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

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This morning, we're going to talk about a doctrine that we kind of assume, but never really talk about.
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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
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Bible teaches this? Now, I have to be 100 % honest. The other reason
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I'm doing this was I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago now to record a message for a conference
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I was supposed to speak at. I dropped out of it because Gav was born. And then
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COVID, well, first COVID happened, and then I dropped out. And then they're like, what are we going to do online?
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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
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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,
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I think this doctrine has some profound implications for our Christian lives. So that's another reason why we're doing this.
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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.
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So I will pray. I'll read the text. We'll pray, and then we'll get into our message.
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I'm going to look at a bunch of passages this morning, so this will not be your standard expositional message.
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But I hope you can track with me. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you have them, to Isaiah chapter 52.
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We're going to start there. Isaiah chapter 52. Isaiah chapter 52 and verse 13.
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Isaiah chapter 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.
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Isaiah chapter 52 and verse 13. We're going to read all the way through to the end of chapter 53.
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So Isaiah 52, 13 through to 53, 12. Isaiah 52, 13.
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Brothers and sisters, once again, these are the words of God. See, my servant will be successful.
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He will be raised and lifted up and greatly exalted, just as many were appalled at you.
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His appearance was so disfigured that he did not look like a man, and his form did not resemble a human being.
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So he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of him.
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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?
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And to whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed? He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.
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He didn't have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him. No appearance that we should desire him.
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He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.
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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.
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But he was pissed because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities.
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Punishment for our peace was laid on him, and we are healed by his wounds.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Yahweh's pleasure will be accomplished. After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied.
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By his knowledge, my righteous servants will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities.
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Therefore, I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mightiest spoil.
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Because he willingly submitted to death and was counted among the rebels, yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
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The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will abide forever. Let's pray and ask for the
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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, saying,
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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.
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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.
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Father, deliver us from taking the cross lightly, and may this message be used by your
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Spirit to aid us in that endeavor. We ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.
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Please be seated. Well, as you can see from the screen there, we're going to consider the doctrine of penal substitution, and I've referred to it as the theater of the gospel.
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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.
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Pink. He refers to it as the theater of the gospel because it's on the cross that the gospel is played out vividly.
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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.
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Now, I'm going to warn you in advance, this is not going to be your typical sermon. Dr. Abner Chow, who is someone
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I've come to really love and respect, is a professor down in California. He often talks about his lectures as being lermons.
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They're part lecture, part sermon. I'm not going to bite his phrasing, so I've called this a precture.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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I'm done, even if it still sounds controversial, you can see why I've come to that conclusion. The statement
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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.
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Let me say that again. If you lose penal substitution, give it enough time, and you will lose the gospel.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I know. I would agree. So allow me to prove it. For our time this morning,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Five questions. I've put them there in the study guide. I've kind of saved you the work from to write them out like I normally do. With that, let's jump straight into it.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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So what do we mean when we use this term atonement? Well, typically what you do is you want to go to the
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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.
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In the English language, it's actually very, very new in the grand scheme of things. It goes back to Tyndale's Bible.
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Tyndale's Bible was one of the first English translations. And what
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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.
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And so what he did was he took the words at -one -ment, pushed them together, and you get the word atonement.
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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
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King James Version. Most of our modern translations use the word reconciliation because that's the actual word there.
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So we can't start with, okay, well, just what's a dictionary definition of the term. We need to kind of piece together what the
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Bible says about this because I don't want to spend too much time. We have a lot more to cover.
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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
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The Dictionary of Theological Terms. It was written by a pastor called Alan Kearns, who for many years pastored
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Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. He gives the following helpful definition for the idea of atonement.
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I put it there in your study guide to make it easier. He defines the atonement as the satisfaction of divine justice in the
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Lord Jesus Christ in his active and passive obedience, i .e. his life and death.
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Put a pin in that. We'll come back to that subject. Which procures for his people a perfect salvation.
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So it's the satisfaction of divine justice. So there is a divine standard that needed to be satisfied.
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And in the atonement that happens. It's done by the Lord Jesus Christ. Has two parts to it.
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Active obedience, his life, and passive obedience, his death. Like I said, we'll come back to that in more detail.
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And the result is, it procures for his people a perfect salvation.
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Now, I like that definition because, and we'll come back to this. Often when we think about the atonement.
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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.
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We limit it to the few hours that he spent on the cross. When we talk about the atonement.
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We literally just think, well it's when Jesus went to the cross and that's that. Well that's part of it.
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But I'm going to argue that penal substitutionary atonement covers everything that was necessary to satisfy
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And so when we talk about the atonement it covers all of that. Not just the problem of the penalty of sin.
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So let's work with that definition. That the atonement refers to the satisfaction of divine justice by the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And his active and passive obedience, i .e. his life and death. Which procures for his people a perfect salvation.
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Okay, so that's simple enough. Let's jump to our second question then.
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If that's what the atonement is, then now we need to start doing the real work and ask the question. Secondly, how does the atonement work?
