Introduction: The Mystery of the Cross
The cross of Jesus Christ is the heart of the Christian faith. It’s not just a symbol we wear around our necks or see on church buildings. The cross represents the most important event in human history. When we look at the cross, we see something so deep and meaningful that we could spend our whole lives trying to understand it and still not reach the bottom.
The apostle Paul was one of the smartest people in the early church. He had studied under the best teachers and knew the Jewish scriptures inside and out. But when he wrote to the church in Corinth, he said something surprising. He told them he had decided to focus on just one thing when he was with them: “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Paul wasn’t saying we should ignore everything else. He was saying that everything we need to know about God and salvation can be found in the cross.
For two thousand years, Christians have asked the same basic question about the cross. We all agree on the basic fact that the Bible clearly teaches. The Bible tells us that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). This is the foundation of our faith. But the question that keeps coming up is this: Why did Jesus, who never sinned, have to suffer and die? What made his death necessary for our forgiveness?
In many conservative churches today, the most common answer to this question comes from a theory called Penal Substitutionary Atonement, or PSA for short. This view teaches that when Jesus died on the cross, he stood in our place and took the punishment we deserved for our sins. According to this view, God the Father poured out his anger against sin on his own Son. Jesus absorbed God’s wrath so we wouldn’t have to face it ourselves.
This explanation has helped many Christians feel confident that their sins are forgiven. It gives them assurance that their spiritual debt has been paid in full. However, this view also creates some difficult questions. Many sincere believers struggle with the idea of a loving Father punishing his innocent Son. It seems to create a conflict within God himself, as if the Father and Son were working against each other instead of together.
This report will explore these deep questions with care and respect for God’s word. We want to present a biblical understanding of Christ’s sacrifice that keeps the truth that he died in our place, but without creating a picture of conflict within the Trinity. We’ll do this in three main parts.
First, we’ll take a close look at Dr. Vee Chandler’s “Victorious Substitution” model. This framework shows how God’s love and justice work together perfectly. Second, we’ll compare this model with the defenses of Penal Substitution offered by respected scholars Dr. David L. Allen and Dr. William Lane Craig. We want to be fair to their views and understand them properly. Finally, through this exploration, we hope to give you a deeper understanding of the beautiful work that Jesus accomplished on the cross.
Part I: Understanding Vee Chandler’s Victorious Substitution Model
To really understand what happened at the cross, we need to start with a solid foundation. Dr. Vee Chandler’s book “Victorious Substitution” gives us a helpful framework that honors everything the Bible teaches. Her model doesn’t throw away the important truths about Jesus dying in our place or the serious consequences of sin. Instead, it puts these truths into the bigger story of God’s triumphant love. Let’s explore her system carefully and see how it provides an alternative to the standard Penal Substitution model.
Section 1: Separating Facts from Theories
Dr. Chandler begins her study by making an important distinction that brings clarity to the whole discussion. She separates what she calls atonement “fact” from atonement “theory.” This distinction is like the foundation of a house. Without it, everything else becomes shaky and confused.
The facts of the atonement are the things that Scripture clearly and repeatedly teaches about what the cross accomplished. These are the truths that all Christians must believe. The Bible tells us plainly that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19). It’s a fact that Christ died for our sins. It’s a fact that through his blood, we have redemption and forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7). These truths form the core of the gospel message. We don’t have to wonder about these things because the Bible states them clearly.
As Chandler explains, what Christ’s life and death accomplished isn’t a mystery. The Bible plainly teaches that sins are forgiven through Christ’s death. We can read this throughout the New Testament. The apostles preached it, and the early church believed it. This is the solid ground we stand on.
But then we come to the theories of the atonement. These are our human attempts to explain how and why this divine work happens. When we develop atonement theories, we’re trying to answer questions like “Why was this specific, bloody sacrifice necessary for our reconciliation to God?” God has chosen to leave some mystery around this question. The Bible doesn’t give us a complete, systematic explanation all in one place. So theologians develop theories to connect the biblical dots and provide a coherent explanation.
Here’s where many debates and arguments start. People often present a particular theory, like Penal Substitution, as if it were the biblical fact itself. When this happens, the theory’s specific explanation becomes treated as foundational truth. For example, the idea that the Father poured his wrath on the Son gets treated as being just as important as the fact that Christ died for our sins. This mixing up of fact and theory can create unnecessary problems for believers. If they struggle with the theory’s implications, they might start questioning the gospel itself instead of just questioning one human explanation of it.
To help us understand the different types of theories, Chandler uses two traditional categories. Objective theories suggest that Christ’s death brought about a change related to God or the cosmic order. These theories say something real happened outside of us, like a debt being paid or justice being satisfied. Subjective theories suggest Christ’s death primarily brings about a change in us. These theories focus on how the cross moves our hearts to repentance by showing us God’s love.
