Q&A: “Does John 3:16 teach penal substitution?” – Brad Jersak

Question:

I have a question about PSA theory (penal substitutionary atonement). Are you able to give me some insight into how to view John 3:16? It seems to directly support PSA theory. 

Response:

Such an important question. The quick answer is that I see nothing at all in John 3:16 that is remotely related to PSA. But let’s review it together.

PSA says, crudely, “God cannot simply forgive sin. He must punish it. He can either punish it in you directly for all eternity, or he can punish it by pouring out his wrath against sin on Jesus in your place. If you believe he did this for you, then Jesus takes your punishment, and you are saved from God’s eternal wrath.”

I have put it crudely, not as a caricature, but because the doctrine is preached that way in its dominant form. Supporters of PSA may cringe, but you can ask them which parts of that account they are willing to renounce and expunge from their system and their preaching.

As NT Wright points out in his book, The Day the Revolution Began, this version of the gospel warps John 3:16 into saying what it does not: something like, “God so hated the world that he killed his only Son.” Wright goes on to say that to twist the gospel into wrath appeasement “paganizes the gospel.” Or as Lazar Puhalo says, “It is the gospel according to Molech.”

John 3:16 actually says…

Now, what does John 3:16-17 actually say… and to whom? 

Let’s start with the “to whom” question. Jesus has good news for those who are perishing, namely, all of humanity, aka ‘the world,’ in our downward spiral of death. Perishing literally means dying. But it’s not just that we will perish at the end of our lives. As God sees the world, the human condition is a world bent on death and bent by the fear of death, through which we live in bondage all our lives. We see this grim reality on the news and in our streets every day. This perishing world is who needs to hear John 3:16-17.

Next, we think about God’s orientation to this world. JI Packer, the great Evangelical spokesman for PSA, once said in my hearing, “The primary disposition of God toward this world is enmity.” I may have never heard a more erroneous statement. What does Jesus actually say in John 3:16? “God loves the world.” The triune God’s one and undivided nature is love. And in that divine and infinite love, God created the world, and all who are in it. God’s only disposition to the world God loves is self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. God’s disposition toward sinners is not “wrath,” which literally means violent anger. Still less does God’s supposed violent anger need to be appeased by doing violence to his own innocent Son. No! God’s heart for a perishing world is the same as the Father’s heart for his Son: love. Only love. 

Then, we ask, what does John 3:16-17 say that God, in his love, does for this world? The world that God does NOT want to perish? Does God condemn it to perishing? NO (vs. 17). God, in his love, desires to SAVE the world (vs. 17). So we read (in vs. 16), “God loves the world in this way.” (That’s a literal rendering of what “so” means in the verse). In what way?

“God loved the world in this way: he gave us his only begotten Son.” We read that God gave his Son to us to save us from perishing. Jesus Christ is the saving gift God the Father gave us,… the gift defined by Jesus himself in his inaugural mandate in Luke 4, citing Isaiah 61. God sent his Son in the power of the Spirit to fulfill his saving mission: to preach good news to the poor, freedom to the prisoners, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the jubilee of liberation to all.

John 3:16 then invites us to receive this gift. Not by believing in a theory of the atonement but by trusting the One God sent and welcoming his saving work (already given, already accomplished) into our real-life experience. He says, in effect, “Welcome me and surrender your life to my care, and you’ll do a U-turn out of this death spiral into an experience of human flourishing.

Happily, there is simply nothing at all about a PSA mechanism there in John 3:16-17. It’s all about love and trust and a new way of being fully alive.

The miraculous twist comes when, instead of receiving this beautiful gift, the world conspires to reject and murder Jesus, crucifying the Lord of Glory… and YET! Even then, God-in-Christ loves his rebellious world, forgives humanity of the crime of deicide (murder of God), does NOT pour out wrath at all, but subverts the crucifixion of Christ into the undoing of death for everyone.

And where is God in all of this? Is God the Father punishing his Son to appease his wrath? No, Paul says, God was IN Christ, reconciling the world to himself. How? Through a transaction of substitutionary wrath appeasement? No. By “not counting our sins against us.” By actually forgiving. By pardoning without punishment. By forgiving the debt without payment. By reframing our backward notions of juridical or economic theories of atonement into the restoration of a relationship… just as he forecast in the story of the Prodigal Son.

For more on all of this in more detail, see my book, A More Christlike God. 

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