![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/11\/110712_subst_atone.jpg\" "\\"110712_subst_atone\\"")
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Each month, we will be highlighting a particular theological topic here at the BLB blog. This month, we are highlighting the topic of\u00a0soteriology<\/strong>\u2014the doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.\u201d<\/span> The cross of Jesus is where the substitutionary atonement happened. On the cross, Jesus served as our substitute and atoned for our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).<\/p>\n At the cross, our sin became Christ’s sin, our blameworthiness became Christ’s blameworthiness, the wrath we deserve from an infinitely just Being became the wrath He absorbed from an in\ufb01nitely just Being. It made salvation possible for spiritually dead sinners wrought with guilt. As if this weren’t good news enough, Christ’s blamelessness became our blamelessness, Christ’s reward became our reward, Christ’s perfection our perfection, and Christ’s con\ufb01dent standing before the holy and just Father became our confident standing before the holy and just Father.<\/p>\n We can no more improve on Christ’s imputed righteousness than we can count past in\ufb01nity.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God…We must, above all, remember this substitution, lest we tremble and remain anxious throughout life\u2014as if God’s righteous vengeance, which the Son of God has taken upon himself, still hung over us….[To] take away all cause for enmity and to reconcile us utterly to himself, he wipes out all evil in us by the expiation set forth in the death of Christ; that we, who were previously unclean and impure, may show ourselves righteous and holy in his sight.” \u201cWhen we think of such an act of grace on God’s part, we have the answer to our question: how can God justify the ungodly? The righteousness of Christ is the righteousness of his perfect obedience, a righteousness undefiled and undefileable, a righteousness which not only warrants the justification of the ungodly but one that necessarily elicits and constrains such justification. God cannot but accept into His favor those who are invested with the righteousness of His own Son.” “Religion says, \u2018attain\u2019; the gospel says, \u2018obtain.\u2019 Religion says, \u2018attempt\u2019; the gospel says, \u2018accept.\u2019 Religion says, \u2018try\u2019; the gospel says, \u2018trust.\u2019 Religion says, \u2018do this\u2019; the gospel says, \u2018it is done.\u2019” The redemptive suffering of Jesus stands in stark contrast to the following sub\u2014biblical theories:<\/p>\n Origen\u2019s Ransom Theory<\/strong>: Alexandrian thinker Origen taught in the 3″\u2019 century that Jesus\u2019 death was a ransom paid to the devil. As Wayne Grudem points out, \u201cit falsely thinks of Satan rather than God as the one who required that a payment be made for sin and this completely neglects the demands of God’s justice with respect to sin. It views Satan as having much more power than he actually does, namely, power to demand whatever he wants from God.\u201d Abelard\u2019s Moral Influence Theory<\/strong>: French thinker Peter Abelard taught in the 12″\u201c century that Jesus\u2019 death was just God’s way of saying “l love you” to the human race, but there was no payment for sin involved. Although the cross is a powerful \u201cI love you\u201d from God to humans to influence us to a moral life, this view leaves us without a solution to our problem of our objective blameworthiness before a just God. This view has witnessed a resurgence in today\u2019s church as God\u2019s wrath and our guilt have been downplayed ( to appease consumers) so that the cross becomes merely an expression of God\u2019s love rather than of God\u2019s love and<\/em> justice. The cross-work of Christ is the ultimate display of God\u2019s retributive justice and<\/em> His redeeming love. If either God\u2019s justice or love is compromised, so is the gospel.<\/p>\n Socinus\u2019 Example Theory<\/strong>: Italian thinker Socinus taught in the 16th century, Jesus\u2019 death does nothing more than give us with an example of the kind of obedience God desires from His creatures. While the cross does serve as a powerful example of costly obedience we ought to mirror, this view, along with the Ransom and Moral Influence theories, overlooks that God requires payment for the offense of sin against His holy nature.<\/p>\n Leo X\u2019s Penance Theory<\/strong>: As Pope Leo X and John Tetzel taught in the 16th century, the crosswork of Jesus is not sufficient to save sinners. We must supplement the work of\u00a0Christ\u00a0by purchasing indulgences, gazing at relics, and committing acts of penance to work off whatever sins were not payed for on the cross. This view resorts to our own religious performance in a futile attempt to gain God’s favor. It reduces “good works” to\u00a0insecure\u00a0attempts to become\u00a0saved\u00a0 rather than grateful acts\u00a0because\u00a0we are saved thanks to Christ’s work as our Great Substitute.<\/p>\n When the church loses sight of the good news of Christ’s substitutionary death we slide into performance-based spirituality, embracing the bad news (the anti-gospel) that man must save himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Each month, we will be highlighting a particular theological topic here at the BLB blog. This month, we are highlighting the topic of\u00a0soteriology\u2014the doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ. \u201cFor our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.\u201d (2 Corinthians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-misc","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5181,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions\/5181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.blueletterbible.org\/blb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n (2 Corinthians 5:21)<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is substitutionary atonement?<\/h3>\n
\n(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, pp. 506, 510)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n(John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 124)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n(Ajith Fernando, The Supremacy of Christ, 144)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nOther atonement theories<\/h3>\n
\n(Systematic Theology<\/em>, 581)<\/p>\n