Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I have a confession. Last week I said we would be moving on to Genesis and the flood narrative and away from the topic of atonement. But I realized that it would be rather unfair to not do a summary episode, kind of an overview of what I just talked about.
[00:00:39] Because I know I've heard from a lot of people that you want to share this information with other people. Some of you are going through it multiple times. So I thought it would be really beneficial, really helpful to do a top-level overview of all of this stuff, especially for those of you who would love to share the material with other people. But asking them to listen to ten hours of a podcast if they're not already listening to it, that's a really big request for a lot of people. So I'm gonna go ahead and do just a general summary of what I've talked about.
[00:01:14] Just know that if this is the only episode you're listening to or if this is the first one you're listening to, that if you have questions or if anything I say is surprising or you're kind of getting that reaction of, "Oh, no, she didn't just say that, did she?" I really ask you to go through the other material or at least kind of survey it before having those reactions and coming at me, because I really do very deep dives here.
[00:01:41] And I'm perfectly fine with people challenging what I've said or giving me some new thoughts to have. In fact, I really like that. So if you would like to challenge anything I'm saying or you have questions or anything, please feel free to actually look at what I have said, because what I've said is probably not exactly like things you've heard before. And so if you're gonna come at me with anything, please do so from what I have said and not what I have not said.
[00:02:14] All right, so I have just more or less wrapped up a really long series of episodes that highlight penal substitutionary atonement, or PSA for short. Some of you listening have never even heard of that before. Some of you have heard all of these ideas but had no idea that there was an actual name for it because you thought, "Well, this is just the gospel. This is just what Scripture obviously teaches." And I hope that through my series, I have at least gotten you to think of some new thoughts, think of things a little bit differently.
[00:02:50] This is not about taking down a doctrine I dislike or looking at Scripture and looking at the doctrine and saying, "Well, I don't like that, so let's see how else we can find it in Scripture in an opposite way." That is not what I'm doing here. I am not trying to defeat a doctrine. That is not the goal, although that might be the result. I'm not trying to just be reactionary against the idea. I'm not trying to poke holes in it for the sake of poking holes in it.
[00:03:20] But I really want to give an honest look and see when we go to the biblical texts that are often used to support PSA, what do those actually tell us? What frames are they using? What problems are they addressing? And what solutions do they present?
[00:03:39] So first let's talk about penal substitutionary atonement and what it is. You've got three different letters here in PSA, and those really define the doctrine and the idea. My friend Lucas shared with me this week a devotional titled The Gospel, and there was an entry that was titled The Atonement. And I thought I would go ahead and share this with you today so that you can see that I am not mischaracterizing penal substitutionary atonement. This is what you will find in the ESV Prayer Journal. And it says, quote, "Atonement is the means by which sinful men and women are reconciled to God. The purpose of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament was to atone, to pay the debt, for the sins of God's people. Rather than requiring the immediate death of every person who sinned against him, God graciously accepted the sacrifice of a spotless, innocent animal in that person's place.
[00:04:45] "The animals who died under the sacrificial system were substitutes for the people of Israel. Their deaths temporarily appeased God's holy and righteous wrath against sin and ensured that God's presence could remain among his people. Atonement is the key gospel theme of Isaiah fifty-three.
[00:05:05] "The passage points to Jesus, who through his death and resurrection, made atonement for all who believe in his name. Jesus's death satisfied God's wrath against sin once for all time. On the cross, he offered himself as our substitute. Although he was innocent of all sin, he took our sin upon himself and received the punishment we deserve.
[00:05:30] "The servant of Isaiah fifty-three is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." John one, verse twenty-nine. End quote.
[00:05:40] Okay, so this is of course just a devotional, but I think it lays out the theme of PSA really well. We have atonement, which is the means of reconciliation to God, and atonement is seated within the Old Testament sacrificial system. Supposedly the sacrificial system was there for God to accept the sacrifices as substitutes for the people, so the animals were dying instead of the people on account of sin. And that is PSA in a nutshell. We have the penal aspect, God's wrath. And it doesn't have to be about anger. Wrath does not have to have some negative connotation necessarily, okay? And I would agree with that. But we have an appeasement of that wrath by the sacrificial system. Of course, in the Old Testament, it's temporary. And we needed one to atone for everyone for all of time, and that was Jesus.
[00:06:38] So we have the penal aspect, the substitutionary aspect, and the atonement aspect here. Anyway, I've talked about ritual atonement before, and I'm not gonna dig at this here. But just from the start, at least from your common everyday presentation of PSA, it seems obvious to me that PSA is being read into Scripture, and that is eisegesis, putting meaning into the text, and not exegesis, pulling meaning out from the text.
[00:07:12] And I don't wanna pick on that devotional, but it's just so common. This is the understanding of sacrifice for many people, and so because of that, their view of atonement is just terrible. And there is a core problem when we're using a technical ritual term in Hebrew that is tied primarily to purification, and then we make that be the general theological concept of atonement or at-one-ment or reconciliation.
[00:07:43] I don't think we actually have a biblical word that entirely encapsulates the idea of reconciliation with God, so I will accept this word in English of atonement. But it's problematic because it makes everything really fuzzy.
[00:08:02] For those of you who are new to Genesis Marks the Spot, I need to give you a brief explanation of frame semantics. Frame semantics is not mere semantics. In other words, I'm not just talking about what word we choose to use when we say something. Like, I'm not just arguing over mere semantics and word choice.
[00:08:26] Frame semantics is not word studies with fancier language. What it's doing is asking what a whole conceptual scene evokes in somebody's mind when a word or a phrase is used. When we use the word atonement, what kinds of ideas are we pulling up here? And for somebody who is steeped in PSA, the word atonement is all about reconciliation to God. But if you go back and read Leviticus, and you can see that atonement there is not just about reconciliation with God, but it's more specific.
[00:09:07] It is more technical. Then what we have is a difference in framing. So when we bring up a word or a concept, we have a little list of questions to ask. We're going to see who is involved, what is the problem, what action is taken, what changes in the scene, what does the text actually say the action accomplishes, and what does the text not say?
