Chapter 11
1 Peter, the Cry of Dereliction, and the Petrine Witness to the Atonement

Introduction: Peter's Powerful Witness

Of all the New Testament witnesses to the meaning of Christ's death, the apostle Peter holds a special place. Peter was there. He walked with Jesus for roughly three years. He watched Jesus heal the sick and calm the storm. He confessed Jesus as the Messiah—and then, in one of the most painful moments in all of Scripture, he denied even knowing Jesus on the night of the crucifixion. Peter knew what it meant to fail. He knew what it meant to be forgiven. And when he sat down to write about the cross, he wrote with the urgency and tenderness of someone who had personally tasted the grace of a substitute who died in his place.

The result is that Peter's first letter contains some of the most clearly substitutionary language in the entire New Testament. In 1 Peter 2:24, we read that Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree." In 1 Peter 3:18, Peter writes that "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." And in 1 Peter 1:18–19, he tells his readers they were "ransomed... with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." These verses are not vague or ambiguous. They are direct, pointed, and deeply rooted in the sacrificial imagery of the Old Testament—especially Isaiah 53, the great Suffering Servant passage we examined in Chapter 6.

Alongside these Petrine texts, this chapter also examines one of the most haunting moments in all of Scripture: the cry of dereliction. From the cross, Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34; Matt. 27:46). This saying has puzzled and troubled Christians for two thousand years. What did Jesus mean? Was he truly abandoned by the Father? Was it just a feeling? Was it a quotation of Psalm 22 designed to point to ultimate triumph? I believe the cry reveals something profound about the depths to which Jesus went as our substitute—that he voluntarily entered the darkest consequences of human sin, including the horror of alienation from God, on our behalf. But this was not the Father pouring out rage on his Son. It was the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—acting together in love, with the Son willingly accepting the full weight of what sin does to the relationship between God and humanity.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: the Petrine witness, especially 1 Peter 2:24 and 3:18, provides some of the most explicitly substitutionary language in the New Testament, while Jesus' cry of dereliction from the cross opens a window into the deepest mystery of the atonement—the Son's voluntary experience of bearing the consequences of human sin. Together, these texts strengthen the case we have been building throughout this book: that substitutionary atonement, rightly understood within a Trinitarian framework of divine love, stands at the very center of what the cross accomplished.

1 Peter 2:24 — "He Himself Bore Our Sins in His Body on the Tree"

We begin with what is arguably the single most important verse in Peter's atonement theology. Here is the full text in its immediate context:

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:21–25, ESV)

Notice the context. Peter has been talking about how believers should respond to unjust suffering. But he does not leave us merely with an example to follow. He pivots from Christ as example to Christ as substitute. Yes, Jesus left us an example—but the heart of what Peter wants to say is not "follow his example" but rather "he bore your sins." The example is important, but the substitution is the foundation on which the example rests.

The Meaning of "Bore Our Sins" (anēnegken, ἀνήνεγκεν)

The Greek verb translated "bore" in 1 Peter 2:24 is anapherō (ἀναφέρω), used here in its aorist form anēnegken (ἀνήνεγκεν). This is a very important word. In ordinary Greek, it can mean "to carry" or "to bring up." But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, or LXX), anapherō is the standard term for offering a sacrifice on the altar.¹ When the Old Testament describes a priest bringing a burnt offering or a sin offering up onto the altar, anapherō is frequently the word used. So when Peter says Christ "bore our sins," he is using language that is saturated with sacrificial meaning. He is saying, in effect, that Jesus offered up our sins on the altar of the cross.

But the sacrificial overtone is not the only dimension. The phrase "bore our sins" (tas hamartias hēmōn anēnegken, τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν ἀνήνεγκεν) also clearly echoes the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 53. In Isaiah 53:4, we read: "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." In Isaiah 53:11: "By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities." And in Isaiah 53:12: "He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors." The Hebrew verb used in Isaiah 53 for "bearing" sin is nasa (נָשָׂא), which means "to carry" or "to bear away"—and in the context of sin, it carries the clear meaning of bearing the penalty or consequences of sin.²

John Stott argues persuasively that in Old Testament usage, "to bear sin" is not merely about sympathizing with sinners or identifying with their pain. Rather, it specifically means to endure the penal consequences of sin—to undergo its penalty. Stott traces this language through Leviticus and Numbers, where those who violate God's laws are said to "bear their iniquity," meaning they will suffer the consequences. Sometimes the penalty is spelled out explicitly: being cut off from the community, or even death.³ This matters enormously for how we read 1 Peter 2:24. Peter is not saying Jesus merely felt sad about our sin, or even that he identified with us in our pain (though both are true). He is saying Jesus carried the weight of our sins—he took on himself the consequences that rightly belonged to us.

Stott goes further by tracing the development from involuntary vicarious sin-bearing (where innocent people found themselves suffering the consequences of others' guilt, as in Lamentations 5:7) to deliberate, intended, God-provided substitution. The most striking Old Testament example is the Day of Atonement ritual described in Leviticus 16, where the high priest laid both hands on the scapegoat's head, confessed over it all the sins of the people, and then sent it into the wilderness. The goat "carried on itself all their sins to a solitary place" (Lev. 16:22). The ritual declared publicly that reconciliation with God was possible only through substitutionary sin-bearing—someone or something else carrying the burden that belonged to the guilty.^3b When Peter writes that Christ "bore our sins," he is drawing on this entire tradition. The cross is the fulfillment of everything the scapegoat and the sin offering pointed toward.

