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That's a Good Question

Wrath and Rescue: Unpacking the Mystery of Atonement

December 17, 2024

Jon Delger

&

Mitchell Leach

Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources on the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.c/questions. If you find this resource helpful, do us a favor, rate and review the podcast so more

people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode or that has questions like the ones that we're answering on the episode, please share this episode with them. My name is John. I'm here today with Mitch.

Yeah. And this week's episode is a really good one. We're going to address something maybe even a little controversial. We're going to be talking about the atonement, but I want to ask this question first. John, is there anything that God isn't able to do? Is there something

that limits God's ability?

Like a mountain, like can he make a mountain so big that he himself can't move it?

Yeah, I think that's maybe one of the ways that we can think about answering that question. But are there other things that God isn't able to do?

Like, forgive sin without somebody paying for it?

Yeah. Could God have just simply forgiven sin by snapping his fingers and not sent Jesus to

die on the cross? Right. Is God able to do that, or is he limited somehow? I think that's a good question. I think that's a great question. And not everybody agrees on the answer to that question.

It's true.

Which is why today we're gonna talk about what is commonly called the theories of atonement. I'm not a big fan of calling it that because I feel like theories is a weird word. You know, theory feels like, you know, we don't know exactly how it works,

so we've got these different theories about how maybe it works. I think perspectives is maybe a better word. Sure, yeah. A view or a lens of what happened at the cross. Yeah.

But yeah, historically in theology world, there is three theories or perspectives on what happened at the cross. And they all kind of come back to this question of, yeah, how does God deal with sin? Is sin actually the problem that the cross is addressing? And this is one of those things that I feel like a lot of people assume that all Christians agree on this, but actually they don't. You know, you say, well, John 3, 16,

this is like one of the most basic things, you know, that Jesus died for our sins to bring us to Him. And I would agree with that, obviously, that that is basic, that is the gospel, that is core to the Christian faith. But actually, not everybody who calls themselves Christian agrees on this. Yeah, and I hope that if you're listening to this and you're starting to roll your eyes going, oh my gosh, they're gonna make, you know, the cross even something that not every Christian

agrees on. Don't stop listening because this is really important not just for understanding more theology, right? This isn't just about us cramming more theology into your head. This is about understanding who God is and that impacts how we worship, right? The more we know God, the deeper we can fall in love with Him. The more we love God, the more we want to know Him. So today we are looking at how Jesus's death and resurrection saves us, right?

That's the idea of atonement, right? That's what we call atonement. And so atonement is kind of a weird word. We don't really use it a lot in our everyday language. John, what does the word atonement mean? Yeah, to atone for something is to appease

the wrath of usually a deity is kind of the language, you know, it's taken from kind of older language when we talked about appeasing the wrath of a god, of a deity. It's making up for something to take away the punishment or the anger or the wrath or something like that.

Yeah. So why do we need atonement? Why is that important as we have this discussion? I think that understanding, why isn't the idea of atonement necessary?

Sure. Well, therein lies part of the controversy of the three theories. So we'll get into that some more. But yeah, the Bible tells us, Romans 3.23, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So all of us human beings are sinners.

We've fallen short of God's perfect standard. Romans 623 says the wages of sin is death. Okay, so there's a standard, there's consequences for not meeting the standard. All of us as human beings have sin in our lives and therefore by our nature on our own without Jesus, we are deserving of death. And so we need an atonement. If we don't want to suffer eternal death, if we want to instead have life and joy with God,

be reunited to Him the way it was before sin entered the world, then we need an atonement.

Yeah. Is this just a New Testament thing, the idea of atonement?

No, this is all throughout the Bible. This is Old Testament. This is going all the way back. You think of the sacrificial system. It was a foreshadow of what was going to be needed ultimately through Jesus. Yeah, this has been around for forever. And this is around even in non-Christian, non-Biblical religions. Think about pagan religions, right? They even have – I think it's just kind of innate to human beings

that we have this idea that there is a deity and that we're not perfect, we've done something wrong, and even thinking like it modern-day Orthodox Jews practice the day of atonement, right? The day of atonement is something that we see in the Old Testament If you've ever seen that that holiday on your calendar that says Yom Kippur, that's yeah, but I guess 16 Yeah, that's the Jewish Day of Atonement I always as a kid growing up saw that and I'm like what in the world is that like I thought that it was somebody's

Name, but it's a Yom Kippur is the day of atonement, right?

