Sunday School | Penal Substitutionary Atonement Christus Victor

If you've been here with us, you know that we're doing a big, broad, long term series on doctrine. We studied the doctrine of theology proper, which is the doctrine of the first person of God. And then we've moved from there into Christology, studying the doctrine of the son. And we've gotten to the point as we study the work of Christ that we're looking at his work on the cross. And we're looking at it through the lens of what we would call theories of atonement, of which there are several different atonement theories. And what we're trying to capture with those is different facets of the work of Christ.

Last week, we talked about what I think is really the heart of the work of Christ: what we would call penal substitutionary atonement. And what this is is the idea that when Jesus was dying on the cross, what he was doing was absorbing the wrath of God against man's sin. For many of you, you'd be like, "Yeah, well what else is there? That's the obvious answer." But for some, and for many in fact, they would really struggle to understand how that works.

Atonement Theories: PSA and Christus Victor

Sometimes an alternative to PSA is proffered, which is known as Christus Victor. We're gonna talk today about Christus Victor, but not quite yet. I believe that both penal substitutionary atonement and Christus Victor are very important. I think that Christus Victor in a lot of circles that we probably tend to run in gets lost, and it's incredibly important and absolutely true. So I wanna make the case for that. But before I do, I wanna take one more lap around PSA.

Penal substitutionary atonement is the notion that God is angry about sin. And in order to forgive us, something has to die. Some people have thought, "Well, that's weird. Is he really so mad, so incredibly furious that somebody has to die, somebody has to be killed?" In fact, I've been mad and I have forgiven people. And when I forgive people, I didn't have to murder somebody in order to vent my wrath so that I could.

So PSA, quite reasonably, whether your vision of God is grounded in something like Exodus 34:6—

The Lord, the Lord, the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness — Exodus 34:6

—or your understanding of God is rooted in Jesus the savior who loves lost sinners, it can be difficult to be like, "Well, why did anybody have to die? Like, why was that even necessary?"

I wanna show you a clip from what I would suggest is one of Hollywood's best depictions of forgiveness from the last few years. It's from the TV show Ted Lasso. I found about a two minute clip, and here it is:

Rebecca is the owner of a soccer team, a football team in England. Ted is the coach. He's this happy go lucky, kinda doofy American football coach who got recruited to come lead this team in England. Everybody hates him because he's not really competent at the task. But everybody loves him because he's just an amazing human being. Rebecca, who is his boss, has been secretly undercutting him at every turn. At every moment, she is taking his knees out from him. And she's finally gotten to the point where she's gonna level with him about what's going on.

Just a couple background things: Ted is going through a very painful divorce. Rebecca has already been divorced by her husband who used to own this soccer team. So both of them are hurting in significant ways. And she is now about to come and let Ted know just how much she has been sabotaging him.

Ted, I lied to you. I hired you because I wanted this team to lose. I wanted you to fail. Then I sabotaged you every chance I've had. It was me who hired that photographer to take the photo of you and Keeley. I set up the interview with Trent Crim, hoping that he would humiliate you. And I instigated the transfer of Jamie Tart, even though you'd asked me not to. This club is all that Rupert has ever cared about, and I wanted to destroy it, to cause him as much pain and suffering as he has caused me. And I didn't care who I used or who I hurt. All you good people just trying to make a difference. Ted, I'm so sorry. If you want to quit or call the press, I completely understand.

I forgive you.

You would? Why?

Divorce is hard.

And it doesn't matter if you're the one leaving or if you're the one who got left. It makes folks do crazy things. Hell, I'm coaching soccer for heaven's sake. In London. I mean, that's nuts. This job you gave me has changed my life. Gave me the distance I needed to see what was really going on. But you and me, we're okay.

I think that if you care about someone and you got a little love in your heart, there ain't nothing you can't get through together. You're not just talking about us now, are you? Maybe. Maybe not.

So Ted Lasso is a work of genius. If you go watch this, you're gonna be like, one of our pastors suggested I watch a TV show that uses the f word 85 times an episode. If you can't tolerate that, don't watch Ted Lasso. But if you can, it is brilliant. It is so full of insight into the human condition. It's absolutely beautiful. And this depiction of forgiveness, if you'd seen it in the context of how treacherous she had been, it might actually even be more moving to you.

