Some have played off the meaning of “(means/place of) expiation” against the meaning “(means/place of) propitiation” (expiation refers to the wiping away of sins, propitiation to the assuaging of someone’s wrath). This misses the point that in Scripture amends is made for sin (expiation) and to God (propitiation). It is not a case of either-or but of both-and. There is no expiation of sin apart from amends made to God.

In the previous installment we showed how ironic and absurd it was for a Presbyterian Church USA hymnal committee to think it was their “educational mission” to censor the song “In Christ Alone” for the words “the wrath of God was satisfied” given that this doctrine played a crucial role in the understanding of salvation put forward by the father of Reformed faith, John Calvin, and by virtually every Reformed confession in the PCUSA’s own Book of Order.

As the chair of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song tells it in her Christian Century article “Debating Hymns,” the nine members of the hymnal committee voted against the hymn “In Christ Alone” after voting for it. They did so because “it would do a disservice to [the committee’s] educational mission [of forming the faith of coming generations] to perpetuate … the view that the cross is primarily about God’s need to assuage God’s anger.” The song was acceptable when they thought the original lyric was “the love of God was magnified” but couldn’t be stomached once they realized that the original wording was “the wrath of God was satisfied.”

Either these nine committee members are ignorant of the witness of Scripture, or they have little concern for what Scripture says when it conflicts with their own preconceived views of what God is like. What better place to demonstrate the significance of the scriptural theme of what I call “substitutionary amends” (but which is more commonly known by the infelicitous expression “penal substitutionary atonement” or just “penal substitution”) than to turn to the single most important theological letter in the New Testament, Paul’s letter to the Romans.

The case for and in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Although Romans is not a systematic “compendium of Christian doctrine” (as the Reformer Melanchthon once called it), it is the closest thing that we have to a full presentation of Paul’s gospel. The church has long recognized that Paul’s letter to the Romans is the definitive unpacking of the gospel in the New Testament. Indeed, Romans has played an indispensable role in renewing the church over the past two millennia.

Central to the presentation of the gospel in Romans is the combination of the twin theme sets of God’s wrath and judgment on the one hand and God’s love and grace on the other. Paul depicts Christ’s death on the cross as the God-initiated, amends-making, and price-paying pivot. Christ’s atoning death makes it possible for God to move those with faith from being under his wrath and destined for destruction to being under his grace and destined for salvation.

The cross is at one and the same time the greatest demonstration of God’s love for humanity and the definitive satisfaction of God’s justice. Were it not necessary that amends or restitution be made for human sin, the death of Jesus on the cross would have been for nothing. Had God not loved his rebellious human creation, nothing could have induced him to allow his Son to die an excruciating and ignominious death. The cross is motivated by God’s love and necessitated by God’s justice.

God’s wrath and judgment in Romans 1:18-3:20

The concepts of God’s wrath and God’s judgment dominate Rom 1:18-3:20 where Paul lays out most fully a diagnosis of the human problem (note that prior to 1:18 is the letter prescript [1:1-7], thanksgiving [1:8-15], and thesis statement [1:16-17]). God’s wrath or anger (Gk. orge) against sinful humanity is mentioned five times, including the kickoff verse in 1:18 (thereafter 2:5 [twice]; 2:8; 3:5; later three more times in 4:15; 5:9; 9:22). God’s role as punishing judge is mentioned almost a dozen more times in the same section (1:32; 2:2-5, 9, 16; 3:4, 7-8, 19; a theme continuing elsewhere in Romans, particularly 6:15-8:17).

Given this emphasis on God’s wrath and judgment, there is no place in the discussion for Satan as the one to whom amends is made. Amends is made to God through Christ at God’s own initiative and at greatest cost to God and God’s Son. It is impossible to explain how God’s wrath and judgment are averted apart from Christ making amends to God for human sin. As Calvin rightly put it: “If the effect of [Christ’s] shedding of blood is that our sins are not imputed to us, it follows that God’s judgment was satisfied by that price (…eo pretio satisfactum esse iudicio Dei; Institutes 2.17.4).

Romans 1:18 sets the stage for what follows (through 3:20) with a reference to God’s (not Satan’s) wrath:

For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of humans who, in unrighteousness, are suppressing the truth.