Chandler’s Victorious Substitution model, like Penal Substitution, is primarily an objective theory. It says something real happened at the cross that changed our situation. However, it completely redefines what that objective reality was. Instead of saying the change was in God’s attitude toward us (from angry to loving), it says the change was in our position (from captive to free). This is a major difference that affects everything else.
Section 2: Problems with the Penal Substitution Theory
Before building her own model, Chandler carefully examines the problems with the dominant Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory. She’s not attacking PSA from outside the faith. This is a respectful conversation among conservative believers who all hold the Bible as their highest authority. Chandler recognizes that PSA is often considered the orthodox or correct understanding. She appreciates that it takes sin seriously and emphasizes that Christ died in our place. Her disagreement isn’t with the idea that Christ died as our substitute. Her problem is with the specific way PSA explains how this works—the idea that God the Father satisfied his own need for justice by actively punishing his Son.
Chandler identifies several logical problems with the PSA framework. First, there’s a basic contradiction between paying a debt and forgiving it. Think about it this way. If you owe someone money and a friend pays it for you, the lender has been paid. They got their money, so there’s nothing left to forgive. The debt is settled. But if God’s justice received its full payment through punishing Christ, how can we say God graciously forgives our sins? The forgiveness seems to have been purchased rather than freely given. This runs against the biblical teaching that salvation is a free gift (Romans 6:23). As Chandler puts it, a debt cannot be both forgiven and paid back at the same time. You can do one or the other, but not both.
Another logical problem involves the nature of the penalty for sin. According to Scripture, the true penalty for sin is eternal death, which means eternal separation from God. But Christ didn’t suffer this penalty. He was dead for three days and then rose again. Some defenders of PSA argue that because Christ is divine and has infinite value, his temporary suffering was worth the same as our eternal punishment. But Chandler points out that this is a complex theological idea that people created to solve the problem. The Bible doesn’t explicitly teach this. It’s still a logical leap to say that a finite amount of suffering, no matter how intense, equals an eternal penalty.
The most serious challenges to PSA are moral ones. These touch on the very character of God. The biggest moral problem is the injustice of punishing an innocent person. The Bible itself establishes a clear principle of divine justice in places like Ezekiel 18:20, which says “The one who sins is the one who will die,” and Deuteronomy 24:16, which forbids punishing children for their parents’ sins or parents for their children’s sins. These passages show us God’s standard of justice. Each person is responsible for their own sin.
So how can God violate his own revealed standard of justice in the very act that’s supposed to be its ultimate demonstration? To punish a perfectly innocent person (Christ) for crimes he didn’t commit would be, by God’s own definition, an act of injustice. This creates a serious problem. We’re saying God does something that he himself calls wrong.
The PSA model can also accidentally portray God the Father in a troubling way. It can make him seem like a stern judge whose anger must be satisfied before his love can be expressed. This creates a moral tension within the Godhead. The Father demands punishment, and the Son provides it. They almost seem to have conflicting interests. The Father wants justice, the Son wants mercy, and they work out a deal. This picture is hard to reconcile with the New Testament’s portrayal of a God who “is love” (1 John 4:8) and whose every action flows from that love.
These moral problems lead to deep theological difficulties. The PSA narrative can suggest a division within the Trinity. It sets the Father’s justice against the Son’s mercy. The Father inflicts punishment while the Son endures it. This is theologically problematic because Scripture consistently shows us a unified work. Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The atonement isn’t the Son appeasing an angry Father. As Paul says, it’s “God… in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). The Father, Son, and Spirit are perfectly united in their purpose and love.
Another theological problem is about who needs to be reconciled. PSA focuses on satisfying a need within God—his need for justice to be satisfied. In this view, the change happens in God. Once his justice is satisfied, he can now forgive. But the New Testament consistently speaks of humanity being reconciled to God, not the other way around. The barrier to fellowship is our sin and rebellion, not God’s reluctance to forgive. God has always been ready to forgive. We’re the ones who need to change.
Finally, there’s the issue of what motivates the atonement. The ultimate source and motivation for the atonement is God’s boundless love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). While PSA doesn’t deny God’s love, its mechanism makes satisfying an abstract principle of justice the central necessity of the cross. Chandler argues this gets the priority backwards. In the Bible, justice serves love, not the other way around. Love is the driving force, and justice is how that love operates.
These profound objections to the idea of God punishing God lead us to an important question. If the necessity of the cross wasn’t to satisfy something in God, where was the necessity? Chandler finds the answer by turning to a more ancient understanding of the atonement. This older view sees the necessity not in changing God’s mind but in changing humanity’s desperate situation. The necessity wasn’t to satisfy God but to free humanity from bondage to hostile cosmic powers. This completely changes how we understand Christ’s substitutionary death.
Section 3: Understanding Biblical Terms Differently
A key part of Chandler’s argument involves taking a fresh look at biblical verses often used to support Penal Substitution. She argues that centuries of viewing the Bible through PSA glasses have colored how we interpret important theological terms. When we take these glasses off and look at the text more carefully, we might see something different.
