Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is an Atonement Model that has its roots in the Satisfaction Model of Anselm of Canterbury from the 1100s. PSA's main idea is that Jesus Christ died to satisfy God's wrath against human sin. Penal means punishment. The Substitution part refers to Jesus taking our place on the cross, or taking our place enduring God's wrath while on the cross. Atonement is about the reconciling of man to God who has been separated by sin.
PSA has seventeen key claims. I will examine each of these in light of the scriptures. Ultimately, the conclusion is that PSA should be rejected as a scriptural Atonement Model.
== Penal Substitutionary Atonement's 17 Claims ==
Please note that the 17 claims below are explanations of the claims and do not reflect beliefs of the churches of Christ. We will address these beliefs in the next section from scripture.
=== 1 - Original Sin ===
Original sin is the doctrine that Adam, as mankind's federal head, transmits the guilt of his sin to all mankind. 
Around 400 AD, a former Manichean Gnostic named Augustine used a British man named Pelagius as a focus for exchanging Biblical teaching about sin and salvation for something more akin to his Manichean roots. While Augustine was not the first to teach this doctrine, but he is the one who brought it into the proto-Catholic church. It has found wide acceptance in Catholicism, Protestantism, and even to some extent in Eastern Orthodox faiths. 
=== 2 - Total Hereditary Depravity ===
During the Reformation period, a man named John Calvin took Augustine's doctrines further and said that, because of Adam's sin and federal headship, all humans are conceived in a state of total depravity. Total Hereditary Depravity (THD) is, according to Ligonier Ministries "the idea of total in total depravity doesn’t mean that all human beings are as wicked as they can possibly be" but that "the fall was so serious that it affects the whole person." In other words, we are incapable of good moral choices as sin colors everything we do.
According to THD, until God supernaturally, directly alters your very nature by regeneration, you are incapable of even faith in Jesus, though you may appear to mimic it for a time.
=== 3 - Infant Guilt of Sin ===
According to PSA, even infants, who are innocent of personal sin, are still guilty of Original Sin, as Augustine taught. This has led some to teach doctrines found nowhere in scripture such as the "baptism" of infants or infant damnation. At some points in Roman Catholicism, teaches both of these, but waffles on the latter. Other theologians such as James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries hold it consistently. This concept is also taught in the 1689 London Baptist Confession in Chapter 10, Section 3 which reads:
* 3) Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit; who worketh when, and where, and how he pleases; so also are all elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.
* 4) Others not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet not being effectually drawn by the Father, they neither will nor can truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men that receive not the Christian religion be saved; be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature and the law of that religion they do profess.
=== 4 - Adam's Sin Infinitely Offends God ===
Again, deriving from the Satisfaction Model of Atonement promulgated by Anselm, PSA teaches that the sin of Adam infinitely offends God because the gravity of the offense depends on the worth of the one offended. This Satisfaction Model derived from the Medieval Period notion of honor. For example if a peasant who was on the same nobility level as another peasant were to accidentally strike or bump into that second peasant, there would be no dishonor done. The first could apologize to the second and be on his way. However, if a peasant were to do the same to a noble, say a Duke or a Knight, then the noble's honor has been besmirched and the peasant would owe a debt of honor or suffer punishment on a level equivalent to the dishonor done to the noble based on the noble's rank. The higher the rank, the higher the dishonor and the more extensive the debt owed.
Since God is infinitely higher in nobility than humans, Adam's sin (not to mention our own personal sins) offends God to an infinite extent.
=== 5 - All Sin Is A Debt We Owe God For Dishonoring Him ===
The necessary logical next step in Anselm's doctrine of Satisfaction is that because we have dishonored a Holy God who is infinitely above us, we owe an infinite debt that we cannot hope to pay. Neither an individual nor all of humanity could pay such a debt. This dishonor or offense is seen as a crime against God. This last point will come to bear when we talk about the Penal part of PSA.
=== 6 - Even Infants Owe This Debt ===
Putting together the ideas above, Original Sin, Total Hereditary Depravity, Infant Guilt of Sin, Original Sin Offends God, and Sin is therefore a Debt humans owe God, the next logical step is that even infants owe this debt. If infants are guilty of Original Sin, if they have inherited Total Depravity and all that they do is therefore corrupted by sin, their sin offends a Holy God as all sin does and thus this debt owed to God for dishonoring Him is owed by infants as much as anyone else.