Leon Morris's classic study The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross reinforces this conclusion. Morris demonstrates that both the Hebrew nasa and the Greek anapherō carry penal connotations when used in connection with sin. The one who "bears" sin is not merely observing it or sympathizing with it—he is taking its weight upon himself, absorbing its consequences.^3c This is precisely what Peter affirms: Christ took the weight of our sin upon himself, absorbed its consequences in his own body, and thereby freed us from its penalty.

"In His Body on the Tree"

The next phrase—"in his body on the tree" (en tō sōmati autou epi to xylon, ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον)—adds two more layers of meaning. First, Peter emphasizes that this was a physical, bodily act. The atonement is not a legal fiction or an abstract theological idea. It happened in the real body of a real man on a real instrument of execution. Christ bore our sins in his body. The physical suffering of the cross was not incidental to the atonement; it was the means through which substitution was accomplished.⁴

Second, Peter uses the word "tree" (xylon, ξύλον) rather than the more common "cross" (stauros, σταυρός). This is almost certainly a deliberate allusion to Deuteronomy 21:23: "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." Paul makes the same connection in Galatians 3:13 (examined in detail in Chapter 9). By calling the cross a "tree," Peter is linking Jesus' death to the Old Testament curse that falls on one who is hung on a tree. Jesus took upon himself the curse that belonged to us. As Fleming Rutledge observes, the connection between the cross and the Deuteronomic curse is one of the most audacious claims the early Christians made: that God, in the person of his Son, voluntarily entered the place of greatest accursedness on behalf of sinners.⁵

"That We Might Die to Sin and Live to Righteousness"

Peter does not stop at describing what Jesus did. He tells us why Jesus did it. The purpose clause—"that we might die to sin and live to righteousness" (hina tais hamartiais apogenomenoi tē dikaiosynē zēsōmen)—reveals the goal of the substitution. Jesus bore our sins not simply to satisfy a legal demand (though that is real) but to transform us. The atonement is not just about getting us off the hook; it is about making us new. Christ's substitutionary death breaks the power of sin over us so that we can live a new kind of life—a life of righteousness, oriented toward God rather than toward rebellion.

This is an important point, because critics of substitutionary atonement sometimes claim that it focuses only on legal categories and neglects the transformative dimension. Peter's own words show this is a false dichotomy. For Peter, the legal reality (Christ bore our sins) and the transformative reality (we now die to sin and live to righteousness) are two sides of the same coin. They are not competing ideas. The substitution is what makes the transformation possible.⁶

"By His Wounds You Have Been Healed"

Peter finishes this magnificent verse with a direct quotation from Isaiah 53:5: "By his wounds you have been healed." The Greek word for "wounds" here is mōlōpi (μώλωπι), which refers to a welt, bruise, or wound caused by a blow—the kind of mark left by a whip. This takes us straight back to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who was "wounded for our transgressions" and "bruised for our iniquities" (Isa. 53:5). Peter is unmistakably identifying Jesus with the Suffering Servant and applying Isaiah's sacrificial, substitutionary language directly to the crucifixion.

The healing Peter has in mind is primarily spiritual rather than physical. We were "straying like sheep" (2:25, echoing Isa. 53:6), but through Christ's wounds, we have been brought back. The sickness was sin. The healer was the substitute. And the medicine was his own suffering and death.

Engaging the Counterargument: Does "Bearing" Require Penal Substitution?

At this point we should address a significant objection. William Hess, in his book Crushing the Great Serpent, argues that "bearing our sins" does not necessarily imply that sin was transferred to Jesus or that God poured out wrath on him. Hess suggests that bearing can mean "coming alongside"—that Jesus bore our sins in the sense of supporting us and carrying us through something, not in the sense of having our sins imputed to him.⁷ Hess also notes that the Greek word anapherō means "to lift up" or "to offer up," and he interprets this as Jesus offering himself up to the Father rather than receiving transferred guilt.

I appreciate Hess's concern to protect against distorted versions of penal substitution that depict the Father angrily punishing an unwilling Son. That concern is valid, and I share it (as I argue throughout this book). But I believe Hess's reading of 1 Peter 2:24 does not do justice to the full range of evidence.

Here is why. First, as we have seen, the phrase "bore our sins" echoes Isaiah 53, where the language of sin-bearing clearly carries penal connotations. The Servant "bears iniquities" in a context where he is "stricken," "smitten," and "afflicted"—language that goes far beyond mere accompaniment. He bears the consequences that belonged to others. Second, in Old Testament usage, the phrase "bear sin" or "bear iniquity" consistently refers to suffering the penalty of sin—not merely sympathizing with the sinner.⁸ Third, the immediate context of 1 Peter 2:24 makes the substitutionary dimension clear: Jesus, who "committed no sin" (2:22), bore our sins. The contrast between his innocence and our guilt only makes sense if there is a genuine exchange—the sinless one taking the place of the sinful.

That said, I want to be clear about what I am not arguing. I am not arguing that the Father sadistically punished an unwilling victim. I am arguing that the Son voluntarily took on the consequences of our sin—including its penal dimension—in an act of Trinitarian love. There is a world of difference between those two claims, and we will return to this distinction when we discuss the cry of dereliction later in this chapter.

1 Peter 3:18 — "The Righteous for the Unrighteous"

If 1 Peter 2:24 is the most richly detailed Petrine atonement text, 1 Peter 3:18 may be the most concise and powerful summary of substitutionary atonement anywhere in the New Testament. Here is the verse:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. (1 Peter 3:18, ESV)

Let us look at each element carefully.