[00:09:35] So an example is that the idea of someone doing something for us can mean a whole host of things and can bring up different framing. It can mean because of us, because we did something and now somebody else has to fix it. It can mean on behalf of us. It can mean for our benefit. It can mean in solidarity with us. Representatively for us. Or it can mean what PSA says it means, that it is instead of us.
[00:10:11] Bearing sin is another frame that I talk about. And it can mean a guilty person carrying the consequence of their own sin. It can bring up the picture of a priest mediating for the people. It can bring up the idea of the scapegoat carrying impurity away from the people and away from the space. It can mean God lifting away sin in forgiveness. Or it can mean a righteous sufferer is carrying the burden of other people's evil actions. And those are not all the same thing.
[00:10:46] If we insist that every use of the idea of bearing sin actually includes all of those ideas, then we've got real problems. Because a guilty person carrying the consequence of their own sin is not the same frame as God lifting away sin in forgiveness, for example.
[00:11:05] So some other examples of different kinds of frames. If I say the word courtroom, you do not only think of a room, you are also thinking of a judge, witnesses, evidence, guilt or innocence, a verdict, and possibly punishment. And so the word courtroom is evoking a whole scene in your mind. And usually I would say that this is kind of the idea we have with PSA. When we're thinking about wrath or judgment of God and we're thinking about wrongdoing, this is the frame we have in our mind. So the question we have before us is whether or not Scripture is bringing up that frame or not. Does it have a different framing? Or does it have a similar frame but enough differences in it for the ancient person that it is effectively not quite the same thing?
[00:12:04] All right, so let's get into these different pieces that I've talked about here in PSA. Let's talk first about the P, the wrath and judgment behind this idea. When Scripture gives us these ideas of wrath and judgment, what is the frame that is in the ancient person's mind? And the way that you investigate this is by going into the actual places where you see the concept brought up, and then you see what those places are saying.
[00:12:26] And biblical wrath is not just an abstract penalty that has to land on someone. It is a real aspect of Scripture where God's judgment action against a world that is corrupted by violence, bloodshed, injustice, rebellion, and ruin actually occurs for real, right? There's a real wrath that falls in response to these corruptions of the world. And within that judgment, God also preserves and vindicates and carries forward life. And so there's two parallel things that are going on every time we see God's wrath.
[00:13:16] I framed this out in my episode on wrath in the flood. Of course, the flood does not use the word wrath, but the flood is judgment against corruption and violence. The world is not just guilty in a legal sense, but it's ruined, it's violent, it's propelling itself towards self-destruction. And so God judges the world in a way that corresponds to what the world has become.
[00:13:44] The judgment is creation level, not just individual sinners receiving individualized punishments. But within that context, Noah is seen as righteous, but he's not just carried out of the world to be plopped back into it. He does not escape the judged world, but he enters the ark and he passes through the judgment in a state of refuge.
[00:14:11] And so the frame here is not that God is angry at Noah, but he does pour out his wrath on the corrupt world, and he provides refuge to preserve the righteous one and those with him. And that carries life through judgment into a renewed world. And that sets up the righteous remnant pattern. The pattern is the generation, the world, or the people are all coming under judgment and for deserved reasons. But there is a faithful one or a faithful few, and they do not always avoid the condition of judgment, but they do pass through it faithfully, and God vindicates them.
[00:14:54] And through their passing through that, then others are also preserved or restored or given life through this person or people. And so Noah is the early pattern of that. But we have many later patterns. We have Joseph, who suffers because of other sins, and he becomes the means of preservation for more than just those other people. Israel passes through the Red Sea judgment into deliverance. The faithful remnant in exile lives under judgment, but they're never abandoned by God. And of course, our ultimate example, Jesus the faithful Israelite who enters the judged condition and is vindicated.
[00:15:38] I've brought up questions about the exile and what the prophets say about forgiveness and what God says justice is with the people sometimes. And occasionally I will get the response of, "Oh, that's just the exile," as if it really is not part of the pattern, or I don't really know, because exile is our prime example of the wrath of God.
[00:16:05] Because the covenant people have sinned, the leaders have failed, worship has become corrupt, justice has absolutely collapsed across society, bloodshed and violence mark the people, and so in comes the judgment. We have God's wrath actively poured out, but not everyone who suffers exile is personally guilty. The faithful are caught up inside this historical judgment, and God preserves them, and his covenant faithfulness continues. And of course, the hope is to return. It is restoration with the Messiah.
[00:16:44] So wrath can fall on a people or a world in a way that the faithful endure without being the deserving target of that wrath. That matters for what we see in Christ. That matters for what we read in the New Testament, because even there, wrath is not done away with. Wrath is talked about quite often in Scripture, even in the New Testament. People are still going to undergo that, but importantly, they undergo that when they aren't in Christ. Of course, the PSA person will say that that's because Christ was a substitute for people to avoid the wrath. But is that what the theme of substitution actually shows in Scripture?
[00:17:27] I've talked about that extensively, and to this point, I have not seen a positive idea of substitution replacement in the sense of PSA. That doesn't mean substitution doesn't exist, but we'll get to that here in a minute. It's really important to see the Red Sea pattern before we get to that because this is deliverance for Israel and destruction for Egypt. And so there is judgment and salvation within the same event, and there's passage through the waters into covenant life. So the same act of God can judge the oppressor and save the people of God.
[00:18:09] So this is not wrath directed onto a substitute instead, but it is the oppressor getting what they deserve and the righteous people of God, the ones who are being delivered, getting what God is giving them within this salvation narrative, right? And so the concept of refuge and boundary is absolutely essential. And we'll connect that with Passover and Rahab as well.
[00:18:36] But what's fascinating when we go back into the flood narrative and we see the flood happen and we see the first instance of covenant after the flood. And of course, we also see that happen after the Red Sea incident. And so it seems like covenant is God's answer to the question, if judgment falls on all flesh or the whole world or however we're putting that in the text, how does life continue?
