Few modern songs have enjoyed the popularity and cross-denominational appeal of Keith Getty and Stuart Townend’s “In Christ Alone.” It may surprise you, then, that the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted in 2013 to strike the song from its hymnal over a doctrinal controversy. The church wanted to replace the line “’Til on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied” with “. . . the love of God was magnified,” an emendation the song’s authors refused.

Though now 12 years old, this story points to a profound, still fiercely debated question: What did Jesus do on the cross? Did he suffer in the place of sinners to bear the wrath of God for humanity’s sin (penal substitutionary atonement theory) or did he defeat Satan in an invisible victory over cosmic forces (Christus Victor theory)?

The PCUSA’s preferred “love of God was magnified” describes the moral influence theory, namely that Christ’s death supremely demonstrated the lengths to which God’s love would go, which inspires people to lives of service.

The book of Hebrews addresses this issue directly. Examining this deep book helps us answer this important question and allows us to see how Jesus first identifies with us in our humanity, then takes the place of sinners on the cross, and ultimately pays the punishment for our sins through his sacrifice.

Precondition for the Sacrifice: High Priest’s Humanity

Hebrews begins with an extended reflection on the Son’s total uniqueness. Jesus is unlike any past bearer of revelation or angel, since he is God himself (Heb. 1:1–14). Yet beginning in Hebrews 2, there’s a striking shift in the argument: In the incarnation, this utterly unique Son has become “like” mankind. The same Son who is so superior to angels has been “made lower than the angels” (2:9) and now calls humans his “brothers” (v. 11).

The author clarifies the purpose of this condescension, explaining that Jesus was “made lower than the angels . . . so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (vv. 9–10). More specifically, he was “made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (v. 17).

But why did Jesus need to be human to “make propitiation for the sins of the people” or “taste death for everyone?” According to the author of Hebrews, Jesus’s total humanity was a precondition for his role as humanity’s high priest (v. 17). Only as a true human could Jesus be mankind’s representative to “make propitiation” (i.e., a wrath-atoning sacrifice) for the sins that other humans (“the people”) had committed. This logic becomes clearer in Hebrews 9.

Nature of the Sacrifice: High Priest’s Blood

In Hebrews 9, the author draws an analogy between Jesus’s sacrifice and the Day of Atonement ritual. During this annual feast, the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place but “not without taking blood” that he would offer “for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people” (v. 7). Similarly, Jesus “entered . . . into heaven itself” to make atonement for humans (vv. 24–25).

It’s important to understand the Old Testament background the author draws from. Leviticus 16 describes how, after purifying himself, the high priest was to take two identical goats for the people’s sins (vv. 3, 5). One of these goats was sacrificed as a “sin offering,” and the priest carried its blood with him into the Holy Place (v. 15, referenced in Heb. 9:7, 25).

To symbolize the effect of that sacrifice, the high priest would then lay his hands on the second goat, confess Israel’s sins, and “put them on the head of the goat” (Lev. 16:21). This second animal thereby came to “bear [the] iniquities” (v. 22) of Israel and was then driven away to perish outside the camp. The deaths of these two goats symbolized the transference of both the people’s sin and sin’s penalty from the people to the animals.

The deaths of these two goats symbolized the transference of both the people’s sin and sin’s penalty from the people to the animals.

The problem with this ritual, however, was that “the blood of bulls and goats” could never itself take away or atone for human sin (Heb. 10:4).

Yet in a striking transformation of the imagery, the author of Hebrews explains that it was Jesus, the fully human great high priest himself, who carried not animal blood but his own blood into the Most Holy Place, and was “offered once to bear the sins of many” (9:25, 28). On the true “day of atonement,” Jesus wasn’t just the officiating high priest; he was the sacrifice on whose head the people’s sins were placed.

Effect of the Sacrifice: Substitution

The author summarizes the effect of this transfer in Hebrews 9:15–17. Christians can have hope that they’ll one day receive the “promised eternal inheritance” of salvation because of what Jesus has done. The author explains that his death “redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (v. 15). As verses 16–17 explain, in a covenant arrangement, transgressions ordinarily require “the death of the one who made [the covenant]” (v. 16).

The natural and just penalty for our sinful covenant-breaking is death. This is an essential principle of God’s perfect justice: No sin can go unpunished. Hebrews goes on to say that “a covenant is valid only when people are dead” and is “[not] in force while the one who made it lives” (v. 17, NASB). If God would simply let covenant-breakers off the hook, this would only show that the covenant was never really binding, valid, or in force. But this problem is decisively removed through Jesus’s work. He died in our place to both satisfy the demands of God’s justice and set us free.

Christ died in our place to both satisfy the demands of God’s justice and set us free.

Certainly, the death of Jesus was the defeat of Satan (2:14–15) that “disarmed the rulers and authorities” (Col. 2:15). Jesus is, of course, the Christus Victor. This death is also our great example that inspires us to a new way of life (John 13:34), as the Moral Influence theory stresses. Yet whatever else may be said, Hebrews presses us to the conclusion that Jesus’s death was not less than a penal, substitutionary atonement.

Because Jesus became human, identified with us in our weakness, bore our sin, and died a sacrificial death, Christians can be certain that we too will one day receive the promise of eternal life (Heb. 9:15).

News Source : https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/penal-substitutionary-atonement-hebrews/