Chapter 32
Exegetical Objections to Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Introduction: Testing the Case at the Level of Scripture

Throughout this book, we have built a positive case for penal substitutionary atonement from the Old Testament sacrificial system, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, the Gospel accounts of Jesus' self-understanding of His death, and the great Pauline and apostolic texts that interpret the cross. We have examined Romans 3:21–26, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24, Hebrews 9–10, and a host of other passages. We have also traced how the Church Fathers, the medieval theologians, and the Reformers all drew on this biblical material to articulate what Christ accomplished on the cross. And we have offered philosophical arguments for the coherence and moral integrity of penal substitution.

Now it is time to let the critics have their say.

Every strong theological position must be willing to face its best objections head-on. If a doctrine cannot survive careful scrutiny, it does not deserve our allegiance — no matter how beloved or traditional it may be. Penal substitutionary atonement has been challenged from multiple directions in recent decades, and we owe it to the truth to take those challenges seriously.

In this chapter, we turn to the exegetical objections — the arguments that say penal substitutionary atonement simply does not have the biblical support its defenders claim. These are not objections about whether PSA is morally offensive or philosophically incoherent. Those come in the next chapter. These are objections about what the Bible actually says when we read it carefully. Critics contend that PSA advocates have misread the Old Testament sacrificial system, mistranslated key Greek words, imported forensic categories into texts that are really about something else, and forced a theological grid onto passages that do not support it.

I want to be upfront: I take these objections seriously. If penal substitutionary atonement cannot withstand rigorous exegetical scrutiny, then we have no business defending it — no matter how long its theological pedigree. As evangelical Christians committed to the authority of Scripture, we must follow the text wherever it leads. Our theology must be built on what the Bible actually teaches, not on what we would like it to teach.

But I am also confident that when we examine these objections carefully, they do not hold up. The exegetical case for penal substitution is stronger than critics typically acknowledge. In what follows, I will present five major exegetical objections as fairly and forcefully as I can, and then show why each one falls short. Along the way, we will engage extensively with Vee Chandler's Victorious Substitution (especially Chapters 2–3), Joel Green and Mark Baker's Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, and the broader scholarly conversation.

Objection 1: The Old Testament Sacrifices Were Not Penal

Stating the Objection Fairly

The first objection strikes at the very foundation of the PSA case. Critics argue that when we look at the Levitical sacrificial system carefully, we discover that the sacrifices were fundamentally about purification and cleansing — not about punishment. The Old Testament sacrifices were rituals of expiation (removing the stain of sin and its defilement) rather than propitiation (turning away God's wrath by satisfying His justice through a penal substitute). According to this view, PSA defenders have read a later, post-Reformation theological framework back into the ancient Israelite cult and found what simply is not there.

Several specific claims support this objection. First, critics point out that the laying on of hands in the sacrificial ritual (Leviticus 1:4; 3:2; 4:4) was a gesture of identification between the worshiper and the animal, not a mechanism for transferring sin and guilt from the person to the animal. The worshiper was saying, "This animal represents me; it stands in my place before God." But that is not the same as saying, "My sins are being placed on this animal so that it can bear the punishment I deserve." The idea of sin-transfer, critics argue, is being imported from later theology.¹

Second, they note that the blood rituals in Leviticus are primarily about cleansing sacred space — the tabernacle, the altar, the holy place — from the contamination caused by Israel's sin. Jacob Milgrom, one of the most respected scholars of Leviticus in the twentieth century, argued that the purpose of sacrificial blood was to purge the sanctuary of ritual impurity, not to satisfy divine justice or absorb divine punishment. On this reading, the sacrificial system is essentially about housekeeping in sacred space, not about legal penalty.²

Third, critics observe that the animals used in sacrifice were not being "punished" for anything. They were not guilty. They had committed no crime. So how can their death be called "penal"? The animal's death was necessary to release the blood — which represents life (Leviticus 17:11) — but the death itself was not a judicial penalty being imposed on the animal. Vee Chandler articulates this point clearly, arguing that the sacrificial ritual should be understood as the surrender of the offerer's life to God, symbolized through the animal. The worshiper identifies with the animal through the laying on of hands, the animal is slain as a symbol of the offerer's total self-giving, and the priest brings the blood (representing the surrendered life) into God's presence for acceptance. In Chandler's words, "Life is offered, completely surrendered, accepted by God, transformed, and shared."³ This is a picture of consecration and restoration — not of punishment.

Chandler presses the point further by distinguishing between the regular sin offering and the scapegoat ritual. PSA defenders, she argues, assume that the laying on of one hand on the sin offering transfers sin in the same way that the laying on of both hands on the scapegoat transfers sin. But there are important differences. The scapegoat is not killed and its blood is not shed — it is driven into the wilderness. The sin offering is pure and offered to God, while the scapegoat becomes impure. Anyone who touches the scapegoat must purify themselves afterward (Leviticus 16:26). So the two rituals work differently, and it is a mistake to read the explicit sin-transfer of the scapegoat back into the regular sin offering.⁴

Responding to the Objection

This objection has real force, and we should not dismiss it too quickly. The critics are right that we must be careful not to flatten the rich variety of the Levitical system into a single theological category. The sacrifices served multiple purposes — purification, consecration, thanksgiving, communion with God — and we impoverish the text if we reduce everything to penal substitution. I have argued throughout this book that the atonement is multi-faceted, and that applies to its Old Testament foundations as well.

But having said that, I believe the objection overreaches in several important ways.