[00:19:05] So what does all of that mean for the penal aspect of PSA? Well, we see that Scripture has wrath and judgment, and sin has consequences, and God judges evil. And so bloodshed, violence, injustice, covenant rebellion, all of those things are really big deals, and they don't just go unnoticed. God does not just hand wave those things away. But within the concept of wrath, we also have to see corruption and ruin. We see God giving people over to what they have built, and this is seen as an act of judgment. And within that, there is covenant preservation. The faithful remnants are within the refuge, and life is carried through that judgment. There is not just an escape that happens.
[00:19:54] So wrath is absolutely God's judgment action. It is God's holy opposition to evil as He gives people over to what they have built, and He exposes corruption, and He judges the bloodshed and the violence and the injustice. But we never see it fall on people without a remnant being saved.
[00:20:21] Once we see wrath and judgment this way, we are in a better position to talk about justice. Because one of the problems in the conversation is that justice often gets reduced to the idea of punishment or retribution. But in Scripture, justice is bigger than that, and forgiveness is not the enemy of justice.
[00:20:46] So just a brief little side here about justification. This is something I didn't really bring out too much in my episode, so I do wanna say a brief note about that here. In PSA frameworks, justification becomes something like, God declares me righteous because my penalty has been transferred to Christ, and then Christ's righteousness has been credited to my account, and the legal demand has been satisfied.
[00:21:14] That's like double imputation. Now, there are some other versions of that, right? But this is kind of the idea. This is why we need the penal aspect and why we need the substitution aspect. And it's not really wrong to place justification in a courtroom or legal frame. We have Scripture using verdict language. But the problem is when justification gets narrowed to legal status after penalty payment.
[00:21:45] I would rather say that justification is God's righteous verdict that those who belong to Christ and in Christ are in the right. Not because God pretends that they're righteous, not because a punishment has been transferred elsewhere, but because they are united to the faithful, crucified, and risen Messiah.
[00:22:06] And this is not occurring as a legal fiction, but it is in fact a true declaration because those in Christ are in fact made righteous in truth. This is not to be understood as a sinless perfection of people. And this is where we can put in the idea of atonement in the sense of reconciling the world. But we participate in that because when sin occurs, restitution and repentance also occur in Christ and in truth as we walk out our lives as Spirit-filled disciples. Again, this is not about perfection and never sinning, but people living actual righteous lives.
[00:22:59] So I agree that justification is forensic because there is a verdict rendered, but it's also covenantal. It identifies who belongs to the promised family line, and it's participatory because it belongs to those who are in Christ. And we are participating in what Christ did. It is also eschatological. The future verdict is announced in the present, even though it maybe has not already reached its fulfillment in our daily lives, right?
[00:23:25] It is very much about resurrection and not just the cross. And it does rectify things because God is not just declaring something, He is setting things right. It's not Jesus being condemned instead of me so that God can declare me righteous. But I would say that Christ, the faithful one, entered the condemned condition of Adam and Israel and the whole world. He passed through death. He was vindicated in resurrection. And those united to and in him share in this verdict of life, Spirit, inheritance, and family status.
[00:24:07] So we're not doing away with the legal declaration here, but it's not a legal fiction or an accounting transfer.
[00:24:15] All right, so let's bring those ideas into the concept of justice and forgiveness, which are not opposite, by the way. Justice is making things just. If you are building something, you're doing some sort of construction, and you're going to make something just, then you're making it sit just right. It's setting something right in relation to other things. So that's what justice is, God setting things right. And forgiveness is one of the ways that God deals truthfully and mercifully with sin without pretending evil does not happen.
[00:24:54] The pressure point within PSA is usually that people will say or assume that if God just forgives the sinner, then God is unjust. But again, go read the prophets. That is not what the prophets say. Sin deserves punishment. God is just. Therefore, God must punish sin. And if God forgives sinners, then someone else must be punished in their place because we can't just forgive. Therefore, the cross is where God punishes Jesus instead of us. But that whole line of reasoning depends on a particular definition of justice and a particular and twisted definition of forgiveness, which really is not forgiveness at all.
[00:25:45] So to fix this problem, we need to look at the word justice in Scripture and how it's actually used. And it's very clear that biblical justice includes retribution, punishment, and that negative form of judgment. But it is not reducible to it. And so justice, it is about judging wickedness. It is about restraining violence. But it's also about vindicating the righteous, defending the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger. It is about restoring right order, exposing falsehood, ending oppression, returning what has been stolen, healing communal disorder, bringing peace, and just in general making things right.
[00:26:35] So biblical justice is not that wrongdoers receive pain equal to their guilt. Biblical justice is that God sets the world right. So retribution can be part of that, but it's not the whole frame. And the prophets over and over stress that the retribution happens to those who are actually guilty. And there's many places where if it's twisted and the retribution falls on an innocent person instead, that is a miscarriage of justice.
[00:27:07] But what about forgiveness? Well, forgiveness is not pretending that sin didn't happen. It's not saying that guilt doesn't matter. We don't just hand wave away the problem. We don't avoid the truth of what just happened. And we certainly don't bypass repentance where repentance is called for.
[00:27:29] Forgiveness is not just portrayed as God will forgive the guilty just because. It's not the refusal to hold evil to accountability. But forgiveness is the refusal to let evil have the last word. And if somebody repents and they return to God, then God is quick to forgive them and bring them back in. And biblical forgiveness has a sense of lifting away sin, releasing from a debt or bondage, removing guilt, restoring relationship, refusing vengeance just to have vengeance. And it does involve absorbing a cost a lot of times.
[00:28:13] But it's not just about exact punishment. Like if I forgive a debt, I do not collect the debt from someone else and then call that forgiveness. I may have to absorb a loss when I forgive a debt. I will release the claim on the person, and that may include bearing a cost associated with releasing the claim.
[00:28:37] Now, of course, that is just kind of an analogy, and there is much more to forgiveness than just releasing a claim that someone has on you. But since people will often loop in the financial metaphors to it, and you know, Scripture does too, fair enough. This is why it gets a little bit confusing. But forgiveness is simply not tied to exacting the penalty and making sure the debt is paid.
[00:29:03] The Joseph pattern that I brought out in this series is a very strong narrative example of this. Because Joseph's brothers truly sinned against him, and Joseph suffered because of their sin. And Joseph calls what they did evil. But he also says that God worked through the evil to preserve life, not because God caused the brothers to do what they did, but because God used the situation for life-giving purposes. And in the end, Joseph refuses vengeance on his brothers. He provides for them, and he lifts or forgives the sin. And the result is life, preservation, reconciliation, and family restoration.
