July 19th - "Penal Substitution: The Theatre of the Gospel" (Selected Scriptures)

This morning, we're going to talk about a doctrine that we kind of assume, but never really talk about. I think if I start to explain it, as I will in this message, you'll be like, well, yeah, that's exactly what I believe.

But I think very rarely do we actually stop and take time and answer the question, well, why do we believe that the Bible teaches this? Now, I have to be 100 honest. The other reason I'm doing this was I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago now to record a message for a conference I was supposed to speak at.

I dropped out of it because Gav was born. And then COVID, well, first COVID happened, and then I dropped out. And then they're like, well, we're going to do it online. Kofi, would you be interested?

So I said yes.

And I was asked to talk about this topic of penal substitution. And I realized that I don't think I've actually taught on this publicly. And it would be good for our fellowship to think through this doctrine, because as I will say right at the end, I think this doctrine has some profound implications for our Christian lives.

So that's another reason why we're doing this. I had the material done, and I wanted to share it with you, as well as the folks who are actually going to be paying to hear it. So I will pray. I'll read the text.

We'll pray, and then we'll get into our message. I'm going to look at a bunch of passages this morning, so this will not be your standard expositional message. But I hope you can track with me. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you have them, to Isaiah 52.

We're going to start there. Isaiah 52. Isaiah 52 and verse 13. Isaiah 52 and verse 13. And when you get there, if you'd stand with me one more time, as we read this portion of God's Word. Isaiah 52 and verse 13.

We're going to read all the way through to the end of chapter 53. So Isaiah 52, 13 through to 53, 12. Isaiah 52, 13. Brothers and sisters, once again, these are the words of God. See, my servant will be successful.

He will be raised and lifted up and greatly exalted, just as many were appalled at you. His appearance was so disfigured that he did not look like a man, and his form did not resemble a human being. So he will sprinkle many nations.

Kings will shut their mouths because of him, for they will see what had not been told them, and they will understand what they had not heard. Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed, who grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground?

He didn't have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from.

He was despised, and we didn't value him. Yet he himself bore our griefs and carried our pains, but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was pissed because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities.

Punishment for our peace was laid on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way, and Yahweh has punished him for the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep silenced before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.

He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living. He was struck because of my people's rebellion. He was assigned a grave with wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.

Yet Yahweh was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed,.

He will prolong his days,.

And by his hand Yahweh's pleasure will be accomplished. After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servants will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mightiest spoil. Because he willingly submitted to death and was counted among the rebels, yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will abide forever. Let's pray and ask for the Spirit's help, and then we will study the word of God together. Heavenly Father, we can't read these words without having that feeling that Moses did on the mountainside when he saw that burning bush and saying, I have to turn and look at this.

Indeed, we read these words and it's almost as though we ought to take our shoes off because the ground on which we're standing is holy ground. Father, as we study what the Scripture teaches us about the work of our Savior, we pray that you would open our eyes, that we would see wonderful things out of your law.

Father, deliver us from taking the cross lightly, and may this message be used by your Spirit to aid us in that endeavor. We ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, as you can see from the screen there, we're going to consider the doctrine of penal substitution, and I refer to it as the theater of the Gospel, the theater of the Gospel. I call it that. Actually, that's taken from an older book called The Satisfaction of Christ by A .W. Pink.

He refers to it as the theater of the Gospel because it's on the cross that the Gospel is played out vividly. And so if we're going to understand what it is that Jesus has done for us, we need to grapple with this doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.

Now, I'm going to warn you in advance, this is not going to be your typical sermon. Dr. Abner Chow, who is someone I've come to really love and respect, he's a professor down in California. He often talks about his lectures as being lermons.

They're part lecture, part sermon. I'm not going to bite his phrasing, so I've called this a precture. It's going to be part preaching, and at times it's going to feel like a lecture. If that bothers you, I apologize in advance, but this is just the nature of this topic.

At times, we're going to get very technical, and at times, it's not going to be technical at all. Because far from being a theological abstraction, this is the kind of thing that actually should stir the Christian up.