First, Leviticus 17:11 grounds atonement in the giving of life through blood, which implies substitutionary death. This verse is foundational:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." (Leviticus 17:11, ESV)

Notice the logic here. God says He has given the blood "for you" — that little phrase is loaded with substitutionary meaning. The blood makes atonement "by the life" — that is, by the life of the animal given in the place of the worshiper. The animal's life is given so that the worshiper's life might be spared. This is not merely a purification ritual; it is an exchange of life. The animal dies so that the person does not. As David Allen observes, Leviticus 17:11 establishes the principle that atonement requires the giving of life through blood, and this giving is explicitly described as being "for you" — on your behalf, in your place.⁵ The substitutionary dimension is woven into the fabric of the sacrificial system itself.

Second, the scapegoat ritual in Leviticus 16 explicitly involves the transfer of sins. Critics like Chandler are right that the scapegoat and the sin offering are distinct rituals with different mechanics. But this actually strengthens the case for a penal element rather than weakening it. The Day of Atonement ritual includes both a sin offering (the first goat, whose blood purifies the sanctuary) and a scapegoat (the second goat, onto which the high priest confesses all the sins of Israel). The two goats together present a complete picture of atonement: purification of sacred space through the blood and the removal of sin through transfer to a substitute. As we argued in Chapter 5, the two goats are two sides of the same coin. The fact that sin-transfer is explicit in the scapegoat ritual — and even Chandler does not deny this — means that the concept of bearing another's sin is not foreign to the Levitical system. It is built right into its most important annual ceremony.⁶

The text of Leviticus 16:21–22 is striking:

"And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness." (Leviticus 16:21–22, ESV)

The language could hardly be clearer. Aaron confesses the people's sins "over" the goat, "puts them on" its head, and the goat "bears" those iniquities. The Hebrew verb here is nasa (נָשָׂא), meaning "to bear" or "to carry." This is the same verb used in Isaiah 53:12, where the Servant "bore the sin of many." The conceptual link between the scapegoat bearing Israel's sins and the Suffering Servant bearing the sins of many is not a coincidence — it is a deliberate typological connection that the later prophetic tradition develops.⁷

Third, the guilt offering (asham, אָשָׁם) carries an explicitly penal dimension. The guilt offering (sometimes called the "trespass offering") is described in Leviticus 5:14–6:7 and involves reparation for specific offenses — particularly offenses against "the holy things of the LORD" or against a neighbor's property. The asham requires not just a sacrifice but also restitution plus a 20 percent penalty (Leviticus 5:16; 6:5). This is not merely purification language. This is reparation — making good on a debt incurred through wrongdoing, with an additional penalty attached. The penal dimension is right there in the text.

And here is why this matters enormously for the atonement: Isaiah 53:10 says that the Suffering Servant's life is made an asham — a guilt offering. The prophet deliberately uses the term that carries the strongest connotations of reparation for wrong, of penalty, and of making good on an offense against God. As we demonstrated in detail in Chapter 6, the use of asham in Isaiah 53 strongly supports a penal dimension to the Servant's substitutionary suffering.⁸

Fourth, while Milgrom's purgation model is valuable, it does not eliminate the penal dimension. Milgrom is right that the blood rituals purify the sanctuary. But purification and penalty are not mutually exclusive categories. Why does the sanctuary need purifying in the first place? Because Israel's sin has contaminated it. And why does blood — the life of an animal given in death — function as the cleansing agent? Because the gravity of sin is such that it requires life itself to address. The purgation model explains how the blood functions ritually, but it does not answer the deeper why: why life must be given for atonement to occur. Leviticus 17:11 answers that question, and its answer involves substitution.⁹

William Lane Craig puts it well: the purificatory and propitiatory dimensions of the Levitical sacrifices are not competing explanations but complementary aspects of a single reality. The blood cleanses because it atones, and it atones because it represents a life given in the place of the worshiper. To insist that the sacrifices are "only" about purification and never about penalty is to create a false dichotomy that the text itself does not support.¹⁰

I should add one more observation. Critics sometimes talk as though the idea that animal sacrifices involved substitution is a modern invention. But this is simply not the case. The Hebrew word kipper (כָּפַר), which is the fundamental verb for "to atone" or "to make atonement," carries within its range of meaning the ideas of covering, ransoming, and propitiating. As we surveyed in Chapter 2, the semantic field of kipper includes both the expiation of sin and the propitiation of God's just response to sin. These two dimensions exist together in the word itself — not as rivals but as partners. Reducing kipper to expiation alone requires ignoring a significant portion of the evidence.¹¹

There is one final point worth making. Even if we grant — for the sake of argument — that some of the Levitical sacrifices were primarily purificatory rather than penal, this does not mean that the Old Testament as a whole lacks a penal framework for understanding sin and atonement. The broader narrative of the Pentateuch is saturated with the language of judgment, penalty, curse, and death as the consequences of sin. God warns Adam that in the day he eats of the forbidden fruit, "you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). The curses of Deuteronomy 27–28 spell out in terrifying detail the penalties for covenant disobedience. The exile itself — the most devastating event in Israel's national story — is consistently described by the prophets as God's judgment on sin (Isaiah 42:24–25; Jeremiah 25:8–11; Ezekiel 39:23). This broader framework of sin and penalty provides the context within which the sacrificial system operates. The sacrifices do not exist in a vacuum. They exist within a world where sin brings real consequences — consequences that require a real remedy. The sacrificial system is that remedy, and its logic includes both purification and the bearing of penalty.

