Paul Pavao,
while critiquing the Roman Catholic teachings on the papacy, also warned
readers of his book, Rome’s Audacious
Claim, to avoid various Protestant churches due to serious soteriological
issues, such as their rejection of baptismal regeneration. Commenting on the penal substitutionary nature of
atonement as taught by many Protestants, Pavao wrote:
The
Atonement
Protestants often teach that Jesus paid for
our sins in the sense that he took the penalty for all sins that have ever been
done and ever will be done by mankind.
This cannot be true. The letters to the
churches in the New Testament are full of penalties for sin. These include
corruption (Gal. 6:8), death (Rom. 8:12), being worse off than before we were
saved (2 Pet. 2:20-21), and being spit out of his mouth (Rev. 3:16). Those are
not only penalties—they are severe penalties.
Jesus died not only so that past sins could
be forgiven (2 Pet. 1:9), but also to release us from slavery to sin. God has always
been willing to forgive the sins of those who turn from wickedness to
righteousness, as Ezekiel 18:20-30 and many other Old Testament passages
testify. The problem is that humans, as a whole, are incapable of continuing in
the righteousness that brings eternal life (Ezek. 18:21-22; Rom. 2:6-7). Paul
devotes two chapters of his letter to the Romans (3 and 7) to the problem, and
then says that the sacrifice of Jesus resolves the problem (Rom. 8:2-4; cf.
Gal. 6:8-9).
The penalty that Jesus took care of was our
slavery to sin. When Protestants say Jesus “paid the price, they mean that he
took away the penalties for sin. This is wrong. As we have seen, the penalties
for sin still exist, even for Christians. When the Bible says Jesus paid a
price, the price is for us. He brought us out of slavery to sin (e.g., 1 Cor.
6:20).
The words “redemption” (Eph. 1:7) and “ransom”
(Matt. 20:28) and purchase words. To redeem is to “buy back,” and to ransom is
a payment to release from captivity. The Bible is even more clear than this,
though, saying, “Do you not know that . . . you are not your own? For you have
been purchased at a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
There is a critical verse in Romans 5:19. It
says:
For just as through the disobedience of one
person the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one the many
will be made righteous.
We are not guilty of Adam’s sin. Instead, we
inherited death and slavery to sin from Adam (Rom. 5:12-14; Eph. 2:1-3). Romans
5:19 tells us that “just as” we were all made sinners by Adam, we will be made
righteous by Jesus. Adam did not give us “wrong standing” with God. He gave us
death and a propensity to sin. “Just as” Adam did this, so Jesus gave us more
than “right standing” with God. He gave us life, and a propensity to do
righteousness.
This is why the apostle John was so bold as
to say that only those who practice righteousness are righteous as Jesus is righteous
(1 Jn. 3:7). He knew that practicing righteousness is the normal behavior of someone
who has been bought with a price by Jesus.
Titus 2:11-14 is an excellent description of
the purpose of Jesus’ death.
For the grace of God has appeared, saving all
and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live
temperately, justly, devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the
appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for
himself a people as his own eager to do what is good.
Protestants often confuse grace and mercy.
Mercy is God forgiving us of our sins. Grace, God’s favor, brings us the power
of the Holy Spirit so we are no longer under the power of sin (Rom. 6:14; Gal.
5:16). Grace is the foundation of spiritual gifts as well (1 Pet. 4:10-11).
Grace means “favor,” but that favor teaches us to “reject godless ways and worldly
desires.”
This passage also teaches us that one purpose
of Jesus’s death was to have a people he owned who are eager to do what is
good.
Protestant translations, such as the New
American Standard Bible, say we are a “people for his own possession,” who are “zealous
for good deeds.”
Romans 14:9 says he died (and rose) so that
he might be Lord of the living and the dead. 2 Corinthians 5:15 says he did for
all so we would not live for ourselves any longer, but for him.
The Scriptures say that we have “redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph. 1:7). 1 Corinthians
15:3 tells us that he “died for our sins.” Neither of these statements can mean
that he paid the penalty for all sins of mankind, whether past, present, or
future. As pointed out, there are a lot of penalties for sin threatened in
letters to Christian churches.
“Forgiveness” or “remission” in the Bible is
a very interesting word. There are four Greek words that are translated with
some form of the word “forgive” in the Bible: aphesis, aphiemi, apoluo, and charizomai.
Almost any time forgiveness is associated with the death of Jesus, and every
time the word “remission” is used (at least in the King James and New King
James Versions), the Greek word is aphesis.
Aphesis has a grand history in the Old
Testament. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (called the
Septuagint or LXX), aphesis
translates the release from debts that occurred every seven years (Deut.
15:1-10), “Jubilee” (Lev. 25:10-12), and most importantly, the “scapegoat,” the
goat that was released with a red cord around its neck every year on the Day
of Atonement (Lev. 16:26). Isaiah 61:1 prophesies that the Messiah will
proclaim aphesis to the captives.
While “forgiveness” is not a wrong translation
of aphesis, it means much more than
that. Its primary meaning is “release.” Thus, the scapegoat represents the “release”
or sending away of Israel’s sins. The year of Jubilee is the “release” of land
back to its original owners, and every seven years all debts are “released.” Jesus
quotes Isaiah 61:1 in reference to himself and uses aphesis to mean the “release” of both the captive and the
oppressed.
What Jesus brought for us with his blood was aphesis (Eph. 1:7). According to Hebrews
9:22, without the shedding of blood, there is no aphesis. God shows mercy for sin even without blood, as Psalm
51:18-19 and Ezekiel 18:20-30 tell us. The release from the captivity to sin,
however, can only be bought with blood; specifically, with the blood of the
unblemished Lamb of God, Jesus. Thus, when he held up the cup and said, “This
is my blood,” he also said it was shed for the aphesis of sins (Matt. 26:28).
Jesus paid the price for us. He did not pay
the penalty of sin. This is why he can still punish sin, as he threatens to do
throughout the letters to the churches in Revelation, chapters 2 and 3. All our
previous sins are washed away in baptism (Acts 2:38; 22:16), and we are born
again, saved, put in right standing with God, and delivered from the power of
son (Rom. 6:14). We are no longer sinners (Rom. 5:19). In fact, we have escaped
the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Pet. 1:3) and are warned
not to become entangled in that corruption again (2 Pet. 2:19-21).
You can see how important and central these
things are, Jesus paid the price for “a people for his own possessions, zealous
for good deeds” (Tit. 2:14). Paul told Titus to “speak and exhort and reprove
with all authority” about these things (Tit. 2:15). (Paul Pavao, Rome's Audacious Claim: Should Every
Christian Be Subject to the Pope? [Selmer, Tenn.: Greatest Stories Ever
Told, 2019], 264-67)
