffering is sufficient for all.
• Penal substitutionary atonement surpasses human understanding.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Jesus suffered and died to take the punishment we deserve.

Cross’s impact
Penal substitutionary atonement is central to everything else.

• God shows his love for us.
• Jesus defeats Satan and death.
• Jesus shares in our suffering.
• Jesus’ example stirs our love.