=== 7 - In the Old Testament Era, God Accepted Temporary Payment of This Debt By Animal Blood ===
While the blood of bulls and goats cannot permanently take away sin, it could hold off God's wrath for a time until the promised Messiah could come and make a proper, full payment. Thus, the elect under the Old Testament could truly be saved from God's wrath. Note that this debt must be paid to save mankind from God's wrath rather than from sin. This is a major important distinction of PSA.
=== 8 - God Could Have Redeemed Man by the Simple Act of Willing It ===
According to Anselm, an Omnipotent God has the power and authority to redeem mankind from sin by simply willing it to be so. He had the capacity to say that man's infinite debt to Him was simply forgiven. However, God chose not to do this.
=== 9 - God Cannot Forgive Sin Without First Punishing the Sinner ===
God chose not to simply forgive the debt because it goes against His nature to simply forgive sin without punishment first. While this had its beginnings with Anselm's Satisfaction Model, it was more fully developed by the teachings of John Calvin, Martin Luther, and others. Sin must be punished else it cannot be forgiven.
=== 10. The Redemption Must Mirror the Fall ===
Anselm and later theologians who developed PSA taught that the full redemption of man, which happened in Christ at the cross, must mirror the fall. The term "mirror" is used in that it did not replicate, duplicate, or mechanically reverse the fall. It was a reflection of it such that some things were intensely opposite of what the fall was, just as the image in the mirror is the opposite of the object it reflects. Man fell because of sin of the first Adam, and so man is raised by righteousness of the last Adam (Christ). Man's fall was without blood (in which there is life) and so the redemption of man required blood (in order to restore his life). Man sought to become as God and so he sinned, thus to redeem him, God must needs have become man. Man's fall was easy and thus the redemption must be as hard and painful as possible.
Thus, Christ needed not only to suffer, but He needed to suffer the most brutal, excruciatingly painful, horrifying death imaginable.
=== 11 - Only the death of the God-Man is Worth Enough To Recompense God ===
Since God is infinitely holy and since the offense against Him brings infinite dishonor, the only valid payment that could pay to recompense God for this dishonor was an infinite sacrifice. Thus, God the Son must needs have come down as a man and died as a wage of mankind's sin as the infinite God-man sacrifice to pay the debt.
=== 12 - Christ Became Incarnate so His Humanity can Suffer as a Substitute for Us ===
Because it is humanity that sinned in Adam, Christ must needs have become incarnate as a man in order to suffer as a man in our place. It is wholly predicated on this idea of paying the debt through suffering that PSA is built upon. The Penal aspect of this doctrine is payment for a crime. God's wrath demands that man suffer infinitely for his sin. Man cannot suffer infinitely because man is finite. Thus, Jesus Christ incarnated in order to pay that infinite debt by suffering in our place. This is the Substitutionary part of the PSA Model.
Note that this model has nothing to do with His sinless life, the healing, the moral examples, bringing victory over death and sin, or anything leading up to the cross. It is wholly about paying this debt and satisfying God's wrath for the crime of dishonoring Him.
=== 13 - God Pours Out His Wrath on Christ Pretending that Christ is Mankind ===
Even though, according to this model, it is mankind in Adam that is guilty of the crime of sin, of dishonoring God, and deserving of punishment and wrath, God had arbitrarily decided that He will pour out His wrath on His own, innocent Son in punishment for our sin, and forgive us of the debt. Though my analogy is infinitely smaller in magnitude, I will give it to the purpose of helping readers understand what this point means. It is akin to me committing a murder and the judge deciding to have his own son executed instead of me and treating me as if I had not committed the murder before the law.
PSA says God crucified Jesus, not man.
=== 14 - On the Cross, Christ Becomes Literal Sin and a Literal Curse ===
2 Corinthians 5:21 reads - "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." PSA adherents choose to interpret this passage in isolation without context of the rest of scripture and so the phrase "made him to be sin for us" means for them that Jesus became murder, theft, rape, covetousness, adultery, child molesting, and all other kinds of sin. This is taught explicitly by men like the late R.C. Sproul and Todd White.