The most important word to reconsider is the Greek word hilasmos and its related forms. In many English Bibles, this word gets translated as “propitiation.” Propitiation means to appease someone’s anger or to turn away their wrath. This translation fits perfectly with the PSA model. If Christ’s sacrifice propitiates God’s wrath, then PSA makes sense. But Chandler makes a strong case that a better translation is “expiation.” Expiation means something different. It means to cleanse, wipe away, or remove sin.
How does Chandler support this different translation? She points to several pieces of evidence. First, she looks at what the action of hilasmos is directed toward. In both the Greek Old Testament (called the Septuagint) and the New Testament, this action is consistently directed toward sin, not toward God. You expiate sin, but you propitiate a person. The Bible says Christ is the hilasmos “for our sins” (1 John 2:2), not “for God.” It wouldn’t make grammatical sense to propitiate sins. You can’t appease or calm down a sin. You can only cleanse or remove it.
Chandler also looks at the Hebrew background of this Greek word. When Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek, they used hilasmos to translate the Hebrew word kipper. This is the main Old Testament word for atonement. The basic meaning of kipper is to “cover” or “wipe clean.” When the Old Testament talks about sacrifices, they’re meant to cleanse the people and the sanctuary from the contamination of sin. They’re not about appeasing an angry God but about removing the stain that sin leaves behind.
This shift from propitiation to expiation is huge theologically. It removes the idea of an angry God who needs to be calmed down by a violent sacrifice. Instead, it presents a loving and holy God who provides a way to cleanse his beloved but sin-stained people. The problem is the contamination of sin, and the cross is God’s powerful cleanser. It’s like the difference between trying to calm down an angry parent versus cleaning up a mess you’ve made. The focus shifts from God’s anger to our need for cleansing.
This different understanding also affects how we read Romans 3:25. Many supporters of PSA translate the word hilasterion here as “propitiatory sacrifice.” But Chandler argues it should be understood as “mercy seat.” The mercy seat was the golden cover of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament Tabernacle. It was the most sacred object in Israel’s worship. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat. There, God’s presence would meet with humanity and forgive their sins (Leviticus 16).
Paul’s point, then, is that Jesus himself is the new and ultimate mercy seat. He is the place where God’s holy presence and boundless mercy meet our sin and cleanse it away once and for all. The old mercy seat was hidden behind a thick curtain in the temple. Only the high priest could approach it, and only once a year. But the new mercy seat, Jesus, has been publicly displayed for all the world to see. Anyone can come to him for cleansing.
Finally, Chandler addresses the biblical concept of God’s wrath. She doesn’t deny that God’s wrath is real. She firmly believes in God’s holy opposition to all evil and sin. But she argues that God’s wrath isn’t like an impersonal force of nature that must be satisfied. It’s not like a volcano that has to erupt somewhere. Rather, God’s wrath is his personal, judicial response against sin that remains unrepented. It’s the settled opposition of a holy God to evil.
In this view, the cross isn’t the event where God’s wrath gets poured out and absorbed. Instead, the cross is the ultimate rescue operation. It’s the means by which we are saved from the sin that would otherwise subject us to God’s future wrath and judgment. The cross doesn’t satisfy God’s wrath; it rescues us from the danger of facing that wrath.
Section 4: Christ’s Victory Over the Powers of Darkness
Having shown the weaknesses of the PSA model, Chandler turns to the model she believes is more biblical and theologically sound. This is often called the Ransom theory or the Christus Victor model. Christus Victor is Latin for “Christ the Victor.” Following the work of Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén, Chandler argues that this was the main way Christians understood the atonement for the first thousand years of church history. Early church fathers like Irenaeus and Augustine held this view.
This view frames the story of salvation not as a legal transaction in a divine courtroom but as a cosmic drama. It’s like a great war between the Kingdom of God and the powers of darkness. Instead of focusing on legal categories like guilt and punishment, it uses military categories like bondage, liberation, and victory.
The story begins with humanity in bondage. When Adam and Eve sinned, they didn’t just break a rule like a child disobeying a parent. They did something much worse. They switched sides in a cosmic war. They surrendered their allegiance from God to his enemies. This plunged the entire human race into a state of captivity. We became slaves to a triumvirate of hostile spiritual powers.
These three powers work together to keep humanity in bondage. First, there’s Sin with a capital S, understood not just as wrong actions but as an enslaving force. Second, there’s Death, which entered the world as the consequence of sin. And third, there’s the Devil, whom Jesus calls “the prince of this world.” We were all born as captives in enemy territory. We couldn’t free ourselves any more than prisoners of war can unlock their own chains.
Into this situation comes Christ the Liberator. Jesus’s incarnation wasn’t just God becoming human to teach us or to be punished in our place. It was a divine invasion, like D-Day in World War II. God was launching a rescue operation behind enemy lines. When we read the Gospels with this perspective, we see that Jesus’s entire ministry was a cosmic battle. His temptation in the wilderness wasn’t just a personal spiritual test. It was a direct confrontation with the enemy commander. Satan tried to get Jesus to switch sides or compromise his mission, but Jesus stood firm.