[00:29:54] And so Joseph, the righteous sufferer, bears the cost of his brother's evil. He is vindicated and exalted by God, and he becomes the means of life and forgives his brothers. None of that means that they didn't do what they did or that Joseph didn't suffer on account of it. But there was still good that happened even with all of that.
[00:30:12] Now, I do want to mention when people hear forgiveness and when we're talking about releasing claims and everything like that, I don't want you to think that victims should just immediately reconcile with abusers or oppressors, or that justice doesn't matter in the situation where maybe there is some sort of penalty that is going to fall upon the guilty party still.
[00:30:37] And I'm also not saying that if you forgive someone that you just have to go back to a perfectly restored relationship. Because you'll also notice that Joseph's brothers did not continue to sin against him. They actually turned back toward Joseph, showed signs of repentance, and so that enabled the restoration of the relationship.
[00:31:02] So it was a two-sided thing there. But sometimes when you forgive another person, it is really kind of only a one-sided thing. Or even if the person is repentant, there could still be a rupture in relationship there that is just not healed at the time, that you two just cannot heal yourselves. And so I'm not saying that if you forgive someone that you just have to continue to be in relationship to them if that is still harmful.
[00:31:33] But in the world of God's justice, forgiveness is going to equal reconciliation because of the change in all of the parties.
[00:31:42] I also want to say that there is a version of this atonement conversation where forgiveness is treated almost as a legal impossibility for God. Like, oh, yes, God wants to forgive, but justice prevents him unless punishment happens. But Scripture repeatedly presents God as forgiving because God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and faithful to covenant. And none of that includes this idea that the punishment must be paid.
[00:32:18] And again, in PSA, justice and forgiveness are held together by the punishment transfer. Justice is satisfied because sin is punished in Jesus, so that forgiveness is possible because the sinner is not punished and Christ is punished instead. But again, go read the prophets. That is not how they present the situation.
[00:32:41] We do have a setting things right thing going on with justice. Sin is judged where evil is exposed and victims are vindicated. But the guilty party, through the moment of wrath, can actually repent. And when they do, if they do, that is when they can be forgiven.
[00:33:03] Once justice and forgiveness are framed this way, we are ready to ask what Scripture means when someone acts for another. Because another major pressure point in PSA is the move from Christ died for us to Christ was punished instead of us. And that brings us to the S, substitution.
[00:33:28] My overview of the whole idea is that Christ acts for us in many biblical ways. He does things for our benefit, on our behalf, as our representative, in solidarity with us, as the faithful one who includes us in himself.
[00:33:46] But the question I'm gonna ask is whether we have the instead of us frame in that or how we have it. The Bible's for us language is amazing, but it does not mean instead of us in this narrow replacement sense. And I'm going to call substitution, substitution replacement for the reason that, in PSA, that's what it is. It is Christ doing something instead of us.
[00:34:18] Now, you can certainly say that substitution could involve things more than that, but if you're doing that, then you are moving away from the idea of PSA. Everybody who affirms Scripture will affirm that Christ died for us. The New Testament directly tells us this. But that does not have to mean that Christ died instead of us. It does not have to mean that Christ was punished instead of us.
[00:34:48] And so that's why I have so many episodes in this series, because I was distinguishing very carefully these ideas. You'll see in a lot of these conversations people will say, "Oh yes, I deny the P aspect of PSA. I don't think that Christ had to suffer the punishment instead of us. But it's really obvious to me that Christ was still a substitute." Well, what do they mean by that? Because most of the time people haven't even thought about it.
[00:35:21] The word substitutionary is used so loosely that it becomes basically meaningless. People will use it for all of these ideas. Christ acting for us, Christ doing what we could not do, Christ giving himself for our benefit, Christ suffering because of our sins. In the broadest sense, I would say that almost every orthodox Christian will say that Christ's work is substitutionary in some way when we're defining it this loosely. But that broad sense is just not helpful to settle the PSA question, and I would say it's just entirely unhelpful to just even keep using the word substitution.
[00:36:07] So I have narrowed it down to the PSA framing, the strict category of one person, animal, object, or group taking the place of another so that the replaced party does not undergo that role, fate, obligation, death, claim, consequence, or future. So this is literally the instead of us idea.
[00:36:36] But I've walked through many other categories here that belong under the idea of for us. For our benefit, something is done for our good. We have on our behalf, someone acts as a representative agent, a king, a priest, a prophet, a covenant head, or even our congressmen may act on behalf of the people. So it includes responsibility and mediation, but again is not necessarily replacement.
[00:37:16] For us can be in solidarity with us, where someone enters our condition. Christ enters the human condition. He enters Israel's story of suffering, temptation, exile, death, shame, and curse. But it means he joins us where we are in order to bring us out as our savior.
[00:37:33] For us can very commonly be representative. One person embodies the many. Adam, Christ, Israel, the king and the people, the servant and the many. Representation means what happens to the one matters for the many because the one stands as the head or the embodiment of the group. That is not substitution replacement.
[00:38:00] Related to that is for us in a participatory way. What happens to the one becomes ours because we are united to him in some way. We died with Christ. We were crucified with Christ. We are raised with Christ. We are seated with Christ. His story becomes ours by this union. And that's very different from saying that Christ died so that we do not die in any sense. But Paul says the opposite. Christ died, and therefore we die and live with him.
[00:38:35] One undergoes something so that another person does not. That is substitution replacement. The ram dies instead of Isaac. But even there, we still have to ask what the text says the replacement accomplishes. The ram replaces Isaac in the sacrifice, but the passage does not say the ram receives Isaac's guilt or absorbs any kind of divine punishment.
[00:39:03] And in fact, it's really a replacement from Abraham's perspective because Abraham really truly was going to sacrifice Isaac. And instead of Isaac, he sacrificed the ram. But from God's perspective, is that what God was seeing? If it is, that makes God desirous of human sacrifice because none of this situation here was about punishment anyway. It wasn't about clearing Abraham or Isaac's guilt. It wasn't penal in any sense. But the ram is only a substitute for the sacrifice. And if it's a true substitute from God's perspective, that means God wanted human sacrifice, not to appease his wrath, but just because he wanted human sacrifice.
