Equipping Eve: Without the Shedding of Blood (Part 1)

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Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

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Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

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But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

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Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

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No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

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My name is Mike Ebendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

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Well, hello ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word so that we can stand strong and firm on that Word in an age of deception.

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And the deception is everywhere, right? It's not just in the world. We often think of the secular world, oh, it's filled with lies, and et cetera, et cetera.

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True, true, very much, but so is the professing evangelical world, and so you have churches or quote -unquote

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Christian authors and leaders and parachurch organizations that are deceiving you.

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They are not rightly interpreting God's Word, and thus they're not rightly teaching God's Word, and that is why we need to know

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God's Word, so that we can understand and recognize when something is awry, right?

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And it's not even just in the crazy, seeker -sensitive churches that we see this.

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It's not just in the ridiculous things that we see on the shelf at the local quote -unquote

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Christian bookstore, which hey, good news, I think I said this a couple of months back, but Family Christian Store is going out of business, and it's actually happening.

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There's a big store closing sign on my local store. So that's exciting.

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So I'm going to have to run over there and get some cheap gag gifts, because that's pretty much all

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I ever bought at that store. And so it's good to know that there will be a few less shelves out there with heretical books on them.

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So congratulations, Family Christian Store, on going out of business. Part of the problem might have been when you switched over to so much

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Jesus junk, I mean, your books were bad enough, but then you were selling dish towels with Bible verses ripped out of context that gave us a warm fuzzy, and it made no sense, and nobody wants that junk sitting around their house.

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So congrats. Good job. We're all pretty excited you're going out of business anyway, but that is just some examples of deception in evangelical

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Christianity, the visible church, if you will. And, you know, but we see deception even in churches that might be doctrinally sound on paper.

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You know, there are legalistic teachings. There are teachings that err on the side of grace.

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And so we have an imbalance on one side or the other. It's either let us sin that grace may abound, or let us have these rigid rules, even if they're not written down as rules, but this mindset that if you do this or that, or you wear this or that, then you probably aren't saved.

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So there needs to be a balance, because without that, we have a wrong gospel, right?

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If we don't have a balance between law and grace, we don't have a right gospel.

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If we don't have a right gospel, well, then we're in a whole host of trouble, aren't we? And so that kind of leads into what

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I want to talk about today. We are coming off, at least as I record this, we're coming off of the

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Easter holiday, Resurrection Sunday, however you'd like to refer to it. I am indifferent.

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I tend to call it Resurrection Sunday in print or this or that, but I said

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Happy Easter this year, and I shall continue to do that. So those people who condemn you for not being saved, if you use the word

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Easter, well, we'll just ignore them. Anyway, so we're coming off of the Easter holiday, and along with that is not just Christ's resurrection.

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We can't have a resurrection without a death, right? And so that's why we have Good Friday. And why is it

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Good Friday? Jesus died. Well, it's good because he needed to die so that we will not die.

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We as believers will not die. And so Christ's death on the cross is central to Christianity, right?

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Now, without the resurrection, of course, the crucifixion is incomplete. We need to have, again, we need to have the full spectrum of necessary elements here to understand the

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Christian faith, to understand the gospel. And if we have crucifixion without resurrection, well, we're pretty hopeless.

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And if we have resurrection without crucifixion, well, then we're just confused. We need to have all of our elements in place when we understand what we believe and when we tell others the gospel.

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That doesn't mean you need an eight -hour gospel presentation, but it means that you need to give a complete picture and complete understanding.

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And so when we decide that we don't like certain elements of the gospel or the story, and when

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I say story, I mean history, as set forth for us in scripture, we have a problem. And then we end up with an incomplete gospel.

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We end up with people not being actually saved because they don't know what to believe and they can't believe the right thing.

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So where am I going with this? All right, here's where I'm going with this. I saw this article back in March.

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It was posted on baptistnews .com on March 1st, 2017, and it's called

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Atonement Tweet Sparks Blood Feud on Social Media. So it reads, when it comes to social media, there's power in the blood.

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Quote, questioning penal substitutionary atonement really brings out the 30 -year -old white dudes in my feed.

