You have probably heard a common Christian argument that goes something like this:
God is completely holy and cannot abide the presence of sin. Since God is also completely just, He cannot allow sin to go unpunished. He cannot simply forgive sin without there being some sort of satisfaction for sin (this argument typically focuses on personal sins, and not original sin).
We of course, can do nothing ourselves to either earn forgiveness by works or by punishment we suffer. God then sent Jesus, who suffered the penalty for our sins, and therefore we can have forgiveness through faith in Jesus. God is still holy and just because Jesus’ death takes away our sin and sin is punished.
An example of this is a well-known email that has made its rounds around the world. It depicts God as a judge who finds the defendant guilty. He then takes the penalty on himself, and is then able to pardon the defendant since the offense had been paid for. The idea is that if God had simply pardoned the defendant without there being a penalty paid, then God would be unjust judge that allowed sin to exist without punishment (implicitly endorsing it).
My question is: how exactly is it just that the innocent is punished for the guilty? Furthermore, with the whole Trinity concept, Jesus is God. So, not only is an innocent party punished, it’s actually the party the was wronged that is punished (defining sin as an offense against God). But somehow, this innocent and wronged party (the Trinity) couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, forgive us until He had been had taken the penalty Himself.
I understand from the perspective of grace, but how can it be termed just?
As I’ve mentioned before, we’re going through the whole concept of the Atonement in a men’s Bible Study right now, and have discussed this question to some degree.
A crude analogy is a bookie who has a debt owed to him doesn’t particularly care who pays the debt, as long as the debt is paid and “justice” is done. God is supremely holy and just and will not allow Himself to commune with someone who is sinful UNLESS His wrath toward the sin has been propitiated (appeased). So the next question is why didn’t God use someone besides His Son? For example, in the Old Testament, why wasn’t animal sacrifice sufficient? Because an animal is merely a thing, tainted by the fall of Creation, and not on the same level as a man. So why not sacrifice a man rather than a God-in-flesh man? Because all men are sinful and unable to be pure, as all sacrifices had to be. So God chose to offer Himself as the pure, spotless lamb. As John Stott says in The Cross of Christ, “It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease his own righteous anger by bearing it his own self in his own Son when he took our place and died for us. So it was justice AND grace together, not either/or.
Romans 3:22-26 “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
“My question is: how exactly is it just that the innocent is punished for the guilty? Furthermore, with the whole Trinity concept, Jesus is God. So, not only is an innocent party punished, it’s actually the party the was wronged that is punished (defining sin as an offense against God). But somehow, this innocent and wronged party (the Trinity) couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, forgive us until He had been had taken the penalty Himself.
I understand from the perspective of grace, but how can it be termed just?”
I don’t know that I can adequately answer your question, but I’ll take a stab at it. If we go back to Genesis 3 we see a picture of the coming redemption.
10And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
13And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
I think verse 14 and 15 are very telling because they speak of the just punishment of Satan. We don’t tend to emphasize that very much. We talk about Adam and Eve’s punishment quite a bit, but God meted out punishment for every party involved. To get a clearer picture of how God would justly punish Satan, let’s examine what verse 15 says about his punishment. It essentially says that Jesus - the seed of the woman - would crush Satan’s newfound authority (head symbolizes authority) on earth. Consider these other parallel passages:
“But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?” (Hebrews 1:13)
“And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen” (Romans 16:20).
“For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet” (I Corinthians 15:25).
“Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Hebrews 2:8).
Jesus is the just who died for the unjust (I Peter 3:18). But I think we have largely neglected the fact that his justice was not carried out apart from the judgment of Satan. Could God, in his justice, allow Satan to steal his creation and go unpunished? No way. God had already formed a plan of redemption to buy back his wayward creation.
Furthermore, we know that Jesus is God in the flesh, and he is the express image of the Father’s person. But we must also remember that Jesus is a human; this makes him unique among all creatures, in that he is 100% God and 100% man. In his ministry as high priest, he is the mediator of the New Covenant and he can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities both because of his humanity and his compassion. And we know this quality of him, Agape, is the very nature of God. So if we are asking the question of how it is just that the just died for the unjust, we must recall the fact that God is love; his justice cannot be viewed apart from love and therefore mercy.
Good comment, Chris. Here is probably a useful place to use C.S. Lewis’ analogy from the Chronicles of Narnia. The Witch (Satan or Death) owns the boy (Man) because of the boy’s sin against Aslan (God) and His creation. Aslan, in His abounding love, could not bear to see His creation forfeit to the Witch, yet had to abide by the Justice He set out in the beginning. So, to both honor the demands of justice AND show His love by rescuing the boy, He died in the boy’s place. This was something wholly unexpected by the Witch, yet she was quite pleased by the alternative of killing God. Of course, she did not know about the “deep magic” as Aslan referred to it, and He conquered death. Thus, in this ONE way, He could fulfill the demands of the “law” and also show His amazing love for the boy.
Yeah, that’s a great analogy.
I think what Jasen is getting at is that the debt is paid by the one to whom the debt is already owed! To use the bookie analogy, the bookie himself pays the debt. Logically, this is an invalid reference because the bookie (or God) isn’t gaining any kind of pay. I can pay myself a thousand dollars, but that doesn’t mean I wind up with $2,000 in the end. In other words, God’s payment isn’t a payment at all. There is no transaction with some Other. It isn’t some voodoo or “deep magic” if there is no exchange between two different beings. So, here we must abandon the trinity (and settle for completely different beings of the “Father” and the “Son”), see that the transaction was an illusion (giving myself $1,000 doesn’t magically make $2,000), or think of the atonement as theatrics for the real event: the simple forgiveness of sins (accept no substitution?).
“I can pay myself a thousand dollars, but that doesn’t mean I wind up with $2,000 in the end. In other words, God’s payment isn’t a payment at all. There is no transaction with some Other. It isn’t some voodoo or “deep magic” if there is no exchange between two different beings. So, here we must abandon the trinity (and settle for completely different beings of the “Father” and the “Son”), see that the transaction was an illusion (giving myself $1,000 doesn’t magically make $2,000), or think of the atonement as theatrics for the real event: the simple forgiveness of sins (accept no substitution?).”
I wouldn’t say we are abandoning the trinity. Jesus is still God, but he is also man. He carried out his earthly ministry as a man anointed with the Holy Ghost, yet he was still the eternal Word made flesh. He had to live as a man to be “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Check out this passage from Philippians 2.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!