Atonement & Penal Substitution's Wrong Framework

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:02]There is zeal in his heart and fire in his eyes.

[00:00:13]May it burn away the trust.

[00:00:17]They bear the light that's in your eyes.

[00:00:34]I'm living by your burning.

[00:00:40]That's life.

[00:01:13]Uh Hello everybody. Welcome to Refining Exoggetics, a podcast and biblical studies channel which aims to inspire life-changing interpretation of the Bible and our stories through unique explorations of modern biblical scholarship and ancient wisdom. I'm your host Jared Casper and uh I see some people are already in the chat. I see you um oh I see you Dustin. Hi. Uh, good evening to you and and Spencer, the church kid podcast. Uh, welcome Avery. I see you there. And exing Calvinism. Oh, I see you. Uh, I'm not familiar with you. I haven't uh seen you before on here, but I uh I I see the semblance in our uh two channel names or or call names. Uh exiting.

[00:02:08]That's cool. Uh hope you enjoy uh uh tonight's uh live stream. Um and again, welcome.

[00:02:20]So, uh let's get right to it. Centuries of inherited frameworks have taught us to confirm the Bible rather than hear it.

[00:02:30]And most of us have never been shown the difference. This is the place where we learn to actually listen.

[00:02:38]So, as the uh the title of this live stream uh suggests, uh we're going to be uh talking about atonement. I'm going to be giving a presentation on atonement and what I understand the biblical understanding, the paradigm of atonement in the Bible is to be. And uh yes, we're going to be talking about penal substitution because how can we uh talk about atonement and not talk about penal substitution, which is uh arguably the most popular and widely held uh theory or understanding of what atonement is in the Bible uh well pretty much uh since the uh reformation uh for the most part.

[00:03:17]Uh some people would like to go earlier than that u but that's that's debatable.

[00:03:22]But uh tonight we're going somewhere that might feel unsettling at first and I want to name that upfront. The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is not a fringe position. It's probably the dominant framework for understanding the gospel and English-speaking evangelicalism.

[00:03:41]Most of us were given it as children without ever knowing there was another way to read the text. It is the thing many people mean when they say the gospel. So when I say I think this doctrine does not come from the Bible, that it comes from a set of medieval legal assumptions that were read back into the Bible, I recognize what I'm asking you to sit with. Um I'm not asking you to throw away your faith. I'm asking you to do what we do here, which is to go to the actual words and follow them wherever they lead. Uh the question tonight is not did Jesus's death matter.

[00:04:18]It does. It did. Uh the question is what is the mechanism the biblical writers actually describe the one they named in their own language in their own world and is that mechanism what we've been taught uh because if we've been reading it through someone else's lens uh the thing we lose is not just a theological position it's the god who is actually there in the text uh a god whose atonement is about drawing near about purifying and about dwelling thing.

[00:04:50]So, with that said, uh I want to uh go ahead and uh pull up this and I'm going to share my screen here.

[00:05:06]Oh, and I see you. Uh um I see you, Trey. Welcome. the theology experience.

[00:05:25]Bear with me as I pull this up.

[00:05:29]Sure.

[00:05:32]All right.

[00:05:44]So um the the reason why I've titled this uh purification by the life of biblical theology against penal substitutionary atonement uh that is uh so another name for what I will be explicating here in terms of atonement is uh pre a priestly purification model of the atonement.

[00:06:08]Um, and uh, so that's what we're going to be talking about and how it differs uh, exoggetically um, and how it approaches the scriptures uh, from that of penal substitution.

[00:06:26]And see, will it allow me to I don't know if it's going to allow me to do that. Um, all right.

[00:06:48]So, I've spent a great deal of time in the weeds of atonement and what I keep coming back to is the same basic problem. The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement or for the from this point on PSA uh does not emerge from a careful reading of the biblical text on their own terms. It emerges from a set of medieval legal and philosophical assumptions that were subsequently read back into the text.

[00:07:17]When you actually start with the Hebrew and Greek words themselves, the words the biblical writers chose and the frameworks they inhabited, the picture looks quite different from what PSA presents.

[00:07:28]uh this uh what I'm presenting is an attempt to lay that picture out section by section. I want to work through the key vocabulary, the key rituals, the key texts, and the key arguments and show why I believe PSA fails at each of them.

[00:07:44]My goal is not to argue that Jesus suffering and death are unimportant or that there is no mechanism by which we are reconciled to God. On the contrary, I believe the actual biblical picture is richer and more coherent than PSA allows and that recovering it matters enormously for how we understand God, the gospel, and our own calling as his people.

[00:08:05]I will examine the meaning of the foundational Hebrew word for atonement, the location and logic of purification rituals, the significance of blood as life, the grammar of key prepositions that PSA routinely misreads.

[00:08:20]uh what Isaiah 53 actually says.

[00:08:23]Uh and I don't think we're going to get to it uh at this live stream. I I plan to do this in essentially two parts. Uh uh what I've just described encompasses what I'll be talking about in the in this first part. Uh in the next live stream uh to happen soon. Uh we're going to get into Isaiah 53. Uh we're going to talk about what the Passover actually means and finally what the priestly ministry of Jesus in the New Testament actually involves.

[00:08:54]Uh and throughout I will try to let the text do the talking.

[00:09:12]Let me check the chat here. A lot going on here. Well, uh, let's see.

[00:09:41]Um well, I'm just gonna um so it sounds like we've got a a situation here. somebody is uh in in need of um help and uh so father uh whoever this individual is uh I don't I don't know uh who you are but I pray that uh you would uh bring provision for whatever uh whatever he needs right now in this situation and that you would help him that you would come to his aid that you would uh here uh you look after the affairs of the of the needy in their distress in the name of Jesus we ask.

[00:10:29]Amen.

[00:10:39]Um, if you could let us uh know where you're at, uh, John Dalton, uh, there in the chat, uh, maybe it might help if, um, we knew where you are located. Um, and what brought you here to the the chat? If you could uh, brought you here to the stream, if you could let us know, that'd be uh, great. Uh maybe that would help um us to be able to help you out better.

[00:11:11]Okay.

[00:11:19]So, the place where I always insist on starting when talking about atonement and the place where most atonement theories, including PSA, consistently fail to start is with the actual Hebrew verb translated as make atonement uh in our English translations. Uh it's the verb kafar.

[00:11:39]Uh I have encountered discussions of atonement at all levels of theological sophistication. And the single most telling indicator of whether a given discussion is on solid ground is whether or not it takes this word seriously on its own terms and follows the leading scholarship.

[00:12:00]See uh the fundamental meaning of kafar is to cleanse or to wipe. It comes from an Acadian root uh karu uh with precisely this meaning of wiping or cleansing and its usage throughout the Hebrew scriptures is entirely consistent with that root. It does not mean to cover. Uh I know that's a that's a a widely held view even there's even some uh lexicons that sort of put that in there. Um but the there really is no uh actual ex exogetical basis to refer to the verb kafar as this idea of this action of covering. Um this popular assertion is solely based on a singular instance of the verb found in Genesis 6:14 where Noah is commanded to kafar the ark inside and outside with kufur.