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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.
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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.
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Not just what it is. Now as you can guess from this message, I believe that penal substitutionary atonement.
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Is the biblical understanding of Christ's work in our redemption. But not everybody agrees with me.
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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.
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It does become important to spend a few minutes and actually sketch out some of the wrong ideas.
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So that when we start turning to scripture and get the biblical idea. We can see the contrast.
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So for a moment let's think through some false or incomplete ideas. Some false or incomplete ideas about the atonement.
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The first of them comes up quite early in church history. It's called the idea of the ransom to Satan.
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The ransom to Satan. This view basically says that on the cross. Jesus was the ransom paid by God to Satan.
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Who had man in his grip. Textually people typically went to Hebrews chapter 2.
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Where it talks about the fact that through Christ's work on the cross.
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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.
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Because we had broken God's law. And so Jesus then is paid to the father as it were.
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To ransom us from the debts that we owed to Satan.
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Well that doesn't work for the simple fact. That the Bible constantly talks about Christ's work on the cross.
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And it's made to God. Not to the devil. It deals with the devil.
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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.
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Now this was actually close to the view that we're talking about. A former Archbishop of Canterbury.
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His name was Anselm. Wrote a book called. Why the God man. And he put forward what he called the commercial theory.
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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.
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No it was divine honour. The honour of God has been called into question by man's sin.
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And so Jesus on the cross dies for us. So that God's honour can be maintained.
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Close but not quite. Ransom to Satan commercial. Third. A doctrine called moral government.
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And by the way there are lots of people who still hold this third view. The reformed theologian
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Louis Burkoff 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.
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The law is merely the product of God's will. And he can alter or even abrogate it just as he pleases.
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In this view while strict justice. While in strict justice the sinner deserved eternal death.
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That sentence is not strictly executed for believers are set free. For them the penalty is set aside.
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And that without strict satisfaction. Now Christ did indeed render satisfaction.
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But this was only a nominal equivalent of the penalty due to man. Something which God was pleased to accept as such.
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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.
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The inviolable nature of his law. And his holy displeasure against sin. In order that he the moral ruler of the universe.
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Might be able to maintain his moral government. End quote. Allow me to boil that down. Essentially what
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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 breaking of the law.
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He just says this is what happens. Jesus' death is an example of what happens when you don't keep God's law.
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Now God is merciful so he will forgive you. But let's just be clear the cross demonstrates what happens when you break the law.
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So then the cross becomes entirely unnecessary. In a sense and this is where some moral government theologians went.
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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
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God's law. To which I would respond well Jesus seemed to think the cross needed to happen.
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We'll see that in just a moment. Jesus seemed to labor under the assumption that this is why he came.
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So far from saying that well this doctrine is well the atonement excuse me is kind of necessary.
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But kind of not know 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
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Christus Victor. Literally means Christ the victor. This doctrine says and like I said it's become incredibly popular.
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It says that Jesus' work on the cross doesn't do anything about divine justice. Because divine justice isn't a problem
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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.
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That through the death burial and resurrection Jesus conquers the devil. And that's what the cross was designed to do.
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Now before I kind of swing the hammer at that one. The Bible does indeed teach that.
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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.
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Let me say that again. There's a difference between a benefit of the cross and the actual purpose of it.
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So yes the cross has the benefit of defeating the powers of darkness. That's Colossians chapter 2.
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I believe it's verses 11 through 14. Yes absolutely the cross does that.
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But that's a benefit. It's not the purpose of the cross. It would be akin to me walking into my house and I walk up to my fridge.
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I want a drink. I grab a drink. Does the fridge exist for the sole purpose of providing me drinks when
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I need one? No the fridge is there to keep items that need to be refrigerated cold.
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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.
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There's a difference. Its purpose is to refrigerate a bunch of things. Not just this one thing.
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When you say that Christ's work on the cross is only dealing with evil powers and has nothing to do with divine justice.
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You've made a benefit the purpose. And that's a problem.
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We'll come back to why in a few moments. Finally you have the idea that's called moral influence.
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The idea of moral influence. Also called the example theory.
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This one says that the purpose of the cross was to show the love of God and to compel folks to accept
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Jesus on the basis of the emotional pull of an innocent man dying.
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If you have some time this evening and you want something relaxing to do on your Sunday night.
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There's a movie I'd recommend watching. It's called American Gospel. There's two of them.
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The first one is on Netflix. The second one you can rent for like five bucks. I highly recommend the five bucks. It will bless your life.
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It's a great couple of movies. In the second movie there's a scene. My wife will tell you it's one of my favorites in that movie.
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Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D .C. Is talking about this particular understanding of the atonement.
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The moral influence theory. It's basically like a guy who decides to jump headlong into a pool.
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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.
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The problem is that's not what the Bible actually says.
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You see, it's not the emotional pull of a man dying that's supposed to give the cross its power.
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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.
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He says, well, scarcely would a good man die for somebody else.
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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.
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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.
