Appendix H

Substitution and Participation — Responding to Rillera's False Dichotomy

We have arrived at the final appendix in our four-part response to Andrew Remington Rillera's Lamb of the Free. In the previous three appendices, we examined Rillera's treatment of Old Testament sacrifice (Appendix E), his handling of the Lord's Supper, Passover, and the non-atoning sacrifices (Appendix F), and his attempts to strip key New Testament texts of their substitutionary and penal content (Appendix G). Throughout, we have tried to be fair. We have acknowledged where Rillera makes genuine and helpful contributions. We have conceded points that deserve conceding. But we have also shown, passage by passage and argument by argument, that his core conclusions go far beyond what the evidence supports.

Now we turn to what I believe is Rillera's most consequential error. It is not a matter of one exegetical detail or another. It is a matter of theological logic. At the heart of his entire project stands a false dichotomy — the claim that substitution and participation are mutually exclusive. If Jesus died for us in a participatory sense (which he did), then — Rillera insists — he cannot have died instead of us in a substitutionary sense. It is either one or the other. Either Jesus goes ahead of us into death so that we can follow, or Jesus stands in our place so that we do not have to face the penalty ourselves. Pick one.

I want to argue, as clearly and carefully as I can, that this either/or is a mistake. The New Testament does not force us to choose between substitution and participation. It holds them together — not as awkward roommates who barely tolerate each other, but as complementary truths that need each other. Jesus both does something in our place that we could never do for ourselves and invites us to participate in the pattern of his cross-shaped life. Far from being "inadequate, incoherent, and inherently misleading" (as Rillera claims), substitution — properly understood within a Trinitarian and participatory framework — is the very ground that makes genuine participation possible.¹

1. The Heart of Rillera's Argument: Substitution Excludes Participation

Before we respond, we need to present Rillera's argument with full force. I believe in fairness first. Let me lay out what he actually says, as accurately and charitably as I can.

Rillera's concluding chapter builds on the exegetical work of the previous seven chapters and arrives at a sweeping conclusion: the concept of substitution is "wrongheaded and misleading" as a way to understand Jesus' saving work.² He adopts Simon Gathercole's definition of substitution — Christ's death "in our place, instead of us" — and insists that this definition, by its very logic, excludes any notion of participation, sharing, or co-crucifixion.³ As Gathercole himself put it, substitution means "'in our place' does not... mean 'in our place with us.'"⁴ Rillera seizes on this distinction and pushes it to its maximum conclusion: if substitution means "instead of us," then there is no room left for believers to share in Christ's death. And since the entire New Testament calls believers to share in Christ's death (through co-crucifixion, discipleship, suffering, and conformity to his image), substitution must be the wrong framework.

Here is the rhetorical question that sits at the center of Rillera's case: "If Jesus is our substitute, why do we need to take up the cross? Why do we need to have fellowship with his sufferings? Why do we need to be co-crucified with Christ?"⁵ It is a powerful question, and it deserves a serious answer. We will give one shortly. But first, let us continue to map his argument.

Rillera's alternative is a thoroughgoing participatory model. He prefers the language of "solidarity," "union," "participation," and "recapitulation." Jesus did not die instead of us; he died ahead of us, so that we could follow him through death into resurrection life. He compares Christ to a "cosmic voodoo doll" — by which he means that there is an inextricable, inseparable union between what happens to Christ and what happens to those who are in him.⁶ What Christ experiences, we experience. What happens to him, happens to us. This is participation "all the way down," as Rillera puts it. And substitution, by definition, breaks that participation. If Christ does something so that we do not have to, then we are not participating — we are being excused.

Rillera also employs a latte analogy. When you substitute soy milk for dairy milk in a latte, you are replacing one with the other. You do not mean that you also want dairy milk sharing the cup alongside the soy. Substitution means replacement. Period. And replacement is the opposite of participation.⁷

He adds a quicksand analogy of his own: if his children are stuck in quicksand and he gets in to rescue them, you would not call him a "substitute." He entered their condition, got muddy alongside them, and pulled them out. Replace "quicksand" with "curse" or "Sin and Death," and you have Paul's narrative of divine deliverance. "Substitution," Rillera argues, simply does not fit what the New Testament describes.⁸

Finally, Rillera contends that penal substitutionary atonement "opens the door to the satanic idea that one can be a disciple of Jesus and avoid the cross (Mark 8:33)."⁹ This is a very strong claim. He is suggesting that the doctrine of substitution, far from supporting the call to discipleship, actually undercuts it. If Jesus already bore the cross for us, why bother bearing one ourselves?