John Stott captures this well when he observes that the sacrificial system presupposes the seriousness of sin as an offense against a holy God — an offense that demands not merely cleansing but the giving of life. The death of the animal is not incidental to the sacrifice; it is central. Life must be surrendered because sin is that serious. And the life is surrendered "for you" — on behalf of the worshiper, in the worshiper's place. The purificatory and the substitutionary dimensions of sacrifice are not two competing models but two aspects of a single act of atonement.⁴⁸

Objection 2: Hilastērion Means "Expiation," Not "Propitiation"

Stating the Objection Fairly

The second major exegetical objection concerns one of the most important Greek words in the New Testament's atonement vocabulary: hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον). In Romans 3:25, Paul writes that God put forward Christ Jesus "as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith" (ESV). The key word translated "propitiation" is hilastērion. The debate over this word has enormous theological consequences.

The objection goes back to the highly influential work of C. H. Dodd, a prominent British New Testament scholar. In a landmark essay and in his commentary on Romans, Dodd argued that hilastērion and the broader hilask- word group do not mean "propitiation" (the turning away of God's wrath through satisfaction) but rather "expiation" (the cleansing or removal of sin). Dodd contended that while pagan Greek religion used these words to describe appeasing angry deities, the Bible transformed the concept. In the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament), he argued, the hilask- words refer to God's gracious act of removing sin — not to humans pacifying an angry God. Since the initiative in the biblical text always comes from God, propitiation is the wrong category. God does not need to be appeased; He freely acts to expiate sin.¹²

Dodd's argument was enormously influential. He served as the director of the translation panels for the New English Bible (1970), which rendered hilastērion in Romans 3:25 as "the means of expiating sin" rather than "propitiation." The Revised Standard Version (1946) had already made a similar move, translating "expiation" in all three key passages (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). This shift in translation both reflected and reinforced the broader scholarly turn away from propitiation.¹³

Chandler follows Dodd's trajectory, arguing that expiation is the accurate scriptural view and that accepting expiation instead of propitiation does not require abandoning the reality of God's wrath. In her summary of exegetical objections, she writes that advocates of penal substitution "equate the idea of paying a debt to divine justice with a sacrificial ritual 'propitiating' God," resulting in a portrayal of atonement as a transaction or legal settlement between the Father and the Son.¹⁴

Responding to the Objection

Dodd was a brilliant scholar, and his argument deserves careful engagement. But I believe the evidence ultimately tells against him. Here is why.

First, Leon Morris demonstrated that the hilask- word group in the Septuagint and extra-biblical Greek consistently carries propitiatory connotations. Morris's magisterial study in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross examined every occurrence of hilaskomai and its cognates in the Greek Old Testament and in wider Greek literature. He showed that Dodd had been selective in his evidence. While it is true that in the Bible God takes the initiative in providing atonement (unlike pagan religion, where humans try to bribe the gods), this does not mean that propitiation is absent. Rather, it means that the biblical concept of propitiation is different from the pagan concept — not that it is eliminated. God Himself provides the means by which His own just response to sin is satisfied. As John Stott summarizes, "The initiative comes from God Himself; he is the propitiator and the propitiated."¹⁵

Stott offers a penetrating analysis of the Dodd-Morris debate. He notes that the overall verdict among New Testament scholars is that while hilaskomai is a complex word, it nevertheless "includes an element of appeasement, or turning away of wrath" and cannot be reduced to mere expiation. The crucial point is that the propitiation comes from God's own initiative, not from human effort. This removes the "pagan" overtones Dodd worried about while preserving the genuine propitiatory meaning the word carries.¹⁶

Second, the context of Romans 3:21–26 demands propitiation because Paul is explaining how God's justice is demonstrated. This is the clinching argument, in my view. Look carefully at what Paul says. In Romans 3:25–26, he writes that God put forward Christ as hilastērion "to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (ESV).

Paul's whole point is that the cross demonstrates God's righteousness — His dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη), His justice. God had been "passing over" sins in the Old Testament era, and this created a problem: If God simply lets sin go unpunished, is He truly just? The cross resolves this dilemma. God is shown to be both "just" (His righteousness is vindicated because the penalty of sin has been dealt with) and "the justifier" (He can now freely forgive sinners who trust in Jesus). As we argued extensively in Chapter 8, this logic only works if the cross does more than just cleanse sin. It must also satisfy the demands of justice. That is propitiation. A merely expiatory reading cannot explain why Paul frames the cross as a demonstration of God's justice.¹⁷

Third, the translation "mercy seat" — another option — actually supports the propitiatory reading. Some scholars argue that hilastērion in Romans 3:25 should be translated as "mercy seat," referring to the golden cover of the Ark of the Covenant where the blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement (Hebrews 9:5 uses hilastērion with this meaning). If Paul is identifying Jesus as the new "mercy seat," he is saying that Jesus is the place where God and sinful humanity meet, where atonement is accomplished. But what happened at the mercy seat? The blood of the sin offering was sprinkled there to deal with Israel's sins before the presence of God. The mercy seat was the very place where God's holy presence dwelt above the cherubim. Sprinkling blood in God's presence is not merely about cleaning up sin's stain — it is about addressing God's holy response to sin. So whether we translate hilastērion as "propitiation" or as "mercy seat," the propitiatory dimension remains in view.¹⁸

David Allen draws this together helpfully, noting that the biblical concept of atonement encompasses both expiation and propitiation, and that artificially separating them distorts the text. The difference between expiation and propitiation is that expiation signifies the removal of sin while propitiation refers to the satisfaction of God's justice — and the biblical writers hold both together. We should not be forced to choose between them.¹⁹

