That Jesus died for our sins is the most common, and perhaps most basic, statement of the Christian gospel. The Apostle Paul described his evangelistic proclamation in much the same way: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).
Behind Paul’s concise statement stands a robust theology (in accordance with the Scriptures) which includes, among others, the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). This article will not seek to articulate that doctrine. Rather, it will consider the role of explaining PSA in our evangelism as we seek to make sense of the bloody cross, the vanguard of our Christian gospel.
PATTERNS IN APOSTOLIC EVANGELISM
When considering the priority of Jesus’s death for sin in evangelism, we must acknowledge at the outset both complexity and tension in the biblical record. The epistles, which provide the best defense of penal substitution, are not necessarily a representative sample of early Christian evangelism. They’re letters written to churches or individual Christians and would more accurately be categorized as
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