I have tried to present Rillera's argument at full strength. He writes with passion and clarity, and his concern for genuine, costly discipleship is admirable. But as I hope to show, his argument rests on a fundamental logical mistake — a mistake that the New Testament itself corrects.

2. Why the Either/Or Is a False Dichotomy

This is the central argument of this appendix. Everything else builds on this point: substitution and participation are not competitors for the same slot. They operate at different levels and in different respects, and the New Testament holds them together without any sense of tension or embarrassment.

The Logical Error

Rillera's argument commits what we might call a "category confusion." He assumes that if Christ does something "instead of us" in one respect, he cannot call us to follow him in another respect. But these two things operate at different levels entirely. Let me explain what I mean.

Christ bears the judicial penalty of sin in our place — the curse of the law, the wages of sin, the consequences of divine judgment that would otherwise fall on us. That is substitution. It is something we cannot do for ourselves. No human being can bear the infinite weight of sin's penalty and emerge victorious on the other side. Only the God-man can do that. Only the eternal Son, acting in concert with the Father and the Spirit, can absorb the consequences of human rebellion and come through death into indestructible life.

But Christ also calls us to follow the pattern of self-giving love that his cross exemplifies — dying to self, taking up our own crosses daily, suffering for righteousness, sharing in the afflictions of the body of Christ, being conformed to his image. That is participation. It is something we can and must do — not to earn salvation, but because we have already been saved.

The penalty-bearing is unrepeatable. It was finished once for all at Calvary (John 19:30; Heb 9:26, 28; 10:10, 12, 14). The pattern-following is ongoing. It is the daily work of discipleship for every believer until Christ returns. These are not the same thing. They are not competing for the same slot. Substitution addresses the judicial problem (how can guilty sinners be forgiven?). Participation addresses the transformational calling (how do forgiven sinners become like Christ?). The first is the foundation; the second is the building that rises on that foundation.¹⁰

To put this more precisely: substitution and participation answer different theological questions and operate in different registers of the atonement. The substitutionary register is forensic and judicial — it deals with guilt, condemnation, penalty, and justification. The participatory register is relational and transformational — it deals with union, sanctification, conformity, and discipleship. When Paul writes that "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1), the "no condemnation" is the fruit of substitution (the penalty has been borne by another), and the "in Christ Jesus" is the realm of participation (we are united with the one who bore it). Both are essential. Neither eliminates the other. Indeed, the forensic reality (no condemnation) is what makes the relational reality (union with Christ) safe and joyful rather than terrifying. We can draw near to God precisely because the penalty that stood between us has been dealt with — by our Substitute.

An Analogy: Debt and New Life

Think of it this way. A parent discovers that her child has racked up a crushing, devastating debt — far beyond anything the child could ever repay. The parent pays the debt in full, out of her own resources. The child does not contribute a single penny. That is substitution: the parent bears the financial penalty so the child does not have to. But then the parent sits down with the child and says, "Now let me teach you to manage money wisely. Let me show you a better way to live." The child participates in that new way of living — learning, growing, making sacrifices of a different kind. The child does not repeat the parent's payment. The debt is settled. But the child absolutely does participate in the new life that the parent's payment made possible.

Does the parent's substitutionary payment "corrode the logic" of the child learning financial responsibility? Of course not. The payment creates the condition for the new life. Without the debt being paid, the child would still be crushed under its weight, unable to move forward. It is precisely because the debt has been borne by another that the child is free to learn and grow. Substitution does not cancel participation. It enables it.¹¹

Gathercole's Own Nuance

One of the most important things to notice is that Rillera uses Gathercole's definition of substitution — but he does not engage with Gathercole's own argument about how substitution relates to participation. This is a significant oversight. In Defending Substitution, Gathercole explicitly states that the argument for substitution "does nothing to undermine the importance of representation and participation. Rather, the point is that substitution can happily coexist with them."¹² Gathercole is fully aware that Paul speaks of believers being "crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:20), "dying with Christ" (Rom 6:8), and sharing in Christ's sufferings (Phil 3:10). He does not see these as problems for substitution. Instead, he distinguishes between the basis of salvation (Christ's substitutionary death) and the outworking of salvation (the believer's participation in Christ). These are not the same thing, and substitution at the foundational level does not prevent participation at the applied level.¹³

In other words, the very scholar whose definition Rillera borrows disagrees with the conclusion Rillera draws from that definition. Gathercole says, in effect, "Yes, substitution means 'instead of us.' And yes, participation means 'with us.' Both are true — in different respects." Rillera takes the first half but ignores the second.