"Christ Also Suffered Once for Sins"

The word "once" (hapax, ἅπαξ) echoes the language of Hebrews (see Chapter 10), where the finality and unrepeatable nature of Christ's sacrifice is a central theme (Heb. 7:27; 9:12, 26, 28; 10:10). Christ's death was not like the Old Testament sacrifices that had to be repeated year after year. It was a "once for all" event—sufficient, complete, and never needing to be done again. This tells us something profound about the nature of what Christ accomplished. His single act of substitution was so effective, so complete, that nothing more was needed.⁹

The phrase "for sins" (peri hamartiōn, περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν) is also significant. In the Septuagint, peri hamartias is used as a technical term for the sin offering.¹⁰ When Paul says in Romans 8:3 that God sent his Son "for sin" (peri hamartias), most scholars recognize this as a reference to the sin offering. Peter may well be making the same connection here. Christ suffered as a sin offering—the ultimate sacrifice to which all the Old Testament sin offerings pointed.

"The Righteous for the Unrighteous" (dikaios hyper adikōn, δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων)

This is the phrase that makes 1 Peter 3:18 so unmistakably substitutionary. "The righteous for the unrighteous"—dikaios hyper adikōn. The construction could hardly be more clear. An innocent person (the "righteous one") suffered in the place of guilty people (the "unrighteous"). The preposition hyper (ὑπέρ) here means "on behalf of" or "for the sake of," and when used in the context of someone dying or suffering for another, it regularly carries substitutionary meaning.¹¹

As David Allen observes, some atonement passages simply cannot be limited to a merely "representative" category. They are more accurately described as substitutionary—and 1 Peter 3:18 is a prime example. Allen notes the language directly: "Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." The innocent one dies in the place of the guilty. There is no getting around the substitutionary force of this text.¹²

Simon Gathercole's work on substitution in Paul helps us understand the broader pattern. Gathercole defines substitution as "Christ in our place"—and this is exactly what 1 Peter 3:18 describes. Though Gathercole's study focuses on Paul, the Petrine usage fits the same pattern perfectly: the righteous one stands where the unrighteous should stand, suffering what the unrighteous should suffer.¹³

"That He Might Bring Us to God"

The purpose of the substitution is stated with beautiful simplicity: "that he might bring us to God" (hina humas prosagagē tō theō, ἵνα ὑμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῷ θεῷ). The Greek verb prosagō (προσάγω) means "to lead to" or "to bring into the presence of." In the Old Testament world, this language would have resonated with the idea of being brought into the presence of a king—or, more significantly, being brought into the presence of God in the temple.¹⁴

Sin creates a barrier between us and God. We saw this in Chapter 3 when we explored the holiness of God and the problem of sin. Because God is perfectly holy and we are not, we cannot simply waltz into God's presence as though nothing were wrong. Something must be done to bridge the gap, to remove the barrier, to deal with the sin that separates us from our Creator. And this, Peter says, is exactly what Christ did. He suffered—the righteous for the unrighteous—so that he could bring us to God. The substitution is not an end in itself. It serves a relational purpose: reconciliation, access, restoration of the broken relationship between God and humanity.

This is a crucial insight. The atonement is not merely a legal transaction. It is profoundly relational. The goal is not just to balance the cosmic books but to bring people home to God. And yet the relational goal is achieved through the substitutionary means. Peter does not set substitution against reconciliation. The substitution is the means of reconciliation.

Engaging the Counterargument: Is This Only Representation?

Hess argues that in 1 Peter 3:18, Christ died "for" our sins to bring us to God—not to transfer our sins to Jesus or to satisfy God's wrath. He writes that in a classical model, Christ died as a representative, not as a vicarious punishment.¹⁵ I understand what Hess is trying to protect against. He does not want us to picture an angry Father punishing a helpless Son. Neither do I. But I think his reading misses the force of the text.

The phrase "the righteous for the unrighteous" is not merely representational. A representative acts on behalf of a group, but a substitute takes the place of another and bears what that person would otherwise have to bear. When the text says that the righteous one suffered for sins—not for his own, since he is righteous, but for ours, since we are unrighteous—the logic is clearly substitutionary. He took what was ours. He stood where we should have stood. The contrast between "righteous" and "unrighteous" only works if there is a genuine exchange: his righteousness in our place, our consequences on his shoulders.

As Allen correctly notes, you can have representation without substitution, but you cannot have substitution without representation. In the atonement, both are present—but the substitutionary dimension is the deeper reality.¹⁶

1 Peter 1:18–19 — Ransomed by Precious Blood

The third major atonement text in 1 Peter appears earlier in the letter:

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:18–19, ESV)

Here Peter combines two powerful images: ransom and sacrifice.

The Ransom Image

The word "ransomed" (elytrōthēte, ἐλυτρώθητε) comes from the verb lytroō (λυτρόω), which means "to redeem" or "to set free by paying a ransom price." As we discussed in Chapter 2, the biblical concept of redemption is rooted in the idea of liberation through payment. In the Old Testament, a slave could be freed if a ransom price was paid. The firstborn of Israel belonged to God but could be "redeemed" through a substitute (Exod. 13:13–15). The kinsman-redeemer (go'el, גֹּאֵל) could buy back a relative's land or freedom (Ruth 4:1–12).¹⁷

Peter makes a startling contrast. We were ransomed—but not with the kind of currency you might expect. Not with silver or gold, which are perishable and temporary. We were ransomed with something infinitely more valuable: "the precious blood of Christ." The ransom price was not a thing but a person—the very life of the Son of God, poured out in sacrificial death.