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It's not that Jesus died and this should make you feel really emotional about that. Look, it's such a nice thing to do.
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No, the Bible teaches that the cross of Christ actually achieves something objective.
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Its power is not in its subjective response from the sinner. It's in its objective work that is done.
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So if all of those, the ransom to Satan theory, the commercial theory, the moral government theory,
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Christus Victor, moral influence, if all of those aren't what the Bible says, well, what does the
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Bible say about the atonement? Well, let's take a moment and consider the biblical understanding of the atonement, the biblical understanding of it.
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Three things to consider here. First, it's objective. The Bible's understanding of the atonement is that it is objective.
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By that we mean that the atonement primarily serves to render satisfaction to God.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So come with me to a couple of passages. John chapter 3. John chapter 3. John chapter 3.
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Look with me at verse 36. John chapter 3, verse 36. Jesus is concluding his conversation with Nicodemus.
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And he says this. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life.
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But the one who rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.
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So according to this passage, what's the problem that we face? The wrath of God.
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I'll quote this one. Romans chapter 1, verse 18. For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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Romans 5, 9. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath?
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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.
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The human problem is not inequality. The human problem isn't injustice.
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The human problem isn't poverty. The human problem isn't abuse of authority. All of those are manifestations.
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The single biggest problem humanity faces is the totally deserved, unimpeachable wrath of God against sin.
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And get this, against those who do it. Contrary to what our culture says,
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God doesn't just hate the sin but love the sinner. The Bible is actually quite clear. God hates both.
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In the atonement, God is saving sinners not just from hell, not just from the effects of a bad life and poor choices.
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No, God is saving sinners from himself. Sin incurs guilt.
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It leads to bondage. It brings about wrath. And it leads to enmity between rebellious man and a holy
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God. And in the atonement, God objectively deals with the problem.
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It's a concrete act dealing with a concrete problem. The problem being sin and the judgment that sin elicits.
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When we talk about penal substitution, that's the penal part of this. So it's objective.
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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.
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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.
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That's why I had us start our time by reading Isaiah chapter 52 beginning in verse 13 right through to the end of 53.
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Because that is, I would argue, the most clear -cut biblical prophecy relating to the death of Christ.
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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?
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It's one person doing it, but doing it for the benefit of others.
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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
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Bible. You can't read the Bible and not come to an understanding that substitution is a major part of the atonement.
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See if I can fly through this real quick. Exodus chapter 12, if you 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
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God closed them with skins, or He killed an animal, was that pointing to substitution? That's a debate that's rightly had.
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So let's start with one that's really clear that nobody can argue about. Exodus chapter 12. Israel's Passover.
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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.
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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
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Egyptian firstborn. Well, remember what God says to His people to ensure that they avoid that fate?
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They were to take a lamb. In fact, God is explicit. You take one lamb for one house.
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You take a lamb for a house. You are to kill it. You are to eat its meat in haste.
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You are to take its blood, and you are to apply its blood to the doorposts of your home.
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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.
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Exodus chapter 12 and verse 13. God says, The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you.
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When I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when
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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.
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As the destroying angel passed through the land, he would see the blood and pass over them. Why? Because someone else had already died.
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Well, fast forward now. Israel is in the wilderness. And God is giving them rules for worship.
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How it is that unholy people can commune and live with a holy
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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.
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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.
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But God has graciously provided a means by which this animal can function as my substitute.
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So that what happens to old Billy Goat over here is not what happens to me.
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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.
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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.
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This vivid picture of one who will die and one who will bear away the sins of others.
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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.
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And of course we read Isaiah chapter 52 and 53 where the language of substitution is unmistakable.
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Well, that substitution in the Old Testament, when you get to the New Testament, what is kind of explicit in the
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Old Testament is definitely made explicit in the New. And the way the
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New Testament does this is that it uses three particular words. Three particular words.
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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.
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A -N -T -I. Very simple. The preposition anti means in the place of or in the stead of.
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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.
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That's the word that's used there. He's giving his life in the stead of, in the place of many.
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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.
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So, Mark 14, Jesus is giving the commandment about the Lord's table, which we will celebrate in a few moments.
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And he says, Mark 14, 24, This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed on behalf of many.
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John 6, 51, when he has finished the feeding of the 5 ,000, Jesus says, And the bread also,
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John 6, 51, the bread also which I give for, here's that word again, huper,
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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.
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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.
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In fact, one commentator notes that when this word is used with the word for sin in the
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New Testament, It has the idea of taking away sin, atoning for sin.
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So Romans chapter 8, verse 3, For what the law could not do, God did, sending his own
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Son as an offering for sin.
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You put all that together, both the
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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,
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It's done for one, but it benefits others. It's objective, it's vicarious.
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Thirdly, it's comprehensive. It's comprehensive. The atonement, as the
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Bible teaches it, is comprehensive because it doesn't just deal with the penalty for our sin,
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But it deals with the breaking of God's law that leads to the penalty. This is why I ask you to keep a pen.
