304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

Problem two with penal substitutionary atonement theory is that it makes a wrathful violence the solution to everything. PSA claims that God’s justice will not allow Him to just forgive sin; instead, His wrath must be poured out – on an innocent, in this case, Jesus – and His justice be satisfied so He can forgive the guilty (us). And again, that concept presents God as a completely violent and wrathful Being, when He is love. He’s not anger. He’s not wrath. He’s not violence. He’s love.

That is the second real, big, giant problem with the theory of atonement – and the the word ‘atonement’ really just means ‘why Jesus died on the cross’ – ‘what He was doing on the cross’ – it makes wrathful violence the solution to all our problems: in short, violence is actually the answer. Well we know that can’t be true because of Jesus’ teaching, and Jesus’ life, and everything He represented. PSA claims that God must violently punish to satisfy His justice. Now, we can counter that by saying if God had to use violence to solve the problem, we elevate violence as a viable solution for people’s problems. “If God did it, then why can’t I do it?”

That actually is why people can justify the Crusades, and all sorts of persecution of people, and ‘salvation by the sword’, and all that type of thing that happened in the past because they were coming from an Old Testament perspective. And God wasn’t even that God in the Old Testament, because He’s the same, He never changes: He has always been love.

Their view of him was wrong and Jesus came to truly reveal what God was fully like. Even when Peter used a sword to cut off the high priest’s servant’s ear, what did Jesus do? He didn’t commend Peter for violently cutting off his ear, he put his ear back and healed him. Very clearly, the pictures and some of the illustrations that use the terminology of a sword coming to divide were examples of division, nothing to do with violence.

Another claim of PSA is that God punished Jesus on the cross as an expression of His wrath. Again I think we can counter that – the idea of God using violence directly contradicts the ethics taught and lived by Jesus, who is God. There is not one instance where Jesus who is God suggests this in His teaching, especially The Sermon on the Mount. Therefore it contradicts the core of Jesus’ teaching, which is to show mercy, to love our enemies and to never use violence to solve anything.

I think mercy triumphs over man’s desire and need for justice, for sacrifice for offering, and all the other things we have created in our own forms of religion.