[00:39:55] Does that sound like the God that you believe in?
[00:40:01] The idea of participation is really crucial. Because in PSA, people will hear, "Christ died so I don't have to." But Paul says many times, "Christ died and therefore I died with Him." So union with Christ and the idea of participation doesn't lessen the fact that the cross was for us, but it tells us how deeply it is for us.
[00:40:34] Representation also matters a great deal. Because what do we see Christ as over and over in the New Testament? He is the faithful Adam, the faithful Israelite, the seed of Abraham, the obedient son, the Davidic king, the suffering servant, the representative human, and the one in whom many are gathered together. His obedience, his death, his resurrection, his vindication and exaltation matter deeply for those in him. So Jesus isn't swapping places for us as isolated individuals, but he is becoming the faithful head of a new humanity.
[00:41:14] PSA depends on a specific kind of for us, and this is true even if you drop the P from PSA and just say that it's substitutionary atonement. Someone will say, "Well, we'll just drop the P and keep the rest of it." But then my question after that is, what does the S do then? How is Christ a substitute for us if He's not a penal substitute? And is substitute actually a good term to use at all in that case? Because if all you're doing is dropping the P, then Christ has still gotta be a substitute replacing us in something. But what? What do we get out of if we're not getting out of a penal judgment?
[00:42:05] And at this point, it's sounding rather nonsensical to me to even keep the substitution language here. We could define it as vicarious self-offering in representation and participation, but in that case, the term substitute is frankly unhelpful and misleading and entirely unnecessary, unless you want to keep it as a concession to historical western atonement theory, in which case, how is that not just cope for holding onto a theology you ought to let go of?
[00:42:47] There are positive, messianic ways to see the for us frames. Representative, participatory, mediatorial, in solidarity, in liberation, in restoration, and in covenant. So nobody is denying that Christ died for us, but not every for us is instead of us.
[00:43:11] But I will also say that substitution replacement still exists. But what kind is it and what is it doing? As I mentioned with Isaac and the ram, I do think substitution replacement is a real biblical category, but we have to let the texts themselves lead the way to show us what that means and where we see it.
[00:43:35] So I'm just gonna go through these really briefly. Because again, I got into the weeds in all of those substitution replacement episodes, so you can just go back there. But I wanna just run some down for you. We have Seth instead of Abel. This is the first time we see the instead of language. It is absolutely replacement. Seth replaces Abel in the family line. It's obviously not penal or atoning. It's about continuation and seed and life and promise after death. Basically, we had death threatening the family line, and so we have a replacement.
[00:44:19] And this is actually where I think some of the best substitution replacement can be found in a positive way. Because what we can say is that we do have a replacement in headship with Christ. Instead of being in Adam, we are in Christ. That's the substitution, but note very crucially, the replacement isn't us. Jesus is not there instead of us, but the replacement is a new head of humanity. So I still don't think this fits into the substitutionary frame of PSA because that substitution in PSA is instead of us.
[00:44:59] What this is is just new covenant. Out with the old order of death, rescue from the present evil age, as Paul says in Galatians, where death has threatened the line of humanity, and slavery to a number of different things. And with Christ as our new head, those things will no longer threaten us because we are freed from the tyrannical power and the slavery situations that we are in, including and primarily with death. So again, this is where frame semantics is really going to shine to help us see things as clearly as we can.
[00:45:43] We have the framing here of replacement. But I would still not even say that this is substitutionary atonement because substitutionary atonement is still presuming that there is some sense in which Christ is a replacement for us. So this instead of being an Adam, that is not instead of us.
[00:46:07] Another direct replacement idea is replacement stones within a house in Leviticus fourteen. This is again substitution replacement language. It's about impurity, cleansing, and restoration of the house. The replacement stones are just swapped out. It's a very straightforward way to show that substitution instead of language really is about replacement. The dirty stones are taken out and new stones are placed in.
[00:46:40] We have another category and that is vocational substitution. One of the primary examples here is the Levites instead of the firstborn. This is another really clear substitution replacement example. The Levites are taken instead of Israel's firstborn. The substitution is vocational. Is this about atonement? No, not really, but we have the firstborn swapped out with the Israelites within the context of service to sacred space.
[00:47:11] Another example we have of substitution replacement is after the golden calf incident in Exodus. This is where Moses offers himself instead of Israel. Moses is willing to be blotted out for Israel. It's a substitutionary replacement offer, but God refuses it. God says the guilty party remains accountable. Moses' offer shows the goodness of intercessory self-giving, but it also shows that God does not simply accept replacement punishment as the answer to a problem.
[00:47:55] Another instance of substitution replacement that is interrupted is back with the story of Joseph. This is one of the clearest human take me instead moments. Judah offers to become a slave instead of Benjamin. And it seems to me in the story that Judah has legitimately changed. He has repented and realized that instead of one brother suffering for him, that he would suffer for the brother instead. And this is where we have the moment of revelation of who Joseph is. We have reconciliation, forgiveness, family restoration. I think Judah's offer matters greatly because it reveals repentance and transformed love. But Joseph's forgiveness interrupts the need for the substitution at all to be carried out.
[00:48:47] I don't think there's no examples of people offering themselves instead of others. But this is not from the context of God requiring it. And it shows a thread of righteous behavior behind it.
[00:49:03] And that leads us into morally compromised substitution ideas, like we have with the story of Caiaphas, who says, "It is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish." This is explicitly one for many language. And John, in his gospel, is presenting it with irony. Caiaphas is trying to protect himself, possibly protect the people. And John does point out that God's providence means more than Caiaphas intends, but that's not like a rubber stamp on saying that Caiaphas was right about Jesus being a substitute. Because was Jesus a substitute for all of Israel? I mean, the nation of Israel still got slaughtered and destroyed by the Romans, so that still happened.