Human Forgiveness vs. God's Forgiveness

However, that is not what God's forgiveness is like. This is a beautiful depiction of human forgiveness because it is one sinner forgiving another sinner. Ted is able to reach into his own heart and see how much pain he has suffered through his own divorce. He's able to reflect on and recall the times that he himself has been forgiven. And it is his experience of having been forgiven that resources and equips him to forgive others. That is the only possible way that human beings can forgive others—because we know that we too are sinners who have received mercy that we didn't deserve, and we pass it on to others. That is good. In no way, shape or form am I remotely criticizing that. That is spot on. That's beautiful. That's perfect.

But what it's not is the way that God forgives us. Because God has never been forgiven. God has never needed forgiveness. God is not one sinner who has himself experienced mercy extending mercy to someone else. It is the holy and righteous one who owes no one anything, who by an act of pure condescension extends grace where it is not deserved.

If I were to fail to forgive Kelly, that would be an absurdity because Kelly has so many times forgiven me. What God is doing in Christ is altogether other than that. His forgiveness, his show of mercy to us, is in fact an imbalance of the books that needs to be balanced.

You may have heard the definition of forgiveness. If not, I'll offer it to you. Whenever we forgive someone, we're necessarily making the decision to accept the consequences of their evil doing and not reflect it onto them. When somebody hurts you, what you want is for them to hurt. What you want is for them to pay the bill. What you want is for them to suffer, since they did the bad thing. And when they are doing the bad thing and I am suffering, there's something that just feels gross about that. So I don't want it. I want you to suffer. I want to reflect it back to you.

On the cross, what Jesus is doing is quite literally, in a massive and cosmic way, accepting the blame of the wrong that we have done. When he goes to the cross, he really is absorbing into himself God's real wrath against real sin, because he is really holy.

The Emotional Complexity of God

God has an unbelievably complex emotional life. For my money, the most humiliating and clearest display of the emotional life of God is in Hosea chapter 11.

What is the metaphor of Hosea? Hosea is supposed to marry a woman whose prostitution is metaphor. The whole point of the book of Hosea is God saying to his people: being your God is like being married to a whore.

In Hosea 11, watch how functionally schizophrenic God depicts himself as being. It's like a man who discovers that his wife has had an affair, walks in on her in the midst of her affair, and he's instantly livid—super, super angry. Then his heart softens because he remembers their courtship. Then the vision of her with this other man comes back in his mind, and his emotions rage again, and he's going to kill her. He wants to cut her head off. And then he's like, but I can't, because despite myself, I still love her. Up and down. That is Hosea 11.

Just listen to how the complexity of God's emotional life unfolds.

When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son. — Hosea 11:1

He's remembering the earliest days of courtship. And then in verse two:

But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals or they burned incense to images. — Hosea 11:2

It's this adultery. And then in verse three:

And it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms. They didn't realize that it was I who healed them. And I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. I lifted the yoke from their neck, and I bent down to feed them. — Hosea 11:3-4

And then rage, verse five:

Will they not return to Egypt? And will not Assyria rule over them because they refused to repent? Swords will flash in their cities, will destroy the bars of their gates, will put an end to their plans. My people are determined to turn from me. But even if they call to the Most High, he will by no means exalt them. — Hosea 11:5-7

He's like, it's over. We're done. Stop it. And then in a moment, verse eight:

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart has changed within me. All my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God and not man, the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath. — Hosea 11:8-9

They will follow the Lord. He will roar like a lion. And when he roars, his children will come trembling from the West. They will come trembling like birds from Egypt.

I will settle them in their homes, declares the Lord. — Hosea 11:11

In verse 12, the rage comes pouring back in:

Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, the house of Israel with deceit, and Judah is unruly against God, even against the faithful Holy One. — Hosea 11:12

It spills into chapter 12:

Ephraim feeds on the wind. He pursues the east wind all day. He multiplies lies and violence. He makes a treaty with Assyria, and he sends olive oil to Egypt. The Lord has a charge to bring against Judah. He will punish Jacob according to his ways and repay him according to his deeds. In the womb, he grasped his brother's heel. As a man, he struggles with God. — Hosea 12:1-3

Do you see this? It's psycho. It is so schizophrenic. He is equal parts tenderness and compassion and love and longing and rage and anger and frustration and betrayal. He goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

And yet—and yet—it's not equal parts. In this moment, in this little vignette, we see a really clear picture of both. His rage, his anger against sin is real. And his tenderness and his compassion is also real. And this tension gets resolved when he decides to punish himself, which is to say, compassion wins. But compassion doesn't win by ignoring his anger over sin. Compassion wins by drinking his own anger for sin. And that is the penal substitutionary atonement. It is God's son drinking the wrath of God to satisfy God's genuine anger against sin in a way that does not destroy the ones that he loves. Make sense? It's foundational. It's bedrock. I think it's true. And it's true because God has an incredibly complex emotional life.