=== 15 - God's Eyes Are Too Holy to Look Upon Sin ===
God the Father, who is infinitely holy, is unable to tolerate sin. He cannot even look upon sin. So, as a natural corollary to #14, the Father turns His back on Christ, abandoning Him on the cross. Again, taking in isolation the words of Jesus spoken on the cross as recorded in Mark 15:34 - "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?", the PSA adherents conclude that God the Father forsook Jesus, turned His eyes from Jesus while Jesus was on the cross and the Godhead was separated in that moment.
=== 16 - Christ Dies on the Cross As Sin Appeasing God's Wrath ===
When Christ was crucified as a sinless sacrifice, He became all sin (or in some cases, only the sin of the elect) past, present, and future. Thus, Christ needed not only to suffer, but He needed to suffer the most brutal, excruciatingly painful, horrifying death imaginable in order to satisfy the infinite wrath of God. In so doing, he paid that infinite debt due because of sin and thereby removed the need for further sacrifice by appeasing God's wrath once and for all.
=== 17 - Thus Christ's Death Ransoms us From the Wrath of God ===
Rather than ransoming us from sin and death, PSA teaches that Christ ransomed us from the wrath of God.
== Scriptural Response to the Points of Penal Substitutionary Atonement ==
I will, in most cases, be providing passages of scripture that directly contradict the individual points of PSA. For more complex headings, I will expound further on passages and reason from them to show that these points cannot be true.
=== 1 - Original Sin ===
Ezekiel 18:20 - "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."
I would encourage you to go read the whole chapter for context. The premise of original sin is that either the guilt of sin or a "sinful nature" is passed on from Adam to all his descendants. While there are various proof-texts proponents of this doctrine will cite, none teach the concepts of hereditary sin, sin nature, or Adam's federal headship. If they did, there would be a contradiction in scripture (to this verse). Since no contradictions exist in scripture, this verse is sufficient alone to clearly and explicitly deny the doctrine.
For more information, click on the Total Hereditary Depravity link in the title of section 2 below.
=== 2 - Total Hereditary Depravity ===
Just like Original Sin above, Ezekiel 18 eliminates any possibility that depravity, sin, or the like is transmitted across generations. As I have written a complete article on this topic, just click the link above to see a full refutation of this doctrine.
=== 3 - Infant Guilt of Sin ===
Romans 7:9 - "For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." In this passage, Paul speaks of being alive without the law once. Paul is obviously not talking about physical life and death here because he is still physically alive after the death spoken of in this passage. This must then be a reference to spiritual life and later death due to sin. The only possibility that makes sense here is that Paul, as a young child, did not understand the law and therefore could not sin and thus he was spiritually alive. When he reached a point in his life where he was mature enough to understand the law and sin, he made that choice to sin and died spiritually. We often refer to this as the age of accountability.
Deuteronomy 1:39 - "Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it."
Numbers 14:29 - "Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward which have murmured against me."
When these two related passages are put together, we see that "little ones" had no knowledge of good and evil, so much so that even children up to age 19 were spared from the judgment against Israel for the fear and rebellion of the 10 spies that went into the land of Canaan. Furthermore, we read in Romans 9:11 that Jacob and Esau in the womb had "done neither good nor evil". Sin is defined as "transgression of the law" of God (1 John 3:4). To transgress is an active verb, a thing you do. Infants and the unborn cannot do evil, therefore they cannot sin, and as shown above, they do not inherit it either.
=== 4 - Adam's Sin Infinitely Offends God ===
This one is a bit harder to refute by listing a single scripture, not because its true, but because its just not a concept found in scripture at all. Anselm's idea of the nobility of God and Him being offended by sin is borne out of medieval Feudalism nearly a thousand years after the last book of the Bible was written. It is more logical to consider the idea of how our finite action could somehow achieve something infinite, which is an impossibility. Also, when we consider the nature of God and passages such as John 3:16 and Romans 5:8, we come to understand that God is not some feudal noble offended by our breach of decorum and seeking restitution. He is a loving God seeking to restore the relationship between Himself and His creation that we individually break by our own sin (Rom 5:12).