[00:49:56] We also have the replacement of Jesus and Barabbas. I think this is substitution replacement, where Barabbas goes free and Jesus is handed over. But again, that frame is injustice. It's Roman power, it's failed leadership. It is not a good thing. What it does is reveal the world's violence and false justice.
[00:50:20] So when we step back from all of these ideas, we gather the pattern together. But these things seen through the lens of Scripture are narratively described in opposite ways than we would expect if God wanted substitutionary atonement to be active.
[00:50:38] So once we look at all of these frames of substitution, it's not that it doesn't belong. It's not that it doesn't exist. It is not that somebody cannot self-offer themselves for others. But what is the piece of atonement behind that? It is not about justice because God actually accepting something would be a miscarriage of that.
[00:51:03] Now, I'm not going to pretend that I have done all of the deep dives into substitution that are necessary because I haven't done that yet. I'm still looking for ideas. I'm still analyzing all of these frames for what they can tell us in the biblical narrative. But once we actually examine these ideas, we have a family of patterns, and they might be related. But they must be read within the theological message of the text.
[00:51:34] If we're talking about atonement as something that God needs to have happen with the world in order to reconcile it, then we're talking about contexts like justice. We're talking about things that have to do with forgiveness. And it is just essential to me that we are drawing all of our pictures of this from within the biblical world.
[00:51:57] And I really, really think that the term substitution is simply unhelpful and even harmful because our pictures of actual substitution replacement in Scripture are very surprising. They're very shocking. They're very opposite what we might expect. So what about things like Passover? Isn't the Passover lamb obviously substitutionary? Isn't the Passover lamb a replacement for the Israelite so that the Israelite doesn't die on account of God's wrath?
[00:52:37] The story of the Passover is often treated as obvious substitution but again, let's have a look at the frame. The dominant frame in the Passover is one of refuge. Death happening nearby does not automatically mean substitution replacement is going on.
[00:52:58] What do we have with the story of Passover? What we have going on is a warning. There is a judgment going on. There is a refuge that is provided. There is a boundary that is marked, and there is a faithful response within that, and the deliverance comes through the judgment when the people heed the warning and go into the refuge.
[00:53:24] I get why people see substitution with the Passover because you have the animal, you have the blood on the doorpost, but Passover is in the context of Pharaoh's oppression of the people who are enslaved to him, and Yahweh is judging Egypt and its gods. And in the Passover event, we have Israel being marked off as Yahweh's people. They are literally being liberated from bondage. And this is departure into covenant life, which I think is really essential to see as well. The Passover lamb belongs inside the Exodus liberation frame, not just some courtroom penalty frame, even though the death is falling on the Egyptians because they have been the oppressors.
[00:54:12] I'm not saying there's no necessary wrath that's being poured out in judgment. But we don't really have any idea that the wrath is poured out on the lamb because we have no indication that there is some ritual where the sins are being transmitted to the lamb. There's no hand laying. And crucially, the lamb is also going to protect the whole household.
[00:54:36] So the blood seems to be functioning as a covenantal household boundary. It's a sign, and literally the text calls it a sign. The marked houses are spared, not because the lamb died instead of the firstborn, but because there is a marked refuge provided for the people in the midst of judgment. This is like the context of Rahab and the scarlet cord. It is like the context of the ark and the flood. We have many other places where we have refuge.
[00:55:09] So when Christ is our Passover, that doesn't have to mean that Christ was punished instead of us the way that the lamb was punished instead of Israel's firstborn. Because first of all, were Israel's people even seen to be guilty? They weren't. But they did need to do something in order to be within God's refuge of protection within the situation. This was necessary for deliverance, for liberation, for marked identity within the covenant community. They belonged to God, and they experienced life under God's saving judgment.
[00:55:47] But PSA reads the Passover like death has to fall, the lamb dies, the firstborn lives, therefore, the substitute receives judgment instead of the guilty. And it's like, well, they're not even guilty. I've brought this up with people before in trying to understand how this might actually be seen in a way that could lead to PSA. And the idea from the person I was talking to was that the Israelites were guilty, not in that moment, but they were eventually guilty, so therefore they still needed the substitute lamb to die for them. And again, is that how justice is presented?
[00:56:31] This isn't even the frame of sons suffering for the fathers' sin, but this is fathers suffering for the sons' sin. And I'm sorry, but that's outrageous.
[00:56:45] There's also a whole lot of other stuff that's going on with the Passover that the people have to do in order to be saved. It was not just about killing the lamb and putting the lamb's blood on the doorpost. They also had to eat the lamb, and they had to do a whole bunch of other things. All of it led to deliverance.
[00:57:04] Once we see Passover as judgment, refuge, liberation through that, then we're ready to look at ransom and redemption. Because ransom language is often pulled into payment mechanism, but in Scripture, it belongs first to the world of bondage, release, kinship, inheritance, and God reclaiming what belongs to Him.
[00:57:30] In PSA conversations, people are always trying to figure out who got paid. Was it a payment to God Himself? Was it a payment to Satan? And all of the options are problematic. But if we use the Exodus as the controlling frame of what ransom is, and we start there, where Israel's enslaved, they're held under bondage, and Yahweh claims Israel as his own and redeems them, not with money, but by his power. And that redemption leads into worship, covenant, and inheritance. Then this is a different picture.
[00:58:09] Exodus redemption is not God paying off Pharaoh. It's God liberating His people from the power that holds them. And in the prophets, that's described as giving the wicked people in payment.
[00:58:23] We can also loop in places like Leviticus 25, where we have redemption context with kinship and inheritance. Here we have family members buying back land and restoring inheritance, possibly freeing a relative from debt slavery. And this keeps the family line and the land from being lost. We also have the context of that in the jubilee, which the people are expressly condemned for not going through with the jubilee years. And that also leads to the exile. It's almost like all of these ideas are rather important to God.
[00:59:01] We also have ransom expressly forbidden when life is under threat, like murder cannot be ransomed away. And so we can't just buy off blood guilt here.
[00:59:14] Isaiah tells us that Israel is going to be redeemed from exile, but that is without money. So we should really hold back our idea that ransom means literal payment. If redemption can happen without money, then payment cannot be the controlling definition of redemption. Now, of course, Jesus is called as a ransom for many. Jesus gives himself as a ransom. But the question is, what frame is this evoking?