On God's Emotional Life and Vulnerability

When I'm angry at somebody and I'm trying to work through forgiveness or that particular situation in terms of seeing them again and those kinds of things, I'm up and down like that all the time. So separate out for me the holy and righteous God from what somewhat looks like me. That can't be the case, right?

Well, this is the thing. In this moment here in Hosea 11, God is describing himself in such anthropomorphic terms—meaning he looks like a human being. This is what people do. And then when you lay over that the reality that God needs nothing, right? C.S. Lewis comments on this. He talks about how the puppets of his own making could actually grieve him. Like, doesn't he really need us? He could just flick us off the planet. What does he care? The answer is, apparently he does care. Lewis suggests that though in his very nature he doesn't need us—because we need to be needed—he has made himself to need us. And what you see here, the emotional storm raging in his heart, is a condition that he allows himself to succumb to. Though ontologically he doesn't need to do that, he has chosen as an act of pure mercy to love us so much that he would create within himself a vulnerability. He would, in some sense, require our return love and thereby satisfy him, which is just nuts.

When I first came to know Jesus, it was through vulnerability that I knew that was a possibility for me. My eyes to the greener pastures. Word and understanding what true forgiveness is for everything I've done that is rejected. Holy word and I didn't understand at the time that I felt like that was even possible. And he does. We need to be vulnerable to recognize that we need him, which makes sense. But more absurdly, that he would be vulnerable to need us—it's a grace beyond really reckoning. That's the essence here of PSA.

Now we're gonna jump on to Christus Victor. What you said, I agree with, but also if he didn't lead by the example that he did by allowing that vulnerability, we wouldn't have the hope of being able to attain any of it. Absolutely. He loves us. He forgives us as an act of pure grace—not because he's ever been beholden to someone else. It is a genuine act of mercy to us. And then we who have experienced that, we now have an example. We're gonna come to that in a couple of weeks. We're gonna see how the cross is also an example. We'll unpack that a little more fully. But we—our life—we are now resourced to forgive others because he has forgiven us. This sets into motion the possibility for human relationships to be maintained. It's all a big deal. PSA, rock on.

Christus Victor

Now I want to talk about Christus Victor. When we talk about Christus Victor, you can hear the two words in that: Christ and victory. A victory is necessarily a victory over someone or over something. So what is Jesus victorious over? The cross can be seen as a defeat of whom? Sin, death. So it's not so much the specific sin. That's more what we have going on with the PSA. This is gonna be a more personal victory. I heard sin and death, but there's one that you haven't said: Satan. Thank you. That's really what I want you to understand.

Even though I put PSA at the center of the game and don't want to let you guys disbelieve it, the first time that the gospel is ever hinted at in the scriptures, it is a Christus Victor framing. What is the first time that the Bible anticipates the cross? Genesis 3:15.

The proto euangelion—the proto gospel—is in Genesis 3:15. This is what we call the proto, meaning the earliest, the prototype. Euangelion is the gospel. When you go to that passage, what you find in Genesis 3 is not a hint of penal substitutionary atonement. The first, the earliest depiction of the cross—and that's meaningful, I think—is Genesis 3:15.

God is speaking. He's spoken to Adam. He's spoken to Eve. Now he's talking to the snake. And he says to the snake: "I will put enmity." That means fundamental anger. My dog and a groundhog have enmity. She just wants to kill it. Right? Just dinner. You don't have to teach her. She just wants that thing dead.

I will put enmity between you, snake, and the woman. Between your seed, offspring, and hers, her seed or offspring—he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. — Genesis 3:15

Crush and strike are actually the exact same Hebrew verb. This is not saying that when kids go on Boy Scout camping trips, they might get bit by snakes. Although that is true. It's not saying that.

What it is saying is there will be a battle that's going to rage between this woman, Eve, and the snake—who is Satan. He doesn't get named as Satan until way later in Revelation. It's called the ancient serpent. But between the woman and the snake, and then more pointedly, between your offspring and hers—there will be a time that's coming. There will be this battle.

Ultimately, this woman will have a seed, which is unusual because women don't have seeds. So it's a very gentle, veiled hint at the virgin birth. This is being said to Eve, not to Adam, which is curious. This woman is gonna bring forth someone who will simultaneously kill and be killed. His death—the striking of his heel—will coincide with the destruction of the serpent's head. He will die while causing this one to die.

