“For Christ also died for sins [PENAL] once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous [SUBSTITUTIONARY], that he might bring us to God [ATONEMENT]” – 1 Peter 3:18

The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is easily the most profound concept to ever invade the human mind. I use that term, invade, intentionally: it is not the sort of doctrine a man could conjure.

It could not be dreamt up in all the vastness of human imagination. The most feracious mind is, “a fruitless tree in late autumn; twice dead and uprooted”–a desert, dry and desolate, a place too barren to bear the blossoms of this exotic doctrine. The lushest, most fertile heart is a miasma–a putrid, murky wasteland, too foul to flower the snow-white petals of penal substitutionary atonement.

No, this doctrine is an invader. It is the commander of a crusading army–a hulking man of holy war, thrashing and slashing his way into the fortress of men’s minds. This doctrine is otherworldly. It is heaven-sent. It is direct from  God.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the doctrine that Jesus Christ died to satisfy God’s just wrath against sin, that he died in the stead of hopeless sinners, and that his death secured the eternal redemption of those who will have faith in him.

The glorious word of God, writ through the pen of Peter, conveys this amazing doctrine in the span of a single sentence.

“For Christ also died for sins…”

Penal: pertaining to punishment.  Christ died for sins–he died the death that sin rightly deserves. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And not only death, but all the unfathomable fierceness of God’s burning wrath. Christ prayed in the Garden, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…” (Matthew 26:39). That cup, that dreaded chalice brimming over with misery, was none other than, “the cup of his anger” (Revelation 14:10); the “cup of the wine of his wrath” (Jeremiah 25:15). That wrath–the fullness of that wrath poured on Christ as it will be poured out on those who reject his sacrifice–is Hell. The full penalty of sin is Hell, and Christ gulped down every last ounce of Hell ever poured into the cup of those who love him.

 ”once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous…”

Substitutionary: in the place of. Christ died in the place of sinners. Christ drank down the wrath of God in the place of those who will believe on him. The precious blood of Christ was poured out, “like that of a lamb without blemish” (1 Peter 1:19): as a sacrifice for others. The sinless, perfect Christ had no occasion to suffer the wrath of his Father besides to secure the redemption of his beloved. The Redeemer stood before the holy throne of God as a substitute for the helpless sinner. When God was pleased to crush the sinless Christ, he was crushing you–if you will believe–exhausting the wrath your personal sins had rightly incurred. He suffered and died in the place of the wicked, whom we was delighted to make righteous.

“…that he might bring us to God.”

Atonement: reconciliation. Christ died to reconcile sinful men with a holy God. Bearing the wrath of God in the place of wicked men, Christ satisfied God’s righteous anger against the sins of those who will believe. God, having poured his justice out on Jesus Christ, no longer considers the sins of the repentant. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). Repenting unto Christ guarantees that God will count you free of sin; your debt has been paid in full by a the Redeemer who loves you, and his perfect righteousness is counted as yours. The Lamb purposed, “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20) and this he accomplished, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Colossians 1:23a). 

 Approach the throne of God with boldness, believer; Christ had given you perfect peace with your Judge.

]]> http://thetheologicalbrute.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/penal-substitutionary-atonement/feed/ 1 thetheologicalbrute Penal Substitutionary Atonement http://thetheologicalbrute.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/butchered-at-30-weeks/ http://thetheologicalbrute.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/butchered-at-30-weeks/#comments Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:03:43 +0000 the theological brute http://thetheologicalbrute.wordpress.com/?p=110 Read more]]>

This is my son, Tristan. He was born at 30 weeks old. 

It’s almost impossible to imagine the sort of devil who would be able to slaughter a baby like this. You would literally have to be as psychotic–as viciously, mindlessly psychotic–as a serial killer to butcher a 30 week old child. You would have to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre insane to stab this baby in the back of the head with a pair of scissors, crush his skull open, vacuum out his brains, tear his lifeless little corpse from the birth canal and toss it into the trash without so much as a sigh.

This is seriously so demoniacal, so unfathomably, repulsively evil that it would make Ed Gein blush. A mass murderer would vomit at the thought of something so profoundly inhuman. The sort of depraved monsters who prowl the streets, who snatch up women like prey and slash their bodies apart with glee, who tear them limb from limb, who cannibalize their corpses and wear their skin as masks–those sorts of monsters are revolted at the thought of treating a baby this way.