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Contemporary Christian musician Michael Gungor commented during a Twitter storm, he started

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February 25th, with the recommendation, quote, I would love to hear more artists who sing to God and fewer who include a father murdering a son in that endeavor, end quote.

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Well, that's interesting. I don't know who this Michael Gungor person is. I've seen his name before, and I don't do contemporary

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Christian music for many reasons. But that's another topic for another day.

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Anyway, it seems to me I'm not missing anything by not knowing who he is. So this article goes on, curiously, it says, penal substitution is a notion developed during the

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Reformation that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, bearing the wrath of a righteous

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God, promoted by the likes of John Calvin and Billy Graham, two names who probably should not be in the same sentence.

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It was long the default position in Western Christianity, but in recent decades has come under challenge from theologians who regard it divine child abuse.

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Oh, brother. Okay, so we could go on. And I'll link to this article as always.

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But let's talk a little about penal substitutionary atonement, shall we? First of all, penal substitution did not develop during the

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Reformation. Other than the Reformation rediscovered truths of scripture that had been twisted by the

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Roman Catholic Church for so long. So this article is so bad in so many ways.

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I don't know who the author of the article is. It's like Bob Allen. So what he reads here is not a quote from Michael Gungor.

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He says, penal substitution is a notion developed during the Reformation that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners bearing the wrath of a righteous

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God. So this author of this article is wrong. Penal substitution is not a notion developed during the

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Reformation. Penal substitution is actually something we find in, wait for it, the

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Bible. Can you believe it? It's not actually something new.

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Crazy, huh? So how do we know this?

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Is this something hidden in the Bible? Do we need to get out our decoder ring and look for the

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Bible codes that some teachers talk about in order to understand this penal substitutionary atonement?

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Did the Reformers have a better decoder ring than we do, that they found this?

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Do they have a better decoder ring than the early church had? No. I don't think so.

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I don't think that's the case at all. Now, actually, there is a really great article on penal substitutionary atonement in church history.

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And I'm not going to go through this, but I am going to link to this at the Equipping Eve blog. It's written by Michael Vlach, who is a professor at the

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Master's Seminary. And the article is called Penal Substitution in Church History, and this was published in the

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Master's Seminary Journal back in 2009. And we'll link to this, but he goes through church history and demonstrates how this notion of penal substitutionary atonement was not new to the

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Reformation, because that's nonsensical. But the early church hardly affirmed this.

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But more important than going to church history is going back to the

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Bible, right? Going back to scripture to see, is this notion of penal substitution in there?

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Is it in there? Or are we, is it really just cosmic child abuse, as some people say?

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Well, let's take a look. But let's start by defining our terms, shall we?

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What is penal substitution? So Dr. Bill Barrick, who is also a professor at Master's, there's just a lot of great resources on this, especially on the

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Master's website, because there have been several articles written in the Master's Seminary Journal. So it was probably a topic in one particular issue of TMSJ.

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So that's probably why I came across so many articles here. But these are very wise men, and so we might as well not reinvent the wheel and take their definitions here.

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So Dr. Bill Barrick says, penal substitution means that Christ gave himself to suffer and die in place of the sinner in order to bear the full penalty for sin.

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And then he quotes some other scholars and says, quote, the doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty of sin.

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Okay. Penal substitution means Christ gave himself to suffer and die in place of the sinner in order to bear the full penalty for sin.

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Okay, that makes sense, right? Many of us know this already. And so you might be thinking, well, duh, why are you talking about this?

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Because sometimes we need to go back to the basics. We are not above reminding ourselves of these basic truths because they're vital and because they're under attack by crazy people like this

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Gungor person who obviously has no idea what he's talking about from scripture, which means he does not know scripture, does not believe scripture, and should be trembling before the

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Lord. There's another great article in the Master's Seminary Journal by Richard Mayhew.

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This article is called The Scriptural Necessity of Christ's Penal Substitution, and he defines this as he says, three samples offered here will adequately define the basic issue at hand regarding the meaning and necessity for penal substitution as it relates to Christ's atonement.