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Well, let's pull that pen out and let's talk about this for a second. In our
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Reformed tradition, we often distinguish between Christ's active obedience and his passive obedience.
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You've never heard those phrases, allow me to explain that. Actually, I want to make a clarification, and not me. Dr. Robert Raymond, in his wonderful work,
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A New Systematic Theology of Christian Faith, he says this, Quote, Reformed theologians have entrusted themselves with the purpose lying behind Christ's obedient life and ministry,
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Because they have discerned that both Christ's rights to carry out the messianic task as God's Messiah, Savior, And as the race's last
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Adam, and the salvation of those he came to save, Directly depend on his perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to God's law.
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To make this clear, they customarily distinguish between the active and passive obedience of Christ.
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However, because nothing that he did did he do passively,
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That is resignedly without full desire or willingness on his part, These are not satisfactory terms.
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The terms preceptive and penal are to be preferred to active and passive respectively,
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The former referring to Christ's full obedience to all the prescriptions of the divine law,
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The latter referring to his willing obedience in bearing all the sanctions imposed by that law against his people because of their transgressions.
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Once again, allow me to boil down. Dr. Raymond is saying that active and passive kind of gives a wrong impression.
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I would agree with him. And so I will tweak the language slightly and talk about preceptive obedience and penal obedience.
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What do I mean by that? Let's talk about this preceptive obedience real quickly. Preceptive obedience. In his preceptive obedience,
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Jesus obeys the law of God perfectly and achieves a full righteousness for those he came to die for.
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Let me say that again. In his preceptive obedience, Jesus obeys the law of God perfectly and achieves a full righteousness for those he came to die for.
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Now it's time to read some references. Romans 5 verse 19 refers to one man's active obedience.
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Philippians 2 verse 8, Paul talks about Jesus being obedient even to the point of the cross.
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Some people try to say, well, the obedience was going to the cross. No, Paul's point is Jesus was obedient and the obedience culminated in the cross.
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Hebrews chapter 5 verse 8, one of my favorite verses in the New Testament, says that though he was a son, yet he learned obedience, referring to Jesus, through the things that he suffered.
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And the suffering in that context is told by Jesus' humanity. In his preceptive obedience,
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Jesus obeys the law of God perfectly and achieves a full righteousness for those he came to die for.
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The Bible helps us to understand that this obedience was from the heart. So you read
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Psalm 40 verses 7 and 8, which is a Messianic psalm, and it's the, I would argue that the speaker is the
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Messiah, and he's speaking and he says, I delight from the heart to do your will, O Yahweh.
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Which matches what Jesus says, my need is to do the will of him who sent me. This is why my father loves me, because I always do the things that please him.
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This obedience was progressive. So it wasn't that Jesus, and this is where our minds can kind of get stretched a little bit in discussing this.
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Jesus' obedience wasn't that he came out of the womb as a baby and he was perfect, but that he came out and immediately was a fully grown adult.
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No, he had to grow in his obedience just like we all grow in our obedience. Yes, he was without sin, and so I do agree with those who often kind of joke, for example,
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Jesus had to be like the greatest kid to raise ever because he was just perfectly obedient. Agreed. I would actually agree with that.
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And yet, there's a degree to which he had to learn what to obey. Luke 2 .52
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promises that he grew in wisdom and in favor with God and man. This precept of obedience steadily includes his trials, his temptations, and his griefs.
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So every trial he went through, the temptations that he endured in the wilderness, all of that accrues to this righteousness that he builds up.
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And of course, it comes to its climax in the death of Christ. So far from being active over here and passive over here, one leads seamlessly into the other.
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So that's his precept of obedience, that he keeps God's law for us perfectly. But then there's also the penal obedience.
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I'm running way out of time, so I'm going to have to cut some of this. But I recommend in the notes for this week,
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Wayne Gruden's System of Theology, his chapter on the atonement is actually money. I really recommend it. And in that, he talks about a number of aspects of the atonement that we often don't think about.
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Often, we think about the cross, and we think about the physical pain and death that he endured.
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I mean, crucifixion was a rough death. There's a reason Romans would not allow their citizens to be crucified, no matter how badly they did.
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They reserved that for their enemies because they knew it was a rough form of death. But there's more to what happens on the cross than the physical pain that Jesus endures.
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I don't have time to go through all of this, but consider the pain of bearing sin. Think about it.
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Jesus is perfect. He's never sinned. And all of a sudden, he goes, I've never sinned.
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I haven't had any relationship to sin. So now he's bearing the sins of millions.
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I will quote this from you real quickly.
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He says, quote, In our own experience as Christians, we know something of the anguish we feel when we know we've sinned.
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The weight of guilt is heavy on our hearts, and there is a bitter sense of separation from all that is right in the world. Now, Jesus was perfectly holy.
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He hated sin with his entire being. The thought of evil, of sin, contradicted everything in his character.
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Far more than we do, Jesus instinctively rebelled against evil. Yet in obedience to the
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Father and out of love for us, Jesus took on himself all the sins of those who would someday be saved.
