A Substitute for Substitution

The cross of Christ saves men and women from the wrath of God.

That notion troubles Matthew Distefano. He’s probably not the only one, but he is the only one I know who is currently writing a book about it, which he has entitled Heretic! An LGBTQ-Affirming, Divine-Violence Denying Christian Universalist’s Replies to Some of Evangelical Christianity’s Most Pressing Concerns.

“Ah yes,” you say, “I can see where this is going.” Probably true.

The Wrath of God Revealed

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. The apostle Paul commences his treatise in the book of Romans with these words: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” In Thessalonians, he writes of “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” Concerning believers, he says, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.”

So then, the wickedness of men provokes the anger of God. In the words of scripture, that wrath is not merely an emotion stored up in God’s heart forever, or a personal preference about how people should behave that he may decide to lay aside in an excess of tolerance, but rather an inevitable, catastrophic judgment on sin, and therefore on those who are determined to commit sin and live in it. Nevertheless, in his great love, God has also made provision for men to escape his wrath, and he has done so through the death of his Son on the cross. Those who refuse his provision will eventually be subjected to the wrath of his Son, whom he raised from the dead.

The Need for Atonement

The facet of Christ’s work on the cross that deals with the wrath of God and makes peace with him has traditionally been called “atonement” by theologians, mostly because that’s what the Bible calls it. Theologians attach adjectives to it that we do not find in the Bible, but which are shorthand for things we do find there. If you have heard the term “penal substitutionary atonement” (PSA), that’s just a long way of saying that Christ died in the place of sinners (substitution) taking on himself the full sentence we deserved (penal) to fully satisfy God with respect to sin (atonement). But the problem that makes atonement necessary is man’s sinfulness, which God in his holiness cannot merely overlook indefinitely. His holiness will eventually express itself in wrath.

Scripture leaves us no way to get around that fact, but Matthew Distefano and others really, really want to. In short, they want a substitute for substitution.

The Meaning of Atonement

The words “penal” and “substitutionary” are self-explanatory, but the word “atonement” can probably use some clarification. The Bible uses three Hebrew and/or Greek words to cover the concept:

• In the OT, kâphar means “to cover over”, as Noah covered the ark with pitch. It has the sense of appeasement, as when Jacob brought a present to Esau hoping to be accepted. It is sometimes translated “reconciliation”.
• In the NT, katallagē denotes an exchange of equivalent values, as expressed in the statement that “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”
• Also in the NT, lytron means ransom or redemption price.

What these words have in common is that they describe the process of making men right with their Creator, of satisfying a holy God with respect to the issue of human sin.

Five ‘Problems’

Distefano lists five “problems” he finds with PSA:

1. It makes God a debt collector.
2. It makes God retributive.
3. It makes God “archaic”, in the sense that in demanding blood from the sinner (and ultimately receiving it from Christ), he appears (in Distefano’s view) disturbingly like the false gods of the pagans.
4. It makes God two-faced, in the sense that the “angry” God of the Old Testament stands in stark contrast to the “gentle, loving, self-sacrificing” Christ of the New.
5. It makes God “unfollowable”, in the sense that Distefano claims Father and Son forgive in two different ways, and we cannot emulate both.

None of these is actually a problem for most Christians.

Debts, Retribution, Virgins and Volcanoes

Personally, I want a God who collects debts, because I want a world where justice is possible. Sinners don’t just sin against God, but against one another, and in the most egregious of ways. God may have graciously overlooked the “times of ignorance”, but I am immensely grateful that he now commands all men everywhere to repent, because if God never collects on the debt that mankind owes him, our race is lost, and we will continue to abuse one another until cosmic heat death puts an end to us all. Personally, I want a God of retribution for the very same reason, and that’s what we get in Peter: God did not spare angels. God did not spare the ancient world. God turned Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes. He knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

Amen to that! If that aspect of God’s character means my own sins get judged along the way, better that than the abandonment of our race to self-destruction.

As to the complaint that PSA makes God “archaic”, Distefano paints a picture of Jesus as the Hebrew equivalent of a virgin tossed into a volcano to appease an angry god. The scripture, however, paints a picture of a loving Son who walked hand in hand with his Father to the cross in order to deal with a problem that both recognized and wished to resolve. If that’s “archaic”, I’ll take it. Likewise, the complaint that PSA makes God “two-faced” is a misreading of both Old and New Testament teaching about God way too comprehensive to deal with here, so you can read about it at length in this post if you are interested.

Unfollowable?

Finally, with respect to the assertion and Jesus and his Father forgive in two different ways, this too is mistaken. Any actual difference in the way Christ forgave and God forgives is not a product of character differences between members of the Godhead, but rather of differences in tactics appropriate to the times and circumstances. Remember that in his first advent, the Lord specifically told men he had not come to act as judge, but rather as Savior of the world. He steadfastly refused to pass judgment, including on those who hanged him on a cross (“Father, forgive them”). Thus, we can hardly be surprised from time to time to see him extending limited forgiveness of specific sins to those who had yet to fully repent of them. However, that is not how he taught his disciples to forgive during this present era. The Lord’s first advent was exceptional in many ways, and this was one of them.

When the Lord Jesus comes again, the time for forgiveness will be past, and when the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, the Son will be leading the charge.

If I were mean-spirited or suspicious-minded, I might point out that it is awfully convenient for a self-styled LGBTQ-affirming, Divine-violence denying Christian universalist to have a God that forgives the world in the absence of repentance. Fortunately, that isn’t the God of the Bible. With him, we don’t get to have our cake and eat it too.

Tomorrow, let’s walk through the teaching of penal substitutionary atonement from Genesis to the end of the New Testament. Scripture has too much to say about it to fit into a single post.