Yet, this happens. Yet, the sort of people who do this walk around in civil society, cheered on by legions of adoring fans who admire their champions from a distance. 

Not a single person reading this could actually perform the act. You could not. You are literally incapable of it. You could not pick up the scissors, you could not stab them into a child’s skull, you could not let the blood run down your gloves, you could not hold the fragile body in your hands as the life rushes from it. You could not hold back the tears of sheer horror. You could not do it.

Yet, you will champion those who do. You will applaud them. You will rant and rave about their rights.

But you couldn’t even watch it happen. Hypocrite.

Be honest. If you held the baby in one hand and the scissors in another, if you stood there contemplating the act, if you were asked to render the service, every fiber of your soul would scream out “no!”, your body would convulse in horror, and you would not do it. Your conscience would not permit it.

So why allow them?

Would you look at a little baby like Tristan, would you smile and gush about what a little miracle he is, and then consent to the butchering of a baby exactly as old, exactly as developed, exactly as human as he is?

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” [Genesis 1:1] 

The Cosmological Argument is elegant in its simplicity, and it is the very simplicity of the argument that makes it so formidable. To oppose the argument, one must either refuse to believe that which is thoroughly evident, or one must (feign to?) believe that which is logically impossible. It is the utter simplicity of the Cosmological Argument that allows for exactly two trapdoor exists, both of them philosophical deathtraps.

So, without further ado, the deathblow of atheism, the Cosmological Argument:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. The universe has a cause.

Perfect, knifelike simplicity.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause

This statement is so thoroughly obvious that it hardly needs an explanation. In fact, it may be no exaggeration to say this is the single most well-attested fact in the entire universe. If ever it has been contradicted, it has been so supernaturally, spitting directly in the face of basic physics. The most brutish of us have no difficulty in understanding this fact, yet, when cornered, the devout atheist will resort even to denying this basic truth–a frantic, frankly pathetic scramble to avoid the inevitable conclusion of the argument at hand.

How?

Essentially the atheist has one move here: self-causation.

Obviously, built into the first premise of the argument is this self-evident fact: that which causes something to exist is other than and outside of that which begins to exist. In brute terms, something cannot cause itself to exist. This is so stunningly obvious that I’m embarrassed to have to touch upon it at all. To be clear, everything that begins to exist owes its existence to objects and events outside of itself. Example: everything. (A man, for instance, does not burst spontaneously into existence at the mere command of his own will, but rather owes his existence to a dazzling array of contingent causes, not the least of which being a sperm and an egg.)

In their vain effort to refute this first premise, the atheist will usually conjure up some elaborate theory involving time-travel, multiple dimensions, and quantum probability. As you might guess, they will have literally no idea what they are talking about.  Without delving into the particulars of this genre of argument, it’s sufficient to say that these theories are at least as unproven and unprovable as any conceivable God Hypothesis, and are significantly less aligned with both mainstream science and universal experience than the first premise of the Argument. To appeal thus is to demonstrate an extraordinary amount of faith in a most speculative, controvertible position: precisely that which they claim to abhor in the theist. (Not to get all tu quoque up in here, but seriously.)

Of course, even a response as brief and admittedly superficial as that is outrageously generous, considering the rather obvious fact that the detractor himself does not even believe what he is saying. Make no mistake: no atheist actually believes there is evidence for self-causation, and they certainly do not believe that spontaneous generation is somehow compatible with naturalistic materialism. Their charade serves the single purpose of derailing the conversation; pandering to it for any length of time is futile.  

Barring any earth-shattering revelation about the nature of the material universe–like an actually verifiable example of self-causation–we will conclude that the first premise is surely sound.

The universe began to exist

The concept of an eternal universe was once in vogue even among mainstream cosmologists, although the prominence of the theory owed more to its philosophical attractiveness than to any amount of substantiating evidence. Nevertheless, Steady State Theory was, at one time, considered a worthy adversary of the now-triumphant Big Bang Theory. Obviously these days have passed, and the notion of an eternal universe has faded into obscurity and absurdity, where it belongs. The fact that the universe began to exist at some finite point in the past is so thoroughly proven that it’s almost universally accepted among educated persons.

That is, until the atheist is confronted with the second premise of the Cosmological Argument.