And I'm not talking about a fake excitement. I'm talking about an in-the-depth-of-the-soul confidence in the Gospel. This is one of those kinds of doctrines. And so at times, we're going to have to think deeply, but my hope is that as we think deeply, our worship will go deeper as well.

In this message, I really want to make a controversial case. I want to make a statement that sounds on its face very controversial, but I hope that by the time I'm done, even if it still sounds controversial, you can see why I've come to that conclusion.

The statement I want to make is this. The case that I want to kind of bear out in this message is this. If you lose penal substitution, give it enough time, you will lose the Gospel. Let me say that again.

If you lose penal substitution, give it enough time, and you will lose the Gospel. Now, let me stop and say that there are a number of doctrines where this is the case. If you start monkeying with them far too much, you end up monkeying with the Biblical Gospel.

So I'm not saying that penal substitution isn't a class all its own, but I am saying that it is one of those doctrines that you need to have down if you're going to fully grasp the Gospel. Now, I'm sure at this point some of you will say, wait a minute, Kofi, that's a bold assertion.

That's a big thing to say. I know. I would agree. So allow me to prove it. For our time this morning, I'm not going to waste too much time. I'm going to jump straight into it. I have five questions that I want to consider.

Five questions, oh, by the way, there should be a study guide floating around. If you don't have one, I think there are a couple of spares that you can grab. Definitely going to want that today of all days.

There are five questions that I want to consider. Five questions that I believe bolster the assertion that if you lose penal substitution, give it enough time, you will lose the Gospel. Five questions.

I've put them there in the study guide, kind of saved you the work of having to write them down like I normally do. With that, let's jump straight into it.

Question number one.

What exactly is the atonement? If we're going to say that this is that big a deal, it probably helps if we define our terms for a second. What do we mean when we say the atonement? Now, the atonement is, and some of you are about to roll your eyes, you're like, oh, Kofi, not this again.

It's one of those churchy words that we love to use but never define. I use that phrase a lot because there are lots of them. Those who know me well know that I have an almost pathological hatred for words that we use but never define.

I think if you're going to continually use a term, you should probably know what that word means. So what do we mean when we use this term atonement? Well, typically what you do is you want to go to the Bible and ask, well, how does the Bible use this term?

Well, here's what's really fascinating. The term atonement, as we use it in English, is a relatively new term. In the English language, it's actually very, very new in the grand scheme of things. It goes back to Tyndale's Bible.

Tyndale's Bible was one of the first English translations. And what Tyndale did was he made up a word to describe the fact that believers who were once at enmity with God are now brought into union with him.

And so what he did was he took the words at-one-ment, pushed them together, and you get the word atonement. In fact, if like me, you grew up on the King James Version, it's used exactly that way in Romans 5, verse 11, where it says that through Jesus, we have received the atonement in the King James Version.

Most of our modern translations use the word reconciliation because that's the actual word there. So we can't start with, okay, well, what's a dictionary definition of the term? We need to kind of piece together what the Bible says about this.

Because I don't want to spend too much time, we have a lot more to cover. I kind of took the short way around. There's a wonderful book, which I highly recommend if you can get a copy. It's called The Dictionary of Theological Terms.

It was written by a pastor called Alan Kearns, for many years pastored Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. He gives the following helpful definition for the idea of atonement.

I put it there in your study guide to make it easier. He defines the atonement as the satisfaction of divine justice in the Lord Jesus Christ in his active and passive obedience, i .e., his life and death.

Put a pin in that, we'll come back to that subject. Which procures for his people a perfect salvation. So it's the satisfaction of divine justice. So there is a divine standard that needed to be satisfied.

And in the atonement, that happens. It's done by the Lord Jesus Christ. Has two parts to it. Active obedience, his life. And passive obedience, his death. Like I said, we'll come back to that in more detail.

And the result is, it procures for his people a perfect salvation. Now, I like that definition because,.