Yeah.

So it's deeply biblical. It's not brand new in the New Testament. It's something for us. So there are a couple different pictures of what happens on the cross.

John, could you walk us through what they are? Yeah. So the three most popular, like I said, theories or perspectives on the cross would be the moral example theory, that Jesus is dying on the cross in order to be our example of what a good moral person does. The Christus Victor theory that Christ on the cross is being victorious over his enemies,

he's conquering his enemies. And finally, there is penal substitutionary atonement, which is that Jesus is, so those three words there, penal being like punishment, and then substitution, that Jesus is our substitute, so he takes our punishment as our substitute in order to make atonement for our sins. That's that one. And I'll be honest, whenever you hear,

whenever I say the word penal, it makes me think of something other than what it actually means, which is punishment. So I might just for the rest of this episode refer to it as substitution theory. We'll see.

When you hear penal, think about penalty. Yeah. I was a youth pastor and asked a bunch of middle schoolers what they thought penal sounded like. And I quickly realized that they didn't- You probably didn't need to ask.

They didn't think about like the, like penal corrective system or penalty. They were thinking about a different thing.

And you can imagine what they were thinking.

So substitution.

That's the concept.

That's the concept. Yep.

Jesus paid our penalty, he was our substitute, and he atones for our sin. So why are these important as we are diving into those? Why is it important for us to understand these things? Is it wrong for us to believe in some of these things?

Where's the danger here?

Where's the controversy? Yeah, great. So I think the controversy lies in that some people throughout church history have said that we should believe in one of these or two of these to the exclusion of the others, or to the exclusion specifically of one. So the least controversial in this conversation are moral example and Christus Victor.

The most controversial is penal substitutionary atonement. So some people throughout church history have said that, yeah, we should understand at the cross that Jesus is being a great example of, you know, you think of John 15, right? Love knows no better than this, that one would die for his friends, right? So Jesus is setting us the best example. He sacrifices himself, he dies for people that he cares about and therefore you and I should do likewise.

And that's the point of the cross. Yeah. So that's not very controversial. No. It's also true. Yeah.

We wouldn't deny that.

Yeah. The problem is when you exclude one of the other meanings. So Christus Victor, same way. I think of passages like in Colossians towards the end of Colossians 2 talks about Jesus triumphing over the rulers, the principalities, the cross is him completing, Genesis 315, that through defeat he accomplishes victory over the evil one, over Satan. So it is Christ's

victory. So it is. So Jesus is a moral example. Jesus is having victory. Those things are true. Problem is, people in church history have said, those things are true. But it's not true that he bears our penalty as our substitute to take away our sins. Yeah, absolutely. So there are some people even in modern modern theology that are opposed to the idea of penal substitutionary atonement. One of the authors that is probably more famous, maybe you've heard of him, is Brian McLaren. In his book, The Story We

Find Ourselves In, he presents a character who says something like this. That sounds, or penal substitutionary atonement, sounds more like injustice in the cosmic equation. It sounds like divine child abuse. What is Brian McLaren saying? What is he getting after and what does he mean? Yeah, that's a pretty steep claim to say that, yeah,

what most of Christianity and, I mean, historically and worldwide, I mean, just most of Christianity has said that this is the meaning of the cross, right? That Jesus dies as our substitute. So he's posing that idea that actually that if that's what it is, that that's God the Father abusing his son Jesus. It's a pretty big claim.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess let me ask this question and maybe this would help understand why he might say some of those things. Does penal substitutionary atonement, or does substitutionary atonement portray God as a wrathful God who needs violence in order to forgive?

I mean, in some ways, yes. What it portrays is a God of justice. The whole Bible portrays God that way. That God is a God who cares about right and wrong. That there are things that are evil in this world, that there are moral goods and moral bads, and that those who do things on the side of moral bad, that there are consequences. And I think that's

innate to us as human beings. We know that inherently. When something terrible happens, we want justice. We want the bad guy to go to jail or whatever it is. Yeah. As long as the bad guy's not us, right? Yeah, right, right. Well, that's the, yeah, there's some irony in our innate sense of justice.