Stott's "Self-Substitution"

John Stott's profound insight in The Cross of Christ is crucial here. Stott argued in his landmark sixth chapter that the cross is not the Father punishing the Son as though they were two separate parties in a legal dispute. Rather, it is God Himself, in the person of the Son, bearing the consequences of human sin. "The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man."¹⁴ This is what Stott called "the self-substitution of God." The cross is not a transaction between an angry Father and an unwilling Son. It is the Triune God acting in unified love — the Father giving, the Son offering himself, the Spirit sustaining — to absorb the cost of human sin within the divine life itself.¹⁵

Why does this matter for the substitution-participation debate? Because Rillera's caricature of PSA — God pouring out wrath on an innocent, separate victim — is precisely the version of PSA that Stott (and I) reject. When we understand the cross as divine self-substitution, the old objection dissolves. God is not dividing himself against himself. God is not creating distance between Father and Son. God is entering into human suffering, taking on the consequences of sin within the fellowship of the Trinity, and emerging victorious. This is an act of the most profound solidarity and substitution simultaneously. God stands where we stand (solidarity) and bears what we cannot bear (substitution).¹⁶

Craig's Philosophical Analysis

William Lane Craig's rigorous philosophical treatment in Atonement and the Death of Christ provides further support. Craig demonstrates that penal substitution is logically coherent and morally justified when two conditions are met: (1) the substitute acts voluntarily, and (2) the penalty is borne by God Himself rather than by a third-party victim.¹⁷ Both conditions are met at the cross. The Son volunteers freely (John 10:18; Gal 2:20; Phil 2:8). And the one who bears the penalty is not some external scapegoat but the very God against whom the sin was committed. Craig argues that divine self-substitution avoids the standard moral objections to punishing the innocent, because God has the sovereign right to absorb within his own being the consequences of the sin committed against him.¹⁸

Nothing in Craig's analysis prevents or undermines the participatory dimension of the atonement. Craig's point is simply that the penal substitutionary dimension is coherent — that it makes sense both logically and morally. Once we establish that substitution is coherent, we are free to hold it alongside participation without any logical contradiction. The two are simply addressing different questions: substitution answers the question of how guilt is dealt with; participation answers the question of how new life is lived. As argued at length in Chapter 25 of this book, the philosophical coherence of PSA has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.

The Eastern Orthodox Witness

Rillera seems to assume that substitution is a distinctly Western (and particularly Protestant) category, while participation and solidarity are more authentically biblical. But this ignores the remarkable testimony of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which has held substitutionary and participatory language together for centuries without seeing any tension between them.

Fr. Joshua Schooping's An Existential Soteriology demonstrates this beautifully. Writing as an Eastern Orthodox priest, Schooping shows that PSA language is pervasive in Orthodox hymnography, patristic writings, and canonical sources — often appearing in the very same contexts as theosis (deification) language. St. Theophan the Recluse, for instance, describes how God "acted with Him as a sinner, as if He himself had committed all the sins for which all people are guilty together. Only through this could the truth of God be satisfied." But Theophan immediately adds that this is "only half the salvation" — the other half requires "the participation of people."¹⁹ For Theophan, there is no contradiction. Substitutionary satisfaction and human participation are "two halves of a single piece."²⁰

This is not a Western import into Orthodox theology. It is the native Orthodox witness. And it flatly contradicts Rillera's claim that substitution and participation are incompatible. As Schooping argues, PSA and theosis are naturally and deeply connected, because Christ's substitutionary bearing of sin's penalty is precisely what opens the door to human participation in the divine life.²¹ As we demonstrated in Chapter 23 of this book, recapitulation, theosis, and substitution are complementary strands of a single tapestry, not competing threads. Chapter 34 addresses the Eastern Orthodox critique of Western atonement theology in detail, showing that the supposed East-West divide on this matter has been greatly exaggerated.

3. The New Testament Holds Both Together: Textual Evidence

Rillera's either/or might sound plausible in the abstract. But does it hold up when we actually look at what the New Testament says? I do not think it does. Again and again, we find substitutionary and participatory language appearing in the same passages — sometimes in the very same sentence — without any sign that the biblical authors saw a tension between them.

Romans 5–6

Consider the flow of Paul's argument in Romans 5–6. In Romans 5:6–8, Paul writes: "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.... God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The language here — Christ dying "for us" (hyper hēmōn) while we were "helpless" and "sinners" — carries a substitutionary force. Christ did something for us that we could not do for ourselves, precisely because we were weak, ungodly, and under condemnation.²²

But then, just one chapter later, Paul writes: "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Rom 6:4–5). This is the language of participation — dying with Christ, being united with him, sharing in his death and resurrection.