The Lamb Imagery

Peter describes Christ as "a lamb without blemish or spot" (amnou amōmou kai aspilou, ἀμνοῦ ἀμώμου καὶ ἀσπίλου). This imagery draws on at least two Old Testament backgrounds. First, it echoes the Passover lamb of Exodus 12, which had to be "without blemish" (Exod. 12:5). The Passover lamb was slain so that Israel could be delivered from the destroying angel—its blood on the doorposts was the sign of God's protection and salvation. Second, the lamb imagery recalls Isaiah 53:7, where the Suffering Servant is described as "a lamb that is led to the slaughter." As Rutledge notes, the connection between the Passover lamb and the Suffering Servant lamb is almost certainly behind Peter's language in 1 Peter 2:23–24, where Jesus is portrayed as the silent, innocent one who "bore our sins."¹⁸

Allen notes that Peter's use of "redeemed" followed by the phrase "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" may combine the idea of the Passover sacrificial lamb with the ransom statement of Mark 10:45, where Jesus declares that the Son of Man came "to give his life as a ransom for many."¹⁹ This is significant because it shows how the early church naturally wove together multiple atonement images—ransom, sacrifice, substitution, Passover—into a unified understanding of what Christ accomplished.

The "without blemish or spot" language is also important theologically. Only a perfect sacrifice could atone for sin. A blemished lamb was rejected under the Old Testament sacrificial system. Christ's sinlessness—his moral perfection, his complete freedom from any stain of guilt—is what qualifies him to be the substitute. This is exactly what Peter emphasized in 2:22: "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth." The sinless one can take the place of the sinful precisely because he has no sins of his own to answer for.²⁰

The Broader Petrine Context: Suffering, Substitution, and Hope

Before we turn to the cry of dereliction, it is worth pausing to consider the broader context of 1 Peter and how the theme of atonement functions within it. First Peter was written to Christians who were suffering. They were facing hostility, social exclusion, and possibly even persecution for their faith (1 Pet. 1:6–7; 2:12, 19–20; 3:14–17; 4:12–19). Peter's message to them is not "try harder" or "just hang in there." His message is: look at what Christ did for you.

This pastoral context shapes Peter's atonement theology in important ways. For Peter, the cross is not an abstract doctrine to be debated in lecture halls. It is the foundation of hope for suffering people. When Peter says "Christ also suffered for you" (2:21) and "the righteous for the unrighteous" (3:18), he is speaking to people who know what suffering feels like. And his point is this: your suffering is real, but Christ's suffering was for you. He suffered in your place. He bore your sins. And because he did, you have a living hope (1:3), an inheritance that cannot be destroyed (1:4), and a future that nothing can take away.

Joel Green identifies several atonement themes in 1 Peter, including Christ as an example of innocent suffering, Christ as a model of effective suffering, and Christ as the vindicated suffering righteous one.²¹ Green is right that these themes are present. But we should note that Peter always grounds the example in the substitution. It is precisely because Christ bore our sins (2:24) that his example has power. A mere moral example—even a heroic one—cannot save. Only a substitute who bears the consequences of our sin can do that.

We should also note that Peter's theology includes a strong emphasis on the foreknowledge and plan of God. Christ was "foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1:20) as the lamb whose blood would ransom sinners. The cross was not Plan B. It was not an accident that God scrambled to turn to his advantage. It was the eternal plan of the Triune God—decreed before creation, accomplished in history, and applied by the Spirit to every believer who trusts in Christ.

Other atonement-related language appears throughout 1 Peter that we should not overlook. At the very opening of the letter, Peter addresses his readers as those who are chosen "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood" (1 Pet. 1:2). The phrase "sprinkling with his blood" (rhantismon haimatos, ῥαντισμὸν αἵματος) is covenant language. It recalls Moses sprinkling the blood of the covenant on the people at Sinai (Exod. 24:8) and the sprinkling of sacrificial blood in the Levitical system. Allen notes that Peter's reference to "the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" likely has in mind the idea of the covenant with its sacrificial implications.²² From the very first verse of the letter, Peter frames the entire Christian life within the context of Christ's atoning blood.

We should also briefly note 2 Peter 2:1, which provides an important data point for the universal scope of the atonement. Peter warns of false teachers "who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them." The word "bought" (agorazō, ἀγοράζω) is marketplace language—it describes a purchase. Peter is saying that Christ's atoning work was effective even for those who ultimately reject him. This text will be discussed more fully in Chapter 30 (on the universal scope of the atonement), but it is worth noting here because it shows that Peter's atonement theology includes a universal dimension: Christ died for all people, not merely for the elect.²³

Finally, Peter's use of the word "suffered" (epathen, ἔπαθεν) deserves comment. Peter does not typically say that Christ "died" for our sins (though he implies it). He says Christ "suffered" for us (2:21; 3:18; 4:1). This emphasis on suffering is significant. It reminds us that the atonement involved not just the moment of physical death but the entire experience of the cross—the physical pain, the shame, the mockery, the spiritual agony, and (as we will see) the experience of dereliction. The suffering was the means through which the substitution was accomplished. Peter wants us to understand that Christ's saving work was costly—not a painless legal transaction but a real entry into the depths of human suffering and the consequences of human sin.

The Cry of Dereliction: "My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

We now turn to one of the most difficult and most important passages for understanding the atonement: the cry of dereliction.