There's going to be a moment that comes where the snake will be destroyed, but it's gonna be a costly victory. There's not a hint in that moment of penal substitutionary atonement.

Now there will be a little bit—when Adam gets clothed in garments of skin, in order to make somebody a fur coat, you gotta kill somebody. Right? That is PSA. This is not. This is Christus Victor.

So what I want—yes, Robin? So I would understand that Satan was defeated at his resurrection. He was defeated at his resurrection. He will be destroyed at his second coming. Is that good enough for that for the moment? Okay.

Now, if we're gonna unpack this and you gotta understand that Jesus is victorious and he's victorious over Satan, then we would have to first figure out like, well, was Satan really in charge? And the answer is absolutely. Okay?

If we were to run—in fact, we'll do it, we'll do a sample of it right now. By far, the most common description of Satan in the New Testament is—do you know? Prince of Israel. Prince. What did we hear? Prince of Israel. Prince. Prince of darkness. Prince. Okay. Yes. It's ruler. It's language of authority. We tend to think of him as like, he's the evil one. Yes. He is evil. Or that he's a liar. He's a liar. He's a father of lies. When he lies, speaks his native language. He is a liar. But far and away, the most common description of Satan is that he is a ruler. He's in charge.

So here's—I'll give you a whole bunch of these. Alright? We can just blitz through them.

First John 5:19:

We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. — 1 John 5:19

Second Corinthians 4:4:

The god of this age (that's little g, that is not Yahweh, that is Satan), the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ who is the image of God. — 2 Corinthians 4:4

Luke 4—I think we looked at this last week. Did we talk about Jesus and the temptation last week? Or am I imagining it? I talked about this somewhere last week.

The devil led Jesus up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor for it has been given to me. And I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours." — Luke 4

Did we talk about this last week? We did not. Okay. So this one's worth looking at for a second. These other couple that we looked at is where John says something about Satan. It's where Paul says something about Satan. In Luke 4, Satan is saying something about Satan. And so you've always gotta be careful because what does Satan do every time he moves his lips? He's lying. Okay? So we don't wanna build our theology on what he says. What we should assume is that he's lying, and yet the most effective way to lie is to mingle it with the truth.

So when he says—the devil, what Luke says: "The devil led Jesus up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And Satan said to Jesus, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.'" He's lying. Okay? What's the lie? "It was given." It was not given to him, Gary. But what's the truth underneath it? He usurped it. It is his. But he didn't—he stole it. He wasn't given it. He stole it.

This is Gollum, right? You remember the Gollum story? How does he—what's Gollum's story about how he got the ring? Do you remember? "It a birthday present." Right? What'd you say, Sallis? It was Deagol's and then Sméagol strangled him and was like, "No." Good. Right? So Sméagol really steals it from his friend, his cousin, whatever that other hobbit thing is. But he—the story is "It was a gift. It was my birthday present." But he's lying. He stole it. Satan is lying. He was not given it to him. He stole it. But he did come to have it. Okay?

Ephesians 2:1:

As for you, you are dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you follow the ways—listen to this language—when you follow the ways of the world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. — Ephesians 2:1-3

Rulers. John 12. Hang on. John 12:31:

Now is the time for judgment on this world. Now the prince of this world will be driven out. — John 12:31

Over and over and over again, right? Satan is described as a ruler, the controller, the god of this age, the prince of—you know, all these things. It's over and over and over again. He is the one that needs to be defeated. And in fact, Jesus says repeatedly that this is why he came. He has come to defeat Satan, to unthrone him, and to take over the crown.

Noah, I was—I was gonna say our prince is typically like heirs to the throne, like heirs of power. But that—is that even relevant?

Yeah. It is relevant. I'm so glad you noticed that.

So what Noah is pointing out is that he's called a prince but he's not called a king. I think that's essentially an insult. He has never been granted the title of king. I think it's a way to basically say you're an illegitimate ruler. You don't really reign. So we have language of the domain of darkness as compared to the kingdom of light. I think it's a way to throw shade at Satan—yes, the whole world is under control of the evil one. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers. But he's never given the dignity of the language or the title of king, even though he is the one that's ruling. So it's actually a really good observation.

And there's stuff about like, he still has to submit to God in everything too. Like in Job, when he goes before God and he's like, "Hey, can I do this?" Yes. This is great. So over all of it is the Father. Satan has specific constrictions. We see the limits in Job where Job comes before God and God says, "Okay, you can do this, but you can't do that. You can take it this far, but no further." You see it similarly in the New Testament where Jesus tells Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat." So you have this image of Satan coming before the Father and making demands that are granted within prescribed limits.

