Is Penal Substitutionary Atonement Biblical? (Response to “Is There a New Adventism?”
Regarding atonement, the evangelical faith has largely gotten caught up in PSA, which unfortunately is not supported Biblically. To add to that, the idea that the cross finished everything in redemptive history has damaged the power of the church to transform lives. Christ does intercede, and His intercession is essential to our salvation. Even NT Write admits that atonement is applied by Christ’s High Priestly role. To me this is semantics and evangelicals get caught up with a misapplication of John 19:30. I mean why is there still sin and suffering? Obviously there is still a work to be done at some level.
That said, I think a covenant walk with Christ is a message sorely needed by the church. Us Christians need to be different. The gospel is not spread by words alone, it is our actions in the world. How are our actions produced? By the ongoing intercession of Christ in our lives through the Holy Spirit. This ongoing atoning application draws us ever nearer to Christ and elevates Him to draw others. Christ our salvation and our constant desire is the gospel.
Finally, Biblically there is only one Law. The Torah is the written form that does inform the internal Law of the New Covenant. Salvation is only found in the New Covenant.
The written Law was given due to transgress and is not needed for those in covenant with Christ. As Christians we have the internal Law and we fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law.
How does one define righteous requirements? This is a more theological question and the Bible in some ways leaves this to the Holy Spirit. Again, as believers we don’t need a written Law. However, from the Bible the righteous requirements are found by three simple principles:
- Creation origins
- Decalogue inclusion
- Christ’s teachings
Again, one must always understand that Law is a love response and a natural outflow of a relationship with our Creator for New Covenant Christians. This is covenant relationship.
- We are not saved by keeping the Law.
- We are not lost by breaking the Law.
- We are saved and in covenant by the grace of God through faith.
- This was all made possible by Christ’s death, resurrection, and continued intercession at the right hand of the father.
—VIA YOUTUBE
Response: I don’t mean to argue; I genuinely see the New Testament saying something different. When you say that penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) is not supported biblically, I don’t see the scriptural evidence to support that statement. I want to say that it has not been evangelical teachers who have taught me PSA per se, although I learned the term (along with other theories of atonement) from teachers. Nor were Jesus’ words on the cross, “It is finished!” the primary source of my seeing the finished penal substitutionary atonement. It was the full counsel of the epistles in which Paul and John and the author of Hebrews explain that the “old covenant” (Mosaic) was temporary with a clear beginning and ending (Gal. 3:17–21), and Hebrews more or less camping on Jesus’ once-for-all atonement and His sitting down—a seated high priest—at the Father’s right hand. It is Hebrews 7 making much of Jesus’ Melchizedekian priesthood and the fact that a new priest necessitates a change of the law. It is Hebrews’ insistence that the new covenant, promised in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, has replaced the flawed old covenant because the new one has completely taken care of the sin penalty.
The New Testament never equates Jesus’ intercession with atonement. There is no hint of ongoing application of blood. There is the assurance that Jesus has forever paid for sin, and His blood, which He declared to BE the essence and foundation of the new covenant when He gave His disciples the Lord’s Supper, is eternally the assurance and reason and guarantee of our eternal salvation. Interceding is acting in a mediatorial role: Jesus, in whom are both the offended party (God) and the offending party (man) has removed the barriers of the law, paid for sin, and reconciled man to God IN HIMSELF (Eph. 2:14). Moses the mediator prefigured the Lord Jesus, but, as Galatians 3 explains, Moses mediated between two parties—but God is ONE. All mediation occurs IN HIM as per 1 Timothy 2:5, 6. He “gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.” He remains our intercessor, representing us in His own identity and representing God to us, His body, because He Himself IS both God and man.
I see PSA as being the only hope for transformation of lives. The church is never said to transform lives, either—but God does transform. We who believe have our minds transformed by the word of God (Rom. 12:1–3). The church is never asked to transform the world. We cannot transform the word by policy or practice; we are asked to share the gospel of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, to preach Christ and Him crucified. We are asked to make disciples of Him and to baptize in the name of the Trinity. It is belief in the Lord Jesus that transforms us. When we believe and trust Jesus’ completed atonement for our sin, when we throw ourselves on His mercy alone, He causes us to be born again, and He places His Spirit in us. We literally pass from death to life. This reality (which Jesus stated in John 5:24) is not a metaphor nor a promise for the future: it is a present reality at the moment we believe. We become literally new creations, a new race, if you will. And then, when we are literally spiritually alive with the permanently indwelling Holy Spirit, we begin to see reality from God’s perspective, and the word of God makes more and more sense. We begin to be able to love people for God, seeing them as He sees them. God’s perspective is the foundation for all practice and love of neighbor—and God’s perspective is clear about sin and about calling sinners to repentance.
What I do not see in your description of the Christian life is the biblical understanding of the nature of man. We are not born neutral, or blank slates, or sinners waiting to happen. We are born literally spiritually dead. We have two parts: material and immaterial. When we believe, we pass from death to life. That is a spiritual reality that is eternal when we have trusted God. Our bodies are still mortal and will have a “law of sin in our members” (Rom 7:22, 23) until our glorification. But WE are made alive. The issue is life and death, not actions. Actions follow LIFE. Good actions flowing from a person still dead in sin is still a general blessing to the world from God, but they do not recommend us to God (Phil 2, 3). We are all spiritually dead and condemned until we believe (John 3:18, 36; 5:24–31). Our mission is not to transform the world but to bring the truth of hope in Christ’s finished work on our behalf to the dead brothers and sisters who need LIFE.
