Deutero Q

The substitutionary view of the atonement maintains that, upon the cross, Jesus Christ bore God's wrath against sin, taking the punishment that sinners deserved.

I once read about an illustration a preacher used to explain the vicarious nature of the atonement (an illustration that I have occasionally used). He held a hammer, which he said represented God's wrath against sin. He also held a clear drinking glass filled with dirty water that represented sinners. As the preacher raised the hammer and prepared to strike the glass, he took a tin pan and held it between the hammer and the glass, so that instead of striking the glass the hammer struck the pan with a loud crash. Although that sounds crude, essentially it is right. (Reformed theologian Shirley Guthrie points out that if the illustration of the hammer and the glass is to be used in any way similar to what really happened on the cross, the hammer should strike the preacher's own hand--rather than the tin pan--thus emphasizing God's sacrifice of Himself.)

At the cross, the triune God's righteous anger against sin was propitiated; that is, God's wrath against sin was appeased by the sacrificial death of Christ.

Atonement language is especially prevalent in the book of Leviticus. In Lev. 1:3-5, for instance, the Lord said to Moses: "If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord. He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him." It is also in Leviticus where we read about the Day of Atonement, the one day each year when the high priest would enter the special room in the tabernacle known as the holy of holies and sprinkle the blood of the sin offering before the mercy seat (the name for the lid of solid gold that covered the Ark of the Covenant).

Atonement language in Leviticus is clearly vicarious and sacrificial in nature. Hands are laid on the sacrificial animal, symbolizing a transference of sin, and blood is shed. Notice, too, in the passage cited above, that the offering was to be "without defect." Of course all of the atoning sacrifices in the Old Testament point to Jesus Christ, who is the heart of the Bible and the One to whom the Old Testament Law and prophets bear witness. The Bible describes Jesus as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), the perfect sacrifice who "appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26).

Interestingly, the word most often used for atonement in the Old Testament is kaphar and its derivatives; kaphar is the Hebrew word for "to cover." The idea is that a person was delivered from punishment by the placing of something between their sin and God (think of the tin pan covering in the illustration above).

To be sure, Jesus Christ was the perfect sacrificial victim--the Lamb of God--who died vicariously for sinners. Christ is the sinner's covering! In the words of Isaiah 53:6, "We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Elsewhere we are told, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Substitutionary language is also found in 1 Peter 3:18, where we read, "Christ did for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

While acknowledging that there is much to learn from the different theories of the atonement (I think here of the ransom view, which was the early church's primary understanding of Christ's atoning work), it is my conviction that what happened at the cross is best, though not exclusively, understood in terms of substitution.