I want to be clear about one thing. Chandler is absolutely right that accepting expiation does not mean abandoning the reality of God's wrath. God's wrath is real, and even those who prefer the translation "expiation" typically affirm this. The question is whether the cross addresses that wrath — whether it resolves the tension between God's love and God's justice — or whether it only deals with sin as a stain to be removed. I am persuaded, with Morris, Stott, Allen, Craig, and the majority of evangelical scholars, that the cross does both. It expiates sin and propitiates God's justice. And hilastērion, read in its full biblical context, points in this direction.²⁰

Objection 3: Paul's Atonement Language Is Participatory, Not Forensic

Stating the Objection Fairly

The third objection comes primarily from scholars associated with the "New Perspective on Paul" — most notably N. T. Wright, James D. G. Dunn, and (in a different way) E. P. Sanders. The argument runs like this: traditional Protestant readings of Paul, especially in the Reformed tradition, have interpreted his soteriology (his theology of salvation) in primarily forensic categories — justification as a legal declaration, imputation as a transfer of legal status, the cross as a penal transaction. But a closer reading of Paul in his first-century Jewish context reveals that his primary categories are participatory and covenantal, not forensic and transactional.

On this view, Paul's central concern is not "How can I, as an individual sinner, find a gracious God?" (Luther's question) but "Who belongs to the covenant people of God, and on what basis?" Justification is not about how a sinner gets right with God through the imputation of Christ's righteousness; it is about God's declaration that a person belongs to His covenant people. Being "in Christ" is the heart of Paul's soteriology — participating in Christ's death and resurrection, being incorporated into His body, sharing in His life. The forensic categories (justification, imputation, penalty) are secondary to and derivative from these participatory realities.²¹

If this reading is correct, then penal substitution — with its emphasis on legal guilt, forensic imputation, and the transfer of penalty — has been overemphasized at best, and perhaps misread into the Pauline text altogether. Joel Green and Mark Baker make this argument explicitly in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, contending that the Western legal framework has distorted our reading of the New Testament atonement texts.²²

Responding to the Objection

Once again, this objection contains a genuine insight that deserves acknowledgment. The New Perspective scholars are absolutely right that Paul's soteriology includes rich participatory dimensions that have sometimes been underemphasized in Western Protestant theology. Being "in Christ" is indeed central to Paul. Union with Christ — dying with Him, rising with Him, being incorporated into His body — is not a minor theme but one of the great pillars of Pauline thought. Anyone who has read Romans 6, Galatians 2:20, or Ephesians 2:4–6 knows this. The New Perspective has done the church a genuine service by drawing fresh attention to these participatory realities and to the Jewish covenantal context in which Paul was writing. We should be grateful for that contribution even as we push back against some of its conclusions.

But here is where the objection goes wrong: it treats participatory and forensic as mutually exclusive categories. Paul's language includes both. They are not in competition.

First, forensic and juridical terminology pervades Paul's writings. The language of justification (dikaiōsis, δικαίωσις) is by definition legal language — it is a courtroom term meaning "to declare righteous" or "to acquit." Paul uses it extensively in Romans and Galatians. In Romans 4:4–5, Paul makes the forensic background unmistakable: "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness" (ESV). The language of "counting" (logizomai, λογίζομαι) — crediting something to someone's account — is forensic and transactional. Paul is talking about how God reckons righteousness to the unrighteous. That is imputation, and it is a legal metaphor.²³

As Craig observes, proponents of the New Perspective pay insufficient attention to passages like Romans 4:4–5, where the forensic background is inescapable. The vocabulary of wages, debts, reckoning, and crediting is drawn from the law court and the accountant's ledger. To say that Paul's primary categories are covenantal rather than forensic requires minimizing a substantial portion of his argument in Romans 3–5.²⁴

Second, Paul explicitly uses penal and substitutionary language alongside his participatory language. Consider just a few examples. In 2 Corinthians 5:21: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (ESV). This verse is simultaneously substitutionary ("for our sake he made him to be sin") and participatory ("in him we might become the righteousness of God"). The forensic exchange (Christ takes our sin; we receive God's righteousness) is the foundation for the participatory reality (we become righteous "in him"). In Galatians 3:13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (ESV). "Becoming a curse for us" is substitutionary and carries penal overtones — the curse of the law is the penalty for disobedience (Deuteronomy 27–28). And yet this substitutionary act results in a participatory blessing: "so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles" (Galatians 3:14). In Romans 8:3–4: God sent His Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin" and "condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us." Here God condemns sin — that is penal, judicial language — in order that we might walk in the Spirit — participatory, transformative language.²⁵

As we showed in Chapter 9's detailed exegesis of these passages, Paul's theology of the cross weaves forensic and participatory categories together in a way that makes them inseparable. The forensic provides the ground; the participatory describes the lived reality. To claim that Paul is "really" participatory rather than forensic is to impose a false dichotomy on texts that hold both together seamlessly.²⁶

Third, even prominent New Perspective scholars have pulled back from the strongest versions of this objection. Craig notes that more recent scholarship in the New Perspective tradition has backed away from denying the forensic dimension of Paul's thought altogether. The question is no longer "forensic or participatory?" but "how do forensic and participatory relate?" That is a much better question — and the answer, I believe, is that the forensic and participatory dimensions are complementary aspects of a single, rich soteriology. Penal substitution explains the objective ground of our salvation (what Christ accomplished on the cross), while participation "in Christ" describes the subjective means by which we receive and live out that salvation.²⁷

Fleming Rutledge makes a similar point from a different angle. She argues that the forensic and apocalyptic themes in Paul are not rivals but need each other. The forensic framework (justification, judgment, penalty) provides the moral seriousness that prevents the participatory framework from becoming vague. And the participatory framework (union with Christ, transformation by the Spirit) prevents the forensic framework from becoming cold and transactional. The cross is big enough for both.²⁸

Objection 4: The Gospels Present Jesus' Death as Martyrdom, Not Penal Substitution

Stating the Objection Fairly

A fourth exegetical objection focuses on the Gospels. Critics argue that when we read the four Gospel accounts of Jesus' life and death, we find a story of a righteous prophet who was unjustly killed by the political and religious authorities — a martyr, in other words. Jesus was put to death because He challenged the powerful, proclaimed the coming kingdom of God, and threatened the established order. His death was a tragic injustice, the supreme example of faithful obedience to God in the face of suffering. But it was not a penal substitution — not an act in which God the Father imposed the penalty for human sin upon His Son.

