Perhaps the central ‘gratifying’ or ‘satisfying’ feature of penal substitution is the sense that a certain ‘number’ or ‘quantity’ of sins can be ‘completely paid for,’ thus supplying a kind of ‘closure’ to the system, also psychologically. Everything seems ‘symmetrical’ and ‘clinched.’ But this is illusory. In fact, it creates a false security that, in practice, actually compromises a dynamic, vital, covenantal relationship with the living God. The ethical results of such an impersonal—even mechanical or automatic—schema are often appallingly dis–grace-ful. False security can breed conceit and arrogance, clannishness and sectarianism.
The inner certainty and spiritual assurance we crave as fragile mortals are founded on the solid proof of God’s graciousness in spite of any ‘amount’ of sin. That proof has been granted in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from a crucifixion by vicious sinners who were thereby spared immediate, well-deserved termination.
However, when the authentic original interpretation of the ‘Crossurrection‘ composite of integrally linked events comes to be denatured into a penal event followed by a mere resurrection rubber-stamp, then the full impact of those tandem Messianic events is debased and disempowered from delivering its intended full redemptive payload and veers off its divine trajectory. But properly understood and proclaimed, the ‘Crossurrection‘ trumps any other conceivable method or means of providing confident assurance of God’s gracious acceptance, and all without breeding unbefitting presumptuousness. This is because God deliberately made sure there were plenty of qualified, diverse, and independent eyewitnesses to both of its key historic components as well as to Jesus’ career of powerful miraculous deeds, peerless ethical instruction, and prophetic fulfillments in startling sync with literally scores of ancient prophecies recorded in Israel’s ancient Scriptures.
For the same reason, any talk of ‘merits‘ here is unbiblical—a vain attempt to ‘compute’ a conjectured economic exchange rate between sins and pardons. All such recourses are carnal calculations with deceptive utility and positive harm. Such fundamental departures from native biblical vocabulary and conceptuality are shoals easily avoidable by prioritizing concordant analysis of recurrent biblical patterns of usage, whether of words, numbers, names, metaphors, themes, or even whole narrative episodes. [2/6/11; 10/11/23]
In addition to the eyewitness testimony of the disciples of Jesus to his career, crucifixion, and resurrected existence, the miracle-working testimony of the Holy Spirit ever since Pentecost may be added to those weighty considerations that establish God’s extraordinary graciousness and forgiveness, and which far surpass the deceptive grounds of ‘penal substitution,’ i.e., a conjectured ‘penal satisfaction of God’s penal justice‘ by Christ, which is but quicksand.
Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism (at least in the form of its influential but idiosyncratic articulation by Hugo Grotius), and Amyraldianism, each in varying degree, suffer under the imaginary burden of establishing a surer ‘economic’ basis for God’s amazing grace than the unalterable written witness of the New Testament conjoined with the continuous experiential witness of the Holy Spirit. [2/8/11; 10/12/23]
By the Cross, Satan imagined that he had successfully stamped out his rival for rule of planet earth along with his miraculous restorative powers. But it so happens that these creation-restoring powers of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to Jesus as Messiah were his right, due to his lifelong maturing obedience to God his Father. Therefore, when Jesus was deprived of his life, including those powers that were his property and rightful possession, Satan committed a criminal act deserving, by the rules of divine justice, DUE COMPENSATION, which, in this unexpectedly exceptional case, just so happened to be ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING! And it is this unparalleled supercompensation that Christ personally bequeaths to us as a pure gift—immersion in the Holy Spirit of unquenchable life. Without Christ’s brutal experience of abuse unto death, this compensation would never even have existed for us, because never called into existence by the exigencies of reparative justice to him. Praise God from Whom such Blessings flow!
This peculiar feature of divine justice—supercompensation—may also account for the necessity (in view of God’s intended outcome of salvation for ALL who trust Him) of His Son’s even suffering a curse of the Law of Moses (which God Himself had stipulated, of course) as well as temporary abandonment at the cross. For THESE EVILS (although by no means to be construed as ‘divine punishments’ administered substitutionarily on behalf of sin/sinners who all ‘deserved’ them), WOULD LIKEWISE NEED TO BE JUSTLY SUPERCOMPENSATED BY GOD. And such compensation would constitute proof that those particular abuses were not ‘signs of God’s wrath’ but definitive precursors, even beneficent enhancements, of His impending justly due GRACIOUSNESS, indeed, His very SPIRIT OF GRACIOUSNESS! [2/8/11; 10/12/23]
Generally speaking, an “atoning” deed is whatever may be deemed necessary to bring peace in a particular circumstance of hostility or grievance. It ‘makes everything alright,’ relatively speaking. It induces conciliation and friendly relations between contending parties by joint agreement. However, the Atonement that God pre-planned far surpassed the limitations and relativity of the countless cultural conventions for achieving nominal interpersonal amity post-conflict. For God’s own method, at last, satisfactorily tackled “the Last Enemy,” Death itself, which hovers menacingly behind every terrestrial animosity and injury. (See, for example, Don Richardson’s noteworthy account in his famous book, Peace Child.) [2/8/11; 10/12/23]
The Premial Atonement 