=== 5 - All Sin Is A Debt We Owe God For Dishonoring Him ===
If the last premise is false, then this one, which is based on it must also be false. Sin is not spoken of as a debt we owe God anywhere in scripture. Sin is the master to which we are enslaved (Rom 6:16) and our wages earned from that master is spiritual death (Romans 6:23; Genesis 2:17; Isaiah 59:2). Jesus came and died to pay off our debt to sin by dying on the cross and shedding His blood, washing away our sin and setting us free from that horrid master (Romans 6:3-18; ). Any debt we might owe to God is not a debt that is paid, but a debt that is forgiven (Matthew 18:23-27). Forgiveness of a debt doesn't mean that someone else paid off a debt we owe. Forgiveness means that the one to which the debt is owed wipes the slate clean as if the debt were never owed and absorbs the "loss" of the debt themselves. 
While on earth, Jesus had the power to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24) without a payment being made. This shows completely the nature of God's forgiveness in comparison to God being the angry noble demanding payment from us peasants for dishonoring Him.
=== 6 - Even Infants Owe This Debt ===
If infants do not inherit Adam's sin, and infants cannot sin personally, then infants cannot owe any spiritual debt to anyone to any extent. Jesus said "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16) If the kingdom of heaven, which is the church, the body of the saved (Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 5:23), is made up of such as the little children, then we must conclude that since the church is made up of those in a right relationship with God, then children must be in that right relationship with God. They have not sinned and have not been separated from God yet by that sin, thus, it is irrational to argue that they owe any debt of this nature.
=== 7 - In the Old Testament Era, God Accepted Temporary Payment of This Debt By Animal Blood ===
Hebrews 10:4 - "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins."
Romans 4:3-7 "3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. 4 Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5 But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, 7 Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered." (Read the whole chapter in fact.)
In the Old Testament, the animal sacrifices could not pay the debt of sin. Certainly they could not forgive sin. In the Old Testament, people were either seen as righteous such as Enoch (Genesis 5:18-24) and Noah (Genesis 6:9; 7:1) or counted righteous based on faithfulness to God as Abraham was. If the latter, then they looked forward to the coming Messiah to save them from their sins and find forgiveness (Read Hebrews).
=== 8 - God Could Have Redeemed Man by the Simple Act of Willing It ===
This is the only true premise in the list. As shown above, Jesus had the power to forgive sins while on Earth (Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24) without a payment being made. Yet simply doing this for all of mankind would not have helped mankind overcome sin and work to better himself by turning away from sin and towards God. It would simply have enabled mankind's sin. This is why God does not forgive without repentance. He loves us and wants the best for us, which is that we be free of sin (John 8:32; Romans 6:17-18; 1 John) and reconciled to Him (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18).
=== 9 - God Cannot Forgive Sin Without First Punishing the Sinner (Anselm) ===
For the third time, this is demonstrably false from scripture. Once again, Jesus had the power to forgive sins while on Earth (Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24) without punishing the sinner.
Furthermore, to forgive debt is the opposite of punishing a debtor (or some whipping boy stand in). In forgiving debt, the debt is erased. It is declared as released as if the debt were never owed in the first place. Forgiveness is a result of grace, not of work or effort. In punishment for a debt, a debt is satisfied as if paid in full. Punishment for debt is a matter of work, of doing that which pays off the debt in some manner either through mandatory servitude or other penalty as required by law. Romans 4 teaches that we are forgiven like Abraham as a matter of grace based on our faithfulness, not as a matter of works of the law of Moses or merit. We do not "work off the debt" because the debt is forgiven.
The concepts of forgiveness and punishment for debt are mutually exclusive concepts. There was nothing punitive, nothing penal in relationship to what Jesus endured on the cross at all. To argue that there was is to argue that our reconciliation with God was reckoned as a matter of paying off a debt to God rather than forgiveness. Thus, we must conclude that Jesus did not suffer punishment at all on the cross. 