Our innate sense of justice has some that's right and some that's kind of warped by it, right? So we especially don't want justice for ourselves. Sure. We want justice for others. So it's true that God is just and that there is consequences for those who are on the wrong side of justice. We should

understand God that way. And actually, I mean, I think that's maybe a great place to start is that we have to understand that's a good thing, not a bad thing. You know, one of the, I think I did a video a while back asking the question, what if hell didn't exist? You know, so what if there was no eternal consequences for evil? You know, what if Hitler ends up in heaven? You know, is that right? Is that fair? Are we okay with that?

You know a lot of people complain about the concept of hell the concept of eternal punishment But then when you really think I mean what they usually mean is I don't think I should end up in hell Yeah, or I shouldn't get consequences But you know you just you just think boy that doesn't seem right I don't sound like heaven at all if Hitler is there if some of the you know, just the evil People from from earth are there? Yeah, I think if you're a listener hearing this and going man

I really don't love that you know we just said that God is a God of wrath who needs this in order to forgive We have to understand that wrath is a good thing that God being a God of wrath is a good thing I would I would let me let me even interject this so I say wrath is a necessary Result of love right I say it that way. So people want to say, well God is a God of love, so he can't be a God of wrath. Well, have you ever had somebody

that you love be harmed? Yeah. How did you respond? I think it's right for you to be wrathful. If somebody hurts one of my children, and not by accident, you know, if somebody is harming one of my children, I have wrath. Yeah. And that is appropriate for me as a father to have wrath anger to want justice Yeah, those things are right. So so yeah wrath is a result of love. Yeah, I don't even appeal to our love of superheroes, you know you love the fact that

Batman or Superman has wrath when he encounters his you know, the villain, right? We love this because we know that Superman is a good guy who's gonna, he's gonna take care of business, he's gonna institute justice. Because the bad guy's done bad, evil things. He's harming people. Yeah. The problem with us is that we don't love that God is a God of wrath because we're the bad guys. Right. And so it's like, you know, there's some sort of a, you know, I don't know, irony or paradox that we have in ourselves that we're like, yeah, we love this idea of even our superheroes having wrath

when it in instituting justice, but as soon as we're like, wait, we might be the bad guy. We're like, no, no, God can't be a God of wrath. We got it. We've got to get rid of that or that's some sort of archaic or antiquated way to view God, but that's not how the Bible talks about God.

That's not how God displays himself to us. So God being a God who is full of righteousness and is provoked to wrath against sin is a good thing. So let me ask this question.

Is God able to forgive sin without the cross? Could God?

Is there something that would limit God? No. And I say that thinking of passages like Romans chapter 3 that talks about God being the just and the justifier.

Yeah.

So this is from a guy named Steve Chalk, and so he's explaining a different view of the cross that doesn't include this substitutionary atonement that we're talking about. So he says, The fact is that the cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the church have found this twisted version

of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement, God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but born by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus' own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse

to repay evil with evil."

Hachimachi, that's not a great quote.

Quite a statement.

Yeah. Just to be clear, that's a statement that we would disagree with. Sure, yep, yep, for sure. So I feel like I've already kind of addressed the side of, it's not contradictory to God is love

because love results in wrath against those who are harming those who you do love. We were beginning to talk about the justice of God, Romans 3, just in the justifier. Okay, one of the things that they say in there too is that this makes a mockery of Jesus' own teaching to love your enemies, to refuse to repay evil with evil.

Okay, why is it that God tells us not to repay evil with evil? It's because he says, vengeance is mine. Vengeance is mine, thus says the Lord. He's going to be the one that settles the score.

Yeah.

Not us.

Yeah. So he's not just saying evil should go off, you know, scotch-free. It's not just, you know, good luck, let it go. It's don't repay evil in this life because I will repay it in the next life. I'm God. That's where the comfort comes. God is a God of justice. I think it's hard, and sometimes this actually makes me frustrated with

theologians who really try to deny this idea of substitutionary atonement. Because it is so clear that God's justice is evident, not just in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, right? At the end of time, the saints will gather around as God is pronouncing judgment on everyone who is opposed to him, everyone who didn't turn to him, everyone who isn't saved, right? And he casts them into the lake of fire

and the saints gather around and worship God for his righteousness, for his justice. And so if you're having a problem with God being a God of wrath and justice, it's not that, well, you know, we're just distorting one way that the Bible talks about.