Every time Jesus cast out demons, he wasn’t just healing individuals. He was conducting military operations, driving enemy forces from their occupied territory. When people were possessed by demons, it was like enemy soldiers occupying a house. Jesus was liberating occupied territory, pushing back the kingdom of darkness. He announced his mission clearly when he said he came “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners” (Luke 4:18). This wasn’t metaphorical. He was really setting captives free.
The crucifixion is the climax of this cosmic war. This is the decisive battle, like Gettysburg in the Civil War or Stalingrad in World War II. But it’s not what it seems on the surface. To human eyes, it looks like Jesus is losing. He’s arrested, beaten, mocked, and killed. The powers of darkness seem to be winning. They unleash their full, concentrated fury on the Son of God. They use all their weapons against him. They use betrayal (through Judas), injustice (through the illegal trial), physical pain (through the beatings and crucifixion), mockery (through the soldiers and crowd), and finally death itself.
But here’s where the great reversal happens. Because Jesus endures all of this without sinning, he exhausts the enemy’s power. It’s like a fighter who lets his opponent punch himself out, absorbing every blow until the opponent has nothing left. By submitting to death willingly and without sin, Jesus enters the heart of the enemy’s stronghold. Death is the enemy’s greatest weapon, their maximum security prison. But death has no rightful claim on a sinless person. When death tries to hold Jesus, it’s like trying to hold water in a broken container. It can’t be done.
Jesus shatters death’s gates from the inside out. He defeats the powers not by using superior force but by perfect, loving obedience. He turns their own weapon against them. As Paul writes, God “disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). What looked like Jesus’s defeat was actually his victory. What looked like the enemy’s triumph was actually their downfall.
In this model, the resurrection isn’t just a happy ending tacked on to the story. It’s not just proof that Jesus was divine. The resurrection is the public announcement of victory. It’s God’s V-Day, his victory day, declaring to the entire cosmos that the battle has been won. The enemy has been defeated, and the power of death is broken forever. Death couldn’t hold the sinless one, proving that its reign of terror was over. The resurrection is like the flag being raised after a victorious battle, announcing to everyone that the war has turned.
Section 5: Bringing Victory and Substitution Together
Now we arrive at the heart of Dr. Chandler’s unique contribution to atonement theology. She argues that the precious biblical concept of substitution, the truth that Christ acted in our place, doesn’t belong only to the Penal Substitution model. In fact, she believes it makes more sense within the Christus Victor framework. This combination is what she calls the Victorious Substitution theory. It brings together the best insights of both models while avoiding their problems.
How does substitution work in this model of cosmic liberation? Let’s explore this carefully because it’s the key to understanding Chandler’s approach.
First, Christ acts as our substitute by becoming the ransom price. Jesus himself said he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The Greek word here is “lytron,” which literally means a ransom payment. In the ancient world, everyone understood what a ransom was. When someone was captured in war or by pirates, their family would pay a ransom to get them back. Christ’s life, offered in death, is the price that purchases our freedom from bondage. He pays the price so we can go free.
This raises an important question that theologians have debated for centuries. If Christ’s death is a ransom payment, to whom is the ransom paid? In the PSA model, the payment goes to God to satisfy his justice. But Chandler, following the classic view, argues that the ransom is directed toward the one who holds humanity captive. That would be Satan, or more broadly, the objective powers of Sin and Death.
Now, this doesn’t mean Satan is God’s equal or that he has legitimate rights over humanity. Satan isn’t like a legitimate creditor who’s owed a debt. He’s more like a kidnapper holding hostages. But here’s the important point: God, in his perfect justice, chooses to operate in a lawful way. He could have used raw power to simply crush Satan and free humanity. But that wouldn’t address the real problem. Humanity fell into bondage through an act of free will when Adam and Eve chose to rebel. So God chooses to liberate them through a just transaction, a payment, rather than by overwhelming force. He honors the cause-and-effect reality of the fallen world he created.
This is where the “penal” aspect of the atonement finds its proper place, but without any notion of God punishing his Son. Chandler explains that Christ, as our substitute, bears the full penal consequences of our sin. What does this mean? In this fallen world, which exists under God’s righteous judgment, sin has real, unavoidable consequences or penalties. These include suffering, alienation from God and others, and ultimately death itself.
Christ, as our substitute, fully entered into our condemned human reality. He stepped into our place and took upon himself the full weight of those consequences. He experienced the pain that our sin brings into the world. He felt the sorrow of broken relationships. He experienced the separation from the Father when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He died the death that was the just wage of our sin (Romans 6:23).
This suffering is truly penal because it’s the penalty for sin. But here’s the crucial difference from PSA: the agent inflicting this suffering isn’t the Father’s direct, wrathful hand. Instead, it’s the broken system of sin and death itself. Christ submits to the consequences of the judgment that rests upon the fallen world. The Father isn’t punishing the Son. The Son is voluntarily entering into our punished condition to rescue us from it.