Does Paul see any tension between these two ways of speaking? Not at all. The substitutionary benefit of Romans 5 (Christ died for us while we were sinners) is the basis for the participatory reality of Romans 6 (we have been united with him in his death). The first makes the second possible. We can die with Christ because Christ first died for us. Substitution does not cancel participation; it creates the condition for it.²³

2 Corinthians 5:14–21

This passage is perhaps the clearest example of substitution and participation working together in a single argument. Paul writes: "For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died" (5:14). Notice the logical structure: the substitutionary "for all" (hyper pantōn) produces the participatory "all have died." The substitutionary act generates the participatory reality. It is precisely because Christ died for all (substitution) that all have died with him (participation). These are not competing ideas — they are cause and effect.²⁴

The passage reaches its climax in verse 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." Here we have a substitutionary exchange — Christ is "made sin" for our sake — that results in a participatory reality — we become righteous "in him." The substitutionary act (Christ bearing sin) and the participatory outcome (believers becoming righteous in union with Christ) are woven into a single, seamless statement. As argued in Chapter 9 of this book, this passage is one of the most powerful statements of penal substitutionary atonement in the entire New Testament.

Rillera reads 2 Corinthians 5:15 as evidence that hyper cannot mean "instead of" because both Jesus' death and resurrection are described as hyper others. He argues that since "no one says 'substitutionary resurrection,'" the hyper in connection with Christ's death cannot be substitutionary either.²⁵ But this argument misses the point in two ways. First, it assumes that hyper must carry exactly the same semantic force in every occurrence, which is a basic linguistic error. Prepositions carry a range of meanings, and their precise sense is determined by context. In the context of Christ's death — dying for those who are under condemnation (Rom 5:6–8), bearing sins (1 Pet 2:24), becoming a curse (Gal 3:13) — the substitutionary sense of hyper is contextually demanded. In the context of Christ's resurrection — which is not a penalty but a vindication — the benefactive sense ("for the benefit of") is the natural reading. Second, the death and resurrection serve different functions in Paul's soteriology, as I will demonstrate in Section 5 below. The death bears the penalty; the resurrection vindicates. Substitution applies to the former, not the latter. Paul is not being inconsistent; he is being precise.

Galatians 2:19–20

Paul writes: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Look at how tightly Paul weaves together participation and substitution in a single breath. "I have been crucified with Christ" — that is participation, co-crucifixion, sharing in Christ's death. "The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me" — that is substitutionary self-giving, the Son offering himself on my behalf.²⁶

Paul does not see these as contradictory. He does not say, "I have been crucified with Christ — and therefore it makes no sense to say he gave himself for me." He says both. In the same sentence. As though they belong together. Because they do. The participatory language ("crucified with Christ") describes Paul's ongoing identification with Christ's death — his daily dying to self, his renunciation of the old life under the law. The substitutionary language ("gave himself for me") describes the objective, historical act that made this participatory reality possible. Christ's self-giving is the cause; Paul's co-crucifixion is the effect. The two are not at war. They are the ground and the building, the root and the fruit.

1 Peter 2:21–24

Here the combination is especially striking, because Peter moves from participation to substitution within the span of three verses. In verse 21, Jesus is presented as a "pattern" (hypogrammos) for believers to follow — "Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps." That is the participatory and exemplary dimension. But in verse 24, Peter writes: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live to righteousness." That is unmistakably substitutionary language — Christ bearing sins that were ours, in his own body, so that something would change for us as a result.²⁷

As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach observe in Pierced for Our Transgressions, some scholars have "mistakenly supposed that this emphasis on what is often termed our 'participation' in Christ's death excludes the idea of substitution.... These writers are right to affirm the place of participation, but wrong to think that this displaces substitution. The two perspectives sit alongside each other in Scripture."²⁸ First Peter 2:21–24 is a textbook case. Peter holds both together without any awkwardness.

Philippians 3:10–11

Paul writes: "...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." Paul yearns to "share" in Christ's sufferings and become "like him in his death." This is profound participatory language. But notice: Paul desires to participate in the pattern of Christ's death. He does not expect to participate in Christ's penalty-bearing. Paul never says, "I want to become a propitiation for sins" or "I want to bear the curse of the law." Those are things Christ did uniquely and unrepeatably. What Paul desires is conformity to Christ's character — the willingness to suffer for righteousness, to pour himself out in love, to embrace the cross-shaped life. That is the participatory side. And it rests on the substitutionary foundation that Christ has already dealt with Paul's guilt, condemnation, and penalty.²⁹

The Broader Witness

We could multiply examples. In Colossians 1:24, Paul speaks of "filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" — a participatory statement that presupposes the completed, unrepeatable substitutionary work of the cross. What is "lacking" is not any deficiency in the atoning work of Christ (which is complete — Col 1:20; 2:13–15) but the ongoing suffering of Christ's body, the church, in its mission to the world. Paul participates in that suffering precisely because the substitutionary foundation has already been laid. In Hebrews, Jesus is both the once-for-all sacrifice who "put away sin" (9:26) and the "pioneer" who goes before us (2:10; 12:2) — substitutionary accomplishment and participatory pattern. The author of Hebrews sees no contradiction between saying that Christ "offered one sacrifice for sins for all time" (10:12, substitution) and calling believers to "go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured" (13:13, participation). The once-for-all sacrifice and the ongoing call to bear Christ's reproach are complementary, not competing.

