How Firm Was Spurgeon's View of the Atonement?

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

No punishment required?

Spurgeon and penal substitution revisited

(First posted 26 October 2005)

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. This week, I'm rerunning an old post I encountered while researching my seminar for next week's Shepherds' Conference. (I'll be doing a seminar on the life and controversies of Spurgeon during the conference.) This post explored the question of whether Spurgeon would truly fight for penal substitution against the likes of Steve Chalke, Brian McLaren, and Rob Bell, or was he just a quaint old fogey whose understanding of atonement was naive, and hung somewhere between Anselm and Calvin? Read the sermon referred to and linked below if you want Spurgeon's own answer to that question.

   couple of Brit-bloggers, Steve and Sven, both noticed Monday's Spurgeon quote and voiced doubts about whether Spurgeon really believed in the penal-substitution view of the atonement.

Steve writes,

"Pyromaniac digs up this quote by spurgeon, which he belives [sic] is talking about Penal Substitution. Aside from some amusement at the Victor Meldrewness of it, it's an excellent, and typical spurgeon quote, talking about Jesus atoning (at-one-ment—reconciliation) death on the cross."

(For Yank readers who wonder what Steve means, Victor Meldrew was an elderly character in the Britcom One Foot in the Grave, known for his ill-tempered grousing.)

Steve then opines:

"Interestingly while he talks about a recompence [sic] and substititution [sic], he makes no mention of punishment or anything penal. In fact he seems to be fairly clearly talking about the satisfaction model of Atonement (Substitutionary Atonement) which Anselm devloped [sic], before it was developed further by Luther and Calvin into the currently popular penal model."

Actually, in such a context, the recompense Spurgeon spoke of (the payment of which he "fairly clearly" says was "render[ed] to God's justice") is nothing if not punitive. I suppose if you don't understand Spurgeon and aren't familiar with Victorianisms, you might not catch that idea on your initial reading of this particular quote, but for the record, Steve has badly misread what Spurgeon is saying.

Anyway, in a note added after posting, Steve refers his readers to The World of Sven, promising, "Sven says this better."

Sven actually says it much worse: "Spurgeon himself seems to have gotten stuck halfway between Anselm and the classic Reformed position." Sven quotes a sentence from Spurgeon, ("My conscience tells me that I must render to God's justice a recompense for the dishonor that I have done to His law, and I cannot find anything which bears the semblance of such a recompense till I look to Christ Jesus.") and asks:

Doesn't this sound rather more like satisfaction theory rather than the popular version of penal substitution? This is of course slightly problematic, because Anselm (satisfaction theory) and the magisterial Reformers view Christ's death in two very different ways, because of course if Christ makes recompense to God's honour, no punishment is required.(Emphasis added.)

I admit to some amusement at the Arnold Rimmeresque hubris contained in such pronouncements; but Steve and Sven really ought to investigate what Spurgeon actually believed about the atonement before lecturing their readers on the nuances of his view. Spurgeon's view on the atonement was no secret. His outspoken defense of penal substitution was a consistent theme—and not a subtle one—from the beginning of his ministry to his dying gasps at the height of the Downgrade Controversy (in which this very issue of penal substitution was one of the main doctrines in dispute).

Nor would Spurgeon ever have approved of paring back the definition of "at-one-ment" to reconciliation only.

It's extremely irritating that after more than two years of controversy, Steve Chalke and his aficionados still seem blithely ignorant about the historical debate among British Baptists over the doctrine of penal substitution. It's always annoyed me that Chalke, who ministered at Haddon Hall—a chapel founded by Spurgeon's own congregation and named for him—decided to champion this issue, and then has handled the ensuing controversy in such a clumsy and perfunctory way.

Here's a message where Spurgeon explains himself with absolute clarity and without the Victorian euphemisms. Whenever Spurgeon spoke of "substitutionary atonement," here, in his own words, is what he had in mind:

"The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that inasmuch as man could not keep God's law, having fallen in Adam, Christ came and fulfilled the law on the behalf of his people; and that inasmuch as man had already broken the divine law and incurred the penalty of the wrath of God, Christ came and suffered in the room, place, and stead of his elect ones, that so by his enduring the full vials of wrath, they might be emptied out and not a drop might ever fall upon the heads of his blood-bought people."

"Christ—Our Substitute" is one of my all-time favorite Spurgeon sermons, because Spurgeon's passion is conveyed in the words. You don't have to know what he actually sounded like to sense the fervor with which he defended the atonement against the Steve Chalkes of his day:

These are the new men whom God has sent down from heaven, to tell us that the apostle Paul was all wrong, that our faith is vain, that we have been quite mistaken, that there was no need for propitiating blood to wash away our sins; that the fact was, our sins needed discipline, but penal vengeance and righteous wrath are quite out of the question. When I thus speak, I am free to confess that such ideas are not boldly taught by a certain individual whose volume excites these remarks, but as he puffs the books of gross perverters of the truth, I am compelled to believe that he endorses such theology.

Well, brethren, I am happy to say that sort of stuff has not gained entrance into this pulpit. I dare say the worms will eat the wood before there will be anything of that sort sounded in his place; and may these bones be picked by vultures, and this flesh be rent in sunder by lions, and may every nerve in this body suffer pangs and tortures, ere these lips shall give utterance to any such doctrines or sentiments.

There's lots of picturesque and painfully blunt language in this sermon, but if I get started quoting it, I won't know where to stop. It reads like it was aimed at Steve Chalke himself. Read the sermon for yourself. It's a good one.

And, by the way, there are many more where this one came from. Fans of Steve Chalke need to face up to the reality that Spurgeon is no friend of anything Chalke stands for.