And we'll come back to this,.

Often when we think about the atonement, often when we... Oh, good grief, my screen went off again. Often when we think about the atonement, often when we think about Christ's work on the cross, we limit it to the few hours that he spent on the cross.

When we talk about the atonement, we literally just think, well, it's when Jesus went to the cross and that's that. Well, that's part of it. But I want to argue that penal substitutionary atonement covers everything that was necessary to satisfy God's righteous judgment.

Because, and we'll talk more about this in just a minute, not only was there the penalty of sin that was not paid, there's also the problem of our very disobedience when it comes to sin. Put it another way, not only do you have the problem of the law, but you also have the problem of the penalty of the law.

And both of those need to be dealt with. God's law needs to be kept and the punishment for breaking it needs to be paid. And so when we talk about the atonement, it covers all of that, not just the problem of the penalty of sin.

So let's work with that definition, that the atonement refers to the satisfaction of divine justice by the Lord Jesus Christ in his active and passive obedience, i .e. his life and death, which procures for his people a perfect salvation.

Okay, so that's simple enough. Let's jump to our second question then. If that's what the atonement is, then now we start doing the real work and ask the question, secondly, how does the atonement work?

How does the atonement work? Now this might take a while because if we're going to try and prove this assertion that I've made that if you lose penal substitutionary atonement, give it enough time, you'll lose the gospel.

If I'm going to prove that assertion, then we need to actually understand how the atonement works, not just what it is. Now, as you can guess from this message, I believe that penal substitutionary atonement is the biblical understanding of Christ's work in our redemption.

But not everybody agrees with me.

In fact, through church history,.

There have been all kinds of what are called models of the atonement. And so while I don't want this to turn into a total lecture, it does become important to spend a few minutes and actually sketch out some of the wrong ideas so that when we start turning to scripture and get the biblical idea, we can see the contrast.

So for a moment, let's think through some.

False or incomplete ideas. Some false or incomplete ideas about the atonement. The first of them comes up quite early in church history. It's called the idea of the ransom to Satan. The ransom to Satan.

This view basically says that on the cross, Jesus was the ransom paid by God to Satan who had man in his grip. Textually, people typically went to Hebrews chapter 2, where it talks about the fact that through Christ's work on the cross, he destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.

And so they said, well, the way he did that was the devil kind of had this statutory right waving over our heads because we had broken God's law. And so Jesus then is paid to the father, as it were, to ransom us from the debts that we owed to Satan.

Well, that doesn't work for the simple fact that the Bible constantly talks about Christ's work on the cross, and it's made to God, not to the devil. It deals with the devil, but it's not made to him.

So there goes the ransom to Satan theory. That doesn't quite work. Well, the next one was something called the commercial theory. Now, this was actually close to the view that we're talking about. A former archbishop of Canterbury, his name was Anselm, wrote a book called Cardeus Homo, Why the God Man, and he put forward what he called the commercial theory.

Now, like I said, it's very close to our view because it has God as the focus and Jesus as our substitute, but his focus was not the satisfaction of divine justice. No, it was divine honor. The honor of God has been called into question by man's sin, and so Jesus on the cross dies for us so that God's honor can be maintained.

Close, but not quite. Ransom to Satan commercial. Third, a doctrine called moral government. Now, by the way, there are lots of people who still hold this third view. The reformed theologian, Louis Berkhoff, described his view as follows.

He said, quote,.

It denies that the justice of God necessarily demands that all the requirements of the law be met. The law is merely the product of God's will, and he can alter or even abrogate it just as he pleases.

In this view, while in strict justice,.

The sinner deserved eternal death,.

That sentence is not strictly executed for believers are set free. For them, the penalty is set aside, and that without strict satisfaction. Now, Christ did indeed render satisfaction, but this was only a nominal equivalent of the penalty due to man, something which God was pleased to accept as such.

If the question is asked, why did God not remit the penalty outright, as he might have done, the answer is that he had to reveal in some way.

The inviolable nature of his law.