In Revelation, the Lamb who was slain (substitution) makes his people "a kingdom and priests" who share in his reign (participation) (Rev 5:9–10). In 1 John, Christ is the "propitiation for our sins" (2:2; 4:10, substitution) and believers are called to "walk in the same way in which he walked" (2:6, participation) and to "lay down our lives for the brothers" (3:16, imitation). John does not see any tension between confessing Christ as our propitiation and calling believers to lay down their lives in love. The propitiation secures our standing before God; the call to self-sacrificial love flows from gratitude for that security. Everywhere we look, the New Testament weaves substitution and participation together. The idea that we must choose one or the other is foreign to the biblical witness.³⁰

4. "If Jesus Is My Substitute, Why Take Up My Cross?" — Answering Rillera's Central Question

Now let us face Rillera's most powerful rhetorical question head-on: "If Jesus is our substitute, why do we need to take up the cross? Why do we need to have fellowship with his sufferings? Why do we need to be co-crucified with Christ?"

The answer is straightforward, and it flows directly from everything we have said so far: the cross we take up is not the same cross that Jesus bore.

Jesus' cross bore the judicial penalty of sin — the curse of the law (Gal 3:13), the wages of sin (Rom 6:23), the condemnation that would otherwise fall on us (Rom 8:1). That cross is finished and unrepeatable. Jesus said "It is finished" (John 19:30). The author of Hebrews emphasizes that Christ appeared "once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (9:26). He was "offered once to bear the sins of many" (9:28). "We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (10:10). The ephapax ("once for all") language is inherently non-repeatable. We do not offer ourselves once for all to bear the sins of many. Only Christ does this. That is substitution, and it is complete.³¹

Our cross is the cross of discipleship — suffering for righteousness, self-denial, conformity to Christ's character, solidarity with the oppressed, bearing one another's burdens, pouring ourselves out in love. These are real crosses. They are costly. They can involve genuine suffering and even death. But they are not the same cross as the one Jesus bore. Our crosses do not atone for sin. Our crosses do not propitiate God's justice. Our crosses do not bear the curse of the law. Those things have been done — completely, perfectly, irreversibly — by our Substitute.³²

Paul himself makes exactly this distinction. On the one hand, he describes what Christ accomplished uniquely: justification (Rom 3:24), propitiation (Rom 3:25), redemption (Rom 3:24), reconciliation (Rom 5:10–11), freedom from condemnation (Rom 8:1). These are substitutionary accomplishments — things Christ did for us that we could not do for ourselves. On the other hand, Paul describes what believers participate in: suffering with Christ (Rom 8:17), being conformed to his death (Phil 3:10), filling up his afflictions (Col 1:24), being crucified with him (Gal 2:20). The substitutionary accomplishment is the basis for the participatory calling. We suffer because we have been saved, not in order to save ourselves.³³

Now let us address Rillera's latte analogy directly. He says that when you substitute soy milk for dairy, you do not also want dairy sharing the cup. That is true — for that particular analogy. But the analogy actually proves the opposite of what Rillera intends. If Jesus' penal death is like soy milk substituting for dairy, then yes — the penalty is borne by him and not by us. The soy milk (Christ's penalty-bearing) has taken the place of the dairy (the penalty we deserved). But discipleship is a different ingredient entirely. It is not a repetition of penalty-bearing. It is a life of self-giving love, suffering for righteousness, and conformity to Christ's image. Think of it as the espresso, or the sweetener, or the foam — something different from the milk altogether. The latte has soy milk (Christ's substitutionary penalty-bearing) and espresso (the participatory life of discipleship). These are not competing for the same slot. They are different ingredients in the same cup. Rillera's analogy, pressed a little further, actually supports the complementary view rather than the exclusionary one.³⁴