In normal conversation, of course, just about every atheist on the planet will acknowledge that the universe began to exist–some 15 billion years ago, by their reckoning. However, the moment the Cosmological Argument is presented, the atheist suddenly forgoes Big Bang Cosmology and insists on an eternal universe.

Why can’t the universe be eternal?

Considering that this is The Theological Brute, I’ll abjure any feigned speciality in the field of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, but rather, allow me to touch upon a simpler argument: the law of entropy.

The universe is in a state of decay. All things, on all levels, ultimately tend towards disorder and destruction. Food rots, bodies decompose, shores erode, stars collapse, and the universe itself will–if not attended to by an outside force–spiral into cold, dead oblivion. Obviously this has not happened yet. However, if the universe were actually eternal, then there would have been an infinite number of past events, during which the universe would have decayed an infinite number of times to an infinite degree. Once again, this has obviously not happened. Ergo, the universe has not undergone an infinite number of past events, and is therefore not eternal.

Of course, as with objections to the first premise, it’s hardly worth contesting the issue any further, as the detractors do not actually believe what they are saying, and will readily admit as much in any other context. Again, it’s a ruse, orchestrated for no other purpose than staving off the inevitable conclusions of the premises they already accept.

 So, barring any body of evidence sufficient to overturn the theories proposed by Big Bang Cosmology, the second premise of the argument must be accepted.

The universe has a cause

Here is the marrow of the argument, precisely that which the atheist was hoping to avoid. If the universe has a cause, then a number of qualities of this cause become immediately apparent.

The Cause, being other than and outside of the universe, must be immaterial. Matter, which came into existence at some point in the finite past, cannot be the essence of The Cause, upon which the existence of matter is contingent.

The immateriality of The Cause is further evidenced by the fact that it must be outside of space, which is also contingent upon The Cause for its existence.

The Cause, being other than and outside of time, must be eternal. Time is relative to the existence of the universe, and so it is necessary that The Cause exists beyond time. Being outside of time, The Cause must also be changeless, as change requires the passing of time.

The Cause must be necessary. Whereas all observable things–things which begin to exist–are contingent, The Cause itself must be contingent upon nothing, but must exist necessarily.

The Cause must, by its very definition, be supernatural. The Cause is not only outside of the realm of nature–i.e. the physical universe–but it must exist outside of the rules of nature–i.e. the laws of physics, which also began to exist at some point in the finite past. The Cause must be sufficient to enact both the realm and rules of nature, and so must be contingent upon neither. Thus, it is supernatural, in the most literal definition of the term.

The Cause must be intelligent and willful; that is, it must be a Being. That The Cause must be an intelligent, willful Being is obvious by the fact that it acts without contingency. In order to act without any prior causes or outside influences, The Cause must act strictly of its own accord; it must posses the capacity for volition, or self-determination. These are clearly the defining characteristics of personhood, so it must be acknowledged that The Cause is a Being, an Entity or a Person.

An immaterial, eternal, changeless, necessary, supernatural, intelligent and willfull Being

You do not have to be a genius, nor even particularly imaginative, to see that these traits provide us with a rudimentary outline of God. At this point, of course, the atheist who has hitherto granted the basic premises of the argument will take offense.

There, they contest, is the leap in logic. Why must it be God? Why not an immaterial, self-assembling, eternal supercomputer, or why not the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The answer to these objections is obvious: they are simply taking the concept known as God and calling it something else. This is a tacit admission of the fact that a Deity must exist, whether you want to use that terminology or not. Simply redefining words, or refusing to use perfectly adequate words because you dislike them, does nothing to salvage your worldview.

Now, to be clear, no one suggests that the Cosmological Argument is itself sufficient to prove any comprehensive religious system, so quibbling over the fact that it does not prove the existence of this or that God is another irrelevant distraction. The Argument most assuredly does demolish both atheism and naturalistic materialism, and that is the extent of its purpose. Aristotle and Plato argued for the necessity of a Prime Mover long before the advent of Christianity, and many of the most formidable modern apologists in this field are devout Muslims. I’m happy to admit as much, and happy to allow the Argument to end where it ends.

For now it is sufficient that we acknowledge the impossibility of atheism. The evidence that Jesus Christ is the True and Living God will be examined in greater detail in forthcoming entries.