On this reading, the theological interpretation of Jesus' death as a penal substitutionary sacrifice was developed later by Paul and the other epistle writers. Jesus Himself did not understand His death in these categories. He saw Himself as the suffering righteous one, the prophet rejected by His own people, the faithful servant of God — but not as a substitute bearing the judicial penalty for others' sins. The penal and substitutionary categories, critics allege, come from the early church's theological reflection, not from Jesus' own self-understanding.²⁹

Responding to the Objection

This objection fails because it does not do justice to Jesus' own words about His death as recorded in the Gospels. Even a cautious historical reading reveals that Jesus understood His approaching death in categories that go far beyond martyrdom.

First, Mark 10:45 is decisive. Jesus says: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (ESV). The word "ransom" (lytron, λύτρον) is not martyrdom language. A martyr dies for a cause; a ransom is paid in exchange for captives. Jesus says He gives His life as a ransom "for many" (anti pollōn, ἀντὶ πολλῶν). The preposition anti (ἀντί) means "in the place of" or "instead of" — it is the strongest Greek preposition for substitution. Jesus is saying that His death will function as a substitute payment that liberates others. This goes well beyond anything a mere martyr could claim. As we demonstrated in Chapter 7, the "many" language echoes Isaiah 53, where the Servant bears the sins "of many." Jesus is deliberately placing Himself in the role of the Suffering Servant who dies as a substitute for others.³⁰

Second, the Last Supper words explicitly interpret Jesus' death in sacrificial and atoning categories. At the Last Supper, Jesus takes bread and wine and says: "This is my body, which is given for you" (Luke 22:19) and "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28, ESV). Let those words sink in. Jesus says His blood is "poured out" — sacrificial language drawn from the Levitical system. It is poured out "for many" — substitutionary language echoing Isaiah 53. And it is poured out "for the forgiveness of sins" — language that directly connects His death to the removal of sin. This is not martyrdom. A martyr's death might inspire people, but it does not forgive their sins. Jesus is interpreting His own death as an atoning sacrifice that accomplishes the forgiveness of sins for others. That is substitutionary, and given the connection to the sacrificial system, the penal dimension is close at hand.³¹

Third, the Gethsemane scene reveals that Jesus understood something more than martyrdom was happening. In Gethsemane, Jesus is overwhelmed with anguish and prays, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39). What is this "cup"? Throughout the Old Testament, the "cup" is a metaphor for God's judgment (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17, 22; Jeremiah 25:15–16). Jesus is not simply afraid of physical suffering. Martyrs in Jewish tradition often went to their deaths with extraordinary courage — the Maccabean martyrs being the prime example. Jesus' unique anguish in Gethsemane suggests that He faces something far worse than physical death: He faces the "cup" of divine judgment against sin, which He will drink on behalf of humanity. His distress arises not from cowardice but from the sheer weight of what it means for the sinless Son of God to take upon Himself the consequences of human sin. As we explored in Chapter 7, this is what makes Jesus' death categorically different from any martyr's death.³²

Fourth, the cry of dereliction confirms that Jesus experienced something beyond martyrdom. On the cross, Jesus cries out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). Whatever we make of this cry — and we explored it in depth in Chapter 11 — it is not the cry of a confident martyr. It is the cry of someone who experiences a rupture in His relationship with the Father. The most natural explanation, within the broader New Testament framework, is that Jesus was experiencing the consequences of bearing human sin — the "forsakenness" that is the ultimate penalty of sin, the separation from God that sin produces. This does not mean the Father stopped loving the Son (as we argued in Chapter 20, the Trinity acted in unified love throughout). But it does mean that Jesus entered into the full horror of sin's consequences on our behalf.³³

The martyrdom objection, then, simply cannot account for the full range of data in the Gospels. Jesus' own self-interpretation of His death goes far beyond the categories of martyrdom and into the territory of substitutionary, sacrificial, and atoning suffering — precisely the categories that the apostles later developed into their theology of the cross.

It is also worth noting that the earliest Christians clearly understood Jesus' death as categorically different from a martyr's death. Within just a few years of the crucifixion, the church was proclaiming that Christ "died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3). Paul received this formula as an early tradition — it was not his own invention. The "according to the Scriptures" points to passages like Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and the Levitical sacrificial system. The earliest Christian interpretation of Jesus' death was not "He was a brave martyr who inspired us" but "He died for our sins" — substitutionary, atoning language from the very beginning. The notion that penal and substitutionary categories were layered onto the story later by Paul or the church simply does not square with the earliest evidence we have. These categories go back to Jesus Himself and were present in the church's proclamation from the very start.⁵⁰

One more point deserves mention. The martyrdom model, if taken as a complete account of Jesus' death, cannot explain why the cross has the saving power that the New Testament attributes to it. A martyr's death may inspire courage, strengthen resolve, and expose injustice. But the New Testament claims something far more radical: that Jesus' death actually accomplishes something. It forgives sins (Matthew 26:28). It reconciles us to God (Romans 5:10). It defeats the powers of evil (Colossians 2:15). It secures eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). No mere martyrdom — however noble — can do these things. The cross has saving power because it is more than an inspiring example of faithfulness under pressure. It is an atoning act in which the Son of God bears the consequences of human sin so that sinners can be restored to God. That is the consistent witness of the New Testament, and the martyrdom model, whatever partial truths it captures, cannot account for it.