As for the quicksand analogy: it is helpful, but incomplete. A parent who gets into quicksand to rescue children stuck there is indeed showing solidarity and performing rescue. But what if the children were not just stuck in quicksand — what if they were also under a legal sentence of death for a crime they had committed? What if part of the parent's rescue mission involved appearing before the judge and bearing the sentence on the children's behalf? In that case, the rescue would involve both solidarity (entering the children's condition) and substitution (bearing the legal penalty the children owed). The Christian gospel claims that Jesus does both — he enters our condition (solidarity) and bears the penalty we owed (substitution). Rillera's quicksand analogy captures the first but misses the second. And it misses the second not because the Bible misses it, but because the analogy is too narrow.³⁵

It is also worth observing that Paul's own language of discipleship confirms rather than undermines the substitution-participation distinction. When Paul calls believers to "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Rom 12:1), he is calling us to a sacrificial pattern of life — but notice the adjective: living sacrifice. Christ's sacrifice was a dying sacrifice, bearing sin's penalty through death. Our sacrifice is a living one — offering our lives in worship and service. The two are related (our living sacrifice is a response to his dying one) but they are not identical. Christ's sacrifice dealt with the penalty of sin once for all. Our sacrifice is an ongoing offering of gratitude and obedience. This is exactly the substitution-participation dynamic we have been describing: the finished, unrepeatable substitutionary work of Christ creates the ground for the ongoing, participatory life of discipleship.

5. The Resurrection Argument: Does Substitutionary Resurrection Disprove Substitutionary Death?

One of Rillera's cleverest arguments is what we might call the "substitutionary resurrection" argument. It goes like this: If Jesus' death is substitutionary, then his resurrection must also be substitutionary — since Paul treats the two as inseparable (Rom 6:5; Phil 3:10–11). But nobody says "substitutionary resurrection." The very idea is absurd — if Jesus' resurrection were substitutionary, then nobody else would ever be resurrected, since the substitute would have been raised "instead of us." Therefore, since the resurrection is clearly not substitutionary, the death cannot be substitutionary either.³⁶

Rillera supports this by pointing to 1 Corinthians 15:17 ("If Christ has not been raised... you are still in your sins") and Romans 4:25 ("He was delivered over for our trespasses and raised for our justification"). If Jesus' death alone dealt with sins in a substitutionary way, Rillera argues, then the resurrection should not be necessary for dealing with sins. Yet Paul clearly says it is.³⁷

This argument is clever, but it is fallacious. It rests on the assumption that "substitutionary" must apply uniformly to every aspect of Christ's work. But that is precisely what defenders of penal substitution do not claim. Substitution applies specifically to the penalty-bearing dimension of the cross — and only to that dimension. Not every soteriological benefit operates in the same mode.

The resurrection is not substitutionary because the resurrection is not a penalty. Death is the penalty (Rom 6:23). The resurrection is the vindication — the proof that the penalty has been fully borne and exhausted, that death's power is broken, that God accepted the sacrifice. Christ bore the penalty (death) substitutionarily. God vindicated him (resurrection) as proof that the penalty was fully paid. The resurrection then becomes the basis for our future resurrection — not as substitution, but as "firstfruits" (1 Cor 15:20–23). The firstfruits are not a substitute for the harvest; they are the guarantee and beginning of it. This is participatory language, and it fits perfectly.³⁸

And this is precisely what Romans 4:25 says when we read it carefully: "He was delivered over for our trespasses" — that is, because of our transgressions, to bear their penalty (substitutionary). "And raised for our justification" — that is, for the purpose of securing and declaring our right standing with God (vindicatory/participatory). The death and resurrection have different soteriological functions. The death bears the penalty; the resurrection vindicates, acquits, and opens the door to new life. Substitution applies to the death-as-penalty, not to the resurrection-as-vindication. Paul is not being inconsistent. He is being remarkably precise.³⁹

Rillera is also wrong to suggest that 1 Corinthians 15:17 undermines a substitutionary understanding of the death. Paul is not saying that the resurrection replaces the death as the mechanism for dealing with sin. He is saying that without the resurrection, we would have no assurance that the death actually accomplished what we believe it accomplished. If Christ is still dead, then sin has not been conquered — not because the death was irrelevant, but because the resurrection is the Father's verdict that the death was accepted and effective. The two events work together: the death pays the price, and the resurrection declares the receipt valid. Without the receipt, we cannot be sure the debt has been paid — but it is the payment, not the receipt, that actually cancels the debt.⁴⁰

We can put this another way. Imagine a courtroom in which a sentence has been passed and a substitute has stepped forward to bear it. The substitute is led away to serve the sentence. If the substitute never returns, we might wonder: was the sentence actually fulfilled? Was the penalty truly exhausted? But if the substitute walks out of the prison, free and vindicated, we know for certain that the penalty has been fully borne. The substitute's freedom is not a second act of substitution. It is the proof that the first act was successful. That is precisely the relationship between the death and the resurrection. The death bears the penalty (substitution). The resurrection proves that the penalty has been fully exhausted and declares the substitute vindicated (vindication). The resurrection is, if anything, evidence for the reality of penal substitution, not evidence against it. It is the divine receipt stamped "paid in full."

