What Jesus Accomplished on the Cross: Four Myths About Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Despite the challenges raised against it, the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is not unjust, but rather it demonstrates God’s perfect justice mixed with his self-sacrificial love—and I believe it is the best theory of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.   

What is Penal Substitutionary Atonement? 

Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a theory of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. We can understand these concepts by breaking down the meaning of each term of PSA. To ease with logical flow, we will address each of these terms in reverse order. 

Atonement is the process by which a debt is paid or guilt is removed. When one has been atoned for, they are no longer viewed as guilty of the evil they had committed. As William Lane Craig points out, there are two elements to atonement: expiation and propitiation.⁹ To expiate is to cancel debt or guilt, and to propitiate is to satisfy. In the atonement, our sin is canceled, and God is satisfied.³ Under this theory, when Jesus dies on the cross this clears our record of wrong and expunges us of guilt. Since we are no longer liable for our sins, this makes relationship and reconciliation with the perfectly holy God possible. So in this sense, the old-fashioned statement that atonement can bring us “at-one-ment” with God is accurate.⁴ 

Substitutionary indicates the idea that one is punished on behalf of another. The one who is paying the debt is not guilty of the act that led to it but is taking on the consequences as a representative. Craig also draws a distinction between simple substitution and simple representation.⁵ A simple substitute takes the place of another person but does not represent them, such as a substitute basketball player. His performance will only reflect on his own statistics, rather than the player he replaced. A simple representative acts or advocates on behalf of another, but does not take their place, such as a spokesperson for an organization or a lawyer. If both are combined, we have representative substitution, which is what would be required for Jesus to take our place and for his actions to affect our moral standing.⁶ 

Penal indicates that punishment is being given. There has not been a technical violation of a rule that can be remedied with mere payment, but a moral wrong has occurred. Under the dictates of justice, moral wrongs always require punishment, not mere repayment. To give an example, imagine I lost my balance in a restaurant and knocked over an expensive bottle of wine. Assuming there was no negligence on the part of the restaurant to cause my mistake, I would be responsible to repay the business for the value of this item. But assuming I was not acting irresponsibly, we would not want to assign moral guilt to my actions. What is required in this situation is repayment, not punishment, because it was merely an accident. In contrast, if I were to throw a tantrum and intentionally destroy a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787, I would be morally blameworthy for my actions and guilty in a court of law for the destruction of property.  

In summary, PSA says that we deserve punishment for our sins. The wrong that we committed was not merely accidental, it was an intentional disregard for God’s moral law, and worthy of punishment. God, in his justice, is perfectly righteous in requiring this payment. However, God decides to take this punishment on himself in our stead. He offers this substitution to anyone who will believe in him and receive him as their Lord and Savior. Anyone who accepts this substitution will be counted as righteous and no longer worthy of punishment.  

Why do some hold to PSA? 

Before we examine the challenges against PSA, let’s look at a few of the reasons someone might believe in it. First, many biblical passages can easily be interpreted as supporting a PSA framework. To give a few examples, Isaiah 53 describes a prophecy of the Messiah saying,  

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.⁷ 

There are many central concepts of PSA that can be found in this passage. It seems clear that this servant is being punished by God on behalf of others to atone for their sin. Another passage that seems to demonstrate central concepts of PSA is the early creed of the church, which many scholars believe goes back to within months of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which states that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures…”⁸ Additionally, Ephesians 5:2 says, “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Finally, in John 1:29 John the Baptist identifies Jesus by saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Many other examples could be given, but I will not belabor the point.  

Is PSA unjust? 

One way critics have argued against PSA is by arguing that it would be unjust. The central thesis is this: the God of Christianity is a being of perfect moral character and love. If PSA requires God to act in ways that seem incompatible with this character, then it should be rejected as a theory. Whether this is the right way to decide on a theory is questionable. It is possible that God may have good reasons for acting that we can’t fully understand, in which case it would be presumptuous to think we would be able to adjudicate whether an action could fit with his character. Additionally, scripture ought to be the highest authority for the Christian interested in determining accurate theology. If the clear teaching of God’s word violates our moral sensibilities, we must learn to think as God does.  

