Christ’s penal substitutionary death which demands the resurrection…because the resurrection is a demonstration of the legal verdict of righteousness pronounced on the incarnate Son, the resurrection is not an event we loosely tie to a legal atonement but is itself legal in nature as it is Christ’s justification. And because salvation comes to us via our union with Christ, we can declare that he “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and we are thereby forgiven.
Jerry Bridges wrote those words in his excellent work, The Discipline of Grace. As a pastor, I’ve recommended that book to many over the years and loaned out my personal copy so much that I’ve had to replace it repeatedly. But every time I read that line I cringe just a bit. I want to write in “and was raised from the dead!” I want his summary of the gospel to include the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. After all, Paul makes clear that Christ’s resurrection is no inconsequential matter, telling the Corinthians that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in yours sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). The resurrection is of absolute necessity to the gospel message. But I have to admit, this is an area in which I’m a bit sensitive.
An Increasing Awareness of a Truncated “Gospel”
My sensitivity stems from two things. First, I’ve pastored the same church in a college town for the last twenty-three years. With a transient town and students moving in and out, I’ve done my fair share of membership interviews over this time. In those interviews, I always ask the prospective member to share the gospel with me. To the best of our ability, it’s our church’s way of making sure that the person is a believer and is able to articulate the basic components of the gospel message. And more often than I like to admit, the resurrection is absent in these “gospel” presentations. The follow-up question that I’ve most frequently had to ask is, “Did Jesus remain dead?” Of course, without exception, the person answers by affirming that Jesus rose from the dead on that Easter Sunday morning, but for some reason the importance and necessity of the resurrection doesn’t immediately register.
The second reason for my sensitivity in this area comes from my days in graduate studies. The focus of my work in those years was on defending penal substitutionary atonement from the attacks of so-called “evangelicals” who began to argue against this understanding of Christ’s work around the turn of the century.[1] Their attacks ranged from claims that penal substitution is a picture of child abuse to arguments that it distorts intra-Trinitarian relationships. But one attack that always seemed to surface was that proponents of penal substitution ignore the resurrection because our understanding of the cross makes it unnecessary.
For example, Tom Smail wrote in his work on the cross,
The penal model as such does not quite know what to make of the resurrection. It gives birth to a spirituality that . . . is symbolized . . . by a preaching that is dominated by a one-sided preoccupation with sin and condemnation and the suffering of Christ as the price of our deliverance from it. The resurrection is seen only as the sign of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice, his affirmation of the sufficiency of what has been done to secure our pardon, and as a rather disconnected promise of life after death.[2]
Clark Pinnock ratcheted up the charge, claiming that the penal “idea of the atonement does not have much room for resurrection which can go almost unmentioned because it is not required.”[3]
Upon reading those attacks, I always wanted to dismiss them as attacks on straw men. “Of course defenders of penal substitution see the necessity of the resurrection,” I wanted to respond. We would never ignore it or let it go unmentioned. But then I would remember those membership interviews.
Given a moment’s reflection, you can see why detractors of penal substitution make this claim and why proponents of this precious doctrine often do allow the resurrection to go unmentioned in their “gospel” presentations. There is a certain logic to this “gospel” message that seems sound, coherent, and complete without noting the resurrection at all. Because God is holy and we are sinful, we bear divine condemnation. But God sent his Son into the world to live in perfect obedience and then die on the cross, bearing the condemnation that we deserved in our place. Therefore, if we repent of our sins and believe in him, we are credited with his perfect righteousness, and Christ’s death counts as the complete payment for our sins and removes God’s condemnation from us.
In this description, Christ’s death seems to account for everything. The problem, of course, is that without mention of the resurrection a gospel message is no gospel at all (1 Cor. 15:4), and Scripture will not allow such an empty proclamation to be called “good news.” Again, Paul declared, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17-18). He doesn’t say, “If Christ has not been raised, your sins remain forgiven and divine condemnation is removed, you just won’t get to experience resurrection.” Rather, he says if Christ isn’t raised, we’re still in our sins and will perish. Does this mean that Pinnock, Smail, and others are right, and it’s time to move on from penal substitution?