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Taking on himself all the evil against which his soul rebelled must have created deep revulsion in the center of his being.
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All that he hated most deeply was poured out fully upon him.
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So there's the pain of bearing sin on top of the physical pain and death. What about abandonment? Now, granted, there's a lot of debate as to what does the
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Bible mean when it uses this language of Jesus being abandoned by God on the cross. I'm going to skip that debate entirely, simply to note that Jesus clearly speaks to being abandoned in that moment.
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We've been going through the Habakkuk. Remember Habakkuk 1 and 13? God has purer eyes than to look upon evil.
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I simply ask, if God has a purer eyes to look upon evil, and his Son is bearing all the evil of an innumerable number of people down through the ages, yeah,
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I think there's something to be said for as the song we sing. Is it how deep the
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Father's love for us, the one that says the Father turns his face away? I think there's something to that, personally.
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Physical pain and death. The pain of bearing sin. Abandonment. And of course, bearing the wrath of God.
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We talked about that. In his suffering and his death, Christ satisfies the righteous wrath of God against sin.
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And he does all of this for us. For us.
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So how does the atonement work? Well, the biblical understanding of the atonement is that it's objective, it's vicarious, it's done for one for the benefit of others, and it's comprehensive.
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It deals not just with the penalty of sin, but with the fact that we have broken the law. Both the obedience that is necessary and the penalty that needs to be paid, both perfectly satisfied in Jesus Christ.
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But then that begs the third question. I promise we'll move slightly quickly through these last few questions.
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Who benefits from this atonement? Who benefits from this atonement? Now this particular question is not just a theological splitting of hairs.
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MacArthur and Mayhew in their Systematic Theology of Biblical Doctrine say this, quote, If the Son of God has destroyed the power of sin and has purchased the redemption by which sinners may be freed from divine judgment, can there be any more important question to ask than for whom has he done this?
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Who are the ones who benefit from Christ's work on the cross? Now traditionally the way that people like to argue this is, one side will take, typically, all the verses that talk about Jesus dying for everyone, every man, all the world.
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They'll take those verses, and I call it Bible ping pong. Because they'll take it, swap the ball over to the other side, and the folks on the other side will say, well the
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Bible uses all these verses, it talks about him dying for many, him dying for the sheep, all those verses that kind of particularize, that focus the work of Christ on a particular people.
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He died for us. Jesus says, I'm praying not for the world, I'm praying for the ones you gave me, John 17.
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People will typically do that and swap the ball back to the other side, people will be like, ah, John 3, 16 though.
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And before you know it, you'll go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and the question, in my opinion, doesn't actually get answered very well.
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So how do you answer this question of who benefits from the atonement? Now, I understand that this is a topic of debate, there may be people in the room who don't 100 % agree with me on this point, but I'm going to pose three questions.
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I'm not going to pose the questions, I'm going to leave you to go home and think about it. So I can get on to questions four and five.
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Three questions though. Number one, do the members of the Trinity agree on the work of salvation?
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Think about it. The Bible says that the Father elects a particular people.
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The Bible says that the Spirit takes the work that the
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Son does and applies them to the people that the Father has chosen. So the Father has chosen a particular people and the
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Spirit applies that work to that particular people. Why would we then say that Jesus' work applies to more people than the ones that the
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Father has chosen? Think through that for a minute. Is the Son going to go against the will of the
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Father, the one who sent Him to do this work? Those of you who were there on Wednesday, you remember I gave three
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A's for describing the work of the Trinity. The Father is the architect, the Son is the agent, the
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Spirit is the applier. If the Father is the architect and the
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Spirit applies the work to the ones that the Father has chosen, there's perfect unity there.
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Why do you then have a total breakdown when you get to the person of the Son? If I can put it a little bit bluntly, can't the
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Trinity get their act together on that front? Well, we would say of course they can. Something to think about.
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Let me give you a second question to think about. I'm going to put questions two and three together. Question two, does the
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Bible speak of the work of Christ as potential or actual?
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Does the Bible speak of Christ's work as potential or actual? By that I mean, does the
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Bible say that Christ made salvation possible or that He actually saves?
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Now, the question might sound absurd, but allow me to put it the way that most people answer the question.
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Well, yes, Jesus died for everyone. Yes, everybody can be saved, but you need to believe and then
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Jesus' death applies to you. Eddie and I were in the car this morning and I kind of described it like the vending machine.
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That all the drinks are in the vending machine, but you can't have one until you put in your however many cents and then you can have some of this.
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Well, if the atonement is like a vending machine, which is, I know it sounds bad, I know, but if the atonement is like a vending machine, well, your faith is the coin you put in to get some.
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Is that how the Bible describes it? No, I would argue the
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Bible doesn't describe the work of Christ as potential on anything. No, actually the Bible describes the work of Christ as purchasing the very repentance and faith that sinners need to believe in that work.
