Testing Tradition

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? (Psalm 22:1, ESV) These words are so central to the traditional evangelical understanding of the cross of Jesus Christ that their sentiment echoes in the songs we sing, most notably: How great the pain of searing loss— The Father turns His face away, As wounds which mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory. But is this really what's happening on the cross?  The Father turns His face away from the Son?  The Father forsakes the Son?  The Father is considering His Son to be a cursed criminal instead of the apple of His eye?  I want to make the case, on the basis of the Scriptures, that this is not what's happening.  I would submit that throughout Jesus' entire experience of the cross, the Father never stopped viewing His Son as the apple of His eye with whom He is fully well-pleased. Psalm 9 The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in...

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV) This is a lynchpin text for the traditional Protestant understanding of double imputation.  John Piper is just one example of the many who understand this verse as "the great exchange": This is the great exchange. Here it is again in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God lays our sins on Christ and punishes them in him. And in Christ’s obedient death, God fulfills and vindicates his righteousness and imputes (credits) it to us. Our sin on Christ; his righteousness on us. If I buy an item of clothing from the mall for my daughter and find when I get home that she likes it but it's either too small or too big, I would take it back to the store to exchange it for the same item in a different size that better fits her.  This exchange means that th...

Traditional protestant theology holds that the logic of the cross is that Jesus experienced something instead of His people .  In other words, He experienced something on the cross so that we don't have to.  He is substituted for His people on the cross. In what follows, I want to offer several passages to make the case that this actually is incorrect.  The logic of the cross is instead that Jesus experienced something that we might share in that experience with Him , both His experience of death and resurrection.  His people participate with Him on the cross. And these two are necessarily mutually exclusive.  The cross can't be both substitutionary and participatory because, by definition, substitution requires that the one being substituted for isn't participating.  When a class has a substitute teacher, that necessarily means that the regular teacher isn't participating in teaching the classroom that day.  If the regular teacher is there, then ano...

Note: In the development of my thinking unpacked in this post, I am indebted to Andrew Rillera and what he has written in his superb book: Lamb of the Free , specifically the penultimate chapter (Chapter 7: When Jesus' Death Is Not a Sacrifice).  Before reading his book, the Greco-Roman understanding of hilasterion he discusses there had never been brought to my attention. [21] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—[22] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [25] whom God put forward as a propitiation (hilasterion) by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. [26] It was to show h...

Note: This is the third of a three-part series. You can read part one here and part two here . Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Romans 5:9 This verse in Paul's letter to the Romans is one that probably comes closest in the New Testament to explicitly substantiating the claim that the purpose of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was to rescue believers from the future wrath of God by Jesus taking it upon Himself as a substitute for sinners.  William Lane Craig, a proponent of this view—popularly known as the penal substitutionary view of the atonement—comments on this verse: For Paul Christ’s death is conceived to be both expiatory and propitiatory... The first clause expresses expiation (justified by his blood), the second propitiation (saved by him from the wrath of God). —Craig, William Lane. Atonement and the Death of Christ (p. 34). In this post, my aim is to show how Romans 5:9 does no...