Think of it like this: imagine a building has collapsed with people trapped inside. A rescuer goes in to save them. In the process, the rescuer gets hurt by the same falling debris and dangerous conditions that trapped the victims. The rescuer bears the same consequences of the disaster that the victims face. But the rescuer isn’t being punished by anyone. They’re voluntarily entering a dangerous situation to save others. That’s what Christ does for us on a cosmic scale.
The result of this victorious substitution is what Chandler calls the Great Exchange. Christ, our champion and substitute, takes on our condition so that we might receive his. This exchange works in multiple dimensions. Christ takes our bondage, and in exchange, we receive his freedom. He becomes a slave to death so we can become free children of God. Christ takes our sin-sickness upon himself. The Bible says “by his wounds we are healed.” He absorbs the disease so we can receive the cure.
Christ endures our death, the ultimate consequence of sin. In return, we receive his eternal life. Death cannot hold him because he is sinless, and through him, death loses its power over us too. Christ enters the darkness of the enemy’s prison camp. As our liberator, he brings us out into the glorious light of the Kingdom of God. He goes into exile so we can come home.
This Great Exchange is beautifully captured in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ takes on our sinful condition (not becoming sinful himself, but bearing sin’s consequences) so that we can take on his righteous condition. It’s the ultimate substitution, the ultimate exchange, and it happens through victory, not through the Father punishing the Son.
Part II: Comparing the Two Frameworks
Now that we understand Vee Chandler’s Victorious Substitution model, we need to compare it fairly with the Penal Substitutionary Atonement model. To do this properly, we first need to understand PSA in its strongest form. We’ll look at how two of its best defenders, Dr. David L. Allen and Dr. William Lane Craig, present this view. By understanding their best arguments, we can see exactly where the two models agree and where they differ.
Section 6: Understanding the Penal Substitution Position
Dr. David L. Allen and Dr. William Lane Craig are two respected scholars who defend PSA from different angles. Allen approaches it primarily from biblical theology, looking at what Scripture says. Craig approaches it more from philosophy and legal reasoning, showing how it makes logical sense. Together, they provide a comprehensive defense of PSA.
Dr. David Allen’s defense in his book “The Atonement” is built on several key biblical themes. First, he emphasizes that sacrifice is the central metaphor for understanding the atonement in Scripture. He points out that the entire Old Testament sacrificial system, with its emphasis on blood sacrifice for atonement, points forward to Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. In the Old Testament, animals were sacrificed to deal with sin. These sacrifices were pictures pointing to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ.
Allen also stresses the reality of God’s wrath as more than just a metaphor. He argues that God’s wrath is his holy, personal, and necessary reaction against evil. It’s not just that sin has bad consequences. God himself is actively opposed to sin and must respond to it. In Allen’s view, propitiation (turning away God’s wrath) is essential to the atonement. He believes God’s love and wrath are compatible aspects of his nature, and both are displayed at the cross. God loves sinners but hates sin, and both realities meet at Calvary.
For Allen, substitution is the key to understanding how the atonement works. He points to passages like Isaiah 53, where the prophet says the Servant suffers “for our transgressions” and “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This language clearly indicates that someone is suffering in place of others. The innocent one takes the place of the guilty.
Bringing these elements together, Allen concludes that Penal Substitution best explains what the Bible teaches. It directly addresses what he sees as the root problem between God and humanity. That problem is our guilt, which triggers God’s righteous wrath. Christ’s death is penal because he bears the punishment we deserve. It’s substitutionary because he does so in our place. This solves the problem of guilt and allows God to forgive us while maintaining his justice.
Dr. William Lane Craig, in his book “Atonement and the Death of Christ,” defends PSA using legal and philosophical arguments. He frames the atonement primarily as a legal transaction in a divine courtroom. In this model, God is the supreme Judge of the universe. His primary responsibility is to uphold justice in his creation. A good judge cannot ignore lawbreaking. He must respond to it appropriately.
Craig argues that divine justice is fundamentally retributive. This means that justice, by its very nature, requires that sin be punished. Think about human courts. If a judge just let every criminal go free without any punishment, we wouldn’t call that judge merciful. We’d call him unjust. Craig argues the same principle applies to God. A just judge cannot simply overlook wrongdoing. Therefore, for God to forgive sinners while remaining just, the demands of his justice must first be satisfied through the punishment of sin.
The key mechanism that makes PSA work, according to Craig, is the doctrine of imputation. Imputation is a legal term that means to credit something to someone’s account. Craig argues that on the cross, our sin and our legal guilt were legally credited to Christ’s account. It’s like a transfer of debt from one account to another. At the same time, Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to believers’ accounts.