And his holy displeasure against sin.

In order that he, the moral ruler of the universe,.

Might be able to maintain his moral government, end quote. Allow me to boil that down. Essentially, what God does on the cross is say, this is what happens when you break the law. He doesn't actually deal with the problem of our breaking of the law.

He just says, this is what happens. Jesus' death is an example of what happens when you don't keep God's law. Now, God is merciful, so he'll forgive you, but let's just be clear, the cross demonstrates what happens when you break the law.

So then the cross becomes entirely unnecessary, in a sense, and this is where some moral government theologians went. They basically said, well, the cross could have not happened, but it's good that it happens because it shows what happens when you break God's law, to which I would respond, well, Jesus seemed to think the cross needed to happen.

We'll see that in just a moment. Jesus seemed to labor under the assumption that this is why he came. So far from saying that, well, this doctrine is, well, the atonement, excuse me, is kind of necessary, but kind of not, no, the Bible teaches that it was highly necessary.

So, so much for that one. Another doctrine that's become really popular in recent years is one called Christus Victor. Literally means Christ the victor. This doctrine says, and like I said, it's become incredibly popular.

It says that Jesus' work on the cross doesn't do anything about divine justice because divine justice isn't a problem. God is love. So, actually, he doesn't care about justice, not at all. This view says that Christ's work on the cross was primarily concerned with final conquest over evil powers.

That through the death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus conquers the devil, and that's what the cross was designed to do. Now, before I kind of swing the hammer at that one, the Bible does indeed teach that.

However, I'm going to make a distinction, and I'll come back to this again. There's a difference between a benefit of the cross and the purpose of the cross. Let me say that again. There's a difference between a benefit of the cross and the actual purpose of it.

So, yes, the cross has the benefit of defeating the powers of darkness. That's Colossians chapter 2. I believe it's verses 11 through 14. Yes, absolutely, the cross does that, but that's a benefit. It's not the purpose of the cross.

It would be akin to, you know, me walking into my house, and I walk up to my fridge. I want a drink. I grab a drink. Does the fridge exist for the sole purpose of providing me drinks when I need one? No, we would all agree that no, the fridge is there to keep items that need to be refrigerated cold.

Now, I can benefit from the fridge by the fact that I can go up to it and grab a drink out of it, but that's not what it's made for. There's a difference. Its purpose is to refrigerate a bunch of things, not just this one thing.

When you say that, well, Christ's work on the cross is only dealing with evil powers and has nothing to do with divine justice, you've made a benefit the purpose, and that's a problem. We'll come back to why in a few moments.

Finally, you have the idea that's called moral influence. The idea of moral influence, also called the example theory. This one says that the purpose of the cross was to show the love of God and to compel folks to accept Jesus on the basis of the emotional pull of an innocent man dying.

If you have some time this evening and you want something relaxing to do on your Sunday night, there's a movie I'd recommend watching. It's called American Gospel. There's two of them. The first one's on Netflix.

The second one you can rent for like five bucks. I highly recommend the five bucks. It will bless your life. It's a great couple of movies. In the second movie, there's a scene. It's one of my favorites in that movie.

Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D .C., is talking about this particular understanding of the atonement, the moral influence theory. He says it's basically like a guy who decides to jump headlong into a pool, and the idea is as he jumps headlong into this pool and he's drowning, you're supposed to feel sorry for him, and then that makes you change your life.

The problem is, that's not what the Bible actually says. You see, it's not the emotional pull of a man dying that's supposed to give the cross its power. Now, the Bible does talk. Again, the Bible does talk in this kind of way.

So, Romans chapter 5, remember Paul's argument there, if you remember it? He says, well, you know, scarcely would a good man die for somebody else, but God shows his love for us in that, while we're sinners Christ.

Yes, Paul makes that argument, but again, that's not the focus of his argument. The focus of the argument is, we were under wrath, Romans 5, 9, and we've been delivered from wrath by the cross of Christ.

