I would like to offer the attached synopsis of the Penal Substitution Model of the atonement for consideration.

I’ve had a number of people say they found the following summary of the doctrine to be helpful, even eye-opening. At the very least it should give people here a helpful starting point for defining the penal position, regardless of whether or not they agree that my synopsis adequately portrays it. For the record, it is meant to summarize the flow of the logic, not to encompass all Scriptures or arguments given in support of the position.

Here it is. I hope this helps.

The Basic Elements of the Penal Substitution Model of the Atonement

Copyright, 2003, by Jonathan E. Tyler

* Sin is best defined as a breaking of God’s Law.

* The penalty for sin under the Law is death.

* We have all sinned, therefore we are all are under the sentence of death.

* All sins must be punished without exception; yet it doesn’t have to be the person who committed the initial transgression who is punished for it.

* God wouldn’t be just if He didn’t punish every sin.

* God wants to forgive us, but His justice gets in the way of this.

* This is because His justice demands that He punish sins.

* God cannot forgive us unless He finds some other way to punish our sins.

* Out of love for us, God gave His Son as a means of getting around this conflict in His own nature.

* Christ, by some unknown process, became guilty of our sins so as to be justly punished for them; this is what 1 Peter 2:24 means when it says that Christ bore our sins.

* God the Father poured out His angry wrath against Christ the Son, despising His sins.

* Christ’s guilt broke His fellowship with the Father who had turned His face away; this caused a temporary rift in the fellowship of the Trinity which caused Christ great pain.

* Christ paid the penalty for our sins by suffering death in our place.

* Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice; justice is God’s retributive wrath against sin.

* Because God has already punished our sins upon Jesus, He can now forgive sins, whereas before He couldn’t really forgive.

* The chief point of Christ’s resurrection was that it proved God had forgiven Christ our sins because the penalty had been paid; God raised Jesus because our sins were paid for.

* If we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus died in our place for our sins on the cross, and that God raised Him from the dead as proof of this, we shall be saved.

Jonathan Tyler

“What does not satisfy when you find it, was not the thing you were desiring.” C.S. Lewis