No, the Bible is pretty clear that this is who God is. The thing that you're offended by is the whole of the Bible, right? Sure. This isn't us distorting this. This is the way that God is portrayed. Yeah, so let's make that case.

Because it's a hard thing to swallow, but it's an important thing for us to say, this isn't just our idea. It really comes from the Bible. Yeah, so let's walk through some passages of Scripture and say that. So to your question that you had asked about, can God forgive without the cross?

My answer was no, because that makes God a God who is not just. Correct. Somebody has to pay for sin. Yeah. Otherwise God is just winking at sin.

Yeah. He's just saying, yeah, that's bad, that's evil, you did that, but oh well. And he shrugs his shoulders. Yeah.

Without the cross. Can I give an example here that might help and then we'll get into the passages. I've heard this example before. Like imagine if I come over to your house, John, and as I'm leaving, I actually, you know,

I run into the door with my car, right? Your garage door, right? And it breaks your garage door. There's two things you can do, right? You can say, Mitchell, you're an idiot and you shouldn't have hit my garage door

and you're gonna pay for it, right? And that would be your right to do that, right? I've broken your garage door and you can demand that I'll pay for it. That'd be justice, right? Or you can say, Mitchell, it's okay.

You don't need to pay for it. Like, you know, go ahead and you can go home. And that would be forgiveness, right? But at the end of the day, somebody still has to pay for the garage door, right? Either you or me, right?

If I pay for it, that's justice. If you pay for it, that's forgiveness, right? But somebody still absorbs the cost. And so that has to happen with our view of what happens on the cross.

We can't just say God could snap his fingers because there is no forgiveness without a debt being paid, without some sort of penalty, some sort of cost. Right, absolutely. So, let me walk through just a couple of passages that I think make this point clear. And again, so then our point is to say that this is something the Bible teaches and we have to figure out how to make sense of it. You know, you can't come to the Bible and just say, the Bible is wrong because it violates my sense of what's right. You know, we have to hear God on his own terms, right?

We live underneath the Bible, not above the Bible. Yeah, that would be a pretty dangerous worldview to have. Yeah, that would not be good to be able to say, well, you know what, God says that he's like this in the Bible, but I know better. God wouldn't be like that because that violates what I think about God.

I think that's exactly what Adam and Eve did.

Yeah, right.

They said, I know better.

Yeah, yeah.

So we sit under the Bible. So we have to hear what the Bible says, God, you know, tell us who he is in his own terms and how it works, and then figure out, make sense of it. Yeah. So let's try to do that.

So this is Acts chapter two, this is Peter preaching at Pentecost, and he puts a couple of things together here that I think are important to hear. So this is verse 23. He says, this Jesus delivered up

according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. Okay, so he's speaking to a crowd of people in front of him in Jerusalem. Okay, and so on the one hand, he's saying that you all crucified Jesus, you killed him at the hands of lawless men. Yeah, but he's also saying in the same verse that Jesus was delivered up

according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. So he says those two things are true at the same time. At the same time, it's true that the Jews killed him. It's true that the Romans killed him and it's true that God killed him, delivered him up to be killed on the cross.

Yeah.

So, you know, if you say, I can't believe that the Father put Jesus on the cross in order to pay for sin. Well, but the Bible says that. So you've got to wrestle with that and figure out how does that work within what else the Bible tells us about God. Let me share another passage from Acts chapter 4, jumping ahead a couple chapters here. This is starting in verse 27. It says, For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel. Okay, so everybody who's involved in the conspiracy to murder Jesus,

to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." Okay, so again, Peter does the same thing as he did before. It's to put in the same sentence, you all are responsible for killing Jesus, and this happened according to God's foreknown, predestined plan. The Father did this.

I think those are great, and grounding us in Scripture is so helpful because it's how we understand who God is and how he acts. This really got this idea of penal substitutionary atonement was really well-defined in the Reformation era. One of the Reformation documents that we hold to as a church at Peace Church is the Belgic Confession and Article 20 is such a great way of seeing this substitution in our theology.

So I'd love to read this. We believe that God, who is perfectly merciful and just, sent his son to assume that nature in which the disobedient was committed, to make satisfaction in the same and to bear the punishment of sin

by his most bitter passion and death. God therefore manifested his justice against his son when he laid out our iniquities upon him and poured forth his mercy and goodness on us who were guilty and worthy of damnation out of mere and perfect love giving his son unto death for us and raising him for our justification that through him we might obtain immortality and a life eternal." It's a little bit wordy, but it's beautiful.