[00:12:58]Uh as judge me as just mentioned uh kafar is a verbal root originating from the acadian karoo which is in reference to wiping or applying substances not covering over. Uh so furthermore it certainly does not mean to appease to satisfy or to pay a penalty within the priestly text. It means to make a purggation uh to cleanse uh to cleanse something from defilements that is fit for God's presence. So we what we have is this this verbal root and it that uh base meaning gets extrapolated out into different context and gets uh colored certain ways. So, uh, the action of wiping in the context of this verb used with Noah, um, putting pitch on the ark inside and outside. Well, that involves a wiping. You're you're wiping. You're smearing pitch. Uh, this is again this it's a it's a theological interpretive gloss to then say that the verb kafar means to cover over. um that no it's it's an action and that action involves wiping or smearing. Uh when that same action or that root gets translated into a priestly context like Leviticus uh the action is associated with uh the uh utilization of blood uh sprinkled or applied to various surfaces. Um and it's for the purpose of cleansing. uh you get that this is what leads a lot of scholars like Jacob Mgr uh the the late uh Jewish American uh scholar uh and those who have followed in his um exegetical footsteps so to speak. Uh it leads them to associate um blood in this context with along with the verb kafar to be a sort of uh you're sort of uh using blood as a detergent, a ritual detergent.

[00:15:06]to to wipe to cleanse away.

[00:15:15]Yeah. So, let's see. Oh, yeah. Uh Trey says, "Purification by life, not death."

[00:15:36]That's right. We're going to talk about that.

[00:15:44]Habach 21:14, "The knowledge of God will cover the world."

[00:15:50]Um, Amen. Yeah.

[00:16:08]So, um, moving on, uh, I've actually read authors defending penal substitution who acknowledge this meaning in passing. For instance, William Lane Craig in his uh work on uh he he he wrote a book defending penal substitution uh he briefly notes in his defense of penal substitution that the Hebrew verb kafar does mean to wipe and cleanse and then proceeds to set that aside and build his entire argument on the middle English concept of at onement.

[00:16:45]Uh so uh um in the middle English period there was a a verb or there was a word that was coined uh that was sort of conglomeration of three words at one meantment and it became our English word atonement uh stems from that. Um but notice I mean this is the striking move.

[00:17:06]We're we're not talking about uh the Hebrew word anymore. We've coined a new word in English that doesn't really have a semantic connection back to the the Hebrew or the Greek words. Um it just he cl Craig acknowledges what the words means and then reasons from a word that is not in the Bible at all.

[00:17:32]The English word atonement is a coinage of the middle English period. It has no direct Hebrew or Greek equivalent in the biblical text and building a theology of atonement from it rather than from the actual biblical language is exactly the kind of method methodological error that has misled generations of readers.

[00:17:52]Uh the scholastics of middle Europe who developed the earliest versions of what would become PSA were doing so in a context shaped by feudal law and a retributive jud judicial framework.

[00:18:04]uh they wanted to explain philosophically and apologetically why Christ had to die and the conceptual tools they reached for were legal ones.

[00:18:12]Debt, penalty, satisfaction, liability.

[00:18:16]The problem is that none of these concepts are native to the Hebrew framework the biblical writers were working within and importing them into a reading of kafar distorts the word beyond recognition.

[00:18:28]To understand what kafar actually means, the right place to look is Leviticus 16.

[00:18:34]The description of the yan kapour or day of atonement ritual. Leviticus 16 16-20 and 16:33 give us the clearest contextual definition of the term. The high priest makes atonement kafar for the most holy place, the tent of meeting, the altar, and for the priests and all the people of the assembly.

[00:19:03]Now, here's the question I always press.

[00:19:06]If kafar means to cover uh to cover over or to pay a legal penalty, why does the holy place need it?

[00:19:16]Why does the tent and the altar also uh become the recipients of atonement?

[00:19:23]Uh did the tent sin? Was God preparing to pour out his wrath on the altar? Was the altar going to suffer vicariously in the place of a substitute? Obviously, the answer to all of these is no. The tent, the altar, the sacred furniture, none of these are moral agents, and none of them bear guilt. So, what's going on here with Kafar? What um what does this tell us?

[00:19:48]Uh what they do bear what these items do bear is or get infected affected by is defilement uh pollution.

[00:19:57]Uh the defilement that accumulates from the ongoing sins and impurities of the people who use them and dwell near them.

[00:20:05]Kafar is what addresses that defilement.

[00:20:07]It purges it. It wipes it away. It makes the sacred space fit for God's presence once again.

[00:20:22]Uh this is not a marginal or disputed point. Uh Jacob Mgrim, one of the as I mentioned earlier, one of the foremost Jewish scholars on the the Levitical system in the priestly code, uh has done some of the most authoritative work on kafar and its cognets. And his conclusions align precisely with what I'm arguing here. Kafar is about purification of sacred space, not about satisfying divine wrath or paying a legal penalty. The Jewish thought world simply had no concept of blood satisfying an angry deity. Um or God needing blood to do something or satisfy something within himself. uh th that is a fundamentally a pagan concept alien to the Hebraic framework and the fundamental semantic content of kafar itself excludes any such notion.

[00:21:16]A related word often brought into this discussion is kipper and sometimes coper uh which is gets translated in in a lot of times as ransom. Uh some scholars have tried to argue that because kipper in certain instances is related to coper and coper involves the idea of a ransom payment therefore kipper fundamentally means something like paying a penalty.

[00:21:41]Uh I find this argument badly flawed. Uh the most prominent instances of coper are in connection with the passover event where god himself is doing the redeeming and he certainly was not paying anything to anyone. The concept of coper in those contexts is about loosing from danger or oppression, not making a transactional legal payment.

[00:22:06]And uh even granting that there is an overlap in some instances between Kipper and Coper, it does not follow that Coper's meaning gets imposed wholesale into Kipper. In both cases, what is being preserved is God's possession. Uh Kipper is doing so through purification from uncleanliness.

[00:22:26]uh like Leviticus 16 uh Coper doing so through release from external danger. Uh so so what you have with this ransom uh sort of subset of of the um tied to um the uh verb uh the stem coper is uh that something is uh in threat of danger of being uh corrupted or uh falling into um well, falling out of shalom and blessing and and and in danger of of destruction.

[00:23:08]And uh what ransom in that sense is essentially saying is doing something to uh rescue that entity, that thing or that person or persons uh from that uh dangerous situation. bringing them out of that and rescuing them uh bringing them back into a restored place of uh shalom and blessing.

[00:23:36]Um to take that partial overlap and conclude that Kipper then therefore carries a fundamental penal or transactional meaning is a is again a methodological nonsequittor.

[00:23:58]Let's see how we doing in the comments here.

[00:24:06]Uh Spencer says J Scalar uh argues this Kofheer and yeah illegitimate totality transfer is what that is called. Yep. Yeah.

[00:24:19]That's um it's a it's a big word. It's a long word, but yeah, that's essentially uh um what uh you have the like what Spencer is talking about here is that you have different stems or different uh um uses forms of the same base verb. uh that gets again extrapolated out into different context and each of those contexts has their own sort of semantic use. And it would be an illegitimate totality transfer fallacy to say that every single stem of that word, every single variation of that word now has all of those meanings in every instance.