[00:59:46] Quite likely we're talking about Exodus liberation, release from slavery, rescue from death. And while that does include costly self-giving and broad atonement or restoration to God, this is within the context of a new covenant people, deliverance from the present evil age again.
[01:00:06] So none of that is in the context of justice being satisfied or God receiving a payment before He can forgive. PSA absorbs ransom into penalty, where the idea is that sin creates a debt or a penalty. The penalty must be paid. Jesus pays the penalty, therefore sinners are forgiven. I have a big problem with the fact that this removes the idea of forgiveness entirely.
[01:00:36] Once we see ransom and redemption as release from bondage, then we can turn to another phrase that gets absorbed into PSA as meaning usually just one thing. That is bearing sin. One of the frames of bearing sin is that the guilty actually bear their own sin. That is the most basic category of the idea. The sinner is carrying the guilt, the consequence, or the weight of their own sin.
[01:01:04] This idea is collapsed into priestly mediation in the frame of PSA because it's like, well, if a sinner has to bear his own sin, but we also see sin bearing in other places in Scripture, then clearly all of those ideas of bearing sin mean the same thing. But they don't, especially when we see the context of priestly sin-bearing. This is about mediation and the priest is not punished instead of anyone else, but he's still called a sin bearer.
[01:01:40] We also have the scapegoat that bears sin away. The scapegoat is not killed. It's not slaughtered. The emphasis is removal of the dirty stuff from the camp. So sin and impurity is treated like a contaminating burden that has to be carried away. The goal is cleansing and removal, but not retributive punishment of the goat.
[01:02:07] That's crucial to see because there's two goats in Leviticus 16. The scapegoat is the one that bears the sin by carrying it away. That goat is not killed, and it has nothing to do with any blood manipulation going on with the other goat. So there's two things going on there.
[01:02:26] Another absolutely essential frame of sin-bearing is God bearing or lifting away sin in forgiveness. So forgiveness itself. And forgiveness here is not defined in any other way than how we understand it. Like when you forgive someone, they no longer owe you something.
[01:02:47] So forgiveness is one of the Bible's sin-bearing frames, where sin is lifted, removed, carried away. That fits the Joseph pattern absolutely perfectly. So the suffering servant, the righteous sufferer. This is not in the technical Levitical sense of bearing sin, but it is direct claim release on the guilty parties. But it happens not just randomly.
[01:03:17] God doesn't just say, "Okay, it's fine. Everyone is forgiven." That is not what God does. God forgives those who repent. God forgives the righteous who turn to Him. Joseph forgave his brothers who showed that they could offer themselves righteously for another brother.
[01:03:38] And that righteous pattern actually triggered the forgiveness and the revealing of who Joseph was. Reconciliation is a turning and a correction. So then when we bring in Isaiah fifty-three and the suffering servant, we have the context of suffering for others, sin bearing.
[01:03:59] We also have the context of many made righteous. The entire context of Isaiah fifty-three is also a surprising priestly intercessory text. It's surprising because the suffering servant was marred, and so people couldn't understand how he could act like a priest in that state. And yet the consequence is healing, peace.
[01:04:26] But there is a cluster of ideas that is really easy to miss. The servant is misunderstood. The servant is suffering because of people's sin. The servant carries grief and sicknesses, and when this is quoted in the New Testament, it's not because Jesus is a substitute, it's because Jesus removes those things, and he offers healing in replacement. So that is the substitution-replacement is healing in the place of sickness.
[01:04:57] In the context of Isaiah fifty-three, the people mistakenly think that he is struck by God. The servant is certainly oppressed and afflicted. There is connection to the lamb where he is silent in that oppression and affliction. And the suffering brings healing and peace, and there is a strong undercurrent of intercession here. So of course, the servant is suffering for others, but the passage's controlling frame is not divine punishment transfer, but it's righteous suffering that brings healing, intercession, forgiveness, and restoration.
[01:05:39] One of the key things in this passage is the idea of being stricken by God. But the passage actually says, "We considered Him stricken by God." And even though there is some sort of positive viewpoint from God regarding the strickenness that we see in Isaiah fifty-three, we also see that in the Joseph narrative, where what the brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. That doesn't mean that God wanted the brothers to do what they did to Joseph. But God turned the situation around to provide life and blessing.
[01:06:17] So when the New Testament says that Jesus bore our sins, then it brings together a whole bunch of frames where Jesus is entering the burden of sin. He suffers from and because of human evil. He removes sin. He intercedes. He heals. He creates peace. He is vindicated in resurrection, and he brings many into righteousness. Not all of that even happens only within the cross.
[01:06:45] So Jesus is bearing sin not because He is a substitute replacement for us, and certainly not because the Father turns Him into the object of divine hatred, but because He enters the full burden of sin, carries that into death, removes it, intercedes for sinners, and is vindicated in the resurrection. So what that means for the context of PSA is that it's crucial to see that sin bearing is not just about punishment.
[01:07:17] Okay, so once we have looked at wrath, justice, forgiveness, substitution, very broadly, ransom, and sin bearing, we finally come to the A question. What is atonement? What is God actually accomplishing in Christ? And this is where the story gets much bigger than a legal acquittal framing. Now granted, most people will actually acknowledge that. Most people will say that, "Oh, certainly Christ does more than just acquit us from our legal guilt."
[01:07:55] Not always. A lot of times people will just bear down into the idea that the gospel is PSA, and PSA is the gospel. But looking at all of the pieces together, the question isn't how guilty individuals avoid punishment, especially when we have over and over forgiveness described as a release and a lifting away of the burden. But it still is absolutely fair and necessary to ask, what is God doing in Christ to reconcile, to restore, to cleanse, to liberate, to unite, to glorify, and to bring creation to its intended goal?
[01:08:41] Obviously, I do not have time to really lay even a small portion of this out. But atonement is not forgiveness of a legal verdict, but it is much more. In Christ, God is reconciling humanity to Himself by creating a new Spirit-filled family. He restores our vocation as we are conformed to the image of Christ. He defeats the enslaving powers of all stripes. He unites Jew and Gentile within the Abrahamic blessing, and He brings creation into new creation.