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Airborne Pyro, part three

by Dan Phillips

The third of three segments I recorded for the "Bible Burgh" radio program is to be aired tomorrow, June 28 [— er, 29th], at 9pm ET; you can listen to it streaming here; or download it Monday hence.

It was a good experience. Hope we can do it again sometime!

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Substitutionary atonement and Proverbs (part 2 of 2)

by Dan Phillips

In the first installment, O Pyrophilus, I sketched out the course a Christian reader must take in harvesting the full, Divinely-intended value from the Old Testament. One must neither improve the text by inserting ideas inaccessibly alien to its human authors or readers, nor rob the text through denial of God's intended meaning.

I set as a challenging example the doctrine of penal, substitutionary atonement as pointed to by the book of Proverbs. The first of two signposts I found there was the frequent use of "Yahweh," the name of Israel's God, who must be approached by faith on the basis of penal, substitutionary atonement. To name Yahweh in the text of the OT is to name the God of penal, substitutionary atonement.

The second signpost

The second signpost I see is in Proverbs 17:15 —

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
are both alike an abomination to the LORD.

At first blush, the intent of this text is plain: it sets the standard for forensic justice in the deportment of judges. Yahweh intends strict justice to be carried out. The judge may neither turn a blind eye to wrongs committed, nor falsely impute wrongs or crimes to the innocent, for the (Exodus 23:6-8; Deuteronomy 16:18-20; 25:1; Proverbs 17:26; 24:24).

Failure to uphold justice in court was one of the crimes for which Yahweh indicted and punished Israel (Isaiah 5:7, 20; 10:1-2; Amos 5:7, 12-15; Micah 3:9-11; Malachi 2:17, etc.).

What does any of that have to do with penal, substitutionary atonement?

So glad you asked!

The problem...

It is a Biblical fact — not merely a NT fact — that all men are sinners by nature and by choice. Adam and Eve sinned and died spiritually (Genesis 2—3); and their children were conceived and born bearing that same broken, corrupted nature (Genesis 5:3). They still bear God's image, but that image is warped by a propensity to sin. God's universal assessment of mankind is not favorable (Genesis 6:5). David's depiction of mankind is similarly unsparing and stark (Psalm 53:1-3). And Solomon, author of Proverbs, echoes this same viewpoint: "there is no one who does not sin" (1 Kings 8:46). In fact, in that very book, he rhetorically asks, "Who can say, 'I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin'?" (Proverbs 20:9). Clearly the answer expected is, "No man."

"No man"? No man. "Including, say, Abram?" Yes, of course: that would have to include Abram.

Uh-oh. In that case, we have a problem.

The problem is Genesis 15:6, where we read that Abram "believed [Yahweh], and he counted it to him as righteousness." Abram — wicked, sinful Abram — was counted righteous, when he believed Yahweh.

Yahweh justified the wicked — the very thing that Proverbs 17:15 says is an abomination to Yahweh. How can this be? Did Yahweh Himself do what was abominable in His own eyes?

Here is where taking an approach that respects the whole text of Scripture makes an immense difference.

In the short(er) run we know that Moses, who penned the problematic Genesis 15:6, was aware of the fundamental principle of Leviticus 17:11 — "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I [Yahweh] have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." Moses knew that atonement for sin, for sins, for sins such as Abram's, can only be made by the shedding of blood. He knows that Abram had offered sacrifices (Genesis 12:7-8; 13:4, 18), and that Yahweh Himself had made bloody sacrifice on formalizing His covenant with Abram (chapter 15).

Yet there is a tension within the OT itself on the subject of sacrifice. For one thing, the sacrifices themselves had no transformative power, and so many writers deride individuals who looked on them as if they were magical box-checking, formalistic remedies for their unrepented moral crimes (Isaiah 66:3; Jeremiah 11:15). Solomon himself brought scorching barrages to bear on anyone who viewed sacrifice as being an externalistic "fix" for an unrepentant, unbelieving heart (Proverbs 15:8; 21:27).

Beyond all that there is the fact that, even in the case of those with repentant faith, the sacrifices had to be repeated over and over and over. The Day of Atonement occurred year in and year out, again and again. In expressing this, none can surpass the eloquence of Apoll... er, the writer of Hebrews, when he says:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1-4)

Trace it out, then:

1. God does in fact declare the wicked righteous
2. He declares the wicked righteous through faith
3. He declares the wicked righteous on the basis of penal, substitutionary atonement that deals with their sins and His just wrath...
   
4. ...But the atonement provided within the OT itself was imperfect and insufficient.

This was the state of affairs under which Solomon wrote Proverbs 17:15.

The tension, then, is not resolved within the OT. It is only moved forward.

However, the whole OT itself does contain within itself signposts to the ultimate and satisfying resolution of this awesome dilemma.

....and the promise

A major prophetic promise comes in a book which, ironically, begins (in part) by a thunderous and devastating denunciation of Israel's abuse of ritual and sacrifice to cover over their unbelieving lives (Isaiah 1:10-15). Yet I've long envisioned a contemporary of Isaiah's reading those words and thinking, "Yahweh doesn't want sacrifice? What does that leave us?"

Yahweh's ultimate and final answer is given in the jaw-dropping prophetic revelation of Isaiah 52:13 — 53:12. Though this isn't the place for a lengthy exposition, one can readily see the sacrificial imagery throughout this oracle. Isaiah depicts this human being, this Servant of Yahweh — who clearly is not Israel idealized nor otherwise (cf. v. 8, and the repeated contrasts of the one vs. the many, the we and the Him) — offering Himself up to bear the wrath of God for sins not His own, but His people's. This individual, Himself righteous (v. 11), dying as a penal, substitutionary sacrifice for the ungodly and wicked (cf. vv. 4-10).