=== 10. The Redemption Must Mirror the Fall (Anselm) ===
While Romans 5 does give us a few explicit "mirror" examples, none of those listed by Paul and nowhere in scripture is the idea that PSA presents concerning this. The brutality of Christ's death had nothing to do with God's wrath, which wasn't even poured out on Jesus according to PSA until the moment He died. The brutality of Christ's death highlighted the extent of evil that sin is, the ugliness of sin. It was not God's wrath that put Jesus on the cross, but the sins of men. God is not charged with the horrendous torture and murder of His own Son. The Jews were (Acts 2:36) and it was at the hands of humans, specifically the Romans, that this heinous murder was carried out.
=== 11 - Only the death of the God-Man is Worth Enough To Recompense God ===
This premise is predicated on previous premises in the PSA model. As we have already shown those earlier premises to be false, this one must then be false as well. Jesus death was not to recompense God for lost honor. The need of Jesus as both God and man to die was to be the mediator between both parties (1 Timothy 2:5). He needed to experience human life as we experienced it, to lay down His own life and take it up again to defeat death and sin (Hebrew 2). Only as both God and man could He do this for all mankind and thus reconcile mankind to God.
=== 12 - Christ Became Incarnate so His Humanity can Suffer as a Substitute for Us ===
In PSA, the idea of the Substitute is that Christ was a substitute for us in taking on the punishment of God's wrath. This is not taught in scripture. Christ became incarnate, as Hebrews 2 and 4 talk about, so that He could live as one of us, destroy the power of the Devil, condemn sin, and defeat death. It is not just the death of Christ that saves us, but the whole of Christ, His entire life, death, burial, and resurrection. In that resurrection of His flesh, we have hope of resurrection of our own bodies (1 Corinthians 15). Without becoming incarnate, Christ could not have died at all. God as an eternal spirit cannot die, cannot be separated from Himself. Thus, by becoming human, Christ became mortal and was able to die and subsequently be raised from the dead.
It had nothing to do with Him being our substitute to endure punishment and wrath.
=== 13 - God Pours Out His Wrath on Christ Pretending that Christ is Mankind ===
Proverbs 17:15 - "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord."
To condemn the just in order to justify the wicked is considered an abomination to Yahweh. If Christ was punished in our place in order to justify us, then God perpetuated an abomination. In this sense, to justify would mean that though we are still sinners and still bear the guilt of sin, we are declared righteous before the law. This is impossible for God as it is, by definition, unjust to justify sin.
Rather, in Christ dying on the cross and shedding His blood, He provided cleansing, a means of washing away our sins so that we were no longer guilty of them. With our sins washed away, our souls cleansed of all unrighteousness (Acts 22:16; 1 John 1:7), we stand before God justified in the sight of His law because we have no sin any longer. Christ removed it.
==== Objection: What about Isaiah 53:4? ====
I have a whole commentary on Isaiah 53 and would even suggest that you getting a running start at it from chapter 52. It is noted in verse 4 that it was man, specifically the Israelites that esteemed (to regard or consider as if) Jesus stricken, smitten by God and afflicted (punished) by Him. The Jews thought Jesus was a blasphemer and was getting His due punishment for this by the hand of God. We know that Jesus was not a blasphemer, that He is indeed God, therefore their perception that Jesus was smitten by God is false. In Isaiah 53:7, we see that it was the Jews that oppressed and afflicted Jesus, not the Father. Yet He stood silent before them giving no defense to these evil men.
=== 14 - On the Cross, Christ Becomes Literal Sin and a Literal Curse ===
This is absurd on the face of it, but incredulity does not an argument make. For this point, we must examine the various prooftexts and point out the broader context that explains them.
1 Corinthians 5:21 - "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
First, go read the whole chapter. Note that, even in this verse, whatever "made Him to be sin for us" means, it was done to make us the righteousness of God in Him. In this chapter, Paul speaks to the end of reconciling mankind to God. Just as we talked about in earlier points looking to Hebrews, Jesus became man, became mortal, to defeat sin and death and reconcile man to his Creator. Again we point to Romans 8:3 where Paul writes that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful flesh". Jesus, Himself, was without sin, but He came in our likeness, He became a partaker of flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14), He was tempted in all points like as we are tempted (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is the Man of Sorrows spoken of in Isaiah 53:3 living as us and enduring mortality, frailty, grief.