However, for the purpose of this article, the criterion of justice will be accepted, and I will seek to demonstrate that PSA is not unjust. We will address four significant myths which are brought against PSA: 1. It would be cosmic child abuse 2. Demanding payment for forgiveness would be unjust 3. God would be committing suicide. 4. Wrath would be unjust. 

Myth 1: It Would Be Cosmic Child Abuse 

William Paul Young, the author of the popular novel The Shack, put it this way: “Who originated the Cross? If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser…Jesus being the ultimate child sacrifice.…But we know intuitively that such a thought is wrong, desperately wrong.” This is a serious charge against the justice and love of God, as child abuse is one of the most abhorrent evils. Young is not alone in his criticism, with author Steve Chalk stating, “The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith.”¹⁰ Because a picture of God as a cosmic child abuser is clearly inconsistent with the God of the Bible, these critics think we should reject PSA. But does PSA necessitate such a view? We must examine the identity of Christ to see if it fits with this indictment. There are at least three conditions that would need to be met for PSA to qualify as a case of child abuse: Jesus would need to be a child, he would need to be unwilling to participate, and he would need to be an unrelated third party. Let’s examine each of these to see whether PSA could qualify as a case of cosmic child abuse. 

Jesus is not a child at the time of the crucifixion, he is a 33-year-old adult in his humanity and eternal in his divine nature. He is fully aware of the situation, prophesying that he will be killed, and rebuking his followers for suggesting he try to avoid this fate (Matthew 16:23). Given these considerations, it is not as though Jesus is a vulnerable child who is being taken advantage of.  

Jesus explicitly states that he is willing to participate in this plan of redemption. In John 10:17 he says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” Again, the picture of a drunken father taking out his anger on a fearful child simply does not fit here. What would make Jesus so willing to endure the horrors of crucifixion? He did it because of his love for us and desire to redeem us. In John 15:13 Jesus says, “Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” He then demonstrates his love by dying in our place (Rom 5:8). Jesus repeatedly expresses his desire for his followers to be set free from their slavery to sin and united in relationship with God. Given his clearly articulated motivations and readiness to die in our place, we cannot say that Jesus was unwilling.  

One possible objection that could be raised against this is the prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. The critic could claim “Jesus was pleading with the Father to let him escape an excruciating death, so how could he be a willing participant?” First, we can acknowledge that Jesus may have had desires from his human nature that conflicted with those from his divine nature. After all, in his humanity, Jesus would have had many desires such as hunger or thirst, which God would never want or need as an omnipotent spirit. Second, we can see that while Jesus expresses his initial desire for an alternative to the cross, his ultimate will is that his divine mission would be accomplished. This account is therefore not included to be a demonstration of division within the Godhead (which is impossible), but likely to show that we too ought to place our human priorities lower than the wisdom and will of God.  

Finally, and most importantly, if Jesus was an unrelated third party we would certainly consider it a case of injustice. Any judge who decides to punish an innocent bystander instead of the guilty commits a heinous miscarriage of justice. But Jesus is not an unrelated third party: he is the God we have sinned against.¹¹ We can know this both because there are many passages that clearly demonstrate the deity of Christ, and it is the clear teaching of the church throughout history. As J. Oliver Buswell states, “Christ was not a third party in the affair at Calvary. He was God against Whom that sin (and every sin in the last analysis) was committed.”¹² The logic of this statement helps to make sense of PSA. While we may sin against each other, our sin is ultimately committed against God, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe and the source of all moral law (Psalm 51:4). Jesus is therefore intricately related to our situation and does not count as an unrelated third party.  

Given that none of the three conditions for cosmic child abuse are met, we can safely dismiss this charge.  