The pivot, in connection with Proverbs 17:15, is found in Isaiah 53:11 — "Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities."

There it is:

• Many sinners...
• ...will be accounted righteous
• ...on the basis of the perfect and final penal, substitutionary atonement that the Servant of Yahweh would provide.

Note: we have seen all this without citing one verse about Jesus from the New Testament.

But it all makes the greatest sense of Paul's argument in Romans. Once again, on the face of it, these two verses stand in stark and obvious contradiction:

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
are both alike an abomination to the LORD (Proverbs 17:15)

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness... (Romans 4:5)

Yet final and ultimate reconciliation is found in the penal substitutionary atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul opens this up in Romans 3:25-26, which speaks of Jesus Christ —

...whom God put forward as a propitiation 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 his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just [δίκαιον, dikaion — righteous] and the justifier [δικαιοῦντα, dikaiounta — the one who declares righteous] of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Jesus Christ is God's ἱλαστήριον [hilastērion], the sacrifice that absorbs and deflects His just wrath. His blood deals with our sin; our sin is imputed to Him, and His righteousness is imputed to us. In this way and in this way alone, God can be righteous, and declare wicked Abram righteous through faith alone. He can be righteous, and declare wicked Paul righteous through faith alone.

And He can be righteous, and declare wicked you, and wicked me, righteous through faith alone, by grace alone, on the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone.

And so you see, the principle of Proverbs 17:15 is the key to the necessity of penal, substitutionary atonement

1. If God, with no cause nor reason, pronounces guilty people righteous, then He violates His own principle of justice, and un-Gods Himself. However,
   
2. If God imputes our sin to Christ, and imputes Christ’s righteousness to us, with Christ making full atonement for our sin, then is He just and the justifier of believers
   

It was well that Thomas Watson called redemption “the masterpiece of divine wisdom.” Watson envisions the counsels of eternity thus:

God’s mercy looked at us in our miserable and helpless estate, but how to do it without wronging the justice of God? It is a pity, says Mercy, that such a noble creature as man should be made to be undone; and yet God’s justice must not be a loser. What way then shall be found out? Angels cannot satisfy for the wrong done to God’s justice, nor is it fit that one nature should sin, and another nature suffer. What then? Shall man be for ever lost? Now, while Mercy was thus debating with itself, what to do for the recover of fallen man, the Wisdom of God stepped in; and thus the oracle spake: —Let God become man; let the Second Person in the Trinity be incarnate, and suffer; and so for fitness he shall be man, and for ability he shall be God; thus justice may be satisfied, and man saved. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom of God, thus to make justice and mercy to kiss each other! (Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity [Baker: 1979 (reprint of 1890 ed.)], 51.)

Amen!

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Substitutionary atonement and Proverbs (part 1 of 2)

by Dan Phillips

Sail carefully

In approaching the Old Testament believingly, two extremes must be avoided.

Off to the left looms the Scylla of atomization. Each part of the Bible is treated as a standalone, an historical artifact written virtually without reference to any other part. If the human author is allowed some awareness of previous revelation, no greater purpose — no metanarrative — is seen as useful (let alone determinative) in interpretation.

The problem with this approach is that it, in effect, rejects the Bible's self-description as a unified and organic revelation, in which the parts are best understood when set within the whole (e.g. Matthew 22:29; Mark 12:24; Luke 24:44-48; John 7:42; 20:9; 1 Timothy 5:18; Hebrews 1:1-2, etc.).

The unity of the Bible is not only a significant fact for doctrine, but for interpretation as well.

Equally, off to the right is the jutting Charybdis of a false Christianization of the Old Testament.

Note: I am not saying that reading the Bible as a Christian book is false. Indeed, I think it false to read it any other way (though what I mean by that would require expansion beyond the purpose of this post). However, the ultimacy of Christ does not cancel out the relevance of each chapter of revelation within and to its own context.

We commit this error when we neglect the fact that the God who finally spoke "to us by his Son" had previously spoken "to our fathers by the prophets" (Hebrews 1:1-2). We effectively deny this fact if we take, as our primary interpretation of any passage, a meaning that the passage could not possibly have had either to the writer nor the readers. If God spoke hopelessly over the heads of both His prophets and His hearers/readers, you couldn't say that He spoke "to our fathers," and you couldn't call what He did "communication." It doesn't honor God to depict Him as, in effect, running the ultimate shell-game.

Having said that: the approach that is (I think) truest to the whole picture of revelation must suggest meanings that would make sense to the original writers/readers, and relate to the ultimate Big Picture that lay in the mind of God.

As an illustration, let's take the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement as it relates to the book of Proverbs.

"This should be interesting," some of you will doubtless say, "— since there is no doctrine of substitutionary atonement in Proverbs!" At one point, that would also have been pretty much the entirety of my own reaction.

I'd certainty agree that no one could build an entire doctrine of the atonement from Proverbs. But I'd also hasten to insist that no one should build an entire doctrine of the atonement from any single book of the Bible, including Romans and Galatians.

However, I do think that Proverbs contains at least two signposts that, in the context of the whole Canon, point us in the direction of the canonical doctrine of penal, substitutionary atonement.

Let me illustrate, then, by expanding a portion of a sermon I recently preached to the good folks at Calvary Community Church in Louisville, TN.

First signpost: "Yahweh"

The first signpost is broadly missed, or undervalued, for a couple of reasons.

First, nobody's helped by the stupid translators' trick of hiding "Yahweh" behind "LORD" and "GOD." We are so overdue for some head of a translation committee to look his fellow-scholars in the eye and say, "Brothers... why do we even do this anymore? We all know it's wrong, none of us can really make sense out of it. The more that people know, the lamer the 'explanations' in our forwards are sounding — so seriously, let's ditch that whole embarrassing LORD / Lord GOD thing, and let the text say 'Yahweh.'" And then everyone else on the committee needs to vote a hearty "Aye," stop baffling generations of Bible-readers, and start making up for lost time.