It's not that Jesus died, and this should make you feel really emotional about that. Look at it, it's such a nice thing to do. No, the Bible teaches that the cross of Christ actually achieves something objective.

Its power is not in its subjective response from the sinner, it's in its objective work that is done. So, if all of those, the ransom to Satan theory, the commercial theory,.

The moral government theory,.

Christus Victor, moral influence, if all of those aren't what the Bible says, well, what does the Bible say about the atonement? Well, let's take a moment and consider the biblical understanding of the atonement, the biblical understanding of it.

Three things to consider here. First, it's objective. The Bible's understanding of the atonement is that it is objective. By that we mean, that the atonement primarily serves to render satisfaction to God.

There is an objective law that has been broken, and there is an objective act that takes place to deal with this law that is broken. Often when people talk about the atonement, another term that comes up is the term propitiation.

P-R-O-P-I-T-I-A-T-I-O-N. The idea of satisfaction of one's anger. The Bible makes it clear that the reason we need an atonement is because of the wrath of God against sin. So, attend with me to a couple of passages.

John chapter three. John chapter three. John chapter three. Look with me at verse 36. John chapter three, verse 36. Jesus is concluding his conversation with Nicodemus. And he says this. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life.

But the one who rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him. So, according to this passage, what's the problem that we face? The wrath of God. Now, I'll quote this one.

Romans chapter one, verse 18. For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Romans 5 .9. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath?

Those are just three of them.

There are bunches more passages you can look at that make the same point. That the human problem, if I can get topical for just a moment. The human problem is not inequality. The human problem isn't injustice.

The human problem isn't poverty. The human problem isn't abuse of authority. All of those are manifestations. The single biggest problem humanity faces is the totally deserved, unimpeachable wrath of God against sin, and get this, against those who do it.

Contrary to what our culture says, God doesn't just, well, hate the sin,.

But love the sinner.

The Bible's actually quite clear. God hates both. In the atonement, God is saving sinners, not just from hell, not just from the effects of a bad life and poor choices. No, God is saving sinners from himself.

See, sin incurs guilt, it leads to bondage, it brings about wrath, and it leads to enmity between rebellious man and a holy God. And in the atonement, God objectively deals with the problem. It's a concrete act, dealing with a concrete problem.

The problem being sin, and the judgment that sin elicits. When we talk about penal substitution, that's the penal part of this. So it's objective. But not only is it objective, secondly, it's vicarious.

It's vicarious. By that we mean, the atonement is made by one for the benefit of another. The atonement is made by one for the benefit of another. When we talk about the cross, we are talking about one man's death in the place of, and for the benefit of others.

That's why I had to start our time by reading Isaiah chapter 52, beginning of verse 13, right through to the end of 53. Because that is, I would argue, the most clear cut biblical prophecy relating to the death of Christ.

And did you notice the language constantly when we read it, of for us, for us, for our sins, for our griefs, for our pain.

It's one person doing it,.

But doing it for the benefit of others. This idea of the vicarious nature of the atonement, or to come back to the term that we're looking at, the substitutionary nature of the atonement, is all through the Bible.

You can't read the Bible and not come to an understanding that substitution is a major part of the atonement. See if I can fly through this real quick. Exodus chapter 12, probably want to start there.

Some people start in Genesis, and I think that's a good case, but there's some debate as to, well, when God closed them with skins, or he killed an animal, was that pointing to substitution? That's a debate that's rightly had.

So let's start with one that's really clear that nobody can argue about. Exodus chapter 12. Israel's Passover.

If you're like me,.

You grew up at a certain point in time.

You watched a movie.

Called The Prince of Egypt.

Great movie.

I highly recommend it. It's on Hulu. I plan on watching it with Gareth at some point. And if you've seen that movie,.

You may remember.

The very well-depicted scene of the angel of death.

Flowing through the land.

And basically killing all of the Egyptian firstborn. Well, remember what God says to his people to ensure that they avoid that fate? They were to take a lamb. In fact, God is explicit. You take one lamb for one house.

You take a lamb for a house.