Becoming sin on the cross is a figure of speech meaning that Jesus became as one of us, mortal, and died on the cross. This burden is not that of "becoming" sin - i.e. becoming murder, fornication, idolatry, theft, etc. - but becoming human, living perfectly, then using the shedding of that innocent blood by the sin of man to wash that sin away. When mankind sinned, the Servant interceded and gave them life instead. To bear this burden was not to be made as if He had been the one who had sinned, but to take up their cause and heal them, cleanse them that they might live and not remain dead in their trespasses.
=== 15 - God's Eyes Are Too Holy to Look Upon Sin ===
In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve sin, God walks in the garden of Eden and talks with them. Throughout the book of Genesis we see God beholding sin, talking with people who were sinners like Abraham and Moses, even calling them friends. Every Theophany that speaks to man shows this point to be false. Then there is Jesus Himself, God in the flesh, living among sinners, going to their homes, teaching them the Way. He looked upon them daily and it caused Him to weep for them so much did He want to reconcile them to Himself. God can look upon sin. He is not fragile and His holiness is not impugned by our actions, just as our spiritual state is not altered by merely observing sin done by those around us.
Furthermore, the teaching that Jesus became separated from the Godhead, was no longer God in that moment, is blasphemous. It denies the deity of Christ, at least in that moment, and fundamentally changes the nature of the Godhead (or Trinity if you prefer). Any model that teaches such an abhorrent doctrine should be summarily rejected, thrown on the garbage heap, and forgotten.
=== 16 - Christ Dies on the Cross As Sin Appeasing God's Wrath ===
There are a number of issues with this point in addition to the abomination of punishing the innocent, of God abusing His own Son this way. First of all, we know that Christ died for all (1 John 2:2; John 3:16; etc.) If Christ endured the wrath of God for all the sins of the whole world, and if not all men are saved because they reject God's grace, and if those men who reject God's grace are punished individually for their own sin, then God is punishing sin twice and Christ is doubly wronged for receiving punishment of God's wrath for sins that are not ever forgiven.
Furthermore, this premise is not stated anywhere in scripture. The wrath of God is never tied to the death of Christ in the manner of Christ receiving that wrath. Wrath is almost always tied to the punishment of nations for ongoing, unrepentant wickedness.
==== Objection: What about passages such as Romans 5:9 and 9:22? ====
Romans 5:9 - "Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him."
This says that we are justified by His blood and saved from wrath (the upcoming wrath that would be poured out on the Jewish State soon). The verse does not say that Jesus endured wrath at all. Romans 9:22 indicates the nature and target of God's wrath in the context of Romans. It is the Jewish nation for their nigh 1500 years of rebellion against God, the murder of His Son, and the persecution of His Son's bride, the church.
Neither of these passages have Jesus as the target of God's wrath. Neither does Isaiah 53.
==== Objection: What about Isaiah 53:10? ====
It pleased Yahweh to bruise Him - One of the oft pushed misconceptions of this phrase is that God the Father was pouring out His wrath on the Son and was gleeful about it. This misconception makes God out to be some sadistic tyrannical figure like some pagan deity and it is not only wrong, but disgusting. The reality is that the pleasure is not in the torture on the cross, but what that suffering by the Suffering Servant accomplished, namely the reconciling of the world to Himself. The Father, Son, and Spirit were all pleased that Jesus made this self-sacrifice in order to be reconciled to the world. Remember, Jesus went willingly, putting Himself on the cross (John 10:11, 17-18).
He hath put Him to grief - Yahweh has put the Suffering Servant to grief, to endure the brutality of man to show us they way to act towards those who do evil to us. Remember that Christ taught to turn the other cheek? (Matt 5:39) Christ could have rejected going to the cross, could have called legions of celestial angels to come and destroy His enemies. Instead, He spread His arms wide on the cross inviting all to come to Him despite their sin and rebellion. The grief He endured was for our benefit.
=== 17 - Thus Christ's Death Ransoms us From the Wrath of God ===
This, then, is the conclusion of the series of premises. Since I have shown the premises to be false, the argument is unsound and the conclusion is not true.
In Truth and Love.
Category:Denominationalism