[00:25:03]It's sort of uh and that's just that's not how we use lexicons. that's not how we uh uh understand semantic the semantic range of words. So yeah uh good point there Spencer.

[00:25:23]So let me also address one very common misreading uh the suggestion that the Lord making garments of skin for Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 was an act of kafar.

[00:25:35]Uh cuz there you uh what's read into that idea is um is well God is covering Adam and Eve with with skins and uh this was obviously involved in animal being killed in order in order to provide those skins even though the the narrative doesn't even hint at that doesn't even suggest that. Um, but we're uh penal substitution proponents like to find their doctrine everywhere they can find it. And and so let's let's just say, hey, uh they must be uh uh this must be what's entailed. Um there's garments of skins.

[00:26:23]Um ergo animal died. Argo substitutionary uh death. Ergo PSA. Um it is this idea that God killed a substitute to cover their shame. Uh but notice people, the word kafar does not appear in that context. Uh so we're essentially importing a concept that we want to tie into kafar into a text that doesn't include that word at all. Uh the text says nothing about atonement, substitution, or the transference of guilt. God clothe their nakedness.

[00:26:57]That's all that is claimed there. to read a full-blown atonement theology into it is to import a concept the text itself does not invoke.

[00:27:07]Uh similarly when Abraham offers Isaac the argument is sometimes made that the ram provided was a penal substitute that God was about to pour out his wrath on Isaac and God diverted it onto a ram instead. Uh but again the text says no such thing. The offering of Isaac was never about sin needing to be dealt with. It was about Abraham offering his son in whole burnt offering, devotion to God. Uh the ram was provided by God as his own offering. Uh the text in Genesis 22:13 says explicitly that the ram was provided by God. God was not appeasing himself. He was demonstrating his own faithfulness and provision, foreshadowing the Messiah whom he would send as his own son, his own offering.

[00:27:54]Uh, it is Isaac that foreshadows Jesus, not the goat. Isaac was never condemned and the ram was never punished in his place. Abraham did not withhold his own son of the promise. Likewise, God did not withhold his only begotten son. We we we get this Paul uh illustrating this at the end of Romans 8. Uh I believe it's verses 32 33 34 somewhere around there. He says, uh, "Will he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things?" Um, so that's Paul doing a little bit of a a call back to Abraham not withholding his son um in imitation of God who would also not withhold his um only begotten son.

[00:28:44]Um, so Isaac, not the goat, is the type of Jesus. So the narrative is fundamentally not conceived of by the apostles as a substitution.

[00:29:00]Uh so uh what is the correct starting point for a theology of atonement? As I said, it is kafar, a cleansing, a purggation affected through the introduction of undefiled life to sacred spaces, objects, and people. Atonement is a purification right. It is not a payment. It is not a penalty. It is not a legal transaction. And once this is established as a foundation, a great deal follows both about what atonement is and about where and how it happens.

[00:29:36]So that brings us to our next uh point of discussion where atonement happens.

[00:29:44]Uh once we understand that kafar is fundamentally about purification, the next question becomes where and how does this purification take place? This matters enormously because PSA typically locates atonement at the cross at the point of Jesus's death. Yet the biblical material consistently colllocates it elsewhere.

[00:30:06]In the Levitical system, the blood of the sin offering made atonement by being carried by the high priest through the veil and into the holy place, the most sacred space in the tabernacle and later the temple where it was sprinkled before the mercy seat uh which is in Hebrew is the caparet and on the altar of incense.

[00:30:26]This is the copy and shadow of the throne room of God. The atonement happens there in the holy place through the presentation of the blood, not outside the camp, not at the point where the animal was killed. The death of the animal is actually treated with a kind of lurggical indifference in the Levitical text. Uh the animal is slaughtered and then most of its blood is simply poured out unceremoniously at the base of the altar. It is only a portion of the blood, the portion carried into the holy place that accomplishes the purification.

[00:31:02]Uh this is critical. I mean this is critical. I I believe demolishes one of the PSA's one of PSA's fundamental assumptions. Uh if atonement and the earthly type were accomplished by the killing of the animal outside the holy place. We might have grounds for saying that Jesus's death outside the city walls was the atoning event. But the earthly type shows us precisely the opposite. The killing is incidental.

[00:31:28]What makes atonement is the blood being presented before God in the holy place by the living high priest. Uh the author of Hebrews understood this perfectly and it is the controlling framework of chapters 9 and 10. The entire argument of Hebrews 9 is that Jesus as our living high priest through the power of an indestructible life obtained through resurrection entered the heavenly sanctuary the reality of which the earthly tabernacle is only a copy. and presented his own indestructible life uh essentially his blood. Um but one can speculate about whether Jesus had uh physical blood at that point. I mean we we understand that he has a body. Um there is physicality to him after the resurrection. Um, but there's a lot of speculation and a lot of debate about the nature of that body, whether it has physical blood or or if there's something else um animating the life of the of the resurrected exalted body of Jesus. Uh, but what is clear from Hebrews is that it was by an indestructible life, his immortality that he possesses. Um because in John 5 it says uh that um the father has um given to the son to have life in himself. That's immortality.

[00:32:52]And so he has an indestructible life post resurrection.

[00:32:56]Uh and through that uh he is able to present himself before the father in the heavenly sanctuary. Uh that is where and how he accomplished purification of our consciences from dead works. Hebrews 9:11-12 could not be clearer. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

[00:33:32]Um, so note what is strikingly absent from Hebrews 9 and 10 is any notion that God's wrath needed to be satisfied by punishing an innocent substitute.

[00:33:42]The framework is consistently one of purification. Uh, the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. How much more more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works? There's that uh controlling motif here of purifying. This is all about purification, cleansing. Um just as the uh the blood uh and animals and goats and calves under the Levitical priesthood in the earthly copy was used for the purification of flesh. Uh we have God uh we have Jesus coming before God in the heavenly sanctuary as high priest uh with his own indestructible life for the purifying of our conscience uh to present us uh without blemish uh as he is without blemish. Uh the question being answered is not how does God satisfy his own need for justice but how does God cleanse what sin has defiled so that he can dwell with his people.

[00:34:56]Uh the iniquities of the people cause defilement of the sacred space and the place where God dwells to meet with and live with humanity. Defilement sorry uh let me read that again. The iniquities of the people cause defilement. Uh so the place where God dwells to meet with and live with humanity in that sacred space. Uh there's uh defilement that needs to be uh dealt with. Uh if that defilement is left undelt with, it brings corruption, chaos, and the eventual withdrawal of God's presence. All that would remain is a fearful expectation of judgment. But God in his mercy, because he longs to dwell with his people, made provision for the cleansing of this space. He showed Israel that the blood, the life of an unblenmished animal was sufficient to cleanse away the defilement from his presence. And since the blood cleansed, God was able to remain uh favorable. Uh if if we're going to use this propitious uh language, we we understand that God is already propitious uh favorable uh to dwell with his people. But he we had to periodically deal with this issue of uncleanness.

[00:36:07]Um and this isn't just uncleanness from moral iniquities or sins of that nature, but simply uh contact with uh with unclean substances. Um that uh we become unclean for various periods of time depending on the uh the severity or the nature of that contact.