If this issue doesn't resonate with you, then try this: imagine that every occurrence of "Jesus" in the NT were replaced with "the Teacher" or "the Lord," because some group of unbelievers has a superstition about even saying His name. Maybe then the point will begin to stand out more starkly to you.

Second, because of this, too few reflect sufficiently on the significance of the fact that the living God of the Bible has a personal name, and that this means something. All sorts of religions talk about at least one "lord" and/or "god," so we don't stop to think when we see "LORD" in the text.

But we really should. Especially we plenary, verbal inspiration-types.

Actually, Proverbs is rather remarkable in this regard. Proverbs is different from much of the Old Testament in terms of the mode of revelation. Here we don't see oracles of Yahweh, or "thus says Yahweh," as in other books. Instead, this kind of "wisdom" literature is seen in other contemporary (and older) cultures, and the sage's laboratory is the world of observation and reflection.

We see this in Proverbs 24:30-34 —

I passed by the field of a sluggard,
by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
31 and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
the ground was covered with nettles,
and its stone wall was broken down.
32 Then I saw and considered it;
I looked and received instruction.
33 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
34 and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.

Verse 32 might be rendered a bit more literally: “Then I myself gazed, I applied my mind, I saw, I received an education.” The insight of revelation comes not from a vision or a voice, but through observation and reflection.

Now, given the nature of wisdom literature, and given its provenance in the world of nature and society, what name of God might you guess would dominate: the more generic, general-revelation name "God"? Or the very specific, special-revelation, Israelitish name "Yahweh"? I would have guessed the former.

I would have been wrong.

In fact, whereas words translated "God" occur only about eight times in Proverbs, the name "Yahweh" occurs eighty-seven times -- about the same proportion as the (very Yahwistic) book of Deuteronomy (cf. Bruce Waltke, "The Book of Proverbs and Old Testament Theology." Bibliotheca Sacra, 136, No. 544 [1979], p. 305).

"What," you ask, patience finally waning, "does the prevalence of the name 'Yahweh' have to do with substitutionary atonement?"

What kind of God is Yahweh?

I would make the argument that Yahweh is by definition the God of penal, substitutionary atonement. Without repeating works such as Leon Morris' well-nigh epochal The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, the worship of Yahweh prominently featured substitutionary atonement from its very first breaths.

Consider: Adam and Eve sinned, and Yahweh immediately informs them that a Seed of the woman (!) would defeat the serpent through bloody suffering (Genesis 3:15; snake-bit heel = bloody heel); and at least one animal's blood was shed to cover their shame (v. 21; skinned animal = bloody animal). The faith of believing Abel moves him to make blood sacrifice which Yahweh accepts, while He rejects Cain's bloodless (and faithless) sacrifice (closely compare Genesis 4:1-5 with Hebrews 11:4's "more acceptable sacrifice," before too hastily dismissing the bloody element).

When Yahweh formalized His covenant with Abram, what means did He choose? The bloody covenantal formalities of Abram's day (Genesis 15).

Surely no Pyro reader needs me to make the point that Israel's worship of Yahweh was blood-spattered, in a vivid depiction of penal, substitutionary atonement, from start to finish? Yahweh's covenant with Israel is inaugurated with blood (Exodus 24:5-8).

And after a series of commands which Israel is urged to obey (Exodus 20-24), Yahweh immediately begins giving instructions as to what to do in view of the certainty that they will not obey. That is, He directs the construction of the Tabernacle and the institution of the priesthood (Exodus 25ff.). And what is the primary function of the Tabernacle? The worship of Yahweh by the offering of bloody, substitutionary sacrifices (among others; detailed in the book of Leviticus). Thus the writer to the Hebrews could rightly say in 9:22 that "under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."

In fact, the truth is expressed clearly in the central, clarifying text of Leviticus 17:11 — "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. " That is what "Yahweh spoke to Moses" (17:1).

Accordingly, what is "blood" in these Biblical contexts if not shorthand for penal, substitutionary atonement?

Bringing it to Proverbs

Putting this together: a textually-respectful, whole-Bible reading of Proverbs will see each mention of Yahweh as equivalent to saying "the God of Israel, who can be believingly approached only on the basis of penal, substitutionary atonement."

Therefore, I would argue, just as each use of Jesus by NT writers is theologically "loaded," so it is with uses of Yahweh in the OT. No matter the proverb's subject, this is who Yahweh is: He is the God of penal, substitutionary atonement. It would be legitimate (if stylistically reprehensible) thus to gloss proverbs:

A false balance is an abomination to [Yahweh, the God of penal, substitutionary atonement],
but a just weight is his delight (Proverbs 11:1)

The name of [Yahweh, the God of penal, substitutionary atonement] is a strong tower;
the righteous man runs into it and is safe (Proverbs 18:10)

The purpose of Proverbs is expressly stated to be the acquisition and practical living out of God's viewpoint (Proverbs 1:1-6), so one will not expect a focused doctrinal exposition per se. However, when Proverbs 1:7 says that absolutely everything is based and built on the fear of Yahweh, we now understand that Solomon means the fear of Yahweh, the God who can be approached only through faith and on the basis of penal, substitutionary atonement.

In sum, then: the first signpost is in Solomon's use of God's name "Yahweh." The OT knows of no Yahweh who is not the God approached by faith on the basis of penal, substitutionary atonement.

In the next installment, I plan to examine a verse that directs us towards the atonement in a surprising manner; then to bring both posts together in a concluding statement.

UPDATE: part two.