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So he says, on the cross, God treated Jesus as if he had lived our lives with all our sin so that God could then treat us as if we lived

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Christ's life of pure holiness. Then he says, the idea that Christ's death is a sacrifice offered in payment of the penalty for our sins, it is accepted by the

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Father as satisfaction in place of the penalty due to us. Then he says, the notion of substitutionary sacrifice widely attested in scripture means that Christ died in the place of sinners, the perfect obedience

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God required from his creatures, Jesus fully gave. We know that God requires perfect obedience, right?

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If you sin in one point of the law, you've broken the entire law. So we're in trouble. Jesus Christ did not break the law.

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He was perfectly obedient to God. In bearing the penalty of human sin as our substitute, he made full payment to God for all our failures and misdeeds.

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I would just say sins, but he's quoting from another author here. In other words, writes

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Mayhew, Christ, perfectly and eternally righteous in death, received from God the Father the eternal punishment due to all the unrighteous who would believe in him for eternal life.

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He was the believer's substitute. He who deserved no condemnation received eternal condemnation on behalf of condemned sinners who repented in his name.

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Without Christ's penal substitution on behalf of sinners and efficacious atonement rendered by Christ to redeem sinners would not be real.

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Okay, so this is important stuff. You know, we're not dealing with a minor doctrine here.

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Gungor's not attacking even eschatology, which I think is actually a really important doctrine, but we won't go there today.

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But he's not even attacking one of the secondary or tertiary doctrines. This is key. This is central.

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The purpose of the cross, what was accomplished on the cross, that's kind of important in terms of the gospel and in terms of our salvation, right?

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So why is this so important? Why do we need to have a right understanding of this?

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Why is it terrifying that someone with influence, perhaps not among maybe you listeners here, but perhaps among some of your friends in maybe less doctrinally sound churches or your children listening to this kind of music being influenced by these people who claim to be

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Christians? Why is this important that we have a right understanding of something like penal substitution? Because without the penal substitutionary atonement, ladies, we have no gospel.

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None. We have no reconciliation with God. And we are without hope.

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And that sounds kind of not good, right? Owen Strachan had said in response to this

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Gungor tweet, quote, without Christ, we have none of the righteousness of Christ, no redemption by his work, no propitiation of divine wrath, no sonship in the sun, no reconciliation with God, no reconciliation with fellow bloodbought sinners, and no victory over Satan, sin, death, and hell.

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A Christ who does not give his life as a ransom for sin is a Christ of good feelings, a Christ of emotional solidarity with sinners, a

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Christ who feels positively toward the lost, but who does nothing to redeem them, end quote.

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Amen, right? And that is why this is so important. So, you know, whether this musician's tweet actually did anything or caused anything,

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Major, we don't know, but it's an attack on the cross. It's an attack on the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel that saves us.

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And that makes it important, right? It makes it important that we have a right understanding of such a vital doctrine.

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William Barica said, quote, denial of the penal substitution involved in Christ's sacrifice has implications for nearly every major doctrine historically identified with evangelicalism.

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However, the doctrine of penal substitution is disappearing from the modern church with some scholars arguing that it is irrelevant, too violent, too individualistic, or insufficient.

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Too violent even. I remember years ago, there was an article came out by some woman who said that instead of using the cross as a symbol for Christianity, we should use, she said, the cross is inappropriate as a symbol of God's love because it presents a violent act as salvific.

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And so she said that, quote, the value of the nursing breast as a symbol of God's provision might need to be reconsidered in our own time.

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And so that's what we should use instead. And so it came back to Mary, not Christ, and she wanted to eliminate the cross.

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And so, because it was too violent. Really? Okay, well, maybe it doesn't give you a warm fuzzy.

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Maybe it offends your fallen state because maybe it's saying that you as a sinner are so sinful and so undeserving of salvation that you need some drastic help.

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Maybe it offends your pride, but that doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter if it's in the

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Bible. So is the idea of penal substitution in the

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Bible? Or is this really just cosmic child abuse and we need to eliminate this from our mindset, from our

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Christian evangelical mindset? Well, let's start first by asking the question, does

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God punish sin? Do we see punishment, divine punishment in the scriptures?

