Penal substitutionary atonement is the idea that when Jesus\nwent to the cross he carried on His back all of humanity’s sins – past, present, and future. He did this, so the theory goes, to endure the wrath and punishment from God the Father that we ourselves deserved. So Jesus served as our substitute and He paid the debt that we could never pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In Jesus, our account is finally settled with God.<\/p>\n\n\n
Sound familiar? It’s pretty common, but PSA is far from uncontroversial and is widely debated.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Some embrace it unreservedly, some deny it vehemently, and others simply include it as one way among many to understand what happened on the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n
I am just starting to look into it for myself, but I already find myself leaning away from PSA.<\/p>\n\n\n
(And not just because Calvinists seem to embrace it wholeheartedly!)<\/p>\n\n\n
The strongest philosophical argument against PSA I have heard so far – an argument that made me stop and want to dive in to the Scriptures – was this:<\/p>\n\n\n
If Jesus “pays the price” for our sins on the cross and takes our punishment on Himself, then it is not accurate to speak of the Father “forgiving” any sins.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The Father transfers the debt to His Son.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Forgiveness is not on the table. There should be no talk of pardon for sins.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
You see how that’s a problem, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Penal substitutionary atonement is the idea that when Jesus went to the cross he carried on His back all of humanity’s sins – past, present, and future. He did this, so the theory goes, to endure the wrath and punishment from God the Father that we ourselves deserved. So Jesus served as our substitute and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4813,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions\/4813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}