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There's No God like YHWH

by Frank Turk

My friend Phil ended his last post in the "Elijah" series by saying this:

It's always interesting (isn't it?) to look back on an episode like this and marvel at the wisdom and goodness of God, who can bring so much eternal good out of a moment of tragedy. But real faith is to be able to trust Him in the midst of the tragedy—before we see the final outcome—and rest in the assurance that He does all things well.

And so be it -- amen. I would agree with Phil, and add the encouragement of James the brother of Jesus that we should count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

It's true, and I have no qualms with that -- this is how true faith, saving faith, acts out. This is what it does.

But as we consider the contemporary church, there is a greater danger to faith which is manifest every single day on the blogosphere and in our culture which God also warns us about, and ironically, it's that we have it pretty good.

Just to change things up a little, in order to explain that, I'm going to use the Message (don't faint):

When God, your God, ushers you into the land he promised through your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you, you're going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn't build, well-furnished houses you didn't buy, come upon wells you didn't dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don't forget how you got there—God brought you out of slavery in Egypt.[Deu 6:10-12]

This is from the part of Deuteronomy where God, Moses and Israel are having a sort of one-time event -- you have read me go on about it before, I am sure. Moses was on the mountain receiving the 10 commandments, and when he came down the people were afraid of him and of God because of what they saw going on up there. So they say to Moses, [this is a paraphrase] "Dude, don't make us go up the mountain to God, because we won't make it. If God wants to say something to us, you go find out what it is, and whatever it is, we'll do it."

And when Moses delivers that message to God, God is actually pleased with Israel -- He tells Moses, [again, paraphrase] "If they'd always think like that they'd stay out of trouble, because this is one time they have a right-minded fear of YHWH." And in that, God gives Moses the Sh'ma and what follows.

Listen: God doesn't ever miss a beat when it comes to knowing who we are and upon what we usually hang our hopes. Here He's telling Moses to tell Israel that it's pretty easy to remember that God loves you when He's a cloud of fire and lightning on the mountain who's delivering bread every morning and squab every night, and that's all you got. But think about His warning here: "you're going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn't build, well-furnished houses you didn't buy, come upon wells you didn't dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don't forget how you got there". That is, when you need Me, you're pretty quick to treat me like I'm God, but when I give you all the blessings I want to give you, you're going to like the blessings more than you like Me.

I'm pretty sure that there's not another verse of the Bible more specifically useful to most American Christians than this one -- and it's not because this verse promises us prosperity.

It seems to me that this relates directly to why we are worried about becoming "too God-centered" when a bridge falls down. Haven't we forgotten who God is because we have it so good in the first place? We're spoiled, really -- we think (each one of us) that we're the king of the world and we should have a really sweet existence where the part of "me" is played by Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, and we each get to tell all the good jokes and hook-lines, and gas for our Sports Utility pleasure barge is free, and our jobs should not intrude outside of Monday thru Thursday 8-4 (well, Friday if you must) (and I need to catch up on my blogs before break [!] on Monday), and so on. We have a nation we didn't build, in cities we didn't toil for, and we get food we didn't plant, and we have homes that frankly pop up out of nowhere -- we didn't have to frame one wall or float any sheet rock.



We need to remember something before we start thinking about how God provides in the bad times: we need to remember -- we who are sitting in our homes reading this post via the internet -- how good God is to us almost all of the time.

I was in church on Sunday (weren't you?) listening to my Pastor close up week 20 of a 15-week series (seriously) on the core convictions of our faith, and we wound things up with the doctrine of the eternal state -- the doctrine of Heaven, and the doctrine of Hell. And as the Tad-meister was really swinging for the parking lot, I got a little stirred up and frankly I wept over the beauty of God's plan and the exquisitely-generous provision He has made for us in Christ -- and to be honest, the provision He has made for me, because I am certain it is a larger provision than average -- because my need is so much greater than average.

And my kids were sitting with me (weren't your's?), and they both put their arms around me when I was weeping.

After church, as we were driving home, my boy asked me, "Dad, why were you crying in church?" And we pulled the vehicle over so we could talk about why I was crying in church. It wasn't exactly like this, but here's mostly what I said:

The next time your child asks you, "What do these requirements and regulations and rules that God, our God, has commanded mean?" tell your child, "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God powerfully intervened and got us out of that country. We stood there and watched as God delivered miracle-signs, great wonders, and evil-visitations on Egypt, on Pharaoh and his household. He pulled us out of there so he could bring us here and give us the land he so solemnly promised to our ancestors."

That is, "Son, it's because God has done something for me which I did not deserve and which I couldn't do for myself. I deserved to be sent to hell, and instead God sent Jesus to take the punishment for me." We talked about Leviticus (which we are reading), and how only blood pays for sins, and how God didn't take my life, but took Jesus' life in my place -- canceling the record of debt that stood against me with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.

This is when it matters -- our theology and who we say we think God is. It matters when we are in the midst of plenty, and we still can see that what God has done is the most valuable thing, the most beautiful thing, and that it is worth proclaiming and telling-forth.

Here's the challenge, folks: if faith is built up under trial, how do we build up our own faith when we are full up to the chin with blessings which 98% of all people who will ever live never have? And what do we make of our faith when it is tested so infrequently?

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What went wrong?

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Old, Old Story," a sermon preached on Sunday Evening, March 30th, 1862, at the Met Tab.

ust as they say fish go bad at the head first, so modern divines generally go bad first upon the head and main doctrine of the substitutionary work of Christ. Nearly all our modern errors, I might say all of them, begin with mistakes about Christ.