The covenants are clearly taught in Scripture, and the new covenant in Christ’s blood is what we enter when we believe Him. The Mosaic covenant with its “words of the covenant” (Ex 34:27, 28) is now obsolete. The Ten Commandments are not the source of morality for the new covenant nor for the world. GOD Himself is the source of morality and righteousness. The Mosaic covenant contains similar moral commands as the new covenant requirements for the church not because the Ten are carried over but because they have the same Author. A Brazilian who emigrates to the United States no longer answers to the laws of Brazil but to the laws of the USA. A born again Christian who is indwelled by the Holy Spirit on the basis of believing in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection does not answer to the Ten Commandments but to the Law of Christ—a completely NEW law as required by the change of the priesthood from levitical to Melchizedek.
The gospel is not a way to transform society. It is a way to make condemned humanity alive, filled with God Himself and able to love the spiritually dead and the world in which they live with God’s wisdom and grace and glory (as per 2 Cor 3). When people believe and trust God, they begin to live differently, and God blesses the communities in which the Christians live in a way similar to the ways He blessed Israel when Israel was faithful to their covenant. But we enter an UNCONDITIONAL covenant when we trust Jesus because He Himself made the covenant promises and validated them on the basis of His oath and His blood (see Galatians 3).
The nature of man and of God, the very nature of reality, is at the heart of how we understand God’s provision for our life. Adventism does not believe we have immaterial spirits. Yet the issue of life, death, and salvation are worked out spiritually; our physical death is a consequence of our spiritual death. Our death is atoned only one way: by Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. He Himself became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor 5:21). It really IS all about His one-time, sufficient, substitutionary sacrifice for our sin. His blood paid for our sin; when we trust and believe Him, we pass from death to life. This LIfE is transformation!
More Thoughts About Atonement
Colleen and Nikki, I am sure that all is well with you both in Christ Jesus. I am a subscriber and listen to your podcast [Former Adventist Podcast] every week as well as Former Adventist Fact Check. May the Lord grant you both with wisdom and knowledge to keep on sharing His goodness to anyone who believes in Him.
Thank you both again in God for teaching nothing but the New Covenant in Christ Jesus. I didn’t want to leave a comment on YouTube; I prefer to address it respectfully via email since we’re sisters and brother in Christ Jesus as His beloved children. What I would like to share with you both is regarding the word ATONEMENT. It has to do with covering sin. In the old covenant with the animal sacrifices, atonement was only good for one year (Hebrews10:2-4). In the New Covenant Jesus Christ removed sins out of our lives completely (John 1:29; Hebrews 10:10, 14; 1John 2:2). This means the shed blood of Christ Jesus superseded the shed blood of animals (Hebrews 9:12,14).
I would like both of you to give me feedback. Love you both in Jesus Christ, and keep on teaching His word with authority that He has given us through His Son Jesus Christ.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I agree with you that Jesus’ blood atoned for all our sin. His blood was the perfect sacrifice of a sinless man who is also God. As God His sacrifice was eternal and omnipotent, and His once-for-all death was sufficient to pay for all sin for all time.
The atonement was completed on the cross; Jesus entered heaven and sat down at the Father’s right hand (Acts 2:33, 34, 5:31; Romans 8:34; Hebrews 1:3, etc).
Because Jesus paid the wages of sin—death—and broke the curse of death by His resurrection on the basis of His sufficient sacrifice, those who believe and trust Him alone, giving up their “right” to contribute anything to their own salvation but trusting in Jesus alone, those people are born again when they believe. They literally pass spiritually from death to life, as Jesus said (John 5:24). Our dead spirits come to life, and then believers are sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13, 14).
The atonement is what makes our new birth possible. The sufficient sacrifice has been paid so that God can justly bringing us from death to life. Our spiritual death is the consequence of being born in Adam, spiritually dead in sin. That consequence is removed when we trust and believe in Jesus. We still have mortal flesh, but our spirits are alive. Now our lives are spent learning to trust God and apply His word to our lives so that when we face temptation, we turn to Him and act in submission to Him instead of in response to our still-mortal flesh. This process is sanctification.
Romans 7:22, 23 states that the believer joyfully concurs with God’s law—the will of God and His entire Word revealed to us—but in our members (our fleshly bodies) we still have a “law of sin”. We are not free from this law of sin in our flesh until we are glorified.
We have two parts: material and immaterial. We are not sinless when we believe; rather, we become ALIVE. Salvation is about being made alive, not about being made good or obedient. Salvation is LIFE, and we receive that eternal life of God when we believe because Jesus has fully atoned for our sin, past, present, and future. (See John 5:24–31; John 3:17, 18, 36.) Our physical part is still mortal, still subject to destruction, but our spirits—our essence, our identities—are eternally alive and secure in Jesus.
God no longer counts our sins against us for eternal judgment. He has counted them against Jesus. Yet believers will face a judgment for rewards based on the works we do in the flesh as believers (1 Corinthians 3:9–15). So He teaches us to trust Him and rely on Him more and more. We cannot do this before being born again. Here is a video which may be helpful. †
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