Objection 5: Isaiah 53 Does Not Teach Penal Substitution

Stating the Objection Fairly

The fifth major exegetical objection targets what is arguably the single most important Old Testament text for the doctrine of penal substitution: Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the fourth and greatest Suffering Servant Song. Critics argue that while this passage certainly describes vicarious suffering (the Servant suffers because of the sins of others), it does not describe penal substitution (the Servant bears a legal penalty imposed by God as punishment for others' sins).

The argument takes several forms. Some scholars contend that the Servant's suffering is consequential rather than penal. That is, the Servant suffers as a result of others' sins — caught up in the terrible consequences of human wickedness — but is not being punished by God as their substitute. On this reading, the suffering is tragic and unjust, and God brings good out of it, but God does not actively impose it as a penalty. Others argue that the language of "bearing iniquity" (nasa avon) simply means enduring the effects of others' wrongdoing, not bearing a judicially imposed sentence. Still others contend that the Servant figure is corporate (representing Israel as a whole) rather than individual, and that the passage describes Israel's exile and suffering as vicariously beneficial for the nations — not a penal substitution in the forensic sense.³⁴

Chandler presses this objection as well, arguing that accepting Christ's death as both substitutionary and penal does not require the full theory of penal substitution. One can affirm that Christ became our substitute and that He bore a penalty without concluding that God had to inflict punishment on someone in order to be just. That last step, Chandler argues, is theory, not Scripture.³⁵

Responding to the Objection

I appreciate Chandler's careful distinction here. She is right that there is a difference between the biblical data (Christ died as our substitute and bore penalty) and the theory that seeks to explain why this was necessary. That is a fair point, and it echoes the important distinction between the fact and the theory of the atonement that we discussed in Chapter 1. But I believe the Isaiah 53 text, when read closely and in its original Hebrew, pushes us strongly in the direction of penal substitution — not just substitutionary suffering in a vague or general sense.

First, the language of "chastisement" (musar, מוּסָר) carries penal connotations. Isaiah 53:5 reads:

"But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5, ESV)

The word translated "chastisement" is musar (מוּסָר). In Hebrew, this word refers to correction, discipline, or punishment. It is used throughout the Old Testament for corrective punishment — the kind of discipline a father gives a son (Proverbs 3:11), or the judgment God brings on His people to correct them (Jeremiah 2:30; 5:3). The point is that musar is not a neutral word meaning "suffering" in general. It refers specifically to disciplinary or corrective punishment. And Isaiah says this musar — this punishment — was borne by the Servant, and it brought "peace" (shalom) to us. The Servant endures the punishment that should have fallen on us, and the result is our healing and reconciliation. This is penal substitution in all but name.³⁶

Second, "bearing iniquity" (nasa avon) is standard Old Testament language for bearing the penalty of sin. Isaiah 53:11 says the Servant "shall bear their iniquities," and 53:12 says he "bore the sin of many." The Hebrew expression nasa avon (נָשָׂא עָוֺן) is used throughout the Old Testament, and when it refers to someone bearing their own iniquity, it consistently means bearing the penalty for that sin — enduring the punishment. In Leviticus 5:1, 17 and Numbers 14:34, "bearing iniquity" means suffering the consequences of guilt, including punishment. When Isaiah says the Servant bears our iniquities, the natural reading — the reading that arises from the Old Testament usage of the phrase — is that the Servant bears the penalty that belongs to us. He takes on Himself what we deserved.³⁷

William Lane Craig provides a detailed examination of this terminology and concludes that the Servant's suffering is not merely consequential (a tragic byproduct of others' sins) but genuinely substitutionary and penal. The Servant does not merely suffer because of human sin in a general sense; He suffers in the place of sinners, bearing the penalty that was due to them.³⁸

Third, the text repeatedly attributes the Servant's suffering to God's deliberate action. Isaiah 53:6 says, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Isaiah 53:10 says, "Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief." This is not the language of consequential suffering — someone accidentally caught in the crossfire of others' wickedness. This is the language of divine initiative. God laid the iniquity on the Servant. God willed to crush Him. God made His life a guilt offering. The suffering is not random or merely tragic; it is purposeful, divinely ordained, and directed toward a specific goal: "He shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the purpose of the LORD shall prosper in his hand" (Isaiah 53:10). The Servant's suffering accomplishes what God intended it to accomplish — the bearing of penalty on behalf of others, resulting in their justification (Isaiah 53:11).³⁹

Fourth, the overall structure of Isaiah 53 presents a clear pattern of exchange. The passage operates on a consistent logic of substitution: He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him; with His wounds we are healed; the LORD laid on Him the iniquity of us all. The pronouns shuttle back and forth between "He/Him" and "we/us/our" in a systematic exchange: what belongs to us (sin, guilt, punishment) is transferred to Him, and what belongs to Him (peace, healing, righteousness) is given to us. This is the logic of penal substitution, and it is embedded in the very grammar and syntax of the passage.⁴⁰

I should note that this passage was the single most important Old Testament text for the early church's interpretation of Jesus' death. Philip explains the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch from this very passage (Acts 8:30–35). The apostle Peter explicitly quotes Isaiah 53:5–6 and 53:9 in 1 Peter 2:22–25, applying it to Jesus' substitutionary death. The passage is woven deeply into the New Testament's understanding of the cross. The attempt to strip it of its penal and substitutionary content requires reading against both the original Hebrew and the New Testament's own interpretation of it.⁴¹

Engaging with Chandler's Broader Framework

Before drawing our conclusions, I want to engage more broadly with Chandler's overall exegetical argument in Victorious Substitution, because she represents a particularly thoughtful and carefully nuanced version of these objections.