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” [Romans 1:20]

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” [1 John 4:8]

God is love. This verse is inexpressibly profound; it is the very marrow of the Christian faith. If God were not loving, Christianity would be nothing to celebrate. Ours would be a most grievous promenade; we who stride through travail with the invincible hope of Christ would, if God were not loving, crawl trembling through the corridors of mortality, terror-striken, abhorring the very thought of God. The bellow of our hymns would die in our bellies, if God were not loving, and our churches would shriek and scream in unison, rather, at the fearfulness of God Almighty. Praise would fall stillborn from our lips, if God were not loving, where only vain imprecations would find utterance.

If God were not loving, those who know his Name would be most pitied of all men. Ours would be the most lamentable position–to know the holiness of God, to know his majesty and the unfathomable depths of his omnipotence–to behold that perfect power, and to know that he may wield it as he whims, lovelessly.

That is a terrifying prospect: a God who does not love. However, the True God–the God revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ–not only does love, he is love. Yet, we hear this claim, that God is love, so often that the majesty of the verse is lost on us.

In fact, this verse is often the battle-cry of godless men as they brazenly defy God’s commandments. Torn utterly from its context, this verse is often vomited out by men who neither know God nor love him–men who use God’s name, and sliced up fragments of his Holy Word, to justify their rebellion.

God is love, they chant, and so we should abandon the rest of Scripture. God is love, they scream, and so we should endorse every kind of grotesque perversion. In recent times, God is love has become the mantra of those crusading for the acceptance of homosexual sin. We should expect the heathen to misuse the Word of God, but even men and women from within the church–wolves gathered among the sheep–have joined the chorus of God is love, the crescendo of which is an open declaration of rebellion against the God whose words they’ve thieved.

While the contemporary notion of love is such an anemic, irresolute skeleton of an idea that I might write for hours on how it pales in comparison to the Biblical doctrines of love, let me highlight these two primary points of contention.

Love does not affirm all of a person’s decisions. To love someone is not to champion their every move. If such were the case, I doubt anyone reading this would ever manage to find a single person who could bear to love them for more than thirty minutes. Love does not mean approving of one’s actions. In fact, real, thoroughgoing, steadfast love is the love that endures precisely when someone fails to act as they ought. God loves sinners despite their disobedience, but that does not mean he loves your disobedience.

Love does not preclude punishment. To love someone does not entail that they must never be punished for their wickedness. Love restrains one’s anger, it moves one to compassion. Love may even retard the day of reckoning, but it does not abolish it. Eventually justice demands its dues, and wrongdoing must be punished. A parent punishes a disobedient child though they love him more than life. God must punish sin; even now his loving kindness delays the day of judgement, but he cannot and will not forever pass over the sins of those who rail against him.

Dispelling those two notions is enough to illustrate that the oft-repeated God is love has been horribly misconstrued. God does not affirm your sins; his love does not nullify his commandments. God will punish your sins; his love does not nullify his justice. God’s Word plainly warns:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. [1 Corinthians 6:9-10]

God’s mere love–the love afforded to those outside of Christ–will not secure you a place of favor with the Almighty. If you die in your sins, he will cast you into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth–a fiery furnace that rages for eternity upon eternity.

How can it be that this God of love will eternally torment the damned?

God is love, but he is not only love. God is all-loving, but he is not only-loving. God’s virtues encompass a far more vast array of perfections than mere love. God is just. God is merciful. God is righteous. God is wise. God is wrathful. God is hateful.

Yes, the God of perfect love is also a God of perfect hatred.

God’s hatred does not contradict his love; rather, it perfectly harmonizes with it. God’s hatred, unlike man’s hatred, is perfectly just. God, who is omniscient, has perfect warrant to hate–knowing all things, including the depths of a man’s soul, God can hate with righteous hatred that which is abominable. God’s hatred is subdued by his great and longsuffering love, but it nevertheless exists, and it will be given its course.

God hates the sinful deeds of sinners.

“Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” [Revelation 2:6]

“For I the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong.” [Isaiah 61:8]

God hates the righteous deeds of sinners.

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” [Isaiah 1:14]

God hates sinners.