And we'll actually link to that article in the show notes. But it just clearly lays out that phrase, that God therefore manifested his justice against his son when he laid out our iniquities upon him. I think there's just such a clear way to see that. This isn't just something that John and I were pulling out of Scripture,

but this is something that Christians have been seeing forever. In fact, one of the criticisms of substitutionary atonement is that it is, it was invented or it was created in the, during the Reformation. But there's passages in Scripture that would show us, you know,

is that a true thing that this is something that was made up in the Reformation.

Right, yeah, I mean I could add to the case we've already been making, I would add passages like Mark 10, 45, that I came not to be served but to serve, Jesus says, and to give my life as a ransom for many, in exchange for many. That's what's going on there. Jesus, you know, Jesus came voluntarily to sacrifice himself for his people.

Think of in John chapter 10, no one takes my life from me, I lay it down. Jesus says, Jesus and the Father, the Son and the Father are on a mission together. They are committed together to save their people, to save God's people.

Another one, 2 Corinthians chapter five, says he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. So Jesus went to the cross, took on our sin, he became sin and was nailed to the cross. Yeah.

That sounds like a pretty clear passage describing substitutionary atonement, right?

Yeah.

Are there any other places that you'd see substitution?

I'm thinking of one in the Old Testament with Abraham and his son.

Yeah.

I don't know if you guys have the Jesus Storybook Bible. Yeah. But they have a story of that in there and I can't read it to my kids without crying because it's just such a picture, a perfect picture of the cross. Yeah. Yeah. Abraham and Isaac. Yeah. Yeah. The Old Testament, you know, tells a story in a different way. It tells us through through pictures really through foreshadowing of what Jesus is going to have to do. Yeah. Abraham and Isaac is a great example. Yeah. Like we already mentioned the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 16, you know, the animal sacrifices. The book of Hebrews spends a lot of time in

the New Testament talking about how the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament are a foreshadow coming up to Jesus, that the sacrifice of the blood of bulls and goats can't actually take away sins, but it was a picture of what was going to happen through Jesus. Yeah. So I want to be kind, I want to be gracious to those who are maybe struggling with this concept. So if you're struggling, if you're wrestling, you know, sometimes it does take some time

to wrestle through this, to see it, to understand it, to grasp it. If it's initially kind of something that you've been maybe trained or maybe just culturally struggle with the concept, so I wanna be generous. But I do wanna say, I think if you ultimately don't land

in understanding that Jesus was your substitute, then you haven't embraced the gospel. And thus, you haven't received salvation. That's what we put our faith in. When we say you've got to put your faith in Jesus to receive salvation, when you think of John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever

believes in him would have eternal life. He gave him over. He delivered him over. Think of Acts 2, Acts 4 that we've already read. Think of Romans chapter 8, verse 32, right? Again, He's been delivered over.

If you don't embrace that, if you don't say, I'm taking hold of Jesus, that He has taken away my sins, and I'm not going to pay for my sins in hell. Jesus has paid for them for me at the cross, then you haven't embraced the Savior. Yeah, it reminds me of a conversation I had with someone once where they asked me, what

would it look like for us to have a theology where we don't believe in substitutionary atonement? It reminds me of another interview that I saw where someone, a flat earther, was asking a scientist about what would it look like on earth if it was a flat earth? And he just go, he was just like, I don't, it just wouldn't work. And that's kind of where I'm at with this.

Like to try to construct a theology that says Jesus did not pay for something. He did not take God's wrath. He did not trade places with me on the cross. He did not get what happened on the cross was not him getting what I deserved. Like, I don't I don't know what that that looks like. I have to discount so much to the Bible.

Yeah, totally, no, I totally agree. Let me, because I came across this article earlier, I'll try to, this gave me a little bit of a picture of somebody trying to live that theology without the substitution. So this is an article, a blog, it's available online,

written by a children's ministry pastor. So she, let me just, she's writing about Easter. So the piece is called The Trouble with Easter, how to talk and not talk about Easter. So that's already a title right there. Our favorite holiday.

So I'll read you some snippets. So she starts, this is the opening, she says, public execution, child sacrifice, rising from the dead, just the kinds of stories you want to tell your kids, right? Yeah, me neither.