Chandler's key move — and it is a clever one — is to affirm both the substitutionary and the penal aspects of Christ's death while denying that they amount to the theory of penal substitution. She writes that "if one considers Christ's death substitutionary (he became our substitute) and penal (he took our penalty), it does not follow that he became a substitute or bore a penalty because God had to inflict punishment on someone in order to be just."⁴² In other words, she accepts the data but rejects the theological explanation. Christ did substitute for us. Christ did bear penalty. But God did not require this penalty to be borne in order to forgive. The penalty-bearing is real, but it is not the mechanism by which forgiveness becomes possible. Instead, Chandler proposes a "Victorious Substitution" model that combines substitutionary and ransom themes without the penal-satisfaction framework.

I respect Chandler's care here, and she is right that there is a logical distinction between affirming the data and affirming a particular explanation of the data. But I think her position creates more problems than it solves.

If Christ bore our penalty, as Chandler grants, then the natural question is: why? If God did not need the penalty to be borne in order to forgive, then why did He send His Son to bear it? Chandler's answer is that the penalty-bearing is part of Christ's victory over sin and death — He entered into the full reality of human fallenness, including the penal consequences of sin, in order to defeat those powers from within. I find this a beautiful and partly true insight, and it resonates with the Christus Victor and recapitulation models we explored in Chapters 21 and 23.

But it does not fully account for the biblical data. Romans 3:25–26, as we have seen, frames the cross as a demonstration of God's justice — His righteousness in dealing with sin. Paul says God put forward Christ as hilastērion specifically to show that He is just. If the penalty-bearing is incidental to the atonement rather than central to it, then Paul's argument in Romans 3 loses its force. Why would the penalty-bearing demonstrate God's justice if the penalty did not need to be borne? The logic of Romans 3:25–26 requires that the penalty-bearing is not merely a byproduct of the incarnate Son's entry into our fallen condition but the very means by which God's justice is satisfied and sinners are set free. And that is precisely what penal substitution claims.⁴³

Similarly, if we accept (as Chandler does) that Christ bore the penalty for our sins, and if we accept (as Isaiah 53 teaches) that God laid our iniquity on Him and willed to crush Him, then we already have all the essential elements of penal substitution: a substitute who bears a divinely imposed penalty in the place of others, resulting in their justification. The difference between Chandler's position and penal substitution, at this point, seems more verbal than substantive. She affirms the pieces but resists assembling them into the picture they naturally form.⁴⁴

I also want to note Chandler's treatment of the wrath of God. She argues that God's wrath is "his personal reaction to sin, a holy displeasure that results in estrangement and immutability of judgment" and that it is closely related to His love — "his anger at all that harms his beloved." On this I completely agree. As I argued in Chapter 3, God's wrath is not irrational rage but the settled, holy opposition of God's perfect nature to everything that destroys what He loves. But precisely because God's wrath is His just and holy response to sin, the cross must address that wrath — not merely remove the sin that provoked it (expiation) but satisfy the just demands that arise from God's holy nature (propitiation). A God who simply overlooks sin without addressing the demands of justice is not the God of Romans 3:25–26.⁴⁵

In the end, I think Chandler's "Victorious Substitution" model and the penal substitutionary model I am defending are closer than she allows. We agree that Christ is our substitute. We agree that His suffering was real and included bearing the consequences of sin. We agree that His death achieves victory over the powers of evil. We agree that the cross reveals and demonstrates God's love. Where we differ is on whether the penalty-bearing is the mechanism by which forgiveness is secured or merely a byproduct of the incarnate Son's entry into fallen humanity. I believe the weight of biblical evidence — Leviticus 17:11, Isaiah 53, Romans 3:25–26, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24 — falls decisively on the side of mechanism. The penalty-bearing is not incidental to the atonement. It is, as Stott memorably put it, the very heart of God's self-substitution — the means by which the holy and loving God addresses both the reality of human guilt and the demands of His own justice.⁵¹

Engaging with Green and Baker

Joel Green and Mark Baker's Recovering the Scandal of the Cross deserves brief attention as well, since it has been influential in framing many of these exegetical objections for a broader audience. Green and Baker argue that the Western legal framework — shaped by Roman law, Germanic tribal codes, and the Enlightenment emphasis on individual rights — has distorted our reading of the New Testament atonement texts. They contend that we need to "recover" the scandal of the cross from beneath the layers of cultural assumptions we have projected onto it.

There is a legitimate concern here. Every reader brings cultural presuppositions to the text, and we should always be vigilant about the ways our cultural context shapes our interpretation. Green and Baker are right that the New Testament was written in a first-century Mediterranean context very different from our own, and that we should let the ancient context inform our reading.