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34, ESV; cf. Matt. 27:46)

This is the only saying from the cross recorded by both Mark and Matthew. That double attestation tells us something about how important the early church considered it. It is also the only saying from the cross in which Jesus addresses God not as "Father" but as "my God"—a shift that many scholars consider deeply significant.²²

Let me be honest: this is one of the most mysterious and overwhelming moments in all of Scripture. The Son of God—the second person of the Trinity, who had enjoyed perfect communion with the Father from all eternity—cries out from the cross that he has been forsaken. What are we to make of this? Theologians have wrestled with this question for centuries, and I do not think any human mind can fully plumb its depths. But we can carefully examine the major interpretations and draw some conclusions.

Four Interpretations of the Cry

Stott helpfully surveys four major interpretations of the cry of dereliction. Let me walk through each one.²³

First: A cry of anger, unbelief, or despair. On this view, Jesus had hoped that the Father would rescue him at the last moment, or at least sustain him with a sense of his presence. When neither happened, Jesus cried out in dismay—perhaps even defiance. His faith failed him. But as Stott rightly notes, this interpretation effectively accuses Jesus of moral failure at the very moment of his greatest sacrifice. It denies the sinless perfection of Christ, implying that he was guilty of unbelief on the cross. Christian faith protests against such a reading. If Jesus sinned in his final hours, the entire foundation of the atonement collapses, because only a sinless substitute can bear the sins of others.²⁴

Second: A cry of loneliness—the "dark night of the soul." This view is a modification of the first. Jesus knew God's promises never to forsake his people (Josh. 1:5; Isa. 41:10). He did not lose faith. But he felt forsaken—he experienced what the great mystics have called "the dark night of the soul," a profound sense of God's absence even when God is truly present. On this view, the separation was subjective (felt) rather than objective (real). Stott acknowledges this is a possible interpretation and that it does not cast a slur on Christ's character. However, he finds an obstacle in the text itself: the words of Psalm 22:1, which Jesus is quoting, express an experience of being, not merely feeling, forsaken by God.²⁵

Third: A cry of victory. This is a popular interpretation, and it is the one Hess favors. The argument goes like this: Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1, but he intended to evoke the entire Psalm—which begins in agony but ends in triumph. Psalm 22 concludes with confidence and praise: "He has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help" (Ps. 22:24). On this reading, Jesus was not expressing abandonment but was pointing to his coming vindication. Hess calls this a remez—a rabbinic technique of quoting the beginning of a passage to invoke its entirety.²⁶

There is genuine insight here. I do believe Psalm 22 as a whole was on Jesus' mind, and I do believe the Psalm's trajectory from suffering to vindication was part of the picture. But Stott's objection is telling: "Why should Jesus have quoted from the Psalm's beginning if in reality he was alluding to its end? It would seem rather perverse."²⁷ If Jesus wanted to express triumph, he could have quoted from the triumphant ending of the Psalm. Instead, he quoted the agonizing opening—the verse that cries out, "Why have you forsaken me?" We should take those words seriously rather than explaining them away.

Fourth: A cry of real dereliction. This is the interpretation I find most compelling, and it is the one held by Stott, Rutledge, Calvin, and many of the greatest theologians in church history. On this reading, we take Jesus' words at face value. Something genuinely awful happened on the cross—something that went beyond physical pain, beyond emotional anguish, to the very core of Jesus' relationship with the Father. In bearing the consequences of human sin, Jesus experienced a real (though mysterious) dimension of separation from the Father.²⁸

Stott approvingly quotes R. W. Dale: "I decline to accept any explanation of these words which implies that they do not represent the actual truth of our Lord's position." And he cites Calvin, who wrote that if Christ "had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual." For the atonement to address not merely physical death but the spiritual death that is the ultimate consequence of sin, Christ had to enter into the full horror of what sin does—including its most terrible consequence: alienation from God.²⁹

The Dereliction and the Atonement: What Was Happening on the Cross?

If the cry of dereliction represents a genuine experience, then what exactly was happening? Let me suggest several things.

First, Jesus was experiencing the consequences of sin—our sin. Throughout this book, we have argued that the core of substitutionary atonement is this: Christ took our place and bore what we should have borne. The ultimate consequence of sin is not merely physical death but spiritual death—separation from God (Isa. 59:2; Rom. 6:23; Eph. 2:1, 12). If Jesus truly bore the full consequences of sin as our substitute, then it makes sense that he would experience, in some genuine way, the horror of that spiritual separation. The cry of dereliction is, on this view, the moment when the sin-bearing reaches its deepest and most terrible point.

Second, this was voluntary. Jesus was not a passive victim dragged to the cross against his will. He had said plainly, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18). Whatever happened in those three hours of darkness, Jesus entered into it freely and deliberately—out of love for us. Stott emphasizes this with great force: we must never speak of the Father punishing the Son against his will, or of the Son persuading a reluctant Father. Both Father and Son acted together in the same holy love that made the atonement necessary.³⁰

Third—and this is critically important—the dereliction was not the Father "pouring out wrath" on the Son in the way that some popular presentations describe. The Father did not turn away from the Son in disgust or rage. Rather, as I have argued throughout this book, the Triune God acted in unified love at the cross. The Father did not hate the Son on Calvary. He loved him. But within that unified Trinitarian love, the Son voluntarily entered into the darkest place that sin creates—the place where God seems absent, where the light goes out, where the soul cries out and hears only silence. He did this for us. He did this in our place. And he did it in concert with the Father and the Spirit.