6. Rillera's Political and Ethical Concerns: Valid Worries, Wrong Target

Rillera, along with Douglas Campbell in his foreword, raises serious concerns about the social and political consequences of PSA. He worries that a God who punishes a substitute teaches people that "righteous violence" is acceptable, that retributive justice is the ultimate moral reality, and that authoritarianism is divinely sanctioned. Hannah Bowman's work on how penal substitutionary thinking has contributed to "American mass incarceration" is cited approvingly in the introduction.⁴¹ Campbell goes further, suggesting that the PSA model "underwrites political authoritarianism" and makes God "essentially a dictator."⁴²

I want to say plainly: these concerns are not silly, and they should not be dismissed. The history of Christian theology is littered with examples of atonement language being co-opted to justify violence, oppression, and cruelty. When someone says, "God punished Jesus for your sins, and God will punish you if you step out of line," that is a grotesque distortion of the gospel — and it has done real harm in real communities. I share Rillera's horror at the way atonement theology has been weaponized to support punitive parenting, abusive authority structures, and unjust criminal justice systems.⁴³

But the cure for misuse is not abandonment. It is proper use.

PSA, properly understood within a Trinitarian framework of divine self-giving love, does not authorize "righteous violence" or authoritarianism. It reveals a God who absorbs the cost of evil rather than inflicting it on others. This is the opposite of authoritarianism — it is the most radical act of divine humility and vulnerability imaginable. The God who bears the penalty is not a dictator demanding that someone else pay the price. He is a Father who gives his Son, a Son who gives himself, and a Spirit who sustains the offering — all in unified, self-giving love. The cross does not model top-down coercion. It models self-sacrificial absorption of the cost of evil.⁴⁴

Think about what PSA actually teaches, stripped of the caricatures. It teaches that God cares so deeply about justice that he will not simply wave away sin as though it does not matter. It teaches that God cares so deeply about mercy that he will not simply destroy the guilty. And it teaches that when justice and mercy collide, God resolves the tension not by imposing the cost on someone else but by bearing it himself. This is not a theology that supports authoritarianism. It is a theology that subverts it. The most powerful being in the universe chose to absorb suffering rather than inflict it. If there is a political implication of PSA, rightly understood, it is this: power is most godlike when it serves and sacrifices, not when it dominates and punishes. The cross does not endorse the sword. It transforms our understanding of what strength looks like.

As Stott argued with such power, the cross was not an act of "cosmic child abuse" (the infamous phrase from Steve Chalke) because it was not one party punishing another. It was God punishing God-made-flesh — the divine Self bearing the divine judgment, in love, for the sake of those who deserved it.⁴⁵ If anything, a God who absorbs the penalty rather than simply imposing it on others is the most powerful rebuke to authoritarianism imaginable. The message of PSA is not "might makes right." The message is: the Almighty chose to bear the cost of justice in his own body rather than force it onto the guilty.

The political misuse of PSA is a problem with how PSA is presented, not with PSA itself. Just as the misuse of Scripture to justify slavery did not invalidate Scripture but called for better reading, the misuse of PSA to justify authoritarian violence does not invalidate PSA but calls for better theology. Rillera's ethical concerns, while deeply valid, are aimed at the wrong target. He is critiquing the caricature while ignoring the reality. See Chapter 20 of this book for the full argument about the love of the Trinity in the atonement, and Chapter 35 for our detailed engagement with feminist, liberationist, and anti-violence critiques of PSA.⁴⁶

It is also worth noting that the participatory model, taken alone, is not immune to its own forms of ethical distortion. A theology that says, "You must share in Christ's sufferings" without the grounding of substitution could easily become a theology that tells the abused, the oppressed, and the marginalized that their suffering is just "participation in the cross" — and they should accept it. The substitutionary dimension actually provides a crucial ethical safeguard: there is a suffering that Christ bore so that we would not have to. There is injustice that falls on the innocent that God himself judges as wrong. The cross is not a blanket endorsement of suffering. It is the definitive divine act against the suffering caused by sin — an act so radical that God bore it himself. Without substitution, we lose the theological resources to say, "This suffering is wrong and God opposes it." With substitution, we can affirm both that Christ has borne the ultimate suffering on our behalf and that we are called to follow him in self-giving love — a love that confronts injustice rather than merely enduring it.⁴⁷

7. Conclusion: The Lamb Is Both Substitute and Pioneer

We have come to the end of our four-appendix engagement with Andrew Remington Rillera's Lamb of the Free. Let me take stock of where we have been.