[00:36:35]So and since the blood cleansed God was a uh was able to uh remain uh in the and dwell with his people. Uh that's essentially the function of the sin offering goat not to satisfy divine anger but to cleanse divine space so that divine presence could continue. Uh this is also why PSA's insistence on locating atonement at the cross is frankly a rather extraordinary claim given the biblical data. Atonement is through life officiated by a living high priest occurring in the holy place. It is not accomplished by a dead man on a cross outside the city. Hebrews 1:3 makes the sequence clear. Jesus made purifications for sins and then sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. uh the purification was accomplished through his priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. Uh the cross was the pathway through which he passed in order to die and rise and ascend and take his place as our high priest. But the cross itself was not the atoning event. I want to say this again.

[00:37:39]I want to make this clear. The cross was the pathway through which he passed in order to die and rise and ascend and take his place as our high priest. Uh that's uh uh that's sort of all the language behind the pro the law and the prophets. uh when we get in the gospels this understanding when Jesus kind of has to open the eyes of his disciples and say hey look uh didn't you know that it's written in the law and the prophets that the Messiah has to suffer be handed over uh uh to the Gentiles um be treated this way suffer and die before he could enter into his glory. Well, that's that's what's going on here. It was a pathway. It was something that he had to go through this humiliation and suffering in order to uh be exalted.

[00:38:33]Um, and uh I believe it's in uh I I'll have to just see if I can find it later, but uh one of the New Testament authors says uh we also must through many trials and tribulations and sufferings uh face those things in before we can enter into glory. So this is the pathway that Jesus went ahead of, not instead of. Um he uh to borrow the the phrase from a a book that recently came out uh by Andrew Remington uh REA uh called Lamb of the Free. Uh he coined this phrase uh Christ died ahead of us not instead of us. Uh so he was fundamentally a forerunner uh a archacon um in the Greek is how it's put it. A forerunner a uh pioneer he blazed the path forward to show us how we are to walk. Um yep.

[00:39:40]So uh but the cross itself was not the atoning event. It was the cruel act of injustice which God subverted and overturned by raising his son from the dead and vindicating him at his right hand.

[00:40:01]So our next uh section here um by the way um for those interested if there's anybody uh interested in um joining me and in discussing uh at some point uh once I get to the end of this presentation and we can talk about this If you maybe you disagree uh with what I'm sharing here and uh want want to offer some push back, I'm happy to discuss. I'm happy to bring you on. Uh I'll uh we'll have opportunity for that here at the end of the presentation.

[00:40:38]So um so now the blood, the life and the removal of sin. Uh central to any correct understanding of atonement is the biblical equation blood equals life.

[00:40:53]Uh this is stated explicitly in Leviticus 17:11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls.

[00:41:04]For it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. The Hebrew word for life or soul here is nephesh. Blood represents the nephesh the animating life of the creature. This means that when blood is offered in the atonement ritual, it is life that is being offered, not death.

[00:41:20]The cleansing agent is life, not death.

[00:41:23]This is another point at which PSA fundamentally goes astray.

[00:41:28]PSA is a theory about death, specifically a penal death. It asks, why did Jesus die? And it answers because God needed a suitable substitute to bury the death penalty that our sins deserved. Um but the biblical framework of atonement is not a theory about death at all. It is a purification of life by life. Pure undefiled life represented by the blood of an unblenmished animal and ultimately by the indestructible life of the risen Jesus is the cleansing agent.

[00:41:59]What cleanses is not dying uh but the presentation. Um so it's not dying that cleanses. It's the presentation of the life through the high priestly ministry. Uh this is why I argue that death does not make atonement whether by a substitute or otherwise.

[00:42:17]Death accomplishes nothing atoning. It is what a person does with their life that has atoning significance. The high priest does not walk into the holy place carrying the death of an animal. He carries its blood, its life, and he sprinkles that life before the mercy seat as a purifying, cleansing offering.

[00:42:37]Now, the removal of sin in the Levitical system operated through two distinct mechanisms that are often confused in popular discussion. The first is the sin offering goat, which accomplished kafar uh purification of the sacred space. The second is the scapegoat sent to Aazil.

[00:42:57]Uh sometimes it's just simply called uh Aazil.

[00:43:02]Um Leviticus uh 16:21-22 describes how the high priest laid both hands on the head of the live goat, confessed over it all the iniquities of the people, and then sent it out into the wilderness. The scapegoat goat was not killed. It was not punished. The iniquities were symbolically loaded onto it and then it was released carrying them away from the camp. The living goat provides atonement through carrying away. The Hebrew verb there is nasa the iniquities uh not through dying as a substitute.

[00:43:38]The distinction between purification affected by blood life in the holy place and removal affected by the scapegoat carrying the sins away maps beautifully onto the priestly ministry of Jesus as described in the New Testament. His obedient life presented in the heavenly sanctuary purifies our consciences. His intercession carries away our iniquities. In neither case is the operative concept one of a punitive payment being extracted from an innocent substitute.

[00:44:08]Hebrews 9:22 is often quoted at this point. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

[00:44:16]Um PSA reads this as saying that death specifically violent punitive death is required for forgiveness. Uh but the verse is saying something more precise.

[00:44:30]The word translated shedding uh refers to the pouring out of blood and sacrifice.

[00:44:37]And blood as we have established is life. The verse is saying without offering of life there is no forgiveness. Uh forgiveness requires the presentation of unblenmished life before God as a cleansing agent. It does not require the infliction of a death death penalty. Um I mean uh indeed uh inflicting a death penalty is exactly the opposite of forgiveness. uh the death penalty does not then result in forgiveness. That's uh those are two mutually exclusive results. Two mutually exclusive actions.

[00:45:22]Let's make sure I'm caught up on the comments here.

[00:45:34]Yeah.

[00:45:45]So there is also no substitution properly speaking involved anywhere in these purification rituals. Animals are not substitutions. Priests are not substitutions.

[00:45:57]The idea of a substitution where one party takes the place of another party to suffer a punishment that was due to that other party is simply not present in the conceptual framework of kafar.

[00:46:09]Clean life purifies contaminated souls and spaces. That is what is happening.

[00:46:14]The animals blood is not a substitute for the sinner's blood. It is the cleansing agent being used to restore sacred space and sanctify the people so that God can continue to dwell with them.

[00:46:28]And lastly, uh I think this will this point um will will sort of be the uh the last point that I'm going to make during this part. Um we're going to cover the remaining uh points of this presentation on a part two. Uh, and that will include a a a pretty lengthy walkthrough of Isaiah 53, the suffering servant song. Uh, so you won't want to miss that. Um, so be on the lookout for the next for my next announcement of when that live stream is going to happen.

[00:47:13]So uh there's a little bit of misreading of basic prepositions that happens uh within the PSA framework and reading of the scriptures. Um there's uh two prepositions that primarily get misread and that's the Hebrew preposition mean uh that factors prominently in places like Isaiah 53. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. uh and the Greek prepositions uh hooper and anti.

