Notes From My Phone: Penal Substitution
A while ago, I said I would think about starting a series sharing some of the more controversial tidbits from my personal musings. Because my recent Easter reflection still won't leave my brain, I decided to go ahead and start round 2 of this series. (Y'know...only four years later.)
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We think our sin separates us from Him.
But even in Genesis, when God knew Adam and Eve had sinned, He still chose to go walk in the garden in the cool of the day to be with them.
Yet it was *Adam and Eve* who hid themselves from God, not God who hid Himself from Adam and Eve’s sin.
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We were taught somewhere along the way that God can’t stand to be in the presence of sin.
But Jesus—who was God—regularly broke bread with lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners.
That’s one of the main reasons that the Pharisees tried to prove he *couldn’t* be the son of God.
Would God really commune with these sorts of people?
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What I find interesting about the Jesus story is that he often forgives people of their sins before he ever goes to the cross.
(That’s another reason the super religious Jewish nationalist elders wanted to kill him. They thought it was blasphemy. “Only God can forgive sins” they said.)
And yet here he is, telling people their faith has saved them, their sins are forgiven, and they are healed.
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That’s why I can’t really get behind Penal Substitution as the *only* definition of what happens on the cross.
Because what that theory describes is not forgiveness; it’s a payment. It’s not justice; it’s trickery. And it certainly isn’t love; it’s monstrous.
Jesus tells a story about a son who wastes his inheritance early and squanders it on things of this world. This son realizes what he’s done and is ashamed, so he plans to go back and beg his father to let him at least work as a slave in his household. Instead, the father runs to his lost child while he is still a long way out, adorning him with a robe and a ring, and declares a feast to welcome him home.
It’s a shocking and surprising story of grace.
The penal substitution theory would replace that warm embrace with a cold angry scowl, with the father telling his prodigal wretch that he is unworthy of his own name, and in a rage he calls for his guards to whip him ragged and toss him into the dungeons. Until suddenly, out runs the older brother, who tells his father to punish him instead, so the older brother is taken off to be whipped and imprisoned. Immediately, the father turns to the younger son with a big smile and tells him “now that your debt has been paid, I will overlook your filthiness and welcome you back in.” The end.
What a horrible, ugly story.
(And yet this is what so many of us believe about *God*.)
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Forgiveness literally means to release a debt. It means that the one who originally offered the loan takes a loss, and lets the borrower off the hook, so to speak.
I suppose you could do some incredible mental gymnastics to make Penal Substitution look like forgiveness:
We owe God $1000, but we can’t pay it. Jesus comes in and pays God $1000 for us, and then he doesn’t make us pay it back to him.
So in this case, Jesus technically forgives us/frees us from our debt, but he still has to appease the Father first by offering payment of some sort. So God himself doesn’t actually forgive us—he’s merely bought off—and somehow, he actually becomes our enemy in this whole process? Why do we need to pay God off in the first place?
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I think the reason Penal Substitution theory is so prevalent in evangelicalism is because of the inherent connections to Hell theology.
(Whoop, there it is.)
If your starting assumption is that the result of sin is hell, then the only way to get out of it is for *someone* to pay that penalty for us, right?
But here’s (at least) two problems with that theory:
So when it comes to the idea of paying God off, or even the idea of a blood sacrifice, as some kind of “forgiveness” metaphor, I can’t help but wonder…does that mean the Almighty Creator is somehow subservient to greater gods of Justice and Law?
Can’t God do what God wants? Doesn’t He have the power to forgive whom He chooses? (Isn’t that the whole point of the parable of the vineyard workers?)
Or is God instead bound to higher powers and systems, where forgiveness is impossible and every debt must be paid for in full? (Whether or not that debt is paid for by the debtor or by someone else in their stead is, apparently, not important enough for this arbitrary System of Justice that is greater than God himself.)
—
That’s why I find such resonance and importance in the stories of Jesus forgiving people *during* his ministry.
Because he was really, truly, letting-them-off-the-hook forgiving them. He didn’t require any payment. He wasn’t sacrificing goats on altars or throwing virgins into volcanoes. He didn’t tell them “your sins will be forgiven only after I die on the cross for you.”
He simply…forgave them. Had compassion on them. Healed them.
—
And if Jesus is God, then that should say a whole lot about Him. About our assumptions of the work He’s doing and the nature of the story we find ourselves in.
