STEADFAST Steadfast. God is quite steadfast I thought I’d stop and feast that But He said… ‘instead fast’.   Because it means we failed him Because we’re just not true Because we test his patience By what we say and do.   Not good in a pandemic Not good when things go right Not good at waiting for it Not good in a close fight   Not good at loving others? Who don’t look just like us? Not good at... Read more

Q. I think you are right that the moral influence of the death of Jesus is vast, but only if we also realize that his death was a penal substitutionary atonement which propitiates and also expiates. It should have been us on the cross, paying for our sins. It seems to me that the best case for explaining all this is the necessitarian one—the God of love and mercy could not simply take a pass on dealing with sin, or... Read more

Q. Like with the statement ‘forgiveness offered is not the same as forgiveness received’ on pp. 256-57 you make the important point that if a person rejects God’s saving grace, rejects his offer of substitute payment by Christ for sin, then such a person remains guilty for the sins they commit, and faces the legitimate punishment for said sins. This conclusion, it seems to me only really makes sense if we accept a non-Reformed view of salvation, namely that it... Read more

Q. On p. 243 you once more get to the heart of the matter— God’s own righteous character, and how that affects his actions, namely the judge of the earth must, according to his very nature, enact justice, must judge justly. Put another way in Pauline terms, God cannot pass over or ignore human sin forever. A Righteous God must deal with it. This it seems is the basis for saying retributive justice is a necessary function of a righteous... Read more

Q. I think the conclusion drawn at the end of the first redemption chapter is helpful in explicating guilt— guilt means someone has done something wrong, and only by punishment or pardon can the guilt be expiated or done away with. This is quite helpful. Guilt shouldn’t be associated with the past fact of having done something wrong, in itself. Otherwise, a person is perpetually guilty since the past cannot be erased. Also helpful is the discussion of tenses. Just... Read more

Q. Thinking further about this, it would seem that the issue is not an issue of law. It’s an issue of God’s unchanging righteous character. After all, Gal. 4 is clear that Christ came to redeem those under the Mosaic law out from under the Mosaic law (and under the stoicheia—the elementary principles and teachings Gentiles were under), and Rom. 10.4 says Christ is the telos, the end/terminus/goal/fulfillment of the Mosaic law as a means of right standing or righteousness... Read more

Q. If in fact Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice issue in regard to our sins, completely satisfies it, why then do we need a legal pardon at all? If the demands of justice are met by Christ, then a pardon would seem to be completely unnecessary because the issue has been resolved. God no longer has anything against us, and we are no longer his enemies. We just need to be reconciled to God by grace through faith. Please explain... Read more

Q. I wonder if it would help the discussion of penal substitutionary atonement if we stuck to the letter of what Paul says. He says that God made Christ sin. Full stop. We might not fully understand what that entails, but let’s say it’s true. Then suppose we add the idea that God punishes sin, in this case, rather than saying God punishes Christ as a person. Does this alleviate the concern about God punishing an innocent person, and thereby... Read more

Q. You say on p. 184 that every orthodox Christian not only affirms that Christ did not sin, but that he could not sin. Actually, this is not true. Plenty of orthodox Christians say that Christ’s temptations were real, and his resisting them meritorious, virtuous. If he could not do otherwise, there is no virtue in that, never mind no free choosing of the good. Perhaps it would be better to say the following, as Phil. 2.5-11 suggests. In the... Read more

Q. In your discussion of the justification for penal substitutionary atonement you stress that perhaps the main objection to the theory is that it is thought to include the notion that God punished Christ, an innocent person, for our sins, a premise you deny. You stress that Christ voluntarily chose to be our substitute and so his death is not a punishment inflicted by the Father. Please explain this distinction a little bit. I mean Isa. 53 certainly says it... Read more