Rutledge captures this beautifully in her discussion of the "godlessness" of the cross. She notes that the cry of dereliction is the only saying from the cross reported by two Evangelists, which signals its supreme importance. For Rutledge, the crucial point is that "God, in the person of his sinless Son, put himself voluntarily and deliberately into the condition of greatest accursedness—on our behalf and in our place."³¹ Rutledge emphasizes the Trinitarian dimension: the Son and the Father are doing this "in concert, by the power of the Spirit." The interposition of the Son between humanity and the consequences of sin is "a project of the three persons."³²

Philippe de la Trinité, writing from a Roman Catholic Thomistic perspective, makes a similar point. He rejects any formulation that pits the Father against the Son, or that depicts the Father's wrath being poured out on Christ as though on a punishing ground. For Philippe de la Trinité, Christ is the "victim of love"—he goes to the cross in union with the Father, through obedience, as a loving sacrifice. The cross is not the triumph of wrath but the triumph of mercy.³³ I believe this is exactly right and is fully compatible with the genuine reality of the dereliction. Christ really did enter the darkness. But it was love, not rage, that sent him there.

The Paradox: Real Dereliction and Unbroken Trinity

How can we hold these two truths together? On one hand, the dereliction was real—Jesus genuinely experienced the horror of bearing the consequences of human sin, including the estrangement from God that sin creates. On the other hand, the Trinity cannot be broken. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. They share the same divine essence. An ontological rupture within the Godhead is a theological impossibility.

Charles Cranfield captures the paradox well. Stott quotes Cranfield as emphasizing both that Jesus experienced "not merely a felt, but a real, abandonment by his Father" and that "the unity of the Blessed Trinity was even then unbroken."³⁴ These two statements seem contradictory. How can there be real abandonment and unbroken unity at the same time?

I think the answer lies in the distinction between ontological reality and experiential reality. Ontologically—at the level of being, nature, and essence—the Trinity was never broken. The Son did not cease to be the Son. The Father did not stop being the Father. Their shared divine nature remained intact. But experientially—at the level of what the incarnate Son underwent in his human nature as he bore the weight of human sin—there was a genuine, horrifying experience of the absence of God. This was not pretend. It was not play-acting. It was a real entry into the darkness that sin creates, willingly undertaken by the Son in his human nature, within the eternal bond of Trinitarian love.

Thomas McCall's careful philosophical work on this topic is helpful. McCall argues in Forsaken that we must take the dereliction seriously without allowing it to fracture our Trinitarian theology. The cry was real, but it was the cry of the incarnate Son—the God-man—experiencing in his humanity the full weight of what sin does to the human relationship with God.³⁵

Hess raises legitimate questions about the coherence of the traditional view: "Can God separate Himself from Himself? If Jesus is separated from the Father, then how is Jesus even a deity anymore?"³⁶ These are fair questions, and they deserve a fair answer. The answer is: no, God cannot separate from himself, and the Son never ceased to be divine. But the incarnate Son—true God and true man—could and did experience in his human nature the consequences of the sin he was bearing. Just as we do not say the divine nature of Christ was hungry when Jesus fasted in the wilderness (even though the person of Christ truly experienced hunger), so we can say that the divine nature was not ontologically severed from the Father when Christ cried out in dereliction—even though the person of Christ genuinely experienced the horror of that separation in his humanity. The mystery of the incarnation is the key to understanding the mystery of the dereliction.

The Darkness Over the Land

We should not pass over the remarkable detail that, according to all three Synoptic Gospels, darkness covered the land for three hours before the cry of dereliction (Mark 15:33; Matt. 27:45; Luke 23:44–45). This was not merely a weather event. In biblical symbolism, darkness is associated with judgment, the absence of God, and cosmic disruption. When God judged Egypt, one of the plagues was three days of darkness "that could be felt" (Exod. 10:21–22). The prophets used darkness as an image of the Day of the Lord—the day of God's judgment: "Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:20; cf. Joel 2:2, 31; Zeph. 1:15).

The three hours of darkness over the land during the crucifixion signal that something of cosmic significance was happening. This was not merely a man dying—it was the moment when the sin of the world was being dealt with. The darkness tells us that the cross was a judgment event—not God's judgment on an innocent victim in anger, but the moment when God, in the person of his Son, entered the darkness of sin's consequences to defeat sin, death, and the powers of evil from the inside. The darkness is the backdrop for the substitution. When the darkness lifts and Jesus cries out "It is finished" (John 19:30), the work is complete. The price has been paid. The substitute has done his work.³⁷

Connecting the Petrine Texts and the Cry of Dereliction

At this point, we can step back and see how the Petrine atonement texts and the cry of dereliction illuminate each other.

In 1 Peter 2:24, Peter tells us that Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree." The cry of dereliction shows us what that sin-bearing looked like at its most intense. It was not a calm, detached legal transaction. It was agony—physical, emotional, and spiritual agony. Jesus bore our sins, and the weight of those sins pressed him into the darkness where God seemed absent. The sin-bearing language of 1 Peter 2:24 finds its most vivid illustration in the cry of Mark 15:34.

In 1 Peter 3:18, Peter tells us that "the righteous" suffered "for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." The cry of dereliction shows us the cost of that substitution. The righteous one—the one who had never known sin, who had enjoyed unbroken fellowship with the Father—entered the place of utmost unrighteousness. He entered the darkness where sinners dwell so that sinners could be brought into the light where God dwells. The exchange is staggering. He took our darkness so that we could have his light. He experienced separation so that we could have access. He was forsaken so that we would never be.