Men do not like to be always preaching the same thing. There are Athenians in the pulpit as well as in the pew who spend their time in nothing but hearing some new thing. They are not content to tell over and over again the simple message, "He that believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ hath everlasting life." So they borrow novelties from literature, and garnish the Word of God with the words which man's wisdom teacheth.

The doctrine of atonement they mystify. Reconciliation by the precious blood of Jesus ceases to be the cornerstone of their ministry. To shape the gospel to the diseased wishes and tastes of men enters far more deeply into their purpose, than to remould the mind and renew the heart of men that they receive the gospel as it is.

There is no telling where they will go who once go back from following the Lord with a true and undivided heart, from deep to deep descending, the blackness of darkness will receive them unless grace prevent. Only this you may take for a certainty:
"They cannot be right in the rest,
Unless they speak rightly of Him."If they are not sound about the purpose of the cross, they are rotten everywhere.

"Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." On this rock there is security. We may be mistaken on any other points with more impunity than this. They who are builded on the rock, though they build wood, and hay, and stubble, thereupon to their sore confusion, for what they build shall be burned, themselves shall be saved yet so as by fire.

Now that grand doctrine which we take to be the keystone of the evangelical system, the very corner-stone of the gospel, that grand doctrine of the atonement of Christ we would tell to you again, and then, without attempting to prove it, for that we have done hundreds of times, we shall try to draw some lessons of instruction from that truth which is surely believed among us.

Man having sinned, God's righteousness demanded that the penalty should be fulfilled. He had said, "The soul that sinneth shall die;" and unless God can be false, the sinner must die. Moreover, God's holiness demanded it, for the penalty was based on justice. It was just that the sinner should die. God had not appended a more heavy penalty than he should have done. Punishment is the just result of offending. God, then, must either cease to be holy, or the sinner must be punished. Truth and holiness imperiously demanded that God should lift his hand and smite the man who had broken his law and offended his majesty.

Christ Jesus, the second Adam, the federal head of the chosen ones, interposed. He offered himself to bear the penalty which they ought to bear; to fulfill and honor the law which they had broken and dishonored. He offered to be their day's—man, a surety, a substitute, standing in their room, place, and stead. Christ became the vicar of his people; vicariously suffering in their stead; vicariously doing in their stead that which they were not strong enough to do by reason of the weakness of the flesh through the fall.

This which Christ proposed to do was accepted of God. In due time Christ actually died, and fulfilled what he promised to do. He took every sin of all his people, and suffered every stroke of the rod on account of those sins. He had compounded into one awful draught the punishment of the sins of an the elect. He took the cup; he put it to his lips; he sweat as it were great drops of blood while he tasted the first sip thereof, but he never desisted, but drank on, on, on, till he had exhausted the very dregs, and turning the vessel upside down he said, "It is finished!" and at one tremendous draught of love the Lord God of salvation had drained destruction dry. Not a dreg, not the slightest residue was left; he had suffered all that ought to have been suffered; had finished transgression, and made an end of sin.

Moreover, he obeyed his Father's law to the utmost extent of it; he fulfilled that will of which he had said of old—"Lo, I come to do thy will, O God: thy law is my delight;" and having offered both an atonement for sin and a complete fulfillment of the law, he ascended up on high, took his seat on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool, and interceding for those whom he bought with blood that they may be with him where he is.

The doctrine of the atonement is very simple. It just consists in the substitution of Christ in the place of the sinner; Christ being treated as if he were the sinner, and then the transgressor being treated as if he were the righteous one.

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Discerning Wrong from Wright

by Phil Johnson

om Wright has posted a screed on the atonement controversies. (I made note of that fact in a comment under yesterday's post but didn't say much more than that.) I still need to read the full article carefully, but Adrian Warnock's observations closely mirror my own first impression. Wright seems to think since Steve Chalke read some of the Bishop's books and echoed his positions at some key points, he can't possibly be far wrong on the atonement. Also, since Wright endorsed Chalke's book before it caused a flap on the atonement issue, he apparently feels obliged to explain what Chalke really meant.

I dunno. I thought Chalke's own explanation left little doubt about his position, and it does not seem to be what Wright insists it is.

In his article, Wright has some pretty harsh things to say about the book Pierced for Our Transgressions, a recent, generally well-reviewed book on the atonement co-authored by Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach. Near the end of his post about Wright's article, Adrian Warnock lists some typical samples of the scorn Wright pours on that book.

The authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions have responded to Bishop Wright's article here.

Meanwhile, D. A. Carson has put out a review of Wright's Evil and the Justice of God (HT: Justin Taylor), which review contains some candid remarks about Wright's position on the atonement. Following the linkbacks to Justin Taylor's post on the subject will take you to some stimulating discussions.

Doug Wilson (as usual) had the pithiest comments, and this reflects my response exactly when I read Wright's response to the atonement debates:

The really strong language from Wright is reserved for the men from Oak Hill [who wrote Pierced for Our Transgressions], and this is where things get really weird—"almost funny," "Go and read the book," "hopelessly sub-biblical," "it becomes embarrassing," and so on. This is because (as I take it from this distance) they offered a case for penal substitution in the language of systematic theology and not biblical theology. I don't know (not having seen the book) if I would even agree with Wright's point. But what I can say, from this distance, is that Wright has a wildly skewed view of who needs to be praised, who placated, and who challenged.

On the perennially pro-Wright side, Alastair has already weighed in. When Mark Horne speaks, I listen (even though I often disagree). Mark is almost always sympathetic to whatever Wright says, and this is no exception.

My own lack of enthusiasm for Wright's opinions on the atonement, justification, and Pauline theology is well known enough. So don't look for me to jump into this dogpile this week. I'm just going to pretty much sit back and watch it all unfold.

Remember: John Piper has a critique of Wright coming, too.

