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payment to Satan is unlikely.
It is best to affirm that in offering his life in place of others, Jesus releases a mighty host of prisoners, and to leave the question of who is owed the ransom unanswered.
Penal Substitutionary Atonement
The servant serves as a proxy for the people to heal them, suffering wounds in his body for their violation of God’s ways (see 1 Pet. 3:18).
Don’t miss what is at the heart of what has traditionally been called penal substitutionary atonement: God’s love. For us.
God rendered a decisive verdict against sin as it was carried in Jesus’s flesh on the cross.
The Cross’s Work within Enthronement
The work of the cross for us was not finished until Jesus ascended to be enthroned as King and High Priest.8 After attaining the cosmic throne, King Jesus’s saving benefits become available to God’s people through his reign, intercession, and the sending of the Spirit. This is why the gospel, and our response to it, must be king first.
Qualifying Penal
To suggest that penal necessarily implies a violent, vengeful, abandoning God is merely to caricature.
the idea that the Father abandoned the Son on the cross is contrary to Scripture.
On the cross the Son felt abandoned.
Jesus knew the Father had not truly forsaken him.
on the deepest theological level, it is not the Father’s wrath alone that is justly poured out against human sin, but the eternal Son’s and the Spirit’s wrath too.
The Governmental Theory
The governmental theory suggests that Jesus did not bear the exact penalty for every single sin committed,
Jesus bore a lesser representative but sufficient penalty that was commensurate with what his people deserved, but not the exact penalty.
The Satisfaction Theory
no matter what model is advanced, we must bear in mind that the Son voluntarily took on human flesh, truly suffered in his human nature as he died for our sins, and willingly served as a sacrifice (see Heb. 10:5–10). In so doing he offered each of us the opportunity to be reconciled to the triune God. Father, Son, and Spirit are on the same team for our salvation.
the purpose behind all other gospel purposes is simply this: God’s extraordinary love.
Why the gospel? Beyond all else, the gospel is motivated by God’s cross-shaped, self-emptying love for us.
(2) Victorious Kingship
Christus Victor!
Victory is the larger category; substitution is a subset within it. Although both are prominent and essential, Jesus’s identity as the triumphant Christ is emphasized far more in the New Testament than Jesus as our substitute. Meanwhile the cross was the primary means by which the King won the victory.
Jesus’s death, for example, did not substitute for or otherwise purge the sins of demons, evil spirits, or Satan, but nevertheless it defeated them.
Victorious Rule
(3) Moral Influence
The moral influence theory of atonement contends that Jesus’s death rescues us by showing us a pattern that proves to be saving when we adopt it.
in order to enter salvation, we must become disciples of Jesus.
Following Jesus’s behavioral example is not optional for rescue from our sinful condition. Jesus says that it is essential that we undertake a cross-shaped life of discipleship to be saved.
Jesus calls his followers to strive to imitate his manner of life. He warns that on the day of the great kingdom feast, many will claim to know him, but since they are in practice “evildoers,” Jesus will disown them (Luke 13:26–27; see also Matt. 7:13–27 esp. verse 23). They will be cast away from Jesus’s kingdom banquet (Luke 13:28).
The genuineness of discipleship is revealed through action.
Final salvation depends on imperfect but authentic discipleship.
We are saved by allegiance to the King since allegiance unites us to the King and his benefits.
Justified by Moral Influence
We are not justified apart from Jesus’s moral influence but rather through it.
Moral influence is as foundational as substitutionary atonement because through loyalty Jesus was justified and became the Christ. He did this so we could become loyal to him as the Christ and could be justified too. Jesus’s own justification by his faith, or loyalty (pistis), comes before ours and is purposed toward causing ours.
The pistis of the Christ stimulates our human pistis toward the Christ
in the gospel, justification is revealed by the King’s pistis (faith or loyalty) for the purpose of stimulating our pistis (faith or loyalty), resulting in life.
In short, Jesus’s moral influence over us comes before our justification by faith and is basic to it. We are not justified by faith in just any Christ, but by pledging loyalty to the specific Christ who lived and died in a “by faith” way himself.
Alongside substitution and Christus Victor, moral influence is essential for a complete understanding of the atonement.
(4) Recapitulation
To affirm the recapitulation model of the atonement is to claim that King Jesus saves us by being the head of a reconstituted creation, summing up everything that God intended humanity to be within the old creation.
In Scripture, the substitutionary, victorious king, and moral influence models of atonement are not in competition but together serve to recap how God is rescuing us.
The recapitulation model reminds us that God has established King Jesus as the head of a new humanity within his new creation. Recapitulation also encourages us to hold the models of atonement together, viewing what each uniquely contributes to the overall portrait, so we can praise God maximally for his amazing rescue.
3. Raised to Reign
Paul says the reality of the King’s resurrection as a genuine historical event is required for the removal of our sins.
When our gospel is all about Jesus on the cross rather than about how Jesus became the Christ, we are not in a good position to help others see why the resurrection matters.
When we come to appreciate that the gospel is about how Jesus became King of heaven and earth rather than simply about the cross, Jesus’s resurrection makes sense as the essential next step in God’s plan to restore his glory over creation. Jesus’s resurrection was necessary because creation requires genuine human rule.
The primary purpose of Jesus’s resurrection is not to announce God’s miraculous power over death or to certify Jesus’s divinity—even if those are valid minor purposes. The main purpose of Jesus’s resurrection is to permit him to do precisely what he is doing now: ruling as the superlative human King at the Father’s right hand.