“The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.” [Psalm 5:5]

 ”The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” [Psalm 11:5]

Along with God is love there is another mantra borne of the religious zeitgeist, Love the sinner, Hate the sin. You will not, however, find these words anywhere in your Bible. This expression, while generally compatible with Christ’s command to love even our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, does not adequately reflect the character of God. As God’s character is pure and undefiled, as he cannot sin, and as he alone is fit to judge, his hatred is so righteous that it applies not only to the sinful deeds of the reprobate, but to the sinners themselves. God hates sinners.

Yet, God loves sinners. And this is the great paradox. God’s character is so unsearchably vast that we should expect his feelings toward mere men to exceed what we can comprehend. And so, there is no contradiction here, but rather a powerful testimony to the expanse of God’s character. He loves those whom he hates; he loves those whom he rightfully hates and would justly sentence to eternal damnation. Yet, his love alone compels him to stay his hand.

You should marvel at this. Rather than recoiling from the hatred of God–rather than abating his love, perverting its definition to suit your sins–you should fall to your face in awe of the fact that God loves those whom he has every chiefly, heavenly, sovereign right to hate. Behold the hatred of God; stare deep into his wrath, his fierceness, his jealousy. These glorious traits underscore the supremacy of his love for us. His love is all the more marvelous when contrasted with his perfect hatred of sin. Our sin is the blackest night, against which the star of his love shines most radiantly. Understand this. A God who winks at your sins is no God of power, of holiness, nor of justice. A God who abhors your wicked deeds, who stares knowingly into the mire of your soul, and yet loves you–that is a God of untold majesty.

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8]

God’s love is supremely evidenced in the Gospel. Jesus Christ, who is eternally God, came to earth in real human flesh. He lived a perfect sinless life. He was sentenced to death on a cross, where he suffered far more than a crown of thorns and spikes driven through his hands. He gulped down the terrible wrath of God in the place of every sinner who would ever trust in him alone as their Savior. For those who repent unto him, he absorbed the infinite wrath of God–that unquenchable hatred of sin that ought to have been your due. He drank it down, died, and was buried. In exchange for your sins, he grants you his perfect righteousness, that you might enjoy eternal fellowship with God, basking in the glory of his love forever.

Do not miss the greatness of this. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us while we hated him, while we raged against that perfect lamb with all the brutish ferocity of a pack of jackals. His love did not make light of sin; rather, his love required the single most grotesque, heart-wrenching spectacle in all of the universe: the murder of Jesus Christ.

That is the message of God is love.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice...

Tomorrow I make my final trip to our old apartment, to salvage what precious little might be worth retaining. It’s a somber thing, staggering through the ruins of a place we once called “home”. It’s strange to see the stage of your most treasured memories made a theatre where only tragedy plays. It’s stranger still to wonder that this was a deliberate act. Someone chose to do this.

You will never see this, but you have cost us more than our belongings. You have robbed Stephanie of sleep. You have flooded her eyes with tears. You have filled her belly with sighs. You killed her cats.

That’s the whole of my lament. It isn’t very long, because my sorrow was profoundly short-lived.

I texted Greg one melodramatic little message as we stood in awe of the wreckage: “Honestly, we’re as good as dead”. He told me to stop talking like that and come over for lunch. Since then we have been looked after.

If there is anything that is crystal clear to me right now, it is that God loves us and provides for us. We give all the glory to the Lord for his gracious provision.

It is only by a series of providential fortunes that we are all alive. We missed the fire by only moments. Had we arrived home five minutes sooner, we’d have been in the apartment while the fire raged. We would have almost certainly lost Tristan, and it’s very possible that we would have lost our own lives. We were spared.

I will not bemoan my things–even my treasured things–or give myself over to sorrow when we’ve been so abundantly blessed. Stephanie and Tristan and I are alive and well. Every single one of our needs has been readily met. We have not lacked food, shelter, clothing–nor even community, fellowship, or family.

The LORD gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.

I have never been so humbled.

I have never felt so loved.

I have never depended so much on God.

I have never seen such compassion in people.

I have never possessed a stronger, more potent, tested faith in Christ.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has made this trial such a blessing for us. I couldn’t list you all if I tried, and many of you have been anonymous. Your graciousness will never be forgotten, and trust that we will pass it on to others in need.

[This was originally written on Sunday, March 6, 2011, a few weeks after our apartment burned down, the result of arson. It was published in Tenth Press, a publication of Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, on Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011.]