[00:47:46]Um so one of the most consequential and in my view most straightforward linguistic arguments against PSA concerns what he what Hebrew and Greek prepositions are connected with the sufferings and death of Jesus. Uh two prepositions in particular are routinely mistransated in ways that lend support to a substitutionary reading when no such reading is warranted. the Hebrew prefix mean and the Greek preposition hooper.

[00:48:14]Uh let me start with mean uh because it is directly relevant to Isaiah 53 and uh which is the passage most often frequently cited in favor of PSA.

[00:48:29]Uh the Hebrew preposition mean uh primarily conveys origin, source or cause. I want to say up front uh that um the way this functions in general in the Hebrew scriptures uh is mean communicates that uh something is coming out of something or something is brought out of something or something moves out from a place or uh moves um away from a particular time stamp or time period.

[00:49:07]um it's out from or from or even um by in terms of origin. Uh so the a common example that I like to bring up is the blessing the the traditional Hebrew uh blessing the baraka over the bread. Um and that goes mean that last term that last line is uh who brings forth bread from the earth. From is mean and hets is the earth. So from or out of the earth the another way of saying it is who brings forth bread out of or out from uh the earth. uh there's uh the bread originates from the earth.

[00:49:58]It's being brought out of uh the earth.

[00:50:01]So that's what the Hebrew mean uh fundamentally communicates. That's the sort of spatial relation something is coming out of or originating from something.

[00:50:14]Uh, and virtually everywhere in the Hebrew scriptures, this preposition gets translated as from or out of or by.

[00:50:28]Um, but in Isaiah 53:5, the English translations almost universally render it as for.

[00:50:40]We we have this generic uh sort of uh ambiguous preposition in English for which has a variety of meanings a wide range of meanings depending on uh what type of noun or or relation it's governing. Um so ergo in 535 we have he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And that's the Hebrew preposition or the prefix mean.

[00:51:09]uh this rendering quite naturally suggests a purposive or a substitutionary relationship in English vernacular. He suffered for our sins.

[00:51:23]Um and what what that sort of primes us to think when we're thinking purposeive um what was the purpose of his sufferings? Oh, he suffered for our sins. That was the purpose. um instead of suffering for his own sins. For instance, he didn't suffer for his own sins, he suffered for our sins. Um so for in that sense is we're we're sort of primed to read that as a purposive relation between the suffering and the sins.

[00:51:54]Um the the extended mental space that we get into when we start on that path is we start to say things like he was pierced instead of us because of our transgressions.

[00:52:09]Um and the idea is that well God is piercing him. God is wounding him. God is punishing him instead of us. So that the the origin is coming from God and the purpose is to suffer for our sins.

[00:52:23]And that's sort of what's being communicated there. Um, and I really hope that that's making sense. Um, and again, understand that this mean this preposition nowhere else anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures outside of these few verses in Isaiah 53 gets translated that way. It's never translated as for out in any English translation outside of Isaiah 53. That should that should give you pause. Um it it really should. Uh so mean answers the question of what caused this?

[00:53:09]It's like uh yeah what um what caused this and from where?

[00:53:19]not whose place does this take. That's just not the um that's just not the question. That's not the spatial relation um or the uh what's being communicated with mean. Uh a simple analogy that I like to give makes this clear. If I say he was injured from their negligence, uh the Hebrew would use mean there. That's what mean would be communicating is he was injured from their negligence. Now, I'm I'm thinking of like an industrial environment, industrial industrial work environment, and there's uh safety regulations to keep people from being injured by various machines and apparatuses. And let's say uh some other crew members, they're negligent and um and they forget to apply safety measures. And because of their negligence uh and those safety measures not being followed, an employee gets injured uh when something starts moving when it wasn't supposed to or wasn't not supposed to be moving. Um or they were in a place where they weren't supposed to be at the time. Uh so we might say in English he was injured by their negligence. Now we intuitively understand that the negligence was the source of the injury in that sense. Uh the injury came from their negligence.

[00:54:46]Uh and that's exactly what's being communicated in Isaiah 53:5 with the preposition. Uh what we would not say is he was injured by the manager inserting that idea in there for their negligence as if some purposeive legal mechanism were at work. Uh no. Uh, so to be clear, Isaiah 53:5 should be rendered, he was crushed from, or I'm sorry, he was pierced from their transgressions. He was crushed from our iniquities.

[00:55:19]Um what that fundamentally communicates then is that the wickedness of and the sins of the people were wounding him were making him crushed in spirit, contrite, humble. That's what that that verb essentially means.

[00:55:42]Uh so what does this mean for uh for Isaiah 53? And again, I'm I'm only going to touch on Isaiah 53 here just in reference to this preposition mean. I'm not not going to go full into Isaiah 53 right now. Uh but just to uh communicate that uh again the correct rendering of mean in Isaiah 53:5 would be he was pierced because of or from our transgressions. He was wounded from our iniquities. Uh that is our transgressions and iniquities were what caused his suffering. This is entirely consistent with the flow of the chapter.

[00:56:20]The people turned away and went their own way and their rebellion brought its violence and oppression down upon the servant who is trying to intercede for them. Let's see. Uh Spencer says, "And sins which require the death penalty are ineligible for sacrifices."

[00:56:48]Uh that is correct.

[00:56:55]Yeah. Uh uh what Spencer is is pointing to is that uh there were there was no offering available for high-handed uh sin or intentional rebellion. Um the only way that that could be uh rectified, that situation could be rectified is um repentance.

[00:57:18]Um that that's sort of the uh that's sort of the idea. It's like who knows maybe if we repent repent and turn to the Lord and and and uh he um he will relent from the disaster that he intends to bring upon us. I mean this is the idea that we've gone into full-blown rebellion uh and now we're waking up to the fact because like judgment is coming. uh the wrath that we've been storing up due to our unrepentance uh is is about to come to fullness and uh we are under threat and we can't go to the temple at this point and say well we'll just sprinkle some uh we'll just sprinkle some blood here from this sin offering. No, you have to repent um and ask God for mercy and your wrath. God remember your mercy.

[00:58:17]Sorry, it seems that my uh camera has stopped. Let me see what's going on here. There we go. Okay, got it back on.

[00:58:30]Yeah, I hear you, Spencer. Uh uh yeah, Isaiah 53. But I won't be getting too deep into it uh unfortunately at this time. um just sort of breezing uh past one little element of it. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait till part two of the live stream uh to to really get into that. So, um but I I do want to uh get with you um may yeah uh and we'll do a live stream together and and really um um and really present Isaiah 53.

[00:59:14]Uh he was injured for their negligence.

[00:59:19]Okay.

[00:59:23]What?

[00:59:25]Oh, what does meaning mean?

[00:59:30]Oh, you're funny.

[00:59:34]I know. I I I can't just say men. Uh I I had to say mean because ah Phil, it's good to see you here.

[00:59:50]Welcome.

[00:59:56]All right. Um yeah, so there is no warrant for using for as a English preposition in Isaiah 53:5 in a substitutionary sense and the Septuagent which predates most of the Hebrew cotices used in the English translations and which was the Bible of the early church does not support its substitutionary rendering either. It renders the Hebrew preposition with dia.