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Again, Dr. Barak says, pain, banishment, and death do not come about mechanically or impersonally.

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Rather, God acts to bring them about without demonstrating the necessity of divine imposition of penalty or punishment for sin.

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Penal substitution is impossible. So does the Old Testament, let's go back to the

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Old Testament, does it speak of this divine retribution for sin?

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Well, think, think, just think. Just do a quick survey of scripture in your mind.

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What about things such as, well, let's go all the way back to the garden. There was divine retribution for sin, right?

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There was a consequence to the sin of Adam and Eve. Big consequence, right?

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We're still feeling that today and continue to feel that until Christ renews everything.

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We are all born sinners with indwelling sin because of Adam and Eve.

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Think about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, 40 years, 40 years.

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It did not need to take that long. No, you know, if you map out their, their journey, it did not need to take 40 years for them to get to the promised land.

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That was punishment for their sin, for their rebellion and their sin against God.

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Seems like God might punish sin. Korah's rebellion, remember that? That happened during the wilderness, wandering?

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Yeah, yeah, people, people died. People died.

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I mean, even Moses, Moses, Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land.

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Because he disobeyed God. So it seems, it seems that we see in scripture that there is a judicial penalty for sin.

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In Galatians 3 .13, Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 21. He says, if a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day for he who is hanged is a priest of God so that you do not defile your land which the

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Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. And Barak expands on this.

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He says, Moses is speaking of one possible means of implementing the judicial death penalty. Impalement.

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Therefore, a curse of God expresses the punitive nature of impaling. Consequently, Paul picks up that same concept in Galatians 3.

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What makes the passage in Deuteronomy so pertinent is that it describes punitive action. Indeed, reference to Christ becoming a curse for us depicts penal substitution.

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We'll get there, ladies. We'll talk about that verse. Since the Holy Spirit was superintending Paul's writing of Galatians, and since Paul understood that the matter involves penal substitution, how can anyone deny this truth?

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And then Barak goes on and quotes Dr. Abner Chow, who I've had the privilege of sitting under his teaching, and he's an incredible teacher.

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And Chow says, There are implications from Baal Peor that the punishment may have a representational nature due to the targeting of the leadership in that situation.

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In any case, the major emphasis of both Baal Peor and Deuteronomy is that this absolutely supreme punishment is the only means by which

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God's wrath and curse can be satisfied and turned away. This is simply because it is the most severe of the already deadly punishments.

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The highest crime must have the highest penalty. This is how God's justice system works.

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These elements give the sense and ultimate gravity to the situation behind the law, etc, etc.

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And again, this is how God's justice system works, right? We already said you break the law in one point.

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You're guilty of all of it. I mean that God makes the rules, and he's God, and he's perfectly holy, and you're not.

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So there is a penalty for sin. So this idea of penalty, that's in there, that's in the

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Bible. So what about substitution? Well, we immediately think of all the Old Testament sacrifices, right?

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And we understand, don't we, that those are types and shadows pointing to the ultimate sacrifice in Christ.

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Now, Barak gives us some points to remember about the sacrifices in the Old Testament. He says, first, only believers should offer

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Old Testament sacrifices. Second, the Old Testament sacrifices were the outward demonstration of a vital faith.

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And so he's making the point here, those sacrifices only mean anything if they're coming from believers, those who believe in God.

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And they are an outward demonstration of a vital faith. So it's about the heart, right? It's not about what you're doing.

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It's not about your works. He says that the sacrifices did not save from sin or forgive sin.

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That's very important to remember. They did not take care of every sin, especially willful, defiant sin.

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And the sacrifices had fellowship with God as their chief object. That was the point of the sacrifices.

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In obeying God, you have right fellowship with Him. Sixthly, he says, the

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Old Testament sacrifices declared, emphasized, and magnified sin and its consequences, and declared, emphasized, and magnified

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God's holiness, righteousness, love, grace, mercy, and sovereignty. He says the

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Old Testament sacrifices demonstrated that there was no totally independent access to God through the

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Old Testament believer under Mosaic legislation. That's important, right? That's important because we're getting to the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ.