Of course not. To abandon penal substitution in light of its biblical support (see esp. Rom. 3:21-26; 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13) is no better than ignoring the resurrection. Rather, we need to understand the saving nature of the resurrection. We need to see that, far from penal substitution leaving no room for the resurrection, it is the penalty-bearing nature of Christ’s death that demands the resurrection if we are to be saved. But in order to see this, we need to understand three elements: (1) Christ as our representative substitute, (2) the condemnation involved in penal substitution, and (3) the legal nature of Christ’s resurrection. We’ll take these in turn.
Christ as Our Representative Substitute
In order to understand why penal substitution demands the resurrection, one must consider the representative nature of Jesus’s work. Some have attempted to place the concepts of representation and substitution in separate and exclusive categories,[4] but Scripture allows no such division. Believers are said to have “died with Christ” (Rom. 6:8) and are told that “Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Christ represents believers in his high-priestly work (Heb. 5:1), and because he is our substitute, he bears divine wrath in our place and on our behalf. Thus, Jesus is a “representative substitute” for believers, as Packer noted fifty years ago.[5] This recognition must be our starting point in seeing how the cross and resurrection are necessary for our justification. The reason for this is because what Christ accomplishes in both his death and resurrection is appropriated to believers through our union with him. What is true of him becomes true of us, his people, because he is our representative.
Read More
Related Posts:

You also say that “strangers have attacked strangers behind the safe confines of computers, news agencies, and conferences,” which “proliferates fear and distrust,” and that “there will always be people who are all about power.” In all of this I remind you that you hide yourselves behind confines safer than the things you mention here, all of which are at least public, and that your organization has a clever scheme to use committee assignments and other machinery of the General Assembly and presbyteries to accomplish a desired agenda.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Argumentative Method and Use of Scripture
Your appeals are essentially emotional in nature and misuse Scripture, as seen in the following excerpts from “The Letter.” Perhaps you will say that this is no creature of yours, but it was written by one of your number, you discussed and commended it among yourselves, and it bears the signature of many of your foremost members who are known. He who signs a document attests his assent to the veracity thereof, and so the arguments of the Letter might be deemed your own, even if they are accepted by many others as well.
In the Letter you say that in the midst of our controversies “specific brothers in good standing have been labeled.” All offenses in the church are committed by people who are in good standing; if they were not in good standing they would not be in the church. You should not be zealous to use such an argument which was widely used by liberals in other denominations to deflect criticism. The, too, you seem to object, not so much to the particular labels used, but to the mere fact that polemic labels have been applied to some, since you draw a contrast between the labels and the “straw men” you say have been erected “even more frequently.” Labels are permissible in our discourse: Christ himself denounces the Nicolaitans, and he refers to a false prophetess as Jezebel (Rev. 2:14, 20).
You later say that “if the sins of unbiblical practice and unconfessional belief that are currently being voiced with such vigor were true, we would agree that they should be opposed.” Men are not known by self-testimony (Jn. 5:31), but by their deeds: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16). A professed orthodoxy that does not stand at the point at which truth is attacked is useless speculation, not the robust, active faith that confesses Christ before men. So it is with you in this matter, for the culture’s view of sexuality invades our communion and rather than joining the battle you criticize the war effort and plead the glories of making peace in parliament. You continue:
We hear the concerns of our brothers and rarely disagree with the principles behind them. We believe that we desire the same commitment to Scripture and our Standards that they do!
It is hard to see that there is as great an agreement as you suggest when you maintain a secret organization where others act publicly, and when you elsewhere dispute the propriety of public polemics and favor private interactions between those that disagree. In questions of polity there is of course utter disagreement between your view of subscription and that of others, concerning which it also makes for a strange claim that you have the same commitment to the standards when you consider the permissibility of taking and even teaching exceptions to be essential to the PCA’s effectiveness and assert it incessantly. You then denounce:
Social media characterizations that turn suspicions into speculations that become accusations without proof – to achieve political ends within our church. Where compromise or sin is true and can be proven, we have sessions, presbyteries, and judicial processes to engage.