And in 1 Peter 1:18–19, Peter tells us we were "ransomed with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish." The cry of dereliction shows us just how precious that blood was—how much it cost. The ransom price was not just physical suffering, but the willing entry of the sinless Son of God into the full experience of what sin does, including its darkest consequence. The blood was precious because the one who shed it was precious, and the sacrifice was total because the love behind it was total.

The Petrine Witness and the Broader New Testament

The Petrine atonement theology we have examined in this chapter does not stand alone. It confirms and reinforces what we have seen throughout the New Testament exegesis section of this book. Isaiah 53 forms the background (Chapter 6). Jesus' own understanding of his death as a ransom "for many" (Mark 10:45) sets the stage (Chapter 7). Paul's statements in Romans 3:21–26 (Chapter 8), 2 Corinthians 5:21, and Galatians 3:13 (Chapter 9) develop the substitutionary theme in detail. The Epistle to the Hebrews shows how Christ's sacrifice fulfills and surpasses the Old Testament sacrificial system (Chapter 10). And now Peter, writing from the standpoint of an eyewitness who personally denied Jesus and was personally forgiven by him, adds his own powerful testimony: Christ bore our sins. The righteous one suffered for the unrighteous. We are ransomed by his blood.

The cumulative weight of this evidence is enormous. Substitutionary atonement is not a theory invented by medieval theologians or Reformation polemicists. It is woven into the very fabric of the New Testament, expressed by multiple authors, in multiple genres, using multiple images—all of which converge on the same central reality: Christ in our place, bearing what we should have borne, so that we could receive what we could never earn.

Answering Additional Objections

Objection: Peter Emphasizes Example, Not Substitution

Some scholars have argued that the primary purpose of Peter's atonement language is ethical—that Peter wants to hold up Christ as a moral example for suffering believers, and that the substitutionary language is secondary to the ethical purpose. After all, the immediate context of 1 Peter 2:21–25 is a discussion of how Christians should respond to unjust suffering, and Peter explicitly says Christ left us "an example, so that you might follow in his steps" (2:21).

There is a grain of truth in this observation—Peter does indeed use the cross as a moral example. But it is a serious mistake to reduce Peter's atonement theology to mere example. The movement of the passage is from example to substitution, not the other way around. Peter begins with Christ as example (2:21–23) and then pivots to Christ as substitute (2:24–25). The example flows from the substitution, not vice versa. We can follow in Christ's footsteps precisely because he has already borne our sins. The exemplary and the substitutionary dimensions are not in competition—but substitution is the foundation on which the example stands.³⁸

Objection: The Dereliction Proves God Did Not Punish Jesus

Hess and others argue that the cry of dereliction actually undermines penal substitutionary atonement. If the Son cries out asking why he has been forsaken, doesn't that suggest he didn't know? And if God truly planned to pour out wrath on Jesus, wouldn't Jesus have expected it rather than asking why?³⁹

This is a fair question. But I think it confuses two things. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1, which is in the form of a question. As Stott observes, the cry was in the form of a question "not because he did not know its answer but only because the Old Testament text itself (which he was quoting) was in that form."⁴⁰ Moreover, I have been careful throughout this chapter to argue not that the Father "poured out wrath" on the Son (a formulation I find problematic), but rather that the Son voluntarily entered into the consequences of sin—including the experience of God's absence—on our behalf. The cry of dereliction is consistent with this: it shows us the Son in the depths of his sin-bearing experience, feeling the full weight of what he has voluntarily taken on. It is not a cry of surprised confusion but a cry from the depths of an agony he willingly embraced.

Objection: A Good Father Would Never Forsake His Son

This objection is emotional rather than exegetical, but it deserves a response because it is deeply felt by many people. Surely a loving Father would never abandon his child? And if God did forsake Jesus, doesn't that make God cruel?

We must be very careful here. As I have argued, what happened at the cross was not the Father abandoning the Son in cruelty or hatred. It was the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—acting together in love to deal with sin. The Father did not "walk away" from the Son. Rather, in the mystery of the atonement, the Son voluntarily entered the place of greatest darkness—the place where sin takes you—so that no one who trusts in him would ever have to go there. The Father was present in love even in the dereliction. As Paul writes, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). The cross is not evidence of a cruel Father. It is evidence of a love so deep, so costly, and so radical that it is willing to enter the darkness itself to bring us home.⁴¹

Philippe de la Trinité puts it powerfully: the cross reveals not the anger of the Father but the love of the entire Trinity. Christ is the "victim of love"—not the victim of divine wrath. He goes to the cross in union with the Father, through the Spirit, as a willing and loving sacrifice.⁴² This is not cosmic child abuse. It is divine self-giving.

The Cry of Dereliction and the Psalms of Lament

Before we close our discussion of the cry, it is worth noting that Jesus' quotation of Psalm 22 places his suffering within a rich tradition of biblical lament. The Psalms of lament are not expressions of unbelief—they are expressions of faith in crisis. The psalmist cries out to God precisely because he trusts that God is there, even when it doesn't feel like it. "My God, my God" is itself an affirmation of relationship—even in the midst of felt abandonment, Jesus still addresses God as "my God." He does not say "God has forsaken me." He asks why—which means he still believes there is a "my God" to answer the question.

