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 another teacher prese
Testing Tradition
As the people of God, we must hold to apostolic tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6) but reject human tradition (Colossians 2:8). Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day for making void the word of God for the sake of their tradition (Matthew 15:6). And He said they did this in many ways (Mark 7:13b). We are not immune to this error today. This blog exists to test (1 Thessalonians 5:21) our modern Christian traditions against Scripture to discern where we might have done the same.