[01:00:24]And this preposition with an accusative noun uh like when I say accusative just as opposed to a genative uh or accusative nouns. Um and the accusative nouns in Isaiah 53:5 are iniquities and transgressions.

[01:00:44]Uh and when a preposition dia is used in the accusative sense, uh it signifies on account of in the and like for instance the Brenton Septuagent translation uh would say he was uh wound he was pierced because of our transgressions. But really the the relationship is on account of um and again going back to the analogy of the industrial accident on account of their negligence he was injured. Uh this this again is not purposive. It's not talking about the purpose of the injury. It's talking about the cause.

[01:01:21]Where did the injury come from? It's on account of negligence.

[01:01:27]Uh on account of iniquities, he was pierced.

[01:01:33]The the piercing came from the iniquities. I just I don't know how else to the how more clear I could make that.

[01:01:40]I mean it's to me this seems pretty straightforward and uh and I hope that this is bringing clarity to how these prepositions work so we don't get foiled by these uh and getting back into the wrong headsp space by uh errant English translations that use these ambiguous prepositions like for.

[01:02:05]Um so turning to the Greek now uh in the New Testament what factors prominently in a lot of penal substitution proof text is the preposition hooper. Uh and it's foundational to our English New Testament's language about Christ dying for us and for our sins.

[01:02:27]Uh PSA consistently reads this preposition as meaning in the place of see. Let's get that off there.

[01:02:46]Kevin, yeah, it's good to see you here, too. Great show. I took some notes.

[01:02:50]Awesome. Uh yeah, I appreciate your work uh as well. Um you and uh Phil um have uh are ahead of me in in actually uh in producing literature on this uh and appreciate the the work uh the investment of time and energy that you both have put into um in the endeavor of uh rescuing atonement in the Bible from the clutches of reformed uh uh dogmatics.

[01:03:25]I'll just put it that way.

[01:03:29]Uh, Phil, you asked, "How would you piece this together with it please the Lord to crush him?" Great question.

[01:03:36]Definitely going to get more into that into part two. Um, but I I can definitely address it here because I I'm going to be talking about it because it's the that to crush or to um is the same verb that's found in verse five that we're um sort of in right now. Um, and I hope I think I think I get into that here. Um, I don't know why my camera keeps turning off turning itself off, but uh, good question. Let me see if I can address that, Phil. Um, here in short order.

[01:04:11]We'll get to that.

[01:04:17]Um, want to make sure I'm on the right slide here.

[01:04:24]Okay.

[01:04:29]Yeah, let me go back to that. There we go.

[01:04:32]Um uh when governed by the genative hooper means now when I again when I say that's a technical term but it's just uh when let's take for instance uh the phrase Christ died for us now for us Uh that would be Hooper Himmon. Uh and Himmon is a uh a plural pronoun. Uh first person plural pronoun and it's in the genative. So it's a genative of a person that's governing this uh Hooper.

[01:05:18]And whenever hooper is followed by a genative noun and that genative noun is a person or a thing uh typically hooper takes on the for the benefit of or for the sake of connotation. It does not mean in the place of Hooper. Uh contrary to what some people lay people like uh tend to assert Hooper does not have an in place of or instead of use. I mean that there's already a Greek preposition that is used for that and that's called anti.

[01:05:54]Um uh yeah, anti is a perfectly good Greek preposition that already gets used uh in place of uh that's the the preposition that's used in in passages like an I um for an I or um uh things like that.

[01:06:23]Um, but even then, I mean, it's it's it's not strictly a substitution. It's more of like an exchange. Um, you're you're exchanging an I for an I. Um, and it's talking about uh equality in um reparation.

[01:06:46]So, Hooper is not anti and treating them as though they are interchangeable is simply wrong. That's just not how prepositions work in the Greek. You can't interchange them like that. When Paul writes that Christ died Hooper Hmon uh for us, he means Christ died for our sake and for our benefit. Um and uh let me just uh I want to take the opportunity to I want to demonstrate something. I'm not going to pull it up on the screen, but I'm just going to read Colossians 2.

[01:07:20]No, I think I think it's Colossians 1.

[01:07:24]Um, Colossians 1:24, Paul is is saying to the to the Colossians, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you." That's the same Greek preposition governed by genative of a person. Well, here it's the second person um plural pronoun you u but it's hooper for you. Is this Paul saying that he's suffering instead of them that they were meant to suffer but now Paul is taking their place? No. Uh and if you look at the parallel uh versions um different English versions of verse 24, it'll say, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake." This is the sense where you're doing where somebody is doing something to benefit somebody else. It's for their sake. Um it's to um so that some benefit would come down to uh that person. And he goes on to say, "And I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for you, which is the church."

[01:08:39]Um, so, uh, I mean, this gets all this this really messes with penal substitution because again, this is for language. It's the same preposition.

[01:08:54]is Paul saying that there is something lacking in Christ substitutionary sufferings um and Paul is going to somehow fill that up or uh fill up what is lacking in his own afflictions that he's going to suffer some instead of them and take some of that wrath that I mean it's just um I I I hope that sort of makes sense.

[01:09:16]Um, so yeah, Ascension 43 says, "So glad to have brothers and sisters in Yeshua."

[01:09:29]Yeah. Amen. Yeah.

[01:09:35]Um, let's see. Where was I at? Okay.

[01:09:42]Yeah. So that's just an example of hooper just in its normative sense is somebody is doing something for the sake of somebody else not instead of them not as a substitute. Uh so if in English if I say I I would go to the moon and back for you no one is interpreting that as I would go to the moon in your place. Uh the benefit occurs to you but you are not the one who is required to go to the moon. The beneficiary is not themselves obligated to perform the action. Uh to read substitution into Hooper everywhere it appears in the New Testament is to impose on the text a meaning the preposition simply does not carry. The English word for unfortunately the for unfortunately serves both purposes in our language which is part of why the confusion persists. We use for to mean for the benefit of and also more rarely in the place of. he stood in for him at the meeting. But in Greek, uh these are two different prepositions and conflating them leads to seriously logical distortion. When the New Testament says Christ died for sinners, it means for their sake, for their benefit, not as a punitive substitute occupying the place where divine punishment was due to fall on them. Uh the same issue arises in discussions of the Greek elasmos and elastion.

[01:11:13]um words typically translated propitiation in English. Uh the concept of propitiation in the ancient neareastern and Greco Roman world is indeed one of appeasing a wrathful deity with an offering. But this is precisely not how elasmos and ilerion are used in the septuagen uh where they are employed to translate kafar and capared respectively.

[01:11:38]In the lx these words carry the meaning of purification and mercy seat not pagan deity appeasement. When John writes that Jesus is the helasmos for our sins in 1 John 2:2 he is not invoking the pagan concept of appeasing divine wrath. is drawing on the Levitical concept of purification, the cleansing that removes sin and makes God's continued presence and favor possible. Uh the word propitiation in English carries the pagan connotation so strongly that it is in my view a misleading translation. Uh and in point of fact, uh our English translation propitiation is not a rendering or a translation of the Greek or the Hebrew. Propitiation is an English translation of the Latin verb propitio.

[01:12:33]Uh and that comes from the vulgate, not from any Hebrew or Greek manuscript.