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Propitiation

by Phil Johnson

Too many Christians think of divine forgiveness as something that utterly overturns justice and sets it aside—as if God's mercy nullified His justice—as if God's love defeated and revoked His hatred of sin. That's not how forgiveness works.

s forgiveness from sin grounded only in the love and mercy and goodness of God—apart from his justice? Does love alone prompt the Almighty to forego the due penalty of sin, wipe out the record of our wrongdoing, and nullify the claims of justice against us, unconditionally?

Or must God Himself be propitiated? In other words, do His righteousness and His holy wrath against sin need to be satisfied before He can forgive?

It truly seems as if most people today—including multitudes who identify themselves as Christians—think God forgives merely because His love overwhelms His holy hatred of sin. Some go even further, rejecting the notion of propitiation altogether, claiming it makes God seem too harsh. The problem with every such view of the atonement is that mercy without propitiation turns forgiveness into an act of injustice.

That is a seriously erroneous view. As a matter of fact, that very idea was one of the main errors of Socinianism.

The original Socinians were 16th-century heretics who denied that God demands any payment for sin as a prerequisite to forgiveness. They insisted instead that He forgives our sin out of the sheer bounty of His kindness alone. They argued that if God demanded an atonement—an expiation, a payment, a reprisal, or a propitiation—for sin, then we shouldn't really call it "forgiveness" when He absolves us. They claimed that sin could either be paid for or forgiven, but not both.

In other words, they defined forgiveness in a way that contradicts and contravenes justice. They were essentially teaching that God could not maintain the demands of His justice and forgive sins at the same time. They thought of forgiveness and justice as two incompatible ideas.

Scripture expressly refutes that idea. One of the most glorious truths of the gospel is that God saved us in a way that upheld His justice. Justice was neither compromised nor set aside; it was completely satisfied. God Himself was thus fully propitiated. And our salvation is therefore grounded in the justice of God as well as His mercy.

That is what the apostle Paul meant when he said in Romans 1:17 that "the righteousness of God [is] revealed" in the gospel. It's also what the apostle John was saying in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive." He doesn't set aside justice and grant us an unholy amnesty; He forgives because it is an act of justice to do so.

Now, there is a bit if a paradox in that idea. Justice is the moral quality that cries for the punishment of evildoers. Justice fairly screams for retribution whenever a wrong is done: "The wicked shall not be unpunished" (Proverbs 11:21). "[God] will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:7).

We understand instinctively that it is unjust to let evil go unpunished. The truly righteous long for God to deal with evildoers. Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple featured this plea for justice: "Hear thou from heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, by requiting the wicked, by recompensing his way upon his own head" (1 Chronicles 6:23). According to Revelation 6:10, the souls of those martyred for their faith constantly cry to God, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

God will judge evil, and that is a good thing. We look forward to that day when the Judge of all the earth will judge the deeds of the wicked and purge evil from the universe. He will not compromise His own righteousness by allowing one sin to go unpunished. Jesus said, "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known" (Matt. 10:26). Every sin, even the secret ones, will be brought out in the open and judged. Justice screams for retribution of sin, and God is a God of perfect justice, so He will not let one sin go unpunished.

How then can He forgive sinners?

That's what the atonement is all about: Jesus paid the full penalty of sin on behalf of those who believe. Their sins have already been judged at the cross. "[Christ] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). Redefine the atonement to remove the idea that Christ suffered the judgment for sin in our place, and you destroy the heart of all gospel truth: "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

One of the great mysteries not revealed in the Old Testament but fully revealed in the gospel is a clear answer to the age-old question of how forgiveness is possible without compromising the justice of God. Christ fully satisfied God's justice on behalf of those whom He saves. He bore the penalty of their sin when He died on the cross. The gospel declares "His righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).

Christ offered a full atonement that included payment in full for all the sins of every sinner who would ever believe. "[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21)—"whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness" (Romans 3:25). "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:2).

Our thoughts about such things are almost always too shallow. We take God's mercy for granted and ignore His holy justice. But a right view of God will always exalt His righteous hatred for sin as much as it magnifies His love and mercy. God's mercy is not some maudlin sentiment that causes Him to forget about His holiness and set aside His righteous anger against sin. The demands of righteousness must be fully and completely satisfied if God is ever going to forgive sin. He cannot and will not simply overlook sin as if it didn't really matter.

In other words, the gospel is not only a message about the love of God. It is that; but it is not only that. The true gospel magnifies His justice as much as it magnifies His love.

When was the last time you thought of the gospel as a message about divine justice?

We tend not to think in those terms. Invariably, when you hear the gospel presented these days, all the stress is on the love of God, and His righteous abhorrence of sin is rarely even mentioned. "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." We love to talk about forgiveness, but rarely is there any attention given to the fact that God demanded payment for sin in full, and if that payment had not been made, there would never have been any forgiveness whatsoever:

"Without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22).

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How important is the atonement?

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. This week's excerpt comes from "The First Sermon in the Tabernacle," a message preached at the opening service of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, Monday afternoon, March 25th, 1861.

n the excerpt below, Spurgeon was sounding an alarm against early modernist tendencies. Specifically, he was answering those who recoiled from the truth that God requires a blood atonement as the price of forgiveness. "The idea that God must be propitiated by blood makes Him seem too harsh," the modernists argued. Genteel Victorians, whose sensibilities were offended merely by the sound of the word blood, were inclined to agree.

It's interesting to note that when this sermon was preached, Spurgeon was only 27 years old. It would be more than thirty years before complications from Bright's Disease and stress from the Down-Grade controversy would conspire to claim his life. The doctrine of the atonement was one of the major points of conflict in that controversy. So this sermon was remarkably prescient, and the simmering uncertainty about the atonement Spurgeon noticed in the 1860s apparently dragged on for decades, despite Spurgeon's plain-spokenness.