As “wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19), so also do the nature and consequences of bad deeds testify against them, whether done in public or brought there by exposure. We do not dream up our criticisms, but use as proof that which you yourselves have furnished. A thing is not proved true by the judgments of the courts but can be witnessed and testified to by those who act outside of official processes. You continue:
If we do not find more ways of speaking charitably and biblically to one another in our national discussions, we run the risk of doing damage to the nuanced work of individual local churches.
“You brood of vipers! Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come? . . . do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’” (Matt. 2:7,9). Was John’s personal address there uncharitable? No, for he bore sound testimony to the Pharisees’ true nature – and no one who speaks truth rightly can be deemed uncharitable. Why then do you imagine we wrong you when we testify to the course of your deeds?
Instead of raising and publishing suspicions about brothers we do not know in other regions and presbyteries, it is far healthier and more biblical to trust our churches and sessions to follow our Standards, to believe that they were acting in as good faith as we were, when they took their vows to uphold the Faith. If we can prove otherwise, then we have processes to adjudicate error. But until error is proven, restraint of suspicious expression is a key mark of true faithfulness.
This demands a level of trust that the Holy Spirit works beyond our immediate setting – that pastors will continue to preach “the gospel of God’s grace,” and “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:24, 27), and presbyteries and sessions will address sin and sins as they and their sessions see fit in their contexts.
These are the next four verses of Acts 20:
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.
Blind trust in other professing believers is not a gift of the Spirit, nor is it a virtue. Discernment, however, is. Your point above directly contradicts the passage to which you allude and supplants true wisdom with a naïveté that is not commanded, but rather warned against repeatedly. As for your claim that “until error is proven, restraint of suspicious expression is a key mark of true faithfulness,” I remind you again that all process is instituted against men who are in good standing when charged. If we are not able to oppose the bad behavior of some because they are in good standing and the offense has not been proved by the courts, then you condemn, by implication, Peter’s rebuke of Simon Magus (Acts 8:20-22), Paul’s of Peter (Gal. 2:11-14), and John’s concerning Diotrephes (3 Jn. 9-10), in all of which condemnation of wrong was public (or via letter to a third party) rather than private, and in which it apparently occurred toward people who were in good standing who had not been censured under the prescribed form of the Matthew 18 process. You later say that:
Before the Internet connected everyone, and before online news agencies became conduits for agendas, we trusted local churches, Sessions, and presbyteries – We want to propose that we continue to see this as the most excellent way of caring for the Church, and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
This is historically doubtful. What is done now via the Internet was done in print with equal vigor in previous generations – The Presbyterian Journal comes to mind – and far from trusting others, our forefathers organized and published against them, and eventually separated to form our present denomination. If you mean the period between the PCA’s formation and the popularization of the Internet, your remarks still run counter to what I have heard of the tone of our own polity in its early days. In addition, Jude’s enjoinder to recognize and resist heretics is twisted to say ‘trust other professing believers without question,’ the direct opposite of his point. You continue:
Yes, there will be inaccuracies, even heresy – not because we trust one another, but because God’s Word tells us that there will be. Demas will always be in the church (2 Timothy 4:10). There will always be wolves (Matthew 7, Acts 20).
Misplaced confidence in man does in fact allow the proliferation of heresy, which can only be stopped by decisive action (as is the church’s duty, 1 Cor. 5:1-6; 1 Tim. 1:20; Tit. 1:9, 11) or else divine judgment (Rev. 2:15-16). Such mistaken trust receives God’s censure: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength” (Jer. 17:5). As for Demas, whether or no he was a final apostate or one who stumbled temporarily, his failure recorded in 2 Tim. 4:10 was not being in the church when Paul needed him (“Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me”). As for the universality of wolves, that is no excuse to an apathetic trust, which is what you imply at several points in this letter. You say later:
When we pick apart words and statements, often out of context, we do damage to the fabric of our Witness – We are the better to not go there (and all of us have been guilty!), because to the watching world, we would no longer appear as a community that graciously holds forth truth, but one that is torn and divided – and this invalidates our proclamation.
