You Were Bought But Who Was Paid

# Rethinking the Cross: What If We've Misunderstood Redemption?

For fifteen hundred years, the early church understood the cross one way. Then something shifted. A new interpretation emerged during the Reformation that has shaped how millions of Christians think about salvation, God's character, and their relationship with Him. But what if this newer interpretation—penal substitutionary atonement—has created problems we've never fully addressed?

## The Theory That Changed Everything

Penal substitutionary atonement teaches that humanity deserved death as punishment for sin, and God couldn't simply forgive without exacting payment. So instead of killing us, God killed Jesus. The Father poured out His wrath on the Son so He wouldn't have to pour it out on us. It's a legal transaction: Jesus paid our debt, satisfied divine justice, and appeased God's anger.

This sounds familiar because most of us have heard some version of it since childhood. But here's the uncomfortable question: What if this framework doesn't align with how ancient Israel understood sacrifice? What if it fundamentally misrepresents God's heart?

## What the Old Testament Actually Taught

In the Old Testament sacrificial system, nothing magical happened at the moment of an animal's death. The animal wasn't a substitute dying in someone's place. Instead, the death was simply the means to access blood—and life is in the blood.

The blood was used to cleanse God's temple from the contamination of sin and death that accumulated from the people's rebellion. The blood never went on the people themselves (except in ordination or covenant ceremonies). There was no concept of substitutionary death.

Furthermore, atonement could be obtained through multiple means beyond sacrifice—including prayer, almsgiving, and repentance. Only unintentional sins could be addressed through the sacrificial system. Deliberate sins like murder, adultery, and idolatry had no sacrificial remedy.

## The Problems With Seeing God as the Punisher

When we embrace penal substitutionary atonement, we create several theological problems:

**It divides the Father and Son.** The Father becomes the angry judge demanding blood, while Jesus becomes the merciful rescuer protecting us from the Father's wrath. This puts them at odds with each other—God playing bad cop, Jesus playing good cop. The early church would have called this heresy.

**It relocates our problem to the future.** This view suggests we're fine now but will face God's wrath on judgment day. Yet Scripture consistently teaches we're walking in death *today*. We're already condemned, already under wrath, already spiritually dead. Jesus came to rescue us from a present condition, not just a future consequence.

**It undermines discipleship.** If salvation is merely believing historical facts about Jesus's death, why pursue holiness? Why die to self? Interestingly, demons believe Jesus died and rose again—yet they're not saved. Clearly, something more is required than intellectual assent to historical events.

**It eliminates true forgiveness.** If somebody must pay for every wrong, then forgiveness becomes impossible. God can't just forgive; He must exact equal retribution. This makes justice God's highest value and turns Him into a slave to His own legal system. Yet when Moses asked to see God's face, God described Himself as "merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love"—not primarily as a God of retributive justice.

**It creates fear of intimacy with God.** If God is life, and we must come to Him to receive life, but He also must punish us every time we fail, we're caught in an impossible bind. We need Him, but we're afraid of Him. This mirrors the original lie in the Garden of Eden—that God doesn't truly have our best interests at heart.

## What Jesus Actually Said on the Cross

When Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" many assume the Father turned His back because He couldn't look at sin. But Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, which every Jewish listener would have known by heart.

Psalm 22 begins with apparent abandonment but concludes with vindication and victory. It explicitly states: "He has not despised or abhorred the afflictions of the afflicted. He has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him."

Jesus wasn't declaring abandonment—He was declaring that despite appearances, God had not abandoned Him. What follows Psalm 22? Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Then Psalm 24: "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?... He who has clean hands and a pure heart."

The Father was in Jesus the whole time, working together to save humanity.

## Redemption Doesn't Always Mean Payment

We assume "redemption" means someone got paid. But redemption simply means the original owner getting back what always belonged to them.

Consider the Year of Jubilee, which Scripture calls "the year of redemption." Every fifty years, all debts were forgiven, all land returned to original owners, and all Israelites in debt slavery were freed. Who got paid? Nobody. Everything was simply released.

When God redeemed Israel from Egypt, who did He pay? Not Pharaoh. He didn't exchange money. Redemption means rescue plus ownership—"You've always been mine, and I'm bringing you back to myself."

Imagine a father who sees his child about to be hit by a car. He races into the street, pushes his child to safety, and gets hit instead. That's rescue and redemption—the father "paid" with his life to save something that belonged to him. But who got paid? Nobody. It's a way of expressing that something incredibly valuable was given to rescue someone precious.

## The Life, Not Just the Death

First Peter 1:18-19 says we were ransomed "not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish."

But here's the key: lambs were never used for sin offerings. Lambs were peace offerings, representing union and fellowship. Peter is referencing Passover and covenant, not substitutionary death. Five verses earlier, he says "gird up the loins of your mind"—direct Passover language. He's talking about covenant union, not appeasing wrath.

Hebrews 10 is even more explicit. It quotes Jesus saying to the Father: "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired... In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will.'"

Jesus didn't come to make a sin offering. He came to offer His entire life of obedience. The passage continues: "By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

Jesus's sacrifice wasn't primarily His death—it was His entire life of perfect obedience to the Father, even to the point of being tortured to death without compromising that obedience.

**Jesus didn't die the death we deserved. He lived the life we should have lived.**

## A United Godhead With One Heart

The Father, Son, and Spirit are completely united with one heart and mind toward us. They don't disagree about us. The Father doesn't hate us while Jesus protects us.

We were walking in darkness and death, and the entire Godhead—Father, Son, and Spirit—worked together to rescue us, adopt us, and give us life. The Father's idea. The Father's good pleasure. The Son's willing participation. The Spirit's empowering presence.

When we take communion, we're not remembering a payment that appeased an angry God. We're participating in covenant—in mystical union with the divine life. Jesus said, "This is my body... This is the new covenant in my blood."

He's inviting us into intimacy, into shared life, into a binding together of destinies. His problems become ours; our problems become His. His life becomes our life.

This is the gospel: not that God needed to be convinced to love us, but that He always has—and He gave everything to bring us home.

(This blog was created from Stacy Long's original sermon using pulpit.ai)