Many people at the time thought his stance too firm and his words too harsh against those who thought differently about the atonement, but it is a fact of history that everything he predicted in the following excerpt did happen. Countless churches in England and whole denominations in America were fatally compromised. The gospel survived and thrived only where fundamentalists fought for it and evangelicals faithfully preserved it—mostly in independent churches and schools.

here be certain people nowadays who are making the atonement, first a sort of compromise, and the next step is to make the atonement a display of what ought to have been, instead of the thing which should have been.

Then, next, there are some who make it to be a mere picture, an exhibition, a shadow—a shadow, the substance of which they have not seen.

And the day will come, and there are sundry traces of it here and there, in which in some churches the atonement shall be utterly denied, and yet men shall call themselves Christians, while they have broken themselves against the corner-stone of the entire system.

I have no kith nor kin, nor friendship, nor Christian amity, with any man whatever who claims to be a Christian and yet denies the atonement. There is a limit to the charity of Christians, and there can be none whatever entertained to the man who is dishonest enough to occupy a Christian pulpit and to deny Christ.

It is only in the Christian church that such a thing can be tolerated. I appeal to you. Was there ever known a Buddhist acknowledged in the temple of Buddha who denied the basis doctrine of the sect? Was there ever known a Mahomadan Imaum who was sanctioned in the mosque while he cried down the Prophet? It remains for Christian churches only to have in their midst men who can bear the name of Christian, who can even venture to be Christian teachers, while they slander the Deity of him who is the Christian's God, and speak lightly of the efficacy of his blood who is the Christian's atonement. May this deadly cancer be cut out root and branch; and whatever tearing of the flesh there may be, better cut it out with a jagged knife than suffer to exist because no lancet is to be found to do it daintily.

We must have, then, Christ in the efficacy of his precious blood as the only Redeemer of the souls of men, and as the only mediator, who, without assistance of ours, has brought us to God and made reconciliation through his blood.

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It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. This week we'll feature two excerpts: one today from "The Death of Christ," a sermon on Isaiah 53:10, preached Sunday morning, 24 January 1858, at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall.

e who reads the Bible with the eye of faith, desiring to discover its hidden secrets, sees something more in the Saviour's death than Roman cruelty, or Jewish malice: he sees the solemn decree of God fulfilled by men, who were the ignorant, but guilty instruments of its accomplishment. He looks beyond the Roman spear and nail, beyond the Jewish taunt and jeer, up to the Sacred Fount, whence all things flow, and traces the crucifixion of Christ to the breast of Deity.

He believes with Peter—"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." We dare not impute to God the sin, but at the same time the fact, with all its marvelous effects in the world's redemption, we must ever trace to the Sacred Fountain of divine love. So doth our prophet. He says, "It pleased Jehovah to bruise him. He overlooks both Pilate and Herod, and traces it to the heavenly Father, the first Person in the Divine Trinity. "It pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief."

What Was the Reason of the Saviour's Suffering?

We are told here, "Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin." Christ was thus troubled, because his soul was an offering for sin.

Now, I am going to be as plain as I can: Christ was an offering for sin, in the sense of a substitute. God longed to save; but, if such a word may be allowed, Justice tied his hands.

"I must be just," said God; "that is a necessity of my nature. Stern as fate, and fast as immutability, is the truth that I must be just. But then my heart desires to forgive—to pass by man's transgressions and pardon them. How can it be done?"

Wisdom stepped in, and said, "It shall be done thus;" and Love agreed with Wisdom. "Christ Jesus, the Son of God, shall stand in man's place, and he shall be offered upon Mount Calvary instead of man.

Understand, then, the sense in which Christ was made a sacrifice for sin. But here lies the glory of this matter: Man for his sin was condemned to eternal fire; when God took Christ to be the substitute, it is true, he did not send Christ into eternal fire, but he poured upon him grief so desperate, that it was a valid payment for even an eternity of fire. Man was condemned to live forever in hell. God did not send Christ forever into hell; but he put on Christ, punishment that was equivalent for that. Although he did not give Christ to drink the actual hells of believers, yet he gave him a quid pro quo—something that was equivalent thereunto. He took the cup of Christ's agony, and he put in there suffering, misery, and anguish such as only God can imagine or dream of. That was the exact equivalent for all the suffering, all the woe, and all the eternal tortures of every one that shall at last stand in heaven, bought with the blood of Christ.

And you say, "Did Christ drink it all to its dregs?" Did he suffer it all? Yes, my brethren, he took the cup, and

"At one triumphant draught of love,
He drank damnation dry."He suffered all the horror of hell: in one pelting shower of iron wrath it fell upon him, with hail-stones bigger than a talent; and he stood until the black cloud had emptied itself completely.

There was our debt; huge and immense; he paid the utmost farthing of whatever his people owed; and now there is not so much as a doit or a farthing due to the justice of God in the way of punishment from any believer; and though we owe God gratitude, though we owe much to his love, we owe nothing to his justice; for Christ in that hour took all our sins, past, present, and to come, and was punished for them all there and then, that we might never be punished, because he suffered in our stead.

Do you see, then, how it was that God the Father bruised him? Unless he had so done the agonies of Christ could not have been an equivalent for our sufferings; for hell consists in the hiding of God's face from sinners, and if God had not hidden his face from Christ, Christ could not—I see not how he could—have endured any suffering that could have been accepted as an equivalent for the woes and agonies of his people.

Methinks I heard some one say, "Do you mean us to understand this atonement that you have now preached as being a literal fact?" I say, most solemnly, I do. There are in the world many theories of atonement; but I cannot see any atonement in any one, except in this doctrine of substitution.

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