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He says, further, the Old Testament sacrifices demonstrated that God's desire with regard to His people's offering did not exceed their normal ability.

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They emphasized the ministry of the priesthood, involved the recognition of God's covenant with His people, and God commanded the sacrifices for the maintenance of the priesthood.

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So it's important that we remember all of those things, but I know I ran through them quickly. But again, those are heart issues.

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It's about having true faith in God, right? It's about having fellowship with God and obeying Him and emphasizing

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His holiness and our sinfulness. And so we see that and we understand that that Old Testament system was ultimately pointing to Christ, right?

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So let's think of a biblical example of this notion of sacrifice.

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It's all throughout the Old Testament, obviously. Turn with me, ladies, to Exodus 12.

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Exodus 12, verse 1. Now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be the beginning of months for you.

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It is to be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month, they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's households, a lamb for each household.

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Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them, according to what each man should eat.

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You are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

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You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.

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Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

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They shall eat the flesh that same night roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

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Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs, along with its entrails.

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And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning you shall burn with fire.

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Verse 11. Now you shall eat it in this manner, with your loin skirted, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

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It is the Lord's Passover. Verse 12. For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

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I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live, and when

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I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when

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I strike the land of Egypt. Well, that's kind of a big example of substitution, isn't it?

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Isn't it? Because if you are covered by the blood there on the doorpost, the

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Lord will pass over you. The Lord will pass over you.

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According to verse 12, says Barak, the Lord would execute judgment as he passed through the land of Egypt.

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The Israelites escaped death. How can this be? What have they done that would merit death? Just like the

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Egyptians, the Israelites came under sentence of death. What a surprise that proves to the Israelites who were...

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Philip Rikin says, the Israelites were as guilty as the Egyptians, and in the final plague,

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God taught them about their sin and his salvation. Yahweh's judgments upon the gods of Egypt proved that the gods, both severely and totally, of any sort and any status, could not save anyone or anything from death.

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And that comes from Douglas Stewart. And Barak says, by providing the Passover sacrifice, the

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Lord kept his name from pollution, and graciously spared guilty Israelites by means of the sacrificial blood of animals in the observance.

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And so, we see this Passover sacrifice, and we see the

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New Testament affirming that Passover sacrifice, right? Especially as Christ celebrated what we know as the

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Last Supper with his disciples, and affirmed this Passover and the substitutionary nature of it.

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In fact, turn with me, ladies, to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1

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Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7, Paul says, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are, in fact, unleavened.

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For Christ, our Passover also has been sacrificed. And so, Paul draws that vital link that Christ, that Passover was pointing to Christ, and he is the

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Passover lamb. And so, we see this notion.

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We've seen the penalty of sin. We've seen that sin must be punished.

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And we've seen this notion of substitution in the Old Testament. And we know that the

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New Testament then affirms this, right? So, penal substitution, that notion, that didn't come about in the

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Reformation. That's in the Bible. But what does that have to do with Christ? Is it truly related to Christ's sacrifice on the cross?

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Was Christ truly a... Did he suffer the penalty that we deserve?

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Was he truly serving as a substitute for our sin? I mean, if he was serving as a substitute, he had to be paying the penalty, right?

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Because without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins. Well, we're going to continue this discussion in the next show, ladies.

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But we're running a little bit over. So, instead of making one long show,

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I will continue this in two weeks, whenever we air it.

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So, we'll keep recording, and you'll get to hear the rest of it on the next show, ladies.

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So, thanks for tuning in. And we're going to talk even more about Christ and the penal substitutionary of Christ, substitutionary atonement of Christ in the next show.

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So, come back. We're not done talking about this. This is an amazing topic. This is vital.

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This is central. This is key. I don't know. Get out your thesaurus. Come up with some more words that mean the same thing.

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This is the gospel, ladies. So, this is a very important conversation.

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And I'm so glad you were here to join me for this. And I hope you'll come back so that we can talk more about this. Who doesn't want to talk more about Christ, right?

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All right. Thank you, ladies. Until that next time, get in your Bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped.

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Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no -compromise radio production.

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If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of our two websites, donotbesurprised .com