Because Christ was made legally guilty in the eyes of the divine court (though he remained personally innocent), it was therefore perfectly just for God to inflict on him the punishment that sin deserved. In Craig’s view, God didn’t punish an innocent person. He punished the one who had legally taken on the status of the guilty. It’s like when someone co-signs a loan. They become legally responsible for a debt that isn’t originally theirs.
Craig spends considerable effort defending the coherence and morality of this divine transaction. He draws on analogies from legal theory, such as vicarious liability, where one person can bear legal consequences for another. For example, parents can sometimes be held liable for their children’s actions, or employers for their employees’ actions. He argues that since God is the ultimate lawgiver, he has the authority to establish the terms of justice, including allowing for a substitute to bear punishment.
Section 7: Finding the Points of Disagreement
When we place Victorious Substitution alongside the Penal Substitution models of Allen and Craig, we can see that the differences are profound. The core distinction lies in the basic story or narrative used to understand the cross. For Chandler, the atonement is a cosmic drama of liberation, like a great rescue mission. For Allen and Craig, it’s a divine courtroom drama of legal satisfaction, like a trial where justice must be served. This fundamental difference in the story being told affects how every piece of biblical data is interpreted.
Let’s compare the models on several key points to see exactly where they differ.
First, the models identify different primary problems that need to be solved. In Victorious Substitution, the main problem is human bondage. We’re held captive by hostile powers and need to be set free. It’s like we’re prisoners of war who need liberation. In Penal Substitution, the main problem is divine wrath. God’s holy nature has been violated by our sin, and his righteous anger must be dealt with. It’s like we’re guilty defendants who need someone to pay our fine.
Second, the models point the atoning act in different directions. In Victorious Substitution, the payment of the cross (the ransom) is directed outward and downward, toward the hostile powers that hold humanity captive. Christ pays the price to secure our release from these enemies. In Penal Substitution, the payment of the cross (the punishment) is directed upward, toward God the Father. Christ absorbs the punishment to satisfy the demands of divine justice.
Third, the models understand God’s wrath differently at the cross. In Victorious Substitution, the cross is the ultimate rescue operation. It saves us from facing God’s future judgment against unrepentant sin. The cross doesn’t satisfy wrath; it rescues us from the danger of facing it. In Penal Substitution, the cross is the very place where God’s present wrath against sin is poured out and fully absorbed by Christ. The wrath is satisfied at the cross itself.
Fourth, the models define “penalty” differently. In Victorious Substitution, Christ bears the “penal consequences” of sin. He enters our fallen world, which exists under a state of divine judgment, and suffers the effects of that judgment. These effects include pain, death, and separation. But these come from the broken world system, not from the Father’s direct action. In Penal Substitution, Christ bears the direct, active punishment for sin, which is personally and judicially inflicted by God the Father. The Father is the active agent of the Son’s suffering.
Fifth, the models understand the nature of God’s justice differently. In Victorious Substitution, God’s justice is revealed in the just means he uses to accomplish his loving purpose of rescue. He defeats evil through a lawful transaction (paying a ransom) rather than by sheer force. This honors the created order and the reality of human free will. In Penal Substitution, God’s justice is an intrinsic attribute that must be satisfied by punishment before his mercy and love can be extended to sinners. Justice demands payment, and only after payment can mercy flow.
These differences reveal distinct theological starting points. Allen and Craig begin with God’s holiness and retributive justice. Sin violates these divine attributes, creating a legal problem. God’s love then provides the solution in Christ. But Chandler’s model begins with God’s love, which sees humanity in desperate bondage and acts to rescue them. This loving rescue is then carried out in a way that’s consistent with God’s justice. This isn’t just a minor difference in emphasis. It changes the entire character of the atonement story from one of satisfying God to one of rescuing humanity.
These different frameworks also have different effects on how we live out our faith. Chandler’s model offers a powerful story of triumphant liberation from oppression. This can be deeply encouraging to people who feel trapped by sin, addiction, or despair. It presents a gospel of victory and freedom. It says, “You were a prisoner, but Christ has set you free!” Allen and Craig’s models offer a story of profound legal assurance. For those who are deeply aware of their guilt before a holy God, this model provides immense comfort. It says, “Your debt has been paid in full. You have nothing left to fear from God’s justice.”
Both models can bring comfort and assurance, but they speak to different aspects of the human condition. One addresses our sense of bondage and need for liberation. The other addresses our sense of guilt and need for legal forgiveness. Perhaps this is why different Christians at different times have found different models more helpful. We all need to hear that we’re both freed and forgiven.
Section 8: Comparing How Each Model Reads Scripture
The ultimate test of any theological model is whether it faithfully represents what the Bible teaches. The differences between Victorious Substitution and Penal Substitution aren’t just philosophical. They lead to different interpretations of the same biblical texts. Let’s look at how each framework understands key passages about the atonement. This will help us move from abstract theology to concrete biblical interpretation.