This lament tradition runs deep in Israel's Scripture. Psalm 13 asks, "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?" Psalm 44 complains, "Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression?" Psalm 88—the darkest of all the Psalms—ends in unresolved darkness: "You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness." The lament psalms teach us that honest anguish before God is not a failure of faith; it is an expression of faith. Jesus, by quoting Psalm 22 from the cross, places his suffering squarely within this tradition. He is not cursing God. He is not giving up. He is praying the prayer of the suffering righteous one—the one who trusts God even when God seems impossibly far away.

At the same time, I think the truth is richer than any single interpretation captures. Yes, Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, and yes, the full Psalm moves from agony to triumph—so there is a note of hope embedded in the cry. But the agony is real, not just theatrical. And the agony has specifically to do with sin-bearing—with the Son of God entering into the place of utmost darkness on behalf of those he loves. The cry of dereliction is simultaneously a cry of genuine suffering, a prayer of faith in darkness, a fulfillment of prophetic Scripture, and the deepest expression of substitutionary love the world has ever known.

What makes Jesus' lament unique is not its form but its cause. The psalmists cried out because of persecution, illness, or personal distress. Jesus cried out because he was bearing the sins of the world. The distance between God and the psalmist was caused by the psalmist's own situation—suffering that raised the question of God's presence. The distance between God and Jesus was caused by our sin—sin that Jesus had voluntarily taken upon himself. This is the substitutionary dimension of the dereliction: Jesus entered the God-forsakenness that we deserved, so that we would never have to experience it ourselves. As Paul would say, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). The substitute has already been to the place of condemnation—and come through it.

The Resurrection as Vindication

We would be remiss if we ended this chapter in the darkness without pointing to the light. Peter himself does not leave us at the cross. In 1 Peter 3:18, after stating that Christ was "put to death in the flesh," he immediately adds: "but made alive in the spirit." The resurrection is the Father's vindication of the Son. It is the answer to the cry of dereliction. The silence of Holy Saturday gives way to the shout of Easter morning.

The resurrection tells us that the sin-bearing was successful. The substitute's work was accepted. Death could not hold the one who bore its power on behalf of others. As Peter proclaims in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:24: "God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it." The one who entered the darkness for us came through the darkness and emerged on the other side, alive forevermore. The dereliction was real—but it was not the last word. The last word is resurrection, vindication, and life.

This is crucial for understanding how substitution and victory work together. The cross, viewed from one angle, is the moment of substitution—Christ bearing our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous. Viewed from another angle, it is the moment of battle—Christ entering the domain of sin, death, and the powers of darkness (as we will explore in greater depth in Chapter 21 on Christus Victor). And the resurrection is the moment when the victory is revealed. The substitute did not remain in the grave. He conquered. He broke the power of death by dying and rising again. As Gustaf Aulén argued in his classic study Christus Victor, the cross and resurrection together form a single drama of divine victory over the hostile powers.⁴³ I agree with Aulén that the victory theme is genuine and important. Where I differ from Aulén (as I have argued throughout this book) is in insisting that the substitutionary dimension is the foundation on which the victory rests. Christ conquers sin and death precisely by bearing sin and dying in our place. Victory and substitution are not competitors—they are partners.

This is why Peter can write with such confidence to suffering believers. He has seen the whole story—the suffering and the glory that follows (1 Pet. 1:11). He knows that the same pattern that shaped Christ's life will shape ours: suffering first, then glory. The cross and the empty tomb are inseparable. And both are necessary for a complete understanding of what God accomplished for us in Christ.

Conclusion: The Depth and Beauty of the Petrine Witness

This chapter has examined the Petrine atonement texts—1 Peter 2:24, 3:18, and 1:18–19—alongside the cry of dereliction in Mark 15:34. What we have found is a rich, multi-layered witness to the substitutionary heart of the atonement.

Peter tells us that Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree (2:24)—using sacrificial and sin-bearing language drawn directly from Isaiah 53. He tells us that the righteous one suffered for the unrighteous to bring us to God (3:18)—a statement so clearly substitutionary that it can hardly be read any other way. He tells us we were ransomed with the precious blood of Christ, a spotless lamb (1:18–19)—combining ransom and sacrifice into a single, glorious image of redemption. And the cry of dereliction opens a window into the deepest mystery of the atonement: the Son of God voluntarily entering the full consequences of human sin, including the darkness of separation from God, so that we would never have to experience that separation ourselves.

Throughout, we have engaged with counterarguments fairly. We have acknowledged Hess's legitimate concerns about depictions of PSA that pit the Father against the Son. We have agreed that the Trinity was not "torn apart" at the cross. We have rejected any formulation that makes the Father an angry tyrant and the Son a helpless victim. But we have also argued—on the basis of the Greek text, the Old Testament background, and the broader New Testament witness—that the substitutionary dimension of these texts is clear, robust, and central to Peter's message.

The Petrine witness, when added to the evidence we have examined in previous chapters—Isaiah 53, Jesus' self-understanding of his death, Paul's statements in Romans, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, and the Epistle to the Hebrews—further strengthens the case that substitutionary atonement is not a marginal theory tacked onto the New Testament but the beating heart of its message. Christ in our place. The righteous for the unrighteous. The lamb without blemish, slain for the sins of the world. This is the gospel Peter preached, the gospel he wrote about, and the gospel that gave him hope in the face of suffering. It is the gospel that gives us hope too.

In the next chapter, we will turn to the Johannine witness—the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the book of Revelation—to see how John adds further dimensions to the New Testament's atonement theology, including the image of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2), and the Lamb standing as though slain in the heavenly throne room (Rev. 5:6). The New Testament witness to substitutionary atonement is deep, wide, and remarkably consistent across its diverse authors—and we have only begun to see its full scope.