The Best and Worst of Substitutionary Atonement

A few people have sent me this clip that’s floating around of Josh Howerton explaining penal substitutionary atonement. I think because I have been critical of penal models in the past, and so they’ve sent it along asking for some thoughts.

I’ll paraphrase his story here.

There was once a king, known as both the most just and the most loving king who had ever lived. One day it became known that someone was stealing from the royal treasury. The king issued a decree. Whoever was caught would receive ten public lashes. The thefts continued. He raised the sentence eventually to forty lashes, which would have been a death sentence. But then, twist, the thief turned out to be the king’s own daughter.

Well, the king decided the sentence was just. And so the punishment stood. The daughter was brought out, the executioner raised his whip, and at the last moment the king yelled, “Stop.” He took off his own shirt, bent over, wrapped his body around his daughter’s, and said, “Now hit her.” Forty lashes with the king protecting his daughter, and eventually he died in the place of his daughter.

What we’re told, is that the king was both just, because payment for the sin was made, and loving because his daughter went free after he took the penalty.

If the story sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because versions of it have been circulating in preaching for a very long time. Sometimes it’s a chief and his son, sometimes as a story about a Viking king, sometimes he’s just known simply as "the merciful king.”

I think this clip in particular though is actually really interesting, because it demonstrates both the best and the worst parts of substitutionary models when it comes to thinking about the cross.

…continue reading on Substack.