But the implication that forensic and juridical categories are merely Western cultural imports does not hold up. As Craig demonstrates at length, forensic terminology pervades the Old Testament itself — not as a Western overlay but as a constitutive element of Israel's understanding of its relationship with God. The covenant at Sinai was expressed in legal language. God's relationship with Israel was structured around law, obedience, blessing, curse, judgment, and restoration. The prophets routinely used courtroom imagery to describe God's dealings with His people (Isaiah 1:18; Micah 6:1–8). Paul's forensic categories are not borrowed from Roman law but grow organically out of Israel's Scriptures.⁴⁶

Furthermore, the argument that forensic categories are culturally contingent could be turned on its head. If we strip away forensic categories because they are "Western," what stops us from stripping away other categories as "Eastern" or "Mediterranean"? The honor-shame framework that Green and Baker prefer is itself culturally situated. All theological language is expressed through cultural forms. The question is not whether our categories are culturally influenced (they always are) but whether they are faithful to the text. And the forensic categories of justification, judgment, penalty, and imputation are deeply embedded in both the Old and New Testaments.⁴⁷

Green and Baker also suggest that the church should be free to recontextualize the atonement for different cultural settings — using honor-shame categories in shame-based cultures, for instance, rather than imposing a Western forensic model. There is wisdom in this suggestion when it comes to communication. Missionaries and pastors should certainly use the most effective metaphors and images available to communicate the gospel cross-culturally. But there is a crucial difference between contextualizing the presentation of a doctrine and revising the content of it. The forensic dimension of the atonement is not a cultural packaging that we can swap out for something more palatable. It is part of what the biblical text actually says. We can explain it in different ways for different audiences, but we cannot remove it without losing something essential. Paul did not use forensic language because he was a Roman citizen influenced by Roman law courts; he used it because the Old Testament Scriptures he was interpreting were saturated with the language of law, judgment, covenant obligation, and penalty.⁴⁹

Finally, it is worth noting that the honor-shame and forensic frameworks are not as opposed as Green and Baker sometimes suggest. In the ancient world, a just judgment rendered in court was itself a matter of honor — both for the judge and for the wronged party whose honor was restored. The vindication of the righteous and the condemnation of the wicked were simultaneously forensic acts (legal verdicts) and honor-related acts (the restoration of the wronged party's standing). God's justice and God's honor are not two separate categories in the Bible; they are deeply intertwined. When God acts to vindicate His name and His righteousness (Ezekiel 36:22–23), He is simultaneously acting in judicial and honor categories. The either/or framework that Green and Baker propose is too neat for the messy richness of the biblical text.

Conclusion: The Exegetical Case Holds

We have examined five major exegetical objections to penal substitutionary atonement, and in each case, I believe the objection, while raising genuine questions that sharpen our reading, ultimately falls short of overturning the doctrine.

The Old Testament sacrificial system, far from excluding penal categories, includes them — especially in Leviticus 17:11's grounding of atonement in substitutionary blood, the scapegoat's explicit sin-bearing, and the asham's penal-reparative logic. The hilastērion debate, while complex, resolves in favor of a meaning that includes propitiation, especially given the context of Romans 3:25–26 and its emphasis on the demonstration of God's justice. Paul's theology is both forensic and participatory — the New Perspective rightly highlights the participatory dimension but errs when it marginalizes the forensic. The Gospels present Jesus not as a mere martyr but as one who understood His death in substitutionary, sacrificial, and atoning categories — as a "ransom for many" and as the blood of a new covenant poured out for forgiveness. And Isaiah 53, read in its original Hebrew, employs language — musar, nasa avon, asham — that carries unmistakable penal and substitutionary meaning.

None of this means that penal substitution is the only thing the Bible says about the cross. As we have argued throughout this book, the atonement is multi-faceted. Christus Victor, recapitulation, moral influence, and other models all capture genuine dimensions of what Christ accomplished. The exegetical objections we have examined often arise from the correct observation that the Bible says more about the cross than penal substitution alone can capture. On that point, I wholeheartedly agree.

But the critics go too far when they claim that the Bible says less than penal substitution. The penal and substitutionary categories are not Western inventions imposed on an unwilling text. They are woven into the very fabric of the biblical witness — from the Levitical sacrifices to the Suffering Servant, from Jesus' own words to Paul's great theological expositions, from Peter's teaching to the book of Hebrews. When we read the Bible carefully, in its original languages and literary contexts, the case for penal substitution remains strong. The cross is many things, but among them — and at the center — it is the place where God's justice and God's love meet, where the penalty of sin is borne by a willing substitute, and where guilty sinners are set free.

What strikes me most about the exegetical objections we have considered is that, in almost every case, the objection rests on a false dichotomy. Expiation or propitiation. Participatory or forensic. Purification or penalty. Martyrdom or substitution. The biblical text refuses these either/or categories. It holds them together. The cross is a place of purification and penalty, of participation and forensic declaration, of expiation and propitiation, of voluntary self-giving and divinely imposed suffering. The richness of the biblical witness is that it says all of these things at once, and the multi-faceted model of the atonement that this book proposes — with penal substitution at the center and other models complementing it — is, I believe, the most faithful way to honor that richness.

We should be grateful to the critics. Their objections have forced us to read the text more carefully, to attend more closely to the original languages, and to avoid oversimplified formulations of penal substitution that do not do justice to the full range of biblical testimony. The best scholarship is always sharpened by challenge, and the exegetical case for PSA is stronger today — more nuanced, more carefully argued, more attentive to the complexity of the evidence — because thoughtful scholars have pushed back against it. But having listened to the critics, engaged their arguments, and tested the evidence, I am more convinced than ever that penal substitutionary atonement stands on solid exegetical ground.

The exegetical case for penal substitutionary atonement has been tested by some of the sharpest critics in biblical scholarship — and it has held. In the next chapter, we will turn to the theological and moral objections, which raise different but equally important questions. But at the level of Scripture — which is where every Christian doctrine must ultimately be grounded — the evidence for penal substitution is compelling, coherent, and deeply embedded in the biblical text from beginning to end. The God who inspired these Scriptures is a God of both love and justice, and the cross He ordained is the place where those perfections meet in the most profound act in all of history.