What you call picking apart words is simply exercising prudence, and far from it being better to “not go there,” we are commanded to test all things in order to hold fast what is good and reject what is bad (1 Thess. 5:21-22). My own belief is that your statements have not been frequently taken out of context by others; and I can attest that I have done my utmost to avoid doing so myself, for I have scoured this letter and other primary sources for many hours and have excised many points, including several full paragraphs, because further reflection made them seem debatable. You also say:
When we speak in extremes, in order to press a position, we hurt those we love, and do damage to our Witness
Scripture deals in extremes: life and death, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, wickedness and righteousness. This is no quirk of Hebrew literature but is a true testimony to the nature of our world. There are many matters in which the question is one of two or more alternatives that are largely questions of preference, and which bear consequences that touch rather upon form than essential substance. It is not so with many of our present controversies, which touch upon the essential form of our denomination and the course it will follow in the coming years, not least the question of whether we will be faithful to the truth about sexuality or will follow after other denominations in increasingly tolerating wrong conceptions of it. You later say:
Under the flag of, ‘they said it publicly, so we can challenge them publicly,’ friends have been pitted against friends – with no attempts to contact one another personally!
If the friends in question, whomever they may be, are worthy of the name they will no doubt contact each other personally rather than allow strangers to stir them up to mutual distrust. Also, there is no mandate to speak privately with those whom one believes err publicly, and the scriptural data suggest the propriety of public confrontation when it affects third parties (Prov. 18:17; Gal. 2:11-14; 1 Tim. 5:20).
You also say that “strangers have attacked strangers behind the safe confines of computers, news agencies, and conferences,” which “proliferates fear and distrust,” and that “there will always be people who are all about power.” In all of this I remind you that you hide yourselves behind confines safer than the things you mention here, all of which are at least public, and that your organization has a clever scheme to use committee assignments and other machinery of the General Assembly and presbyteries to accomplish a desired agenda.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

God did not treat the human writers as inert objects (non-organic) but as living beings (organic) with their own unique traits. Yet at the same time, every single word was what God wanted written down.

Who wrote the Bible? God did. To put a finer point on it, God is the divine author who used various human authors to write exactly what He wanted written. That is, God is the primary author and the humans are secondary authors. This type of dual authorship is assumed throughout the Bible. For example, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord [primary author] had spoken by the prophet [Isaiah, secondary author]” (Matt. 1:22; see also Mark 12:36; Heb. 3:7 with 4:7; 2 Peter 1:21). Traditionally, God’s effecting the Scriptures to be written is termed inspiration, which means that God breathed out the Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16).
Primary Authorship
In addition to straightforward passages that declare God as the author of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), there are other types of intriguing biblical passages confirming divine authorship. Let us look at three.
There are passages where the Scriptures are functionally equated to God. In Romans 9:17, Paul is quoting from Exodus 9:16, where Moses is told to declare God’s words to Pharaoh. But Paul does not write, “God says to Pharaoh,” but instead, “Scripture says to Pharaoh.” Obviously, Paul means that God spoke to Pharaoh, but God’s speaking and Scripture’s speaking are intimately related to each other in Paul’s mind. Similarly in Galatians 3:8, within an argument showing that the doctrine of justification by faith existed in the Old Testament, Paul notes the forward-looking aspect of Genesis 12:3 intended by God. But in referring to this, Paul does not write, “God foreseeing,” but “Scripture foreseeing.” Again, God and Scripture are intimately related.
There are also Old Testament passages where God does not appear to be the speaker, but He is denoted as the speaker by a New Testament writer. Hebrews 1:5–13 includes seven Old Testament quotes. These quotes include passages in which God is the direct speaker but others in which He is not. However, all the quotes in Hebrews are prefaced by some form of “God says” or “he says.” Thus, whether the Old Testament context includes God’s explicitly speaking or not, the author of Hebrews considers all of Scripture to be God’s speaking on some level.
Read More

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.