[01:09:20] The common PSA-shaped frame starts the atonement question with Genesis 3. But I love to say that the Bible does not begin in Genesis three. It begins in Genesis one. And in Genesis one, we have creation ordered by God, humanity made in God's image, where we have a human vocation that is meant to reflect God's rule. This is to provide blessing to the whole world. The context is supposed to be the entire earth as God's ordered dwelling place.
[01:09:56] Now, that is certainly distorted by sin. But I really think that the concept of atonement as broadly seen should stem from what we see in Genesis 1. In other words, it's not just a response to Genesis 3. It is the fulfillment of the purposes of creation. So while that is in part having to do with sin tearing things apart, it is not just reconciliation after a breach. It is the fulfillment of what God intended from the beginning.
[01:10:32] And while I don't have a whole lot of time to lay all of that out for you, I would just ask you to go into the New Testament, pretty much could read any book in this context, and try and see what's going on there within the idea that the Bible really does start with Genesis 1.
[01:10:51] I don't have a whole lot of new things to bring out with what I talked about in my episode on Galatians three and the curse, except to say that the curse there is not about the legal penalty due to all sinners. Christ became a curse for us in order to enter that cursed condition and bring it to its end. This is not substitutionary for the simple fact that people were already in that cursed condition. They didn't need somebody to enter it instead of them because they were already there. What they needed was somebody to end it, to bring about the full fruition of God's purposes.
[01:11:32] We really need to see this within the story of Genesis one through twelve and beyond, all throughout the Old Testament. We have a whole bunch of problems, right? Our vocation as imagers of God has been distorted, not removed, but we mar it when we sin, and we move away from God's glory. We've lost access to that sacred space context in Genesis two and three. We have the violence spreading. We have corruption deepening.
[01:12:05] And yet we have Genesis 12. This is the answer. Through Abraham, and we know through his offspring who is Christ, blessing will come to all the families of the earth. And so we have all of the three falls of Genesis one through eleven and this hinge point. We actually have the problems solved in Abraham and his family. But of course, it's not an ultimate resolution because we do not have the ultimate offspring of Abraham who will undo all of the problems in a full way where we participate in that with him.
[01:12:44] But after all that I talked about in this whole series and in this episode today, what have we found? If someone asks for the short version of the whole series, here is how I would summarize it. And forgive me for just giving you some point by point bits here, but I really want to give you a shareable payoff for the whole thing.
[01:13:08] This entire series has not been about denying wrath or justice or even substitution. I'm still talking about sin-bearing and curse and atonement, but I'm going to insist that Scripture should define those things in their own frames rather than forcing them into one mechanism of penalty transfer.
[01:13:31] So here are the points that I will wrap up with this whole series on atonement and penal substitution. Wrath is not just an abstract penalty unit that must be poured out onto someone or something before God can forgive. Biblical wrath is God's holy opposition to evil as he judges corruption, bloodshed, violence, idolatry, oppression, covenant rebellion, and really the whole ruin of creation. Wrath is real because it is God's judgment against evil. But nowhere is it presented as a transferable substance.
[01:14:12] This brings us to the concept of justice. Justice includes judgment against evil, but it's not reducible to retribution. Justice includes setting things right, vindicating the righteous, defending the oppressed, exposing bloodshed, restoring what has been broken, bringing peace, healing the community, and yes, judging wickedness. So justice is not not judgment, but it is more than punishment.
[01:14:45] Justice brings us to the idea of forgiveness. Forgiveness should not be redefined as someone else received the full punishment, so now God can call it forgiveness. Forgiveness is lifting away, releasing, restoring, refusing vengeance, and opening up a whole new future. Forgiveness isn't denying justice. It is one of the ways that God sets things right.
[01:15:13] My substitutionary point can be brought forward with the idea that for us is bigger than instead of us. Christ died for us. Christ gave himself for us. Christ bore our sins. Christ redeemed us. All of that is true but all those things have to be defined by the text in their context, not flattened together.
[01:15:38] So real substitution replacement appears in Scripture. But it's very complicated and it shows that self-offering is something that is part of the righteous life as opposed to demands of justice. So within the whole picture, we must look at the context of refuge. We must look at ransom as release. We must see sin-bearing as being within the context of multiple frames that should not be collapsed into the same idea. Jesus bears sin, but biblical sin-bearing is not punishment transfer.
[01:16:20] Atonement as a broad general theological concept is not just legal fiction. It includes things like cleansing, liberation, reconciliation, union with Christ, the giving of the Spirit, the inheritance and unity we experience as believers, all of that is wrapped up in the new humanity and new creation brought about in Christ.
[01:16:48] Atonement is God making things one in Christ. God and humanity, Jew and Gentile, heaven and earth, creation and new creation. This does involve things like redemption from curse. But curse is not just overcome by somebody paying the penalty. Curse is overcome by blessing, and blessing comes in the Spirit in Christ.
[01:17:16] My whole goal in this is to let Scripture's own frameworks speak to us. And when we do that, we find that wrath, judgment, substitution, ransom, sin bearing, forgiveness, justice, curse, blessing, and atonement are all wrapped together. But they're not arranged in a legalistic mechanism.
[01:17:41] What we find is a larger biblical story. God judges evil. He preserves life. He forgives sin. He liberates slaves. He cleanses impurity. He bears and removes sin. He vindicates the righteous sufferer. He overcomes curse by blessing. He pours out the Spirit, and He creates one new humanity in Christ.
[01:18:06] So if PSA has been the main way you have understood the cross, I'm not asking you to not care about the cross. I'm not asking you to treat sin lightly. I'm not asking you to give up the ideas of wrath and justice. But I am asking you to let the Bible give you those categories.
[01:18:26] But at any rate, I really do appreciate all of you who have journeyed through this whole series with me. But at this point, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up. Again, thank you all for listening. Thank you all for supporting me in the various ways that you do. Thanks for sharing the episodes.
[01:18:44] And a really big shout out to all of my Patreon and PayPal supporters. You guys absolutely rock, and I am so blessed by you. But at any rate, that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