So she goes on to say, as a children's pastor in a progressive Christian church, so progressive is kind of a label for that type of theology, what we would also call liberal theology, so, and I think they would embrace titles like progressive, she's saying it herself. So she says, Easter is, well, it's rough, for me anyway. I'm responsible for children, and teaching this central Christian story to kids is one of my biggest challenges.

No matter what I do with the Easter story, someone is likely to be upset. If I tell it flat out, I not only go against my ethos in regard to nurturing children's spirituality, but I'd also be confusing boatloads of kids and the message of my ministry as a whole."

Woof. Man, that's a... So she goes on later in the article and says that there's some things that I don't want to teach. And then she lists some different statements that she doesn't want to teach children. One of them, the first one listed is this,

that Jesus died for your sins. Man, you're a children's pastor and you don't want to teach the maybe the most central part of our belief. That's a crazy thing. Just trying to wrap my head around this worldview.

So she says, something I don't want to teach that you decide for your sins. She then says, Well, I realize that statement won't psychologically damage every kid. If it damages one, it's not worth using, period. To that end, I can list hundreds of people for whom this sentiment was harmful. We have to find better words and be very intentional with our language.

Man, I don't mean to seem dismissive, but man, oh man, I guess that's at least consistent, right?

I guess. It's departed from scripture though, right? Very clearly. Yeah. You know, she opened by saying, if I tell the story... That's a really kind way to say that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She said, if I tell the story flat out. Okay, so what she, and what that means, she said, if I read the Bible story of Easter... If I read the Bible to children. Yeah, if I read, if I read them the story as it's written in the Bible, then I'm going to offend them. If I tell them that Jesus died for their sins,

I might psychologically damage them. So, a pretty wild perspective for us. I think a pretty wild perspective for biblical Christianity, for historical Christianity.

Yeah, I think it's borderline heretical. I mean, maybe not.

Borderline.

I think it's, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's, that is a hard thing for me to be like, yeah, this is a sister in Christ. To say that kind of stuff and claiming to be a pastor, I mean, man, oh man, being able to preach about the crucifixion, being able to preach

about Jesus's resurrection is beyond a privilege. It is one of the highlights of my ability to be a pastor. And to say that, and to share that with children, I mean that's even better. Right. To say that we're gonna pull that because sounds weird. I mean I used to work at a church where they weren't allowed to say certain words from stage, they weren't allowed to say things like the blood of Christ, and I

just think, man, like what what are you, what are you neglecting your congregation if you can't say that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of people want to say, want to think that that's just way over out in some crazy place, but actually I was an ordained pastor in a denomination that had other pastors. I remember reading in writing, one pastor in that denomination that I served in, writing that he found nowhere in scripture that embraced the view of substitutionary atonement. He wrote that in a letter, an email or something like that. He must not have read much of the Bible.

Yeah, yeah, right. For sure. But just to say, it's not, this is not in some kind of crazy far off place. You know, I share a denomination with a pastor who believes that.

Yeah, no, this is far reaching, the implications of this. I mean, if you're at a church in the United States, more than likely there's somebody in your church who is impacted by this theology, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And so while some might be listening and think it's kind of crazy that there would be other perspectives or that we'd even spend time talking about this, I think you've got to know it's so important that we don't lose the core of the gospel. And therefore, we have to continue to talk about it. Somebody might be listening to this and thinking,

yeah, this is what I'm wrestling with right now and glad to hear about it.

Yeah, and if that's you, please ask us follow-up questions. We'd love to do a part two to this. Yeah.

We've got more questions. Yeah, if you're listening and you object or have struggled with this, I'd love to hear further questions, what it is that is a struggle, how we could explain better or more, that'd be great.

Yeah, I got a question for you, probably as we wrap up. What do we miss? What do we lose by abandoning this?

We, not to be too simplistic, but we lose our salvation.

Yeah.

We, as human beings, have fallen short of God's perfect standard. We live in sin and we need a savior. And so if we don't, you know, Jesus came preaching the gospel and telling people to repent and believe.

You know, if you don't accept that you're a sinner, then I don't know how you can repent and believe in a Savior. He's not just your example. He's not just victorious over his enemies, although both of those things are important. He is also your substitute.

Sin is like surgery.

We need someone else to take care of it.

Yeah.

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Have an awesome week, everybody.

Bye!

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