Myth 2: Demanding payment for forgiveness would be unjust 

Another charge made against PSA is that God didn’t need to kill someone to forgive us. Rob Bell states, “God didn’t need to kill someone to be ‘happy’ with humanity. What kind of God would that be? Awful. Horrific.”¹³ Brian Zahnd agrees, “The sacrifice of Jesus was necessary to convince us to quit producing sacrificial victims, but it was not necessary to convince God to forgive.”¹⁴ This objection has an initial appeal. When we forgive one another, we don’t demand some kind of sacrifice. To do so could be seen as demanding payment—the very thing forgiveness is supposed to exclude! So then why would God need to provide a sacrifice—why can’t he just forgive? How can PSA be considered just in light of this?  

First, the assumption that someone can “just forgive” without payment is incorrect. Forgiveness always costs something. If we remember the earlier example of the patron who broke an expensive bottle of wine, there are only two possible outcomes: the owner of the restaurant can either demand payment, or he can forgive—in which case he must bear the cost. To act as though he could just forgive would be to ignore his investment in the bottle, and the profit he lost by not selling it. Buswell states, “No one ever really forgives another, except he bears the penalty of the other’s sin against him.”¹⁵ This seems to be a universal rule for forgiveness: someone must pay.  

This is especially true since God is a perfectly righteous judge. It is morally reprehensible when a judge or law keeper allows the guilty to roam free. We would deem such a judge inept at best and corrupt at worst. In the same way, as the perfect judge of the world, God can’t just sweep our sins under the “cosmic rug,” and pretend like they never happened. This would teach us that our sin is innocuous when scripture tells us it is deadly (James 1:15), which would only lead to more sin and death. But more importantly, it would be fundamentally unjust for a holy God to allow evil to go unpunished.  

It seems then, someone must bear the penalty. However, God desires reconciliation with us. He makes it clear that he takes no joy in the death of the wicked, but would rather that they repent and live (Ezekiel 18). But how can this happen if he punishes us? Only if he fulfills the requirements of justice and pays the penalty himself.¹⁶ This also illustrates why Jesus must be both God and man. Only God has sufficient resources and infinitely valuable life with which to represent us, and only a man can be our substitute. In giving his life for us, Jesus bears the cost of forgiveness and fulfills the requirements of justice. As it says in Romans 8:3-4, “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…” 

Myth 3: God would be committing suicide. 

Another challenge against PSA is that it makes God the killer of God. As atheist Michael Shermer states, “God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Barking mad!”¹⁷ More specifically, a critic could charge that suicide is a sin, and so God would be unable to accomplish it. Scripture clearly teaches that God had a plan of salvation in mind, even before the foundations of the world.¹⁸ If PSA is true, and if God is sovereign over all of creation, then Jesus specifically planned to get himself killed. But Jesus could not have committed suicide, so PSA is false. 

There are several ways we could respond to this challenge. First, we can draw a distinction between suicide and self-sacrifice. Imagine a secret agent who has been captured by an enemy nation that is going to torture him for information. We may be able to imagine a scenario where it would be morally sufficient for him to swallow a cyanide pill to save his comrades. While this action would be considered suicide under normal circumstances, because of the context it might instead be regarded as a life-saving step of self-sacrifice undertaken out of love and concern for his nation. Beyond that, what if an agent is submitted to horrific torture and remains steadfast to the point of death? He has not committed the sin of suicide because he refused to give up his information. Rather, his virtue is what allowed him to resist the demands of his captors despite his horrible fate. So, allowing yourself to be killed to prevent a moral wrong or achieve a great good is not a sin, and is certainly the kind of thing Jesus could participate in. 

But can the crucifixion be considered a case of self-sacrifice if God orchestrated the circumstances and the actions of his crucifiers? This depends on one’s view of God’s sovereignty. For example, a very strong view of God’s control over earthly events would be exhaustive divine determinism. This is defined by Stratton and Moreland when they say, “Exhaustive divine determinism (hereafter, EDD) is the idea that God necessitates all events—especially all things about humanity, which would include all desires, thoughts, intuitions, beliefs, actions, behaviors, evaluations, and judgments.”¹⁹ Under this view, all human actions are completely controlled by God, and so it seems that he would be directly acting to cause the events of Jesus’ crucifixion. Perhaps this could still be justified by the good it would bring, but that is questionable.  