Jesus Comes to Shut Satan Down

Not only does the New Testament describe Satan as being in charge of things, but Jesus has come to shut him down. Here it is. John 12:31:

Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out.

That's Satan. Or 1 John 3:8:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Or how about Hebrews 2:14:

Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

Or Ephesians 6:

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

See how, over and over again, the New Testament casts the work of Christ on the cross, and in the case of Ephesians 6, the continuing work of those who would follow him, in specific language of doing battle against Satan. Does it make sense?

Now if we're plotting this on a timeline, what you'll see is that some of this, including Ephesians 6, is post-cross. Which kind of goes a little bit to Robin's question earlier: if Jesus won on the cross, then why isn't it—why, what are we doing now? It seems like the victory was a rather partial victory. Does this feel fair to you? We watch meth addiction. We watch prostitution. We watch any number of things and you're like, "Well, has he really been dethroned?"

This is where we live right now. You've lived your whole life after the Declaration of Independence, but before Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown. We live in enemy-occupied territory. Jesus has declared himself king. All authority in heaven and earth has been—past tense, just now—given to me. But you and I, we live in this world where we are calling people out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of light. The work is ongoing. It will not be completed until he comes back and Satan is cast into the lake of fire and all things are renewed. We live between. The battle is still on. Jesus has declared himself king and he has struck the fatal blow. But the game's not over yet. Make sense?

One thing that stands out—just thinking out loud here. When you look back at the beginning of biblical time and you see Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden taking the fruit from the fruit-bearing tree, there's a sense of temptation involved in that. And when I first started reading the Bible on my own, I looked at temptation as Satan's involvement in that process. So there is this kind of triad: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Sometimes we are influenced by the world—like the environment that we're in. Sometimes we're simply just influenced by our flesh. I don't need any help—it's just me, all by myself. And then sometimes it's the devil.

There is a range of all three of these things. We are called to not just fight against them defensively—to not give in to their temptations—but we are also called to fight against them offensively, which is really what evangelism is. Evangelism is the attempt to go pull people out of one domain and into a new kingdom. And so that is accurate: He is alive. He is active. He has been defeated. But we are fighting against him.

Christus Victor and Colossians 2

Now, probably my favorite Christus Victor passage is Colossians 2, because it makes so clear the connection between the cross and the defeat of Satan. If you've never noticed this and didn't know how this fits into a PSA framework, it's because it doesn't. This is straight up: the cross was the victory of Christ over Satan.

Go to Colossians 2:13.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us.

That part is PSA, but here's the part I want you to see. He took it away, nailing it to the cross. And look at verse 15:

Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

This is not Rome. This is Satan and his minions. This is the same thing he's talking about in Ephesians 6. This is it—the same thing going on in 1 Corinthians 1. Just the foolishness. Like, nobody would have seen this coming. In fact, nobody did see this coming: that he was going to win by losing. He was gonna destroy Satan by allowing himself to be killed. But in that act of going to the lowest place of suffering—this ignominious death—is specifically because of that. That God exalts him to the highest place and gives him the name that is above every name.

The name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is king.

That is what Christus Victor is all about: the declaration of Christ as king.

Now, a couple more because we're almost out of time. You might look these up. Acts 26:18:

Our purpose now is to open people's eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God so they may receive forgiveness of sins.

2 Timothy 2:

God will grant people repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will.

In Revelation 12:

The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent, this ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray. He's hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

You can see—I think you should see—salvation in terms of kingdom transfer. You used to be part of this old domain of darkness, but you have been invited into this new kingdom of light. This is Colossians 1:

Jesus has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son.

Hebrews 2, we looked at a minute ago, but if we kept going on, it doesn't just say:

Since children have flesh and blood, he shared in their humanity so that by death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil. And free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Or 2 Timothy 1:

Christ Jesus who destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

What Jesus has done on the cross is not only absorb the wrath of God—his just anger against sin—but he has also defeated the malicious tyrant who has ruled the world and replaced him with a good and gracious king. That is what Christus Victor really means.

Looking Ahead

Next week, because I'm out of time, we will consider where the Passover fits into this. I want you to go back. You can look. Read the Passover texts and consider: Is Passover penal substitutionary atonement like you've always imagined it was? Or is it Christus Victor? And if so, why? I want you to chew on that. Think about that. We'll open with that next week, and then we'll probably see if you have questions about those two before we move on to moral exemplar.

Alright. That's all for now.