When we look at Isaiah 53, one of the most important Old Testament passages about the atonement, we see different interpretations. Chandler sees Christ as the Suffering Servant who bears the consequences of our sin as part of his victorious battle. When Isaiah says “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity,” she understands this as Christ taking on the burden of our fallen state, not the Father actively punishing him. Allen and Craig see this passage as clearly teaching penal substitution. For them, the Servant bears both the guilt and the punishment for the people’s sins. The LORD (the Father) inflicts this suffering as a judicial punishment.
The interpretation of Mark 10:45 also differs. When Jesus says he came to give his life as a ransom for many, Chandler takes this literally. Christ’s life is an actual ransom payment to liberate humanity from bondage to Satan, sin, and death. Allen sees this verse as emphasizing the substitutionary nature of Christ’s sacrifice, with the ransom being the price our sin incurred. Craig interprets the ransom as a metaphor for the payment made to God to discharge our debt of punishment to divine justice.
Romans 3:21-26 is perhaps the most debated passage. The interpretation hinges on the word hilasterion. Chandler argues it means “mercy seat,” making Christ the place where God’s mercy cleanses sin through expiation. She sees God demonstrating his saving justice by providing this means of cleansing, not by satisfying his own wrath. Allen and Craig interpret hilasterion as referring to propitiation. They see Christ’s death as averting God’s wrath. For them, this passage shows how God can be both just and the justifier by punishing sin in a substitute.
The famous verse 2 Corinthians 5:21 says God made Christ “to be sin” for us. Chandler understands this sacrificially. Christ was made a “sin offering,” using Old Testament sacrificial language. This avoids the theological problem of saying the sinless one literally became sin or legally guilty. Allen and Craig see this as teaching imputation. Our sin was credited to Christ’s account, and he was treated as a sinner. His righteousness is then credited to our account. They see this as a clear statement of the great exchange through substitution.
When Paul writes in Galatians 3:13 that Christ became a curse for us, Chandler sees Christ entering into our cursed condition under the law and bearing its ultimate consequence, death. By doing so, he breaks the law’s power over us. Allen sees this as Christ bearing the curse of the law on the cross for humanity, a clear statement of redemption through substitution. Craig finds this shocking because it says Christ became accursed of God on our behalf, implying the imputation of our sin and consequent condemnation.
First Peter 2:24 says Christ “bore our sins” in his body on the cross. Chandler interprets this as Christ carrying our sins away, breaking their power so we can “die to sins” and live for righteousness. The healing mentioned is spiritual conversion, not the result of absorbed punishment. Allen sees this as a clear statement of substitution, with the focus on the transformative outcome. Craig sees it as affirming Christ’s substitutionary punishment, echoing Isaiah 53.
When 1 Peter 3:18 says Christ suffered once for sins, “the righteous for the unrighteous,” Chandler sees this as a clear statement of vicarious, substitutionary suffering to bring us to God (reconciliation), not to satisfy God’s justice. Allen highlights that this reconciliation is achieved through the substitution of the just for the unjust. Craig sees it as a clear statement of substitutionary suffering, reflecting the Servant of Isaiah 53.
The interpretation of 1 John 2:2 again depends on understanding hilasmos. Chandler notes that the context emphasizes God’s love, not wrath. She sees this as expiation that cleanses sin, not propitiation that appeases God. Allen sees this as one of the clearest verses affirming universal atonement, with Christ as the propitiation for the whole world’s sins. Craig sees Christ as the atoning sacrifice, connecting to the Old Testament sacrificial system and implying both expiation and propitiation.
Finally, Hebrews 2:17 speaks of Christ making atonement for sins. Chandler points out that the verb is in present tense, referring to Christ’s ongoing high priestly ministry, not just the past event of the cross. The context is about defeating the devil, not appeasing wrath. Allen sees this as underscoring why the incarnation was necessary—so Christ could serve as High Priest and make propitiation for sins. Craig links this to the sacrificial system that was both expiatory and propitiatory.
These different interpretations show us something important. The same biblical texts can be read through different interpretive lenses. The lens we use affects what we see. Those who wear PSA glasses see legal categories, divine wrath, and judicial punishment throughout Scripture. Those who wear Victorious Substitution glasses see liberation, cleansing, and rescue from bondage. Perhaps the truth is that Scripture is rich enough to support multiple perspectives, and we need different models to capture the full glory of what Christ accomplished.
Conclusion: Understanding Christ’s Beautiful Victory
Our journey through these deep theological waters has shown us two different portraits of the cross. Both are painted by sincere believers who love God’s word and want to understand it correctly. Both portraits contain important truths that we need to hear.
The Penal Substitution model, defended skillfully by David L. Allen and William Lane Craig, presents a powerful picture of God’s unwavering justice. It takes sin with ultimate seriousness. Sin isn’t just a mistake or a problem to be fixed. It’s a violation of God’s holy law that demands justice. This model provides deep assurance to troubled consciences. If you’ve ever laid awake at night, haunted by guilt over things you’ve done, PSA offers profound comfort. It says your legal debt has been fully paid by a divine substitute who absorbed God’s righteous wrath in your place. The judge’s gavel has fallen, the sentence has been served, and you are free to go.