However, if one believes God has given libertarian freedom to people the picture changes significantly. Libertarian freedom is characterized by Kevin Timpe when he says, “…free will is primarily a function of an agent being the source of her actions in a particular way. On this approach, you read this book of your own free will if nothing outside of you is the ultimate cause of your action or choice.”²⁰ If we have this kind of will then God is not actively controlling the actions of humans but allows them to freely choose between their various desires. Jesus allows himself to be killed, and even orchestrates elements of the situation so that it would occur, but the guilt is born by those who freely chose to put Jesus to death. This seems to best account for Acts 2:23, where Peter says, “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”  

One final consideration is the fact that the main problem with suicide is that it is declaring ownership and authority over something that does not belong to us. This is the same condition that makes murder wrong—we are taking a life that we do not own. However, God has no such restraint. As the creator and sustainer of the universe, all things belong to him. It is well within his rights to take any human life, as we see in many places in scripture. In the same way, as the rightful owner of his own human life, Jesus had the authority to lay it down (John 10:17).  

Myth 4: Wrath would be unjust 

Another charge that critics often bring against PSA is that it portrays an angry God who pours out his vengeance. Chalk states, “How then, have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Son?”²¹ Author Brian Zahnd continues, “The cross is not where God finds a whipping boy to vent his rage upon; the cross is where God saves the world through self-sacrificing love.”²² Setting aside the caricature of child abuse, is wrath incompatible with a God of love and forgiveness?  

There are several reasons this charge does not demonstrate that PSA is unjust. First, wrath is not necessarily linked to an emotion of uncontrollable rage. It is possible that this is a connotation that has developed through the linguistic use of the term over time. If God experiences an emotion of anger, it would be rational, proportional, an untainted by sin—righteous anger, which would not be unjust. It is difficult to imagine Jesus overturning the money lenders tables and driving them out with a whip of cords while sporting a serene expression.²³ Anger is actually a healthy emotional response to injustice. When someone is emotionally indifferent to evil this demonstrates a lack of care that is either sinful or sociopathic. A father who didn’t care that his daughter was doing drugs would be negligent in his duty to love her. In this way, wrath is the other side of love. It is because parents love their children that they experience anger when their children disobey in a way that harms themselves.   

Furthermore, God is quick to forgive and slow to anger. Again, his ultimate desire is for all to be saved,²⁴ and is patiently waiting for more to repent.²⁵ He does not delight in the death of the wicked, but would rather they turn and live.²⁶ So God is ultimately not angry at us, but angry for us. He hates the sin we choose to commit and how it corrupts and destroys us. Alisa Childers summarizes, “The wrath of God is not a divine temper tantrum triggered by erratic feelings of offense and hatred…It is the controlled and righteous judgment of anything that opposes the Lord’s perfect nature and love. We should be very thankful for the wrath of God.”²⁷ God’s righteous anger is therefore not a reason to doubt the justice of PSA. 

Conclusion 

Despite the challenges raised against PSA, it remains the best theory of atonement. It cannot be classified as a case of cosmic child abuse, because Jesus is not an unwilling child, but is himself the God against whom we have sinned. God could not have “just forgiven” without bearing the cost of forgiveness. This is both because forgiveness is always costly, and because he is a perfectly righteous judge. The cross also cannot be considered impossible because of suicide, because there are cases where it would be morally sufficient to give your life on behalf of others, and there is a significant difference between suicide and self-sacrifice. Finally, God’s wrath is no barrier to the justice of PSA, because anyone who truly loves will experience righteous anger when those they love suffer through self-destructive behavior. Therefore, PSA is not unjust, but is a true picture of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.