"Yet it was the Will of the Lord"

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” (Isaiah 53:10 ESV)

Today, I am probably going to ruffle some feathers. God called Isaiah as His prophet. In doing so, Isaiah wrote several messiah prophecies, all of which Christ fulfilled. Yet despite God’s completed and successful plan of redemption, the Father is maligned for saving humanity from their sin, being called a “cosmic child abuser,” a “violent” God, and that the doctrine of penal substitution is unjust.

Did God the Father crush Jesus, His son? Yes, He did. Did it please God to do so? Yes, it did. Did Jesus go to the cross willingly? Yes, He did. While many look at the idea of penal substitution as horrid, it was the only way that God could save His elect from an eternity in hell. 

Penal Substitutionary Atonement is not a new doctrine. It has been around since the time of Christ, and He spoke of it Himself. In Matthew 20:28, Jesus said, “even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Paul said, in what I believe is one of, if not the most important, verses on salvation, Romans 3:23-26, that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” A propitiation, Christ's sacrifice was the act that satisfied God's wrath against sin, which is His divine anger and judgment towards sin, and allowed us, by faith, to be made righteous before God. Jesus was able to do this through His union of love with humanity.

Jonathan Edwards wrote about this union of love and the imputation of atonement. William Lane Craig has a clear understanding of imputation when he says, “although Christ did not himself commit the sins in question, God chose to treat Christ as if he had done those acts.” [1] But it was Edwards who wrote, “Now the foundation of the propriety of this imputation… seems to lie in these two things: in Christ’s union with God, and his union with men. It would not be proper that the righteousness of any person should be accepted by God for another, but a person that was one with God; nor would it be proper that it should be accepted for any person, but only a person that he is one with.” [2]

“It was but fair, and what justice required, that seeing Christ would so unite himself by love to sinners that had deserved wrath, that they might be partakers of the Father’s love to him, and so they be screened and sheltered, that he himself should receive the Father’s wrath to them. That love of Christ which united him to sinners, assumed their guilt upon himself.”[3]

The plan of the redemption of humanity was not one of violence. It was perpetrated by violent men who carried out the completion of the greatest act of love ever seen. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “the infinite love of the Father to the Son is thereby manifested, in that for his [the Son’s] sake he would forgive an infinite debt, would be reconciled with and receive into his favor and to his enjoyment those who had rebelled against him and injured his infinite majesty.” [4] I have no doubt Edwards saw this in John 3:16,  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Father loved the Son so much that He sent Him to pay an eternal debt, a debt of sin that could only be paid by a human, knowing full well He would raise Him to life and welcome Him back home to be seated at the Father’s right hand.

I think about the day of that crucifixion, and how the sky darkened and the wind blew. Perhaps it was creation itself that mourned, knowing the eternal love between the Father and the Son would be briefly snuffed out. It is just something often pondered, knowing that the most righteous was, at the time, dying for the unrighteous.

I do know that Christ died for me, just as he died for you. I know that if you were the only one standing, weeping before the cross, or on your knees now asking for forgiveness, He would have died for you alone. That is the depth of the love God has for you. That one God/Man would carry the tremendous weight of the cross so that you could receive salvation. We have an amazing God, do we not?

Do you know the saving power of Jesus Christ? If not, yell out to Him today and ask Him to save you from your sins. Come to know the love of the Father through the grace of the Son.

Grace and Peace.

[1 William Lane Craig, as cited by Chris Woznicki, TGC, The Atonement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 61–2.

[2] Jonathan Edwards,as cited by Chris Woznicki, TGC, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 14: Sermons and Discourses: 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 401.

[3] WJE 13:526

[4] Jonathan Edwards, as cited by Chris Woznicki, TGC, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 13: The “Miscellanies,” Entry Nos. a-z, aa-zz,1-500, ed. Thomas Schafer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 406. Misc. 327(a).