Objection: Jesus Was Not Really PUNISHED for Our Sins; He Just Shed Blood to Atone for Them
There is actually a fairly popular body of Christian doctrine out there that teaches that Jesus’ atonement did not involve God punishing Him. The main ideas backing this seem to be (1) Jesus was innocent, and therefore God could not justly punish Him, so He had to just shed blood to make atonement for us, and (2) The punishment for a sinner is eternal, so to truly be punished in our place, Jesus would have had to suffer in hell eternally without ever rising from the dead.
One particular non-punishment theory, known as the “satisfaction theory,” holds that Jesus honored God on the cross in a way that we did not honor Him, and that God was satisfied with that, so no punishment for Him or for us was then necessary because God was satisfied with what He did.
On the other hand, the doctrine of “penal substitution” – that Jesus was punished in our place for our sins, dates back even past its famous promoters John Calvin and John Wesley. In fact, someone had already put it into print a long time before Calvin ever did. In fact, He lived a long time before JESUS! His name was Isaiah. Here’s what he said (Isaiah 53:4-6):
“Surely he hath borne our griefs [literally sicknesses], and carried our sorrows [literally pains]: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
This perhaps isn’t as clear-cut as we’d like it to be at first, because the Hebrew word for chastisement (muwcar) is actually translated instruction a lot more often than discipline, correction or chastisement in the Old Testament. The other meanings don’t fit the context as well as chastisement, but it still makes it hard to convince someone making an argument based on this word alone. If it always meant punishment, this would be a slam-dunk. One phrase, the “punishment of their iniquity” (Leviticus 26:41) is particularly problematic because the word found Isaiah 53:5 for chastisement is the word for iniquity in that verse and not the word for punishment. So if we want to make an airtight case, we should look elsewhere.
Fortunately (for us), the punishment theme continues. Isaiah 53:8: “…for the transgression of my people was he stricken.” Isaiah 53:11: “…for he shall bear their iniquities.” Isaiah 53:12: “…and he bare the sin of many…” I think these are quite clear. He bore, and was punished for, our sins.
It was clear that the onlookers would deem Jesus to be punished by God – “we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). They just wouldn’t realize that He was being punished for OUR sins, not His own, because He had never sinned.
Isaiah makes it clear that Jesus was vicariously bearing things that we deserved on our behalf. He did not just make an atonement that relieved us from having to bear sicknesses and pains. He did not just honor God so that sicknesses and pains could be relieved. He actually BORE them Himself. This only fits the “penal substitution” theory. (Isaiah’s Prophecy of Redemption expounds on this idea.)
How did Jesus atone for our sins? He was wounded. He was bruised. He was smitten. He was afflicted. He bore our sins in His own BODY (1 Peter 2:24). We are healed because He was made sick. Why did all these things have to happen to Him? If God still saw Him as sinless, He could not have punished sin that He didn’t see. Yet He did see sin when He saw Jesus. He saw OUR sin. God literally laid on Jesus the sins of us all, as Isaiah said that He would do.
This explains how God COULD justly punish Jesus even though He had no sins of His own. He “took away the sins of the world” (John 1:29) by taking them upon Himself. It was OUR sins that God punished Jesus for. So it WAS a just thing to punish Jesus. In fact, He would have been unjust NOT to punish the sins that were on Him. Jesus bore OUR sicknesses and pains, not His own. In other words, He took the physical abuse that WE had coming for OUR sins.
The idea of Jesus just making an atonement without being “made sin” turns an Old Testament symbol of Jesus into a lie. That was the serpent that Moses raised on a pole (Numbers 21:5-9). Jesus made an explicit tie between that serpent and Himself (John 3:14). If Jesus had still been in sinless perfection on the cross, a spotless lamb on a pole would symbolize Him. A serpent symbolized sin. The Passover DID symbolize Him as a spotless lamb, which emphasizes His spotless blood that was shed for us. (I believe that the point at which He BECAME sin was when He cried out to God about being forsaken when He was about to die. Until then, He BORE our sins and was punished as if He had committed them Himself. However, God was punishing Him, which means that God had not yet forsaken Him.)
Of course, if Jesus had still been in His sinless perfection on the cross until He died, 2 Corinthians 5:21’s bold statement that He was made sin would be meaningless. He couldn’t be made sin and keep His legal sinless perfection at the same time.
This takes care of the first argument in the first paragraph of this response. Now what about the second argument that Jesus would have had to suffer eternally in hell, never to rise from the dead, if He truly took the FULL punishment for our sins? We know that eternal punishment is ahead for the unrepentant sinner. Modern “annihilationists” who teach that God in His love just burns the wicked up so that they cease to exist or suffer are just plain wrong. There will be everlasting destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9) and everlasting punishment for the wicked (Matthew 25:46) where the everlasting fire (Matthew 25:41) never goes out and the worm never dies (Mark 9:44 and elsewhere). The smoke of the torment of those who worship the beast and his image will go up forever (Revelation 14:11). So how could He get out of everlasting destruction that if He had to be FULLY punished for our sins?
First, God HAD to raise Jesus from the dead because without the resurrection, we would still be in our sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). So the plan of salvation obviously could not end with Jesus being in hell forever. But that still leaves us with the question: How could God LEGALLY get Jesus out of hell when He was there paying for our sins?
The first answer is that Jesus was done paying the legal PRICE for our sins before He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30) just before He died. The Bible never says that Jesus PAID for our sins in hell. However, He had to go there because He was spiritually dead when He died on the cross. He died a sinner’s death to identify with our spiritual death so that He could be raised and we could identify with His spiritual resurrection. (We were not PHYSICALLY resurrected with immortal bodies the way Jesus was; our immortal bodies will not be ours to enjoy in this earthly lifetime.) This whole theme is covered in much more detail elsewhere.
The second answer is that while Jesus was in hell, the Spirit of God raised Him from being spiritually dead. He was no longer sin. He was righteousness again, so He did not belong in hell anymore. Our sins were no longer upon Him. Our sins would have to have been upon Him when He died spiritually, then physically and He went to hell. Without OUR sins on Him, He could not have died spiritually because He had no sins of His own.
So what happened to our sins, then? The Bible never directly addresses this, but it seems to me that legally, they had to stay in hell. They couldn’t have left hell with Jesus because Jesus didn’t have our sin on Him anymore when He was raised. Our sins stayed in the place of punishment where they rightfully belonged. Thus, they were buried in the ground and had no further claims on Jesus. And because we are “in Christ,” they have no further claims on us, either! Baptism is a symbol where WE rise but our SINS stay in the water and don’t come out of the water with us.
When we are born again, we are identified with Christ. Our sins are buried and we have been raised to life without the claims of sin on us. This is why Paul could say that we were buried with Christ and raised with Christ. We share in what happened to Him – we are legally considered to be buried with Him and then raised with Him:
Romans 6:4:
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
This “newness of life” must refer to spiritual life, as your body is still spiritually “dead.” It has not yet received eternal life. For more on this issue, see the answer to the related objection about Jesus dying spiritually.
So I hope that you can see from all this that Jesus was indeed PUNISHED for our sins. He did NOT merely shed blood for them.