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2. Punishment. He endured a punishment by becoming this substitute for us. This of course, was prefigured in Isaiah 53: "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." The New Testament again and again connects the death of Christ to our sins. And when it does, it means that God himself is one who actively punishes; it is not merely a matter of sin being its own reward. Thus the New Testament speaks of Christ "bearing sin," of him "becoming a curse," even of him "becoming sin." There is no doubt as to the significance of these expressions: you "bear sin" by taking the penalty of sin, by paying the price of sin, by being punished for sin: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree…. By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet. 2:24). It is useless hoping that there is no such thing as punishment in a just universe. It is useless hoping that you will not merit punishment in a just universe. You can only hope that somehow, someone will lovingly bear your punishment, and that the universe will still be just.

When Christ was handed over by his own people to the pagan occupying power, it was understood to be a mark of judgment. He fell under the curse of God. When Israel went into exile, that is precisely what was happening. As the story unfolds, every sign of God's wrath is experienced by Jesus: the betrayal, the abandonment of friends, the twofold negative judicial verdict by those who were God's agents of justice, the darkness at noonday, the great cry of dereliction from the cross. It is important to see here not some heavenly Trinitarian transaction occurring out of our sight, but the actual, in-the-body acceptance of judgment by a totally righteous man for the sake of those who deserved to be forsaken by God: As the old hymn "Man of Sorrows" puts it, "In my place condemned he stood."

3. Propitiation. This is a personal word: it means an action that turns aside anger or wrath from a sinner. I expiate a sin; I propitiate a person. The Scriptures speak of the wrath of God, his holy anger against sin and those who sin against him. His anger is just and thoroughly righteous; it is deserved by us. If there were no anger of God in this universe, we would be living in an unjust and hopeless world. But the fact that we are the enemies of God means that we are by nature the children of wrath. It is this that John means when he writes, "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).

As I mentioned, there is some resistance to this way of talking about the death of Jesus. Such resistance is understandable if Christ's sacrifice is presented as the punishment of a loving Son by the angry Father. But such is not the New Testament description.

To quote from Anthony Thiselton's commentary on 1 Corinthians: "Propitiation leads to disastrous distortion only if we fail to emphasize that God himself is the source of the action, not that Christ 'propitiates' an angry and reluctant God." It was the Lord of Glory who was crucified for us; unlike the pagan gods, he provided the propitiation himself, of himself. In the great words of James Denney, some say, "God is love… and therefore he dispenses with propitiation," but "God is love, say the apostles, for he provides propitiation."

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March 2004, Vol. 48, No. 3