An explanation follows about how God “hands over” humans who do not “honor God as God” to enslavement to their self-dishonoring sinful desires — a sort of passive-aggressive stage of God’s punishment. This handing over of humans to the controlling influence of their preexisting sin causes people to heap up their sins so as to incur God’s cataclysmic judgment at the end. It is “the righteous decree of God,” not of Satan, “that those who are practicing such (sinful) things are worthy of death” (1:32).

“The judgment of God,” not of Satan, is imposed rightly (literally, “in accordance with the truth”) “on those who practice such things” (2:2). It is foolhardy to think that one can commit such offenses impenitently and “escape the judgment of God,” even if (not especially if) one judges those who do such things (2:3). The fact that God threatens wrath upon the unrepentant does not cancel out the fact that God also has a “wealth of kindness and forbearance [literally, a ‘holding back’ of his wrath] and patience” (2:4). On the contrary, these qualities are supposed to “lead” people “to repentance” (2:4). Those who do not repent “store up … wrath on the Day of Wrath, that is, (the day) of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (2:5).

The message here has everything to do with the debt that humans incur before God for their wrongdoing and nothing to do paying off a debt to Satan. Lest one miss the point that God is an active judge in all this, Paul adds a quotation from Prov 24:12 (= Ps 62:11): God “will repay to each in accordance with his works” (2:6). It is not as if death and permanent exclusion from God is merely a natural or mechanistic outgrowth of one’s choices over which God has no active involvement. God actively repays. And what does God repay to the impenitent? Paul is clear: “wrath and fury” (2:8) and “affliction and distress” (2:9). By “wrath” he clearly means the punishment that God actively inflicts of exclusion from eternal life (note the contrast with “eternal life” in 2:7). Later in ch. 2 Paul refers to “the day when God judges the hidden things of people” (2:16).

Particularly significant is the theme of God’s judging wrath in Paul’s dialogue with an imaginary Jewish interlocutor in Rom 3:1-8. At stake is the question of whether God can be faithful, righteous, and true to his covenant promises to Israel if he pronounces eschatological judgment on Jews who violate the covenant through their sin. Paul’s emphatic response is “May it not happen!” (Gk. mē genoito; 3:3). Paul cites Ps 116:11, “every human is a liar,” and then David’s words in Ps 51:4 (traditionally associated with the Bathsheba episode), which state that God will “prevail when he makes his case for judgment.” Paul has put before his imaginary Jewish dialogue partner the scene of a law court: God takes the stance in his own defense and shows why his judgment of sinners is right and why no human being can claim his judgment to be otherwise.

Paul then asks his interlocutor rhetorically: “The God who brings on us wrath is not unrighteous, is he?” (3:5). Paul again answers emphatically: “May it not happen! For otherwise how will God judge the world?” Note that the phrase “bringing on wrath” parallels the verb “judge.” It is not just a matter of God inflicting the recompense for sin associated with his anger toward human unrighteousness. It has an activity-oriented sense. The context is that not even Jews in covenant with God will escape God’s judgment, sans reception of the gospel about Christ (the judgment of Gentiles is obvious). The Jewish interlocutor protests: “But if the truthfulness of God abounded by means of my lie to his glory, why am even I still being judged like a (Gentile) sinner?” (3:7). Paul will have none of it, declaring that God’s “judgment is just” on those who abuse God’s grace (3:8).

Paul then proceeds with a litany of OT citations purporting to show that there is no such thing as a righteous person (3:10-18) because, quite simply, “all are under sin,” not just Gentiles but Jews and Gentiles alike (3:9). The conclusion culminating from the prior discussion is (or ought to be) self-evident: the Law “speaks to those in the law [i.e., even Jews] in order that every mouth should be shut and the whole world [i.e., not just the Gentile world] should become liable to God’s punishment” (3:19). Consequently, humanity is left before and outside the presentation of the gospel under God’s wrath, righteous decree, judgment, and punishment, with nothing from their own behavior to rescue them since (as Ps 143:2 states), “no flesh will be justified before” God (3:20).