—
When Jesus started his public ministry, he read from the prophet Isaiah and basically said: “this is my mission. Today this message has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
What was the message?
The year of Jubilee. The arrival of the King. The fixing of what has been broken, and the undoing of all evil.
Jesus is fulfilling the promise that God made all those centuries ago in Genesis 3, when sin first corrupted His “good/VERY good” creation: that He was going to set things right again, that every square inch of creation will be restored, and that his blessings will flow far as the curse is found.
—
We’re sinful. But *we* stepped away from God in our own shame and fear; it was never Him who distanced himself from us.
Therefore, it’s not God who needs a payment for us to be reconciled. It’s for us to have our blindfold of fear and shame removed.
When Jesus chooses to die that horrible death on the cross, that’s what he was doing: revealing to us how much the Creator loves us and just how far He will go to prove it to us. He was showing us how blinded we are by our own systems of power and greed and violence—bred out of our feelings of shame and inadequacy—and we in turn assumed that God must be even harsher at those same systems than we were.
But for him to be truly vulnerable and die at the hands of those systems—and then prove them to be empty and void and meaningless when he conquered death itself and rose again on the third day—he’s shining a light on the darkness, removing the scales from our eyelids, declaring his Love for us, revealing what the Father is like, fulfilling his promise to restore Creation, and declaring himself as King, all at the same time.
It’s mysterious and beautiful and glorious and holy.
—
And in comparison, penal substitution just seems rather profane (and, frankly, like an overtly pagan understanding of the Divine.) #sorrynotsorry
—
Two extra bits, for what they’re worth:
There’s a fascinating story in the Old Testament about a covenant God makes with Abraham (Genesis 15). In those days, you would slaughter animals and cut their carcasses in half, and then you would walk through them as you made your promise, in essence declaring “may it be done to me as was done to these animals if I betray my commitment to you."
Very serious. Very gruesome stuff.
But when God makes this covenant with Abraham, it’s not Abraham who has to walk through the “tunnel of death.” It’s God.
This whole time, it’s been God who bears the burden of the covenant and is working to restore the world. It’s not up to us to make payment. There’s no end of the bargain we have to uphold; God took the responsibility entirely upon Himself.
Wild.
—
Another piece of Old Testament imagery that feels fascinatingly relevant is the Passover.
This was the final of the Ten Plagues, the worst one that eventually convinced Pharaoh to let Moses and his people go, when the angel of death killed all the firstborn children in the city.
Unless the doorposts of your house were painted with the blood of a lamb, you weren’t safe (Exodus 12).
Tellingly, Jesus’ final days happened during the time of Passover. The Christians are right to refer to him as “the lamb that was slain” and "the lamb that comes to take away the sins of the world."
But what if that lamb is actually a Passover lamb, instead of the more commonly assumed sacrificial lamb?
What if, somehow, Jesus’s death acts as some kind of cosmic Passover, and his blood is painted on the doorposts of Creation itself, therefore saving and redeeming everything and everyone within it, just as the original lamb’s blood did on the doorposts of the Israelites homes during the first Passover?
If your starting assumption is that the result of sin is hell, then the only way to get out of it is for *someone* to pay that penalty for us, right?
But here’s (at least) two problems with that theory:
- the Bible says that “the wages of sin is death.” Not Hell. The result of our wickedness is that we die. Which is terrible and sad to be sure, but that’s why Jesus’ resurrection as the firstborn among the dead is so gloriously hopeful and triumphant. He defeated the curse. And now we don’t have to suffer that same fate.
- If Hell was as central to this whole story of humanity and sin and our relationship to God as evangelicals believe, then you’d think it would show up in Genesis 3. (Y’know, the account of when sin first entered the world and God’s response to it.) Nowhere in this passage is there any mention of eternal damnation or conscious torment after death. Instead, *life* will be difficult and painful, and it will eventually end. But the more astounding thing is that, already—right here at the very beginning of the story—God is already promising that He will fix it.
So when it comes to the idea of paying God off, or even the idea of a blood sacrifice, as some kind of “forgiveness” metaphor, I can’t help but wonder…does that mean the Almighty Creator is somehow subservient to greater gods of Justice and Law?
Can’t God do what God wants? Doesn’t He have the power to forgive whom He chooses? (Isn’t that the whole point of the parable of the vineyard workers?)