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I recommended this booklet in Return to the Gospel, in it J .F. Packer says the following, quote,
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God's saving purpose in the death of his son was not a mere ineffectual wish depending on his fulfillment, depending for its fulfillment on man's willingness to believe.
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The Bible sees the cross as revealing God's power to save, not his impotence. Christ did not win a hypothetical salvation for hypothetical believers, a mere possibility of salvation for anyone who might possibly believe, but a real salvation for his chosen people.
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In the words of my favorite set of movies of all time, Star Wars, that great theologian,
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Yoda, rightly says, do or do not, there is no try. And when it comes to the atonement, you didn't think you could learn about the atonement from Star Wars, could you?
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When it comes to the atonement with God, there is no, well, I'm trying, it's potential.
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No, either the cross actually saves, or it doesn't save at all. I'll give you the third question and then we'll move on.
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I don't have time to read it, but Romans chapter 8, verse 28 to 39, great section, we all love it.
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Who will separate us from the love of Christ? And Paul gives that litany of things and says, none of them. But know of the language, and again,
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I'm just going to raise the questions, I encourage you to go home and think about them. Who are the ones who receive this work?
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Beginning in verse 28, Paul's very specific in saying, that it is those who are called.
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Remember Romans 8, 28, the verse we all rightly love in times of suffering, when things don't make sense. All things work together for good for those who love
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God, for those who are called according to his purpose. And he goes on and talks about God's foreknowing and his calling and his justifying and glorifying that golden chain of redemption.
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And throughout that passage, I encourage you to go home and read it. Time and time and time again, the language is used.
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In fact, Paul's explicit. His elect, who's going to bring anything? I believe it's verse 33. Who will bring a charge against God's elect?
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I want to raise some questions. I know it's bad preaching form. The people who taught me preaching would be horrified that I'm doing this.
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But I'm going to leave the questions and not answer them. Because I think if you take some time and think through them, it answers the question of who did
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Jesus die for. I would argue he died for the ones that the Father gave him, the ones who will repent and believe.
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Question number four. So we've asked the question of what is the atonement? How does the atonement work?
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Who benefits from this atonement? Number four. What about the objections? What about the objections?
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This doctrine is not without its critics. There are lots of people who do not like what
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I just laid forward. Can I share some of those objections with you?
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Chances are you will hear them, especially as more liberal. You're not supposed to call them liberals anymore.
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You're supposed to call them progressive Christians now. Progressive Christians in particular like to attack this doctrine.
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In particular, there's three or four objections they like to give. I'll move through them very quickly.
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Number one, they say an atonement like this is entirely unnecessary. Entirely unnecessary.
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I have to apologize because I'm from the U .K., and a lot of this nonsense comes from the U .K. So two British authors,
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Joel Green and Mark Baker, published a book back in 2009 called Recovering the Scandal of the
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Cross. In that book, they basically say that penal substitutionary atonement as a theory is entirely unnecessary because, number one, they say sin is not guilt.
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Because sin doesn't lead to guilt, there's no guilt that needs to be satisfied. Secondly, they say there can be no obstacle to forgiveness of sin, at least not on God's part, because God is entirely love.
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Now, those of you who've ever heard me talk about the doctrine of God in particular, can you see the problem?
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If you can't, allow me to lay it out for you. Well, first of all, let's deal with the whole sin is not guilt thing.
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Sorry, the Bible actually says it is, Romans chapter 5, verses 12 through 21. That's really easy to deal with. If sin doesn't lead to any guilt that needs to be dealt with, a bunch of biblical passages don't make any sense.
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But what about the love part? Because you hear non -Christians even say this. Well, God's just love.
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You know, this is kind of like the sort of parodied line, which I think is not entirely a parody, personally. I like sinning.
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God likes forgiving. It's a great deal. Well, actually, the
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Bible doesn't. Firstly, putting aside the sort of view. Actually, let me pin.
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I'm trying to think on the fly how best to respond to this. Let me put a pin there. I'm going to come back to that. To say that there's no obstacle to forgiveness of sin misses the point that the
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Bible says, track it, that sin is indeed punishable.
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God himself says so. Exodus 34, that great scene where Moses demands to see
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God's glory and God says, okay, I'll show you my glory. And it says in that passage that Yahweh passed before Moses and proclaimed his name.
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He said, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God who is overflowing in kindness.
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Oh, and he's the one who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.
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Actually, an atonement like that is entirely necessary. Because, yes, God is love, but he's also a
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God of justice. Well, that kind of leads into the second objection. The second objection that some people have is such an atonement would take away from the character of God.
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Such an atonement would take away from the character of God. Now, this takes varying forms. Well, if you say that, some people say,
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God's love is not really love because God had to take it out on somebody else.
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There's one, again, British author. I'm so sorry. There's one
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British author, Steve Chalk, in a book that was very influential on this side of the pond, The Lost Message of Jesus, as he put it.
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People who hold this view, he said, hold to basically a form of cosmic child abuse. God's the angry dad who takes out his anger on his innocent son.
