As every theologian and Bible scholar should know (but no penal substitution advocate seems to give its obvious elementary theological meaning), the Hebrew and Septuagint Greek words for “sin offering” are simply the bare words for sin, unadorned with any formal indicators of an “offering.” In fact, translators differ in how to render the word in contexts where it appears along with the very same word in its original significance (if, in fact, it is so intended).
The singular import of this linguistic observation is that the “sin offering” IS a sin in symbolic, ritual guise. That is, it foreshadows a future event of a sinful nature: the shedding of sinless blood such that the life in that lifeblood proliferates to the cleansing, hallowing, purifying, healing, and pardoning of multitudes of others. (The same process may also apply to the “guilt offering,” both linguistically and theologically, and perhaps even to the so-called “peace offering,” although the Septuagint uses a tantalizing variant here: “salvation”! These possibilities deserve more research. [8/19/16]) [9/16/08]
“If one has died for all, then all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). This passage explains why God did not merely reverse the descending plight of death on humanity in some more innocuous manner than by Messiah’s death by crucifixion and justification by resurrection. He had to win back our hearts to Himself and to obedience. This is why He could not “merely forgive” sins and let bygones be bygones. He wanted maturing children, and this requires both the possibility of sinning and the possibility of making a comeback of repentant obedience, without the danger of incurring immediate avenging (and death), but with the grateful acceptance of forgiveness during the learning process.
God’s “problem” was never “how to be able to forgive” but how to be able to motivate humans to want to keep His life-guarding instructions and directions in steady gratitude through all temptations and adversities, without giving up. Only the “Crossurrection” event, in its historic framework, in combination with the outpouring of the Spirit, were up to this challenge of sonhood! [9/16/08]
If I patiently bear someone’s sin against me, am I understood to be performing a “vicarious” act? Of course not. Rather, if I bear their injury, then I am ipso facto forgiving (releasing—aphiemi) them of liability or guilt or penalty for it precisely by bearing the burden of harm myself instead of exacting it from them or demanding compensation. Certainly such a deed is an act of love and self-sacrifice (though we might feel self-conscious if anyone were to point out the virtue), but to weigh it down with the “vicarious” tag would seem onerous and top-heavy.
The “vicarious” label is, however, trotted out more facilely when a plurality of beneficiaries is in view. Yet why should this factor suddenly validate it, especially when the particular injury being borne was not inflicted by the majority in view but only by a few? This is the enigma we face in Isaiah 53 as traditionally interpreted by “penal substitution” theologians. The “Servant” is construed as Messiah Jesus (so far so good), but his bearing the transgressions of “many” (namely, those who got him crucified) is then regarded as referring (without any adequate explanation) to “the whole wide world.” Now such an expanded application beyond the merely “many” who surrounded him during his arrest, trial, and execution would surely constitute a “vicarious” deed, as all would probably agree…BUT NOT IN THE ABSENCE OF A SUFFICIENT REASON FOR SUCH A SUDDEN EXPANSION. (But even with such a reason, a still further leap is necessary to construe such a “vicarious” act as “substitutionary.”) [9/17/08]
The Premial Atonement 