Again, there is no thought anywhere here of owing something to Satan. Sinners stand before God alone. They incur God’s wrath, God’s judgment. Unless someone or something comes along to make recompense for the misdeeds done by humanity, all face destruction at the hands of God. The destruction comes not because God lets natural consequences take hold but rather because God steps back into the picture as an active Judge to inflict punishment on the unrighteous.

Jesus’ death as the paying a price and making amends to God in Rom 3:21-26

After showing in 1:18-3:20 that all humanity rightly stands under God’s wrath and deserving of God’s cataclysmic judgment because of their sins, Paul offers in Rom 3:21-26 what is arguably the single most important unfolding of the core gospel in the Pauline corpus. According to Paul (and it is “according to Paul” whether or not there is a hymnic fragment in 3:25-26a), we are

²⁴being justified (= pronounced righteous) as a gift by his (= God’s) grace through the redemption [or: the ransoming] that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God set before himself as an amends-making offering [or: propitiatory gift, atoning sacrifice] in [= by] his blood, through faith, for an indication of his righteousness, because of the letting go of the previously occurring sins ²⁶in God’s holding back….

It is commonplace for theologians to claim that there are many different ways of conceiving the atonement, of which “penal substitution” is only one alongside of many others such as redemption, justification, reconciliation, victory over spiritual powers and Christ-as-example. This is an instance where theologians are commonly wrong, confusing the results or effects of the atonement (or, in the case of Christ as example, not even an effect) with the atonement proper. Paul indicates here that believers are justified “through” or “by means of” something. From the Godward side it is “by his grace” and from the human side it is “through faith.” When talking about the Christward side it is “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” a means that is further clarified as God setting “Christ before himself as an amends-making offering by his blood (i.e., death).”

(a)   Redemption as Paying a Price of Release to God

The Greek word for “redemption” in Rom 3:24 is apolutrōsis, derived from lutron meaning “ransom, price of release.” This is commercial imagery, involving the payment of a price to achieve for another freedom from captivity or slavery. Paul elsewhere confirms the purchase and price imagery when he says: “you were bought with a price (time)” (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). The price paid is made clear in Rom 3:25: “in [= by] his blood,” i.e., by means of Christ’s death.

That it is Jesus’ death on the cross which is the price paid to God for release us from God’s judging wrath is further confirmed through a comparison with other texts: “justified in [= by] his blood … reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom 5:9-10); “in whom we have the redemption [or: ransoming] (apolutrōsis) through his blood, the forgiveness of the transgressions, in accordance with the riches of his grace” (Eph 1:7); Christ “gave himself as a ransom (anti-lutron) for all” (1 Tim 2:6); Christ “gave himself for us in order that he might ransom [or: redeem] us from every lawless act” (Tit 2:14; using a form of the Gk. verb lutroō); “he is the mediator of a new covenant…, a death having occurred for the redemption [or: ransoming] (apolutrōsis) from the trespasses committed under the first covenant” (Heb 9:15; cp. 9:12: Jesus “through his own blood entered once into the Holy Place [= heaven], having obtained eternal redemption [lutrōsis]”); “you were redeemed [or: ransomed] from your empty way of life … by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless” (1 Pet 1:18-19; using a form of the Gk. verb lutroō); “the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb … [and] sing a new song: ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and you bought for God in [= by] your blood (persons) from every tribes and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9; compare “the one who released us from our sins in [= by] his blood” in 1:5; and the saints conquered Satan “because of the blood of the Lamb” in 12:11). Clearly the consensus witness of the New Testament writers is that Jesus pays the price for our release from enslavement to sin and death through his own substitutionary and amends-making death on the cross.

(b)   Atoning Sacrifice as the Making of Amends to God

The Greek word in Rom 3:25 translated above as “amends-making offering” is hilastērion (an adjective being used as a substantive or noun), related to the verb hilaskomai meaning “to appease, propitiate, conciliate,” often by making amends or restitution (note that the dominant usage in two first-century Jewish authors, Philo and Josephus, is with God or God’s anger as the object). We have a half dozen or more Greek inscriptions and texts from the ancient world where the adjective hilastērion appears. It is used consistently either with nouns for sacrifice or offering (thusia, anathēma) or as a substantive with such nouns inferred. A synonymous noun, hilasmos, is used of Christ in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10, linked to the phrase “for ours sins.” The verb hilaskomai appears in Heb 2:17: Jesus became “a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God in order to expiate [or: wipe away] the sins of the people”; or possibly: “… to make amends [or: propitiation, atonement] (to God) for the sins of the people.”