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So God's love is not really love. It's kind of, well, God took out his frustration on someone else.
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So now he can love you. Other people say, well, this isn't even just. Well, allow me to explain what the problem is with this one.
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That when you say, well, God is love, therefore when you say that God had to punish somebody, you've now subjected his love, which came up in the last one.
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You're making an assumption. Lots of Christians, unfortunately, make this assumption. So let me take a moment and correct it.
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The assumption is God is love, therefore love is up top. If you had a board,
01:00:04
I'd write this out. You have love up top, and then every other attribute of God comes underneath. Love becomes the filter through which you look at everything else.
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Because, hey, doesn't the Bible say God is love? Indeed it does. Therefore, some people say that to me.
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Well, God is love primarily, and everything else is filtered through his love. Allow me to get theological for a second.
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There's a doctrine we talk about called the doctrine of simplicity in theology. The doctrine of God's simplicity basically says that God is all of his attributes all of the time.
01:00:39
It's not that God has one attribute, which is the main one, and then all the other ones he can kind of choose to use and not use.
01:00:45
No. God is all of those things all of the time. To make the love of God so predominant that it rules out his justice is an example, in my opinion, of missing the forest for the trees.
01:01:02
I hasten on because I do need to kind of get to the conclusion. Some people say, well, thirdly, such an atonement assumes an impossible transfer of guilt.
01:01:12
How can you righteously punish someone else when they didn't sin? N .T.
01:01:19
Wright, who is considered by many to be a great scholar, I have my issues with many issues of N .T. Wright, he kind of puts forward an argument that it's like being in a courtroom and someone is guilty of murder and saying, well, this person didn't murder them, this person did.
01:01:33
When all the evidence said, no, this person did. That's the way he puts it. Well, in response to that,
01:01:40
I will simply point out the Bible teaches something very important. Those of you who know me know that my favorite doctrine of all of them in the
01:01:47
Bible is the doctrine of the believer's union with Christ. That when you were born again,
01:01:55
God united you by faith to Christ such that everything that Christ has, you have.
01:02:06
The Bible never says that Christ is over here and he's disconnected from the sinner who's over here and that Christ does this thing over here and then somehow it credits over to this person over here.
01:02:16
That's not how the Bible describes that. The way the Bible describes it is, Romans 6, verse 6, when he died, we died with him.
01:02:28
That it's fully representative because in that moment, Jesus was not just taking on pain and death and abandonment and the weight of sin and all of those things.
01:02:42
Disconnected from the sinner that, no, like the priest in the Old Testament who had the tribes engraved on his heart and a breastplate.
01:02:52
Jesus takes his own to the cross with him. So, no, it doesn't assume an impossible transfer of guilt because there really isn't a transfer.
01:03:02
Well, there is, but rather than saying that, well, it's an innocent person taking on for, no, it's
01:03:11
Christ dying for his own, bearing the names and the responsibility for them in himself.
01:03:19
Finally, some people say, this doctrine is just not relevant. It doesn't speak to our day, especially the last few weeks
01:03:29
I've been kind of watching the chatter and Christendom in relation to social issues. And people have said, well, you people who propound this doctrine, this doctrine doesn't do anything for social issues.
01:03:40
It doesn't do anything for individuals. It doesn't meet emotional needs.
01:03:46
There's no relevance to this doctrine whatsoever. We should just get rid of it. It's confusing. It makes God sound like an angry ogre.
01:03:52
Can't we just get rid of it? Now, I want to be honest,
01:03:58
I'm going to try not to roll my eyes at the intellectual narcissism. Narcissism is such a claim, basically believing that because it has no benefit to me directly, well,
01:04:07
I can't think of it, therefore it doesn't matter. That's nonsense. But actually, I'm going to close out my sermon with this.
01:04:14
There are some practical implications to this doctrine. This doctrine actually does matter. It actually does matter.
01:04:26
Let me give you a few as we close. Romans 5, verse 2, it's because of what
01:04:34
Jesus does on the cross that we can have hope in God. God is no longer the enemy. He is our friend.
01:04:39
And why can we say that? Because of what Jesus did on the cross.
01:04:46
Let's get really topical for a second. Lots of discussion about racial issues in the world today. Lots of discussion about, well, what's the church's role in all of that?
01:04:55
And people, I understand, get very annoyed when you say just preach the gospel. I don't understand why, personally.
01:05:03
Because Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 to 22, which we'll get to in our study of Ephesians, makes it very clear that how is it that God deals with ethnic tensions between his people, real ones like the ones between Jews and Gentiles, ethnic tensions that were warranted, ethnic tensions that were on both sides, you could argue were fair.
01:05:27
How does God deal with it? I believe it's four times in that section, in himself.
01:05:36
In fact, Paul's explicit. I believe it's chapter 2, verse 19. It's through his blood that God creates the new humanity, the one new man.
01:05:46
Well, if it's through his blood, that meant that someone had to die. It's through Christ's death on the cross that you have an objective ground for dealing with the problems that we face, not just with God, but with each other.