Or is God instead bound to higher powers and systems, where forgiveness is impossible and every debt must be paid for in full? (Whether or not that debt is paid for by the debtor or by someone else in their stead is, apparently, not important enough for this arbitrary System of Justice that is greater than God himself.)
—
That’s why I find such resonance and importance in the stories of Jesus forgiving people *during* his ministry.
Because he was really, truly, letting-them-off-the-hook forgiving them. He didn’t require any payment. He wasn’t sacrificing goats on altars or throwing virgins into volcanoes. He didn’t tell them “your sins will be forgiven only after I die on the cross for you.”
He simply…forgave them. Had compassion on them. Healed them.
—
And if Jesus is God, then that should say a whole lot about Him. About our assumptions of the work He’s doing and the nature of the story we find ourselves in.
—
When Jesus started his public ministry, he read from the prophet Isaiah and basically said: “this is my mission. Today this message has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
What was the message?
The year of Jubilee. The arrival of the King. The fixing of what has been broken, and the undoing of all evil.
Jesus is fulfilling the promise that God made all those centuries ago in Genesis 3, when sin first corrupted His “good/VERY good” creation: that He was going to set things right again, that every square inch of creation will be restored, and that his blessings will flow far as the curse is found.
—
We’re sinful. But *we* stepped away from God in our own shame and fear; it was never Him who distanced himself from us.
Therefore, it’s not God who needs a payment for us to be reconciled. It’s for us to have our blindfold of fear and shame removed.
When Jesus chooses to die that horrible death on the cross, that’s what he was doing: revealing to us how much the Creator loves us and just how far He will go to prove it to us. He was showing us how blinded we are by our own systems of power and greed and violence—bred out of our feelings of shame and inadequacy—and we in turn assumed that God must be even harsher at those same systems than we were.
But for him to be truly vulnerable and die at the hands of those systems—and then prove them to be empty and void and meaningless when he conquered death itself and rose again on the third day—he’s shining a light on the darkness, removing the scales from our eyelids, declaring his Love for us, revealing what the Father is like, fulfilling his promise to restore Creation, and declaring himself as King, all at the same time.
It’s mysterious and beautiful and glorious and holy.
—
And in comparison, penal substitution just seems rather profane (and, frankly, like an overtly pagan understanding of the Divine.) #sorrynotsorry
—
Two extra bits, for what they’re worth:
There’s a fascinating story in the Old Testament about a covenant God makes with Abraham (Genesis 15). In those days, you would slaughter animals and cut their carcasses in half, and then you would walk through them as you made your promise, in essence declaring “may it be done to me as was done to these animals if I betray my commitment to you."
Very serious. Very gruesome stuff.
But when God makes this covenant with Abraham, it’s not Abraham who has to walk through the “tunnel of death.” It’s God.
This whole time, it’s been God who bears the burden of the covenant and is working to restore the world. It’s not up to us to make payment. There’s no end of the bargain we have to uphold; God took the responsibility entirely upon Himself.
Wild.
—
Another piece of Old Testament imagery that feels fascinatingly relevant is the Passover.
This was the final of the Ten Plagues, the worst one that eventually convinced Pharaoh to let Moses and his people go, when the angel of death killed all the firstborn children in the city.
Unless the doorposts of your house were painted with the blood of a lamb, you weren’t safe (Exodus 12).
Tellingly, Jesus’ final days happened during the time of Passover. The Christians are right to refer to him as “the lamb that was slain” and "the lamb that comes to take away the sins of the world."
But what if that lamb is actually a Passover lamb, instead of the more commonly assumed sacrificial lamb?
What if, somehow, Jesus’s death acts as some kind of cosmic Passover, and his blood is painted on the doorposts of Creation itself, therefore saving and redeeming everything and everyone within it, just as the original lamb’s blood did on the doorposts of the Israelites homes during the first Passover?
That's a pretty wild image, admittedly, and I'm not sure I'm willing to pitch my tent here; but if it's true, it would seriously repaint our entire understanding of what God is up to and what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
Just some food for thought, in an effort to show other ways of interpreting Old Testament blood imagery that don’t point to Penal Substitution by necessity.
Peace,
--JD
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Note: the image for this blog is, once again, from Scott Erickson, one of my favorite visual artists. Check him out!
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