You were to kill it. You were to eat its meat in haste. You were to take its blood. And you were to apply its blood to the doorposts of your home. And listen to what God says. I won't have you turn there,.

But I'll read it.

You can take it down if you're taking notes. Exodus chapter 12 and verse 13. God says, The blood on the houses.

Where you are staying.

Will be a distinguishing mark for you. When I see the blood,.

I will pass over you.

No plague will be among you.

To destroy you.

When I strike the land of Egypt. So rather than the firstborn in that Israelite house dying, if they were to simply take this lamb,.

Shed its blood,.

And apply its blood to the doorposts of the house, that blood would act as a substitution for this one. As the destroying angel passed through the land, he would see the blood and pass over them because someone else had already died.

Well, fast forward now. Israel's in the wilderness and God is giving them rules for worship, how it is that an unholy people can commune and live with a holy God. Well, that's Leviticus chapter 4. So in Leviticus chapter 4, God starts giving them, well, it starts in chapter 1, but in chapter 4, he gives rules about what's called the sin offering.

And what would happen was the Israelites were to come with a goat. They were to lay their hands in identification with the fate of this animal, essentially saying, as I'm laying my hands on this animal, what is going to happen to this animal should be what happens to me.

But God has graciously provided a means by which this animal can function as my substitute so that what happens to old Billy Goat over here is not what happens to me. Well, fast forward in Leviticus. I mentioned chapter 4 and chapter 16 and 17.

What happens on an individual level now happens on a national level. There is this national day of atonement. Two lambs are chosen. One is slaughtered and one has hands laid on it and is just sent into the wilderness to die.

This vivid picture of one who will die and one who will bear away the sins of others.

By the way,.

This is why you should read Leviticus and not skip it in your Bible reading plan because you miss so much of the gospel by not reading it. And of course we read Isaiah chapter 52 and 53 where the language of substitution is unmistakable.

Well, that substitution.

In the Old Testament, when you get to the New Testament, what is kind of explicit in the Old Testament is definitely made explicit in the New. And the way the New Testament does this is that it uses three particular words.

Three particular words.

They're prepositions.

To kind of explain.

The nature of Christ's work.

On the cross.

The first preposition it uses is the word anti. A-N-T-I.

Very simple.

The preposition anti means in the place of or in the stead of. So, passage we often quote, Mark chapter 10, verse 45.

The Son of Man didn't come.

To be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That's the word that's used there. He's giving his life in the stead of, in the place of many. Another word it uses.

Is the word huper. H-U-P-E-R.

If you translate it roughly into English. It initially means that.

For the sake of.

Or on behalf of. So, Mark 14, Jesus is giving the commandment about the Lord's table which we will celebrate in a few moments. And he says, Mark 14, 24, this is my blood of the covenant which is shed on behalf of many.

John 6, 51, when he has finished.

The feeding of the 5 ,000,.

Jesus says, and the bread also, John 6, 51, the bread also which I give for, here's that word again,.

Huper,.

The life of the world.

Is my flesh. Jesus' understanding was he was giving his life in the stead of, for the sake of,.

All who would repent.

And believe in him.

The final word.

That's often used.

Is the word peri. Peri literally means around,.

But it can have the idea.

Of concerning one, concerning a group. In fact, one thing to note is that when this word is used with the word for sin in the New Testament,.

It has the idea of.

Taking away sin, atoning for sin. So Romans 8, verse 3, for what the law could not do, God did, sending his own son as an offering for sin. You put all that together, both the Old Testament witness.

And the explicit language.

Of the New Testament, and you come to understand that the work of Christ.

On the cross.

Is not just objective,.

But it's substitutionary, it's vicarious, it's done for one, but it benefits others. It's objective,.

It's vicarious.

Thirdly, it's comprehensive. It's comprehensive. The atonement, as the Bible teaches it, is comprehensive because it doesn't just deal with the penalty for our sin, but it deals with the breaking of God's law that leads to the penalty.

This is why I asked you.