In Appendix E, we showed that while Rillera offers genuine and valuable correctives to popular misunderstandings of Old Testament sacrifice, his central claim — that there is no substitutionary dimension to sacrifice anywhere in the Torah — overstates the evidence and fails to account for key texts and theological dynamics within the sacrificial system.

In Appendix F, we demonstrated that Rillera's treatment of the Lord's Supper, Passover, and the non-atoning sacrifices, while containing real insights, cannot be used to deny the atoning significance of Christ's death. The non-atoning sacrificial framework that Rillera identifies in the Lord's Supper sits alongside — not instead of — the atoning sacrifice of Christ attested throughout the New Testament.

In Appendix G, we showed that Rillera's readings of the key New Testament atonement texts — Romans 3:25, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13, Romans 8:3, 1 Peter 2:24, and the witness of Hebrews — are exegetically unsustainable. His attempt to strip these texts of their substitutionary and penal content requires a systematic minimizing of clear sacrificial, juridical, and substitutionary language that the best scholarship has consistently recognized.

And here, in Appendix H, we have addressed what I believe is Rillera's deepest error: the false dichotomy between substitution and participation. We have shown that this either/or is logically unnecessary, textually unsupported, theologically impoverishing, and historically parochial. The New Testament holds substitution and participation together as complementary truths. Gathercole himself — whose definition Rillera borrows — affirms their compatibility. Stott's concept of divine self-substitution dissolves the caricature of Father-against-Son. Craig's philosophical analysis demonstrates the coherence and moral justification of penal substitution. And the Eastern Orthodox tradition, through voices like Schooping, Theophan the Recluse, and Ignatius Brianchaninov, shows that this is not a Western either/or but a catholic both/and.

Jesus is the Lamb who dies in our place — the Substitute who bears the judicial penalty of sin so that we never have to face condemnation (Rom 8:1). Jesus is also the Lamb who goes ahead of us through death into resurrection life — the Pioneer and Forerunner who blazes the trail we are called to follow (Heb 2:10; 12:2). Jesus is the Lamb whose sacrificial meal we share in — the host of the table where we eat and drink in communion with God and with one another (1 Cor 10:16–17). And Jesus is the Lamb whose cross-shaped life we are called to imitate — the Example who shows us what faithful love looks like in a broken world (1 Pet 2:21; Phil 2:5–8).⁴⁸

Rillera sees the last three of these beautifully. He writes with passion about discipleship, solidarity, and participation. He wants Christians to take the cross seriously — not as an abstract doctrine but as a lived reality. I admire that. But by rejecting the first — substitution — he diminishes the very gospel he seeks to proclaim. If Jesus did not bear the penalty of sin in our place, then we are still in our sins (1 Cor 15:17). If there is no propitiation (Rom 3:25), no bearing of the curse (Gal 3:13), no once-for-all sacrifice that puts away sin (Heb 9:26), then participation becomes an empty word. What are we participating in? A noble death? A moral example? An inspiring act of solidarity? These are not nothing — but they are not the gospel. The gospel is that God himself, in the person of his Son, bore the full weight of human sin and its consequences, so that all who trust in him would be forgiven, justified, reconciled, and free to walk in newness of life.

Substitution, properly understood, is not the enemy of participation. It is its foundation. The Lamb who was slain in our place is the same Lamb who invites us to follow him through death into life. These are not two different lambs, and they are not two competing stories. They are one story — the story of a God who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son (John 3:16), a Son who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal 2:20), and a Spirit who unites us to Christ so that his death becomes our death and his life becomes our life (Rom 6:3–11; 8:11).⁴⁹

As argued throughout this book — especially in Chapters 19, 20, 24, and 38 — the atonement is multi-faceted. No single model exhausts its meaning. Christus Victor, recapitulation, moral influence, satisfaction, and participation all capture genuine dimensions of what Christ accomplished. But penal substitution stands at the center, because it answers the most fundamental problem: how can a holy God forgive guilty sinners without compromising his justice? The answer is the cross — where justice and mercy meet, where the penalty is borne and the sinner is set free, where God satisfies his own righteousness by offering himself as the sacrifice.

The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He takes it away by bearing it. And because he has borne it, we are free — free to follow, free to participate, free to suffer with him, free to die daily and rise daily, free to become living sacrifices (Rom 12:1), free to love as he loved us. This is the gospel. This is the cross at the center. And nothing in Rillera's passionate and learned argument has shaken it.

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