[01:12:41]Propitio is not a biblical term. It's not found in the Bible. It's not a Greek or Hebrew term.

[01:12:48]uh it was fundamentally of the Latin tradition that uh where we get this confusion. It it stems from that. Um and it would have been far better to just take what other translations do like in Romans 3:25 uh elastion is translated in some English translations as the mercy seat.

[01:13:16]Well, why is that? Well, because uh elastion in the Septuagent is the Greek word, the noun that translates the Hebrew noun caparet, which is the word for the atonement cover, the mercy seat.

[01:13:33]Uh so uh that's by far a better uh methodology for understanding what these words mean is we go back to what the Septuagent how the Septuagent uses those words and what Hebrew words they translate. then we can get a a a a direct uh rendering uh a direct transmission of the Hebrew uh idea into Greek carrying forward and then we understand that and then we can translate it English as purification offering or the mercy seat or uh uh something of that that nature.

[01:14:18]And I think that's so um yeah that that's all I'm going to cover in the presentation. Uh but I do want to uh touch on to back backtrack to Phil Bray's question. Um how would you piece this together with it pleased the Lord to crush him? So, uh, first off, in Isaiah 53:5, the verb that gets translated as, uh, bruised.

[01:14:49]Uh, there he was bruised from our transgressions or our iniquities. Uh, that's the Hebrew verb daka.

[01:14:58]Um, and let's see.

[01:15:07]I think I do have a slide that I could kind of jump ahead to.

[01:15:26]I know I've got Well, let's just do this. Let me Let me find my notes on that so at least I can give you a sneak peek.

[01:15:46]Yeah. So the verb translated crushed in verse 10 uh and bruised in verse 5 uh has its own semantic field that does not naturally extend to penal uh punishment. uh this idea of punishment uh in Isaiah 57:15 for instance the same root dakah describes the contrite spirit God dwells with the one of a with one of a contrite and lowly spirit and that's dhaka contrite uh to revive them in Psalm 34:18 it says the Lord saves the crushed dhaka in spirit in Proverbs 22:22 uh to quote crush the afflicted is paralleled with robbing the poor. It is the language of oppression and humiliation not of penally sanctioned punishment.

[01:16:43]In this context, the servant being crushed refers to his being humiliated um and brought low through the violence and oppression of the wicked.

[01:16:56]Um, so, uh, that's how I I would briefly answer that. Um, there's another passage, Jeremiah, I want to say it's 44 somewhere in there. Uh, 44:12, I think it is. Uh, but it it's Jeremiah 44. Uh the same verb um it's in the uh nifal stem uh is used in speaking of the people of Israel. It says to this day the peoples have not humbled themselves. It's the same verb dhaka. Uh so we already have both in Isaiah other places in the prophets and in proverbs and the psalms.

[01:17:39]uh we already have this pretty established and well attested meaning of dhaka to be a reference to being humbled to being contrite in spirit. Uh so there there is there really isn't any reason why we shouldn't be rendering uh it or at least reading it that way when we talk about crushed. It this it's talking about crushed in spirit. Um and and just to fully answer that in verse 10 when it says to please the Lord to crush him. Uh the verb is in uh I I want to say it's in the pool. No, hold on. Uh let me pull that up real quick. I want to make sure I'm not getting this wrong.

[01:18:40]It's an appeal infinitive. And uh it's my understanding um and people can check the grammar on this but uh with a verb like da um this sort of conditional um verb um sort of stative uh when in appeal infinitive form it it it acts sort of like the the same as the hel stem. the highful stem denotes positive the this um and I think that that's uh worthy of note because the first line of or that first clause of verse 10 is paralleled with the second clause. Uh it pleased the Lord to make him contrite is how I would read.

[01:19:40]Uh that literally is uh to to make him crushed to to bring low to um it pleased the Lord or it was the will of the Lord to make him contrite to make him humble.

[01:19:54]He has put him to grief. So we have that second verb um to put to grief to make ill. Um that's in in a hel stem which is that causitive. So I think because these two phrases and this again I'm getting a little technical so if this isn't making sense uh let me know people in the chat.

[01:20:14]Um when you have two phrases like that that are paralleled with one another. Um to be made contrite is definitely like in parallel to being put to grief. Um that's why I think the peel infinitive form of the verb dha uh is taking on that same hful use um for the verb. It's uh to make him contrite and make him grieved uh ill.

[01:20:44]Uh that's uh the point of that would be that um uh those aren't punitive terms. I mean that there's nothing in the law of Moses that says, "Oh, you sinned, so I I need to put you to grief. I I need to make you ill." Um I mean those aren't penal ideas. Um but those ideas of being humbled, of contrite, being brought low and put to grief and acquainted with sorrow, uh that is something that is um both inunciated uh in the prologue to the song uh and is a periodic motif through the different stanzas.

[01:21:27]um is this juxtaposition of the of the servants's lowly position and state uh juxtaposed with what God how God responds and elevates him and exalts him uh and vindicates him. So, let's see. Uh, Phil, you said, "Is it a different word to Genesis and being bruised on the heel or crushing the serpent's head?"

[01:21:58]Um, that's a that's an interesting question. Um, uh, let's see. I'm going to go ahead and if if anybody is interested to come on and chat about this, uh I'm going to go ahead and see if I can post um a link.

[01:22:22]Of course, I uh see There we go.

[01:22:39]I'm going to post uh the link to the chat.

[01:23:12]There we go.

[01:23:20]So yeah, uh like I said, if anybody is interested at this point, um be happy to uh bring someone on who is interested it um either to talk about uh anything that they'd like clarity on or uh have some push back. Uh certainly welcome uh discussion on this if you feel I've gotten something completely wrong or um be happy to to bring you uh bring you on and um we can chat Um just by way of recap um so uh what I've really presented uh the part that I've presented tonight uh is uh 0.1 uh kafar equals purification. That's fundamentally what the word means. Uh what the Hebrew verb means when we read make atonement. Um we should understand purification cleansing. Atonement is a cleansing right not a payment penalty or legal transaction.

[01:24:49]Second point tonight was that life purifies by life. Uh undefiled life uh presented before God cleanses what sin has defiled enabling God to dwell with his people. Um and again this where this fundamentally takes place is not on a cross or not when an animal dies uh outside the tent or outside the city um but rather takes place in the holy place by a living high priest presenting life uh that cleanses before the Lord. Um point number three, the living high priest uh Jesus risen and ascended entered the heavenly sanctuary and presented his indestructible life uh thereby securing eternal redemption.

[01:25:33]Uh and four uh the cross as a pathway.

[01:25:37]The cross was the the cruel injustice God overturned by resurrection. Uh the pathway to priestly ministry, not the atoning event itself. And a great passage to really drive that home uh is I want to read Hebrews 2 verse 14. Uh since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

[01:26:25]Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God. to make purification for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

[01:26:44]So we ask the again when I start to deconstruct penal substitution as as a valid theory, uh inevitably what comes up is like okay so Jesus didn't have to die. He could have just gone to no a faithful high priest has to be able to sympathize with those he is seeding for.

[01:27:04]Uh and in order to have an indestructible life, well, he has to be like a grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies. That's I I want to say that's somewhere in Matthew. Uh where he's talking about unless I'm sorry, that's John 12:24, I believe.