The imagery behind hilastērion is cultic, calling to mind the sacrifices in the tabernacle (tent shrine) and in the temple. The core concept behind it, however, is not limited to the sacrificial realm, any more than the commercial image of redemption or paying a ransom price is limited to actual release of slaves and captives. Behind both images, redemption (ransom) and propitiatory sacrifice, lies the bedrock concept of restitution and the making of amends to God for sins.

Some have played off the meaning of “(means/place of) expiation” against the meaning “(means/place of) propitiation” (expiation refers to the wiping away of sins, propitiation to the assuaging of someone’s wrath). This misses the point that in Scripture amends is made for sin (expiation) and to God (propitiation). It is not a case of either-or but of both-and. There is no expiation of sin apart from amends made to God. The argument that propitiation of God cannot be intended here because God is depicted in Rom 3:25 as the one making the offering also misses the surprising point: God is making amends to himself through an offering that he provides (note the middle voice of pro-etheto, from pro-tithēmi, a verb that in the middle can function with direct reflexive force: “set before himself”; cp. 2 Cor 5:18: God “reconciled all things to himself”). It is his wrath and his judgment that is in view throughout the argument in 1:18-3:20. Undoubtedly there is an echo here to God’s provision of an offering in place of the sacrifice of Isaac in Gen 22:1-18, to which story Paul clearly alludes later in Rom 8:32 with his remark that God did not “spare his own Son.” In making amends to himself, God satisfies his own holy demands for justice and diverts the manifestation of his wrath away from believers who receive Christ’s death as their own.

Still others translate hilastērion as “mercy seat” since this is the common meaning of hilastērion in the Septuagint (the standard Greek Old Testament), which translates Hebrew kapporeth (from the verb kipper meaning “cover over, atone for, make atonement or propitiation for”). “Mercy seat” is an awkward English translation for the golden lid on top of the ark of the covenant by William Tyndale (1534) by way of Luther’s “Gnadenstuhl.” A better translation is “the atonement lid,” that is, the place where the sins of the people are covered over or atoned for and where amends are made to God via the purifying of his sanctuary. The concept of amends-making is crucial to the image of the atonement lid so that, even if hilastērion in Rom 3:25 were so translated, it would still lead us back to the concepts of restitution and amends to God.

Nevertheless, while there is almost certainly an echo here to the Day of Atonement ritual (Lev 16), Jesus is probably not being called “the atonement lid” (an image that sounds more Johannine than Pauline) any more than are the priest Eleazar and the mother with her seven sons martyred just prior to the Maccabean Revolt when the term was used of them. They had “become, as it were, a ransom [lit., a life/soul in exchange] (Gk. antipsychon) for the sin of the nation; and, through the blood of those pious ones and the amends-making [or: propitiatory] offering (hilastērion) of their death, the divine Providence saved Israel after it had been badly treated” (4 Macc 17:21-22; compare 6:28-29).

A direct correlation with the so-called “mercy seat” would also be problematic in view of the fact that “the blood” is identified as Jesus’ own in Rom 3:25, suggesting the image of Jesus as the sacrifice itself rather than the lid on which the blood is sprinkled (the image of Jesus as sacrificial sin-offering is a common theme of NT soteriology; e.g., Rom 8:3; 1 Cor 5:7; 2 Cor 5:21; Eph 5:2; 1 Pet 1:19; Heb 7:27 and often; John 1:29, 36; Rev ; Acts 8:32; Rev 7:14 and often).

According to Paul, God had to offer Christ as a ransom and amends-making offering “in order to demonstrate his righteousness” (Rom 3:25). Paul explains that in the pre-Christ era God had merely passed over sins or let them go in the sense of leaving them unpunished. He had “held back” his wrath without actually providing full restitution and amends for sinners (a mere cease-fire rather than an actual peace; 3:26a). In now providing such definitive restitution and amends God demonstrated his righteousness in the twin sense of being the only one “in the right” and being mercifully faithful to his promises of old by “pronouncing right (justifying) the one whose life is based on faith in Christ” (3:26b).

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