The Victorious Substitution model, articulated by Vee Chandler, offers a different but equally powerful portrait. It’s a picture of cosmic warfare and divine rescue, motivated by infinite love. In this view, Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice is the ransom price that liberates humanity from slavery. It’s the decisive blow that defeats the powers of sin, death, and the devil. This model speaks powerfully to those who feel trapped and helpless. If you’ve ever felt like sin has you in chains, like you’re fighting a losing battle against forces bigger than yourself, this model declares that Christ has won the victory and your freedom has been purchased.
From the perspective of this report, the Victorious Substitution model holds several advantages. It affirms all the essential truths that conservative Christians hold dear. It maintains the absolute seriousness of sin—sin is so serious that it enslaves us to cosmic powers and leads to death. It upholds the absolute necessity of the cross—without Christ’s death, we would remain in bondage forever. It affirms the substitutionary nature of Christ’s sacrifice—he truly died in our place, as our representative and substitute. It proclaims the forgiveness of sins purchased by his precious blood—the ransom has been paid and we are free. And it maintains the reality of God’s perfect justice—God defeats evil through just means, not through arbitrary force.
The Victorious Substitution model accomplishes all of this while avoiding some significant problems that arise from the idea that the Father punished the Son. It doesn’t create a conflict within the Trinity. It doesn’t make God the author of his Son’s suffering. It doesn’t suggest that God needs to be reconciled to us rather than us to him. And it doesn’t imply that God violates his own standards of justice by punishing the innocent.
Instead, this model presents a beautiful picture of the Trinity working in perfect harmony. The Father, in his love, sends the Son on a rescue mission. The Son, in his love, willingly enters our fallen reality to bear the consequences of our sin and lead us to freedom. The Spirit, in his love, applies this victory to our hearts and lives. There’s no conflict between the Father’s justice and the Son’s love because they’re united in the same purpose. The Father doesn’t punish the Son. Rather, the Father grieves as his beloved Son voluntarily enters into our punished condition to rescue us from it.
This is a gospel not of divine anger appeased but of divine love triumphant. It’s a story of victory, not just forgiveness. It’s about liberation, not just legal pardon. It’s about a Great Exchange that brings us from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from death to life. We don’t just get our sins forgiven and our debt paid. We get transferred from one kingdom to another. We were prisoners of war in the kingdom of darkness, and now we’re free citizens in the kingdom of light.
But ultimately, regardless of which theoretical model we find most convincing, our response must be the same: awe, gratitude, and worship. The cross will always contain mystery. We’re finite creatures trying to understand an infinite God’s work. We’re like children trying to understand how the ocean works by playing in the waves at the beach. We can experience it, we can describe what we see, but we can’t fully comprehend its depths.
What isn’t a mystery is the love that motivated the cross. Whether we understand the cross through the lens of Penal Substitution or Victorious Substitution or some other model, we can all agree on this fundamental truth: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The cross is the ultimate demonstration of divine love. God didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up. He didn’t demand that we make ourselves worthy. While we were his enemies, while we were rebels, while we were helpless and hopeless, Christ died for us.
This is the truth that unites all true believers across all denominational lines and theological debates. Christ died for our sins. He rose again for our justification. Through him, we have forgiveness, freedom, and eternal life. This is the gospel that has transformed billions of lives throughout history. This is the message that brings hope to the hopeless, peace to the troubled, and joy to the sorrowful.
May we never lose our wonder at the cross. May we never become so familiar with it that we forget its power. May we never get so caught up in theological debates that we miss the simple, beautiful truth that God loves us and gave himself for us. Whether we see the cross as the place where divine justice was satisfied or where divine victory was won, may we see it ultimately as the place where divine love was displayed in all its glory.
The Lamb who was slain has conquered. He has redeemed us to God by his blood. To him belongs all glory, honor, and praise, forever and ever. This is the song that believers from every model of the atonement will sing together in eternity. We may disagree on exactly how the cross works, but we all agree on what it accomplished: our salvation, our freedom, our eternal life with God.
Let us hold fast to what we know for certain while holding humbly what remains mysterious. Let us be united in our love for the Savior who died for us, even as we continue to explore the depths of what his death means. And let us live lives worthy of the sacrifice he made, whether we understand it as payment, ransom, victory, or all of the above. The cross changes everything. May it continue to change us, day by day, until we see him face to face and understand fully what now we only see in part.
In the end, perhaps the best theology of the cross is not found in our theories but in our thanksgiving. Perhaps the truest understanding comes not from perfect doctrine but from sincere devotion. Perhaps we comprehend the cross best when we’re on our knees in worship, overwhelmed by gratitude for a love we can’t fully explain but can’t help but embrace. This is the victory of the cross: it conquers not just sin and death but also our hearts, drawing us into the eternal embrace of the God who loved us enough to die for us and powerful enough to rise again.
Amen, and amen.
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