[01:27:23]um unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it can bear no fruit.

[01:27:28]So, of course, he has to go through this uh process in order to bear fruit uh unto life. And he's a trailblazer. Um he's showing us the way.

[01:27:44]Um Oh, hey. Uh I I think that's Rachel. I think that's you. Yeah, welcome. Uh, have you heard of the restored icon theory? Uh, yes. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. Um, I don't see restored icon as a theory of atonement. Uh, just uh I I see it I I see it as a valid understanding.

[01:28:11]I see it as a a a valid understanding of the life and the ministry of Jesus that he was sort of recapitulating humanity and everywhere where uh from Adam to Israel, everywhere where uh we have a mandate and a calling uh and a vocation that we're we're supposed to do, but we've been uh uh led astray. uh he has been victorious uh and has sort of recapitulated that um and through his uh entering into death and being resurrected, vindicated, uh he's restoring uh the image of God um as a as a fully glorified man. Uh so yeah, I see that. I just I don't I don't call that atonement because for me and from my studies and uh I think the scholarship bears this out that uh atonement is a univocal uh singular understanding and uh that is univocal from the Old Testament to the New Testament that there aren't multiple models of atonement. Like I I I don't want to toot my own horn and be prideful or anything like that, but this is atonement. there isn't there isn't any other competing thing just I'm going back to the word itself and it's semantic uh uh range uh it's conceptual framework and I'm just working from there uh I'm I'm not trying to systematize um things into different models um and so I um I I don't call I mean I don't use the term resto stored icon just because I I I think maybe recapitulation is is something that's makes more sense to me.

[01:30:12]Um, yeah. So, uh, but all that to say that, yeah, I I appreciate the restored icon, um, understanding of Jesus's life, um, his death and his resurrection as an entire paradigm of what it means for um, for the image of God to be restored through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. um his the path that he blazed sort of sort of uh not only provides the pathway for us to follow in, but it sort of calls all of us who want to obey him up into the reality of that restored image that he is. So yeah, um there's a lot of richness there. I just don't see that as an atonement model.

[01:31:05]Again, I want to uh uh to anybody uh still uh listening in and watching, um there's still a little bit of time. I have maybe about uh 15 to 20 minutes that I'm willing to uh devote uh to uh further conversation discussion if somebody wants to come on and join uh me here on uh Streamyard and be happy to discuss um questions and push back. I I'd love to discuss this stuff.

[01:32:24]All right, I'm going to um while waiting to see if somebody else is if somebody is going to uh join again uh if you want to join the the stream here, uh the link is in the chat. uh look for the uh the link that I posted for StreamYard. Uh it's in the chat and you just click on that to and and I'll show you or I'll see you in the in the stage.

[01:33:03]Uh Rachel, you said so basically he came to redeem. Uh redeem can mean rescue in Greek. Uh so perhaps he didn't come to die but to rescue. Um yeah. Um the the redemption involves just uh entering into the domain of the enemy. Yeah. Um a redemption is uh comes about when somebody is held captive um through slavery or uh some other uh some other means.

[01:33:40]And uh what the what the Passover event was is basically God's people that he was meaning to call to himself and make into a great nation.

[01:33:53]uh they were held captive in the house of bondage under oppressive forces and redemption in that in that sense the redemption language the ransom language uh acquiring um acquiring possession uh that's that's all about God descending into the domain of Egypt uh judging them judging the gods the oppressive forces and um uh disarming them. Uh so God brought judgment through plagues that uh dis disbarred the uh the powers of Egypt. Uh thereby he's able to lead his people out of there um as his own possession. He acquired possession of his people and he did so by destroying the enemy. In the same way, uh, the last enemy to be destroyed, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, is death. Um, Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God, waiting for all of his enemies to be put under his feet.

[01:34:57]And the last enemy to be uh put under his feet is death itself. Um, he has gone uh and entered into the domain of the enemy, death, himself. Uh that's part and parcel what I was reading in Hebrews 2:14 and 15 uh is that he did so to destroy the works of the one who holds the power of death which is the devil um and deliver us from that bondage deliver us from that lifelong fear of death and um so that yeah that's redemption language that's ransom language that's uh uh he gave his life as a ransom, a redemption, a a rescue uh for many for for us all. Um and so that's how I would understand that it did involve dying. So he he did in a sense have to come to die. Um but that's not to satisfy something in God. Um but it's the fact that it's the it's the vocation the the um the mandate of the Messiah to u to bring redemption and that redemption involves entering into the domain of our enemy and rescuing us from it. So God raised him, vindicated him and raised him up from the dead uh to furnish proof to all that uh he is the son of God and that he will uh he has fixed a day where he will judge the living and the dead by a man whom he has appointed and that man is is Jesus Yeshua.

[01:36:45]Yep. All men die. Uh that's the end of uh Hebrews 9. It says, "For is appointed just as it is appointed for man to die once and afterwards to face judgment."

[01:36:56]Uh so of course Jesus being a man uh part of the human race, he he dies too. Uh this isn't a substitution uh thing. Uh it's just not part of the um the headsp space there in the in at least in terms of the biblical writers.

[01:37:22]Yeah, great uh great thoughts there.

[01:37:41]All right. Um, so it doesn't look like anybody has uh Let's see.

[01:38:19]Yeah, I don't see anybody backstage or anything. Uh, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and and close this out here. Um uh let me uh just uh yeah let's let's wrap up what uh what I presented here. Uh PSA is a theory that was developed outside the biblical framework and then read back into it.

[01:38:46]When medieval scholars reached for legal concepts, debt, penalty, satisfaction, liability to explain the cross, they were doing their best with the tools they had. But these tools were not native to the Hebrew framework uh the biblical writers inhabited and importing them into kafar distorted the word beyond recognition.

[01:39:05]Once you commit to starting with the word the actual Hebrew word and following where it leads the entire PSA structure collapses not because someone decided to reject it but because the text will not support it. Atonement is purification not penal payment. Blood is life, not death. The atonement happens in the holy place, not on a cross. The prepositions mean and hooper do not say what PSA needs them to say. And Isaiah 53 presents a representative intercessory high priest, not a punitive substitute. The Passover is ransom redemption uh language. We've talked a little bit about that. Um yeah.

[01:39:55]Um yeah. So I I hope that that's uh has um laid a great foundation. I if if many of you have lacked a foundation or a good starting point for understanding atonement in the Bible, I hope that this presentation has presented you with a good foundation and a framework for uh for understanding the biblical language.

[01:40:22]Um and I hope that's blessed you. Uh I'm going to go ahead and end the the stream here. Uh I I pray that the uh the Lord uh blesses you and uh continues to to guide each and every one of you uh according to the spirit. Um and um walking not only as uh um as personal students of the word but also living and um studying it in community. That's uh hugely important I believe. So, uh, blessings to you all and as always, think deep.

[01:41:11]Hey folks, if you enjoyed this episode and the content, please like the video and leave a comment below and definitely subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so you can be sure to catch more content like this as it comes. Until next time, think deep.

[01:41:40]Heat up here.

[01:41:55]Heat.