01:06:08
I'd love to say more. I'll save it for the 29th. I'd love to say so much more about that.
01:06:15
But here's a third and final benefit as we kind of close out this message and come to the Lord's table. Rightly understanding this doctrine provides a buffer for our liberties going out of sync.
01:06:31
It provides a buffer for our liberties going out of sync. Kofi, what do you mean by that?
01:06:37
Well, I find it interesting. I'm very fascinated by the subject of Christian liberty because I think it's very misunderstood in the 21st century.
01:06:47
I'm going to fight the urge to start trouble and talk about some of the ways it's misunderstood.
01:06:53
But suffice it to say, I think it's very misunderstood. Two biblical passages, if you want to understand
01:06:59
Christian liberty properly. Romans 14 to 15 and 1
01:07:06
Corinthians chapters 8, 9, and 10. Romans chapter 14 and 15 and 1
01:07:13
Corinthians 8, 9, 10. It's interesting that in both texts with a number of years apart, with totally different audiences, with very different problems.
01:07:26
Romans is kind of a good church. Paul doesn't really mention any problems. Corinth is anything but a good church, all kinds of problems.
01:07:35
But I want you to see this. Romans 14, 15. Romans chapter 14 and verse 15.
01:07:49
Romans chapter 14 and verse 15. Paul says this. As he's trying to explain to the
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Roman Christians how their liberties should work, how they should respect those who have differing convictions on matters.
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Paul says this. For if your brother or sister is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love.
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Now look what he says. Do not, by what you eat, destroy someone for whom
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Christ died. Paul can turn around and say the reason why you should not, under any circumstances, so abuse your liberties that somebody for whom
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Christ died is practically destroyed. The reason why you shouldn't? Well, I just said it.
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Because Christ died for that person. Christ bore the penalty for their sins.
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That's not a light thing. So don't treat it like a light thing by just wasting your liberties like that.
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How about 1 Corinthians chapter 8? Turn there with me and see this one. 1
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Corinthians chapter 8, verse 10. 1
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Corinthians chapter 8, verse 10. For if someone sees you, he's talking about the meat sacrifice, the idols issue.
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For if someone sees you, the one who has knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, won't his weak conscience be encouraged to eat food offered to idols?
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So the weak person, oh, here's the same language again. The brother or sister for whom
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Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge. Now if you sin like this against brothers and sisters and wound their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ.
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It's Christ's work on the cross that Paul, I don't want to say weaponizes because that's such a negative term, but he puts it to work and says, listen, because of Christ's death, you need to treat your brothers and sisters like they're actually brothers and sisters.
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That was the cost by which they became part of the family of God.
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And if that's true, that means that sometimes, let me jump on this a little bit, that means sometimes things that you like doing, you might have to say, this doesn't help my brother.
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Put that aside. I hear you all have an election happening in November.
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I can't vote, so I'm just kind of watching as an outsider. And do
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I think the Bible says stuff about politics? Absolutely, I do. But the reality is we don't all agree on some of those issues.
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Are those issues for which you should divide brother against sister? Are those the issues that you should go to bat for?
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I would argue Paul says no, no. Romans 14, those are liberty issues.
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Paul will say Romans 14, 19, the opinion that you have, literally the belief that you have, keep it between you and God.
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Why? Because you may unconsciously ruin the conscience of someone for whom
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Jesus died. Direct line from Christ's death to our unity as believers.
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As I conclude, I have to ask, who on earth would say that this doctrine is not relevant? Of course it is.
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It's preeminently relevant. Because it deals not just with our problems for eternity, but it provides answers for the problems that we face in life.
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Of course, dealing with the biggest problem that we face, the problem of our estrangement from God. If you start monkeying with this doctrine, give it enough time.
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And church history is littered with examples from the Reformation on, of people who started toying with the atonement. And before you know it, the biblical gospel syncs with it.
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Beloved, take time. Think through this doctrine. Like I said, we have a couple of resources on our resource table.
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Grab them. Get to grips with this doctrine. Because I really do believe that if you lose this doctrine, you will lose the gospel.
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Join with me as I breathe a word of prayer, and then we'll come to the Lord's table. Our Father, we are reminded of the fact that Christ died for us every time we read the scriptures.
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And yet, Father, forgive us that we don't often plunge headlong into the depths of this.
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We kind of take for granted that we know what it means when it says that Jesus died for us. Help us that we would never take for granted what happened on the cross.
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Help us that we would live out of that reality. As we engage with a world which sees so much division, recognizing that the only unity that can be had is unity in the blood of Christ.
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As we deal with one another as believers, and we have differing opinions on issues, and we feel strongly about varying issues.
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Help us to temper our strength of opinion with the reality that the believer that I disagree with is someone else for whom
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Christ died. Father, help us to grow in our appreciation for this doctrine of the atonement.
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May we love Jesus more dearly, may we follow Him more nearly, and may we see Him more clearly as we think through this truth.