At the center of the Christian faith hangs a bloody, broken man. Beaten, humiliated, scourged and put to death in one of the most barbaric, cruel punishments devised by men. It’s one of the things that makes the Christian faith so distasteful to unbelievers. But, if people find that hard to swallow, then Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is in another despised category on its own. What is PSA and why is it so controversial?
The doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.
PSA is based on the belief that God is simultaneously loving and holy. Because he is holy, he hates sin and must punish it justly. Because he is love, he is not willing that any should perish. Therefore, in Jesus, God becomes man. He lived among us perfectly and sinlessly. He then dies a death on our behalf. In doing so, He received the full, terrible wrath of God that was our due. This is how Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to
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