Does the Text of 1 John Demand Penal Substitution Theory ?

yes there is agedman, Its called a crucifix. Jesus was nailed to it, He bled, He suffered, He died in agony and despair.

His death is revealed in the OT.
Psalm 22
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.
18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
19 But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me.


Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

 

My opinion:

Crucifixion is only symbolic of the death of Jesus Christ - humanly speaking It is perhaps the most agonizing death known to man.

It is symbolic in that Christ death was the most intense suffering of death experienced by any being in the universe. It had to be.

It was the propitiation of the wrath of God for the entire human race of which I don't believe we can comprehend, neither apparently is it necessary to our full understanding as it is only described in partial detail in Isaiah 53.

Why the resistance to this kind of death?

It is that we shrink in horror that the propitiation of the unrestrained wrath of God was/is the price of sin including my own.

 

I don’t know anyone who would even attempt to consider the crucifixion was any less than torturous. However, the fact is that every stripe, every wound, every bruise, every chastisement all were prophetic, and every was blood letting.

One of the remarkable items one should not ignore is that the actual crucifixion was designed to be both excruciatingly painful, but one not die from blood loss. The Romans were cunning in regard to this death to make it last often for days.

The wounds received prior to the actual nail piercing were where the great amount of blood was splashed.

Each time the Savior lifted his body to exhale, the wounds would be torn open.

But as Isaiah states, the people thought they were doing what was righteous, and he also states, it pleased God.

God did not torture His Son, the Son was in total control of the universe “holding all things” throughout.

 

You were doing so very well until that last sentence.

 

Did it make you shrink in horror?

 

Unless you read about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53...

The Archangel

 

Who punished the suffering savior? God or human hands?

The problem is that some equate the suffering as imposed by God.

Nope. Not a single prophecy about the wrath of God poured out upon the messiah.

Though every detail of the. Crucifixion was part of prophecy, somehow the wrath of God was overlooked?

What wound, stripe, chastisement dislocation, blurring of vision... was by God’s hand?

Nope, it was all done by humans thinking they were just to do so,.

“Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Did not Isaiah state, “... it pleased God...”

Strange it is that some would find God pleased by pouring out wrath upon His own self as part of the trinity.

What is it that one would pronounce sever judgment upon a parent who would brutalize their own, yet would from that same mouth proclaim great swells of adoration for a God who took out His wrath upon His own?

So, not only is such not Scriptural, it doesn’t conform to human sense of justice - fallen as it is.

But, I must offer apologies to JonC. The topic has rushed off the rails.

 

Sorry, that should be Robert Candlish. I don't know what induced me to write 'James.'

 

I meant, how does Christ intercede for us with the Father?

So in your view Christ is not an advocate and does not intercede for us and the Holy Spirit speaking through John is mistaken. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have that book.
When I was at a Brethren assembly, Bruce was regarded there as the world's greatest theologian since he was brethren. What he says here is correct enough, except that I don't think atonement is the same as propitiation. Other than that, it's thin.[/QUOTE]

 

'It pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.'

 

Christ died so that we might have our sins washed away (Hebrews 10:19-22). He suffered and died to satisfy the justice and righteousness of God, and His wrath against sinners. @JonC's claim that Penal Substitution is 'man-centred' is grotesquely incorrect. It is God-centred to the core.

Isaiah 42:21. 'The LORD is well pleased for His righteousness' sake; He will magnify the law and make it honourable.'

Romans 3:25-26. 'Whom God set forth as a propitiation.......to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.'

Last night I felt that I have not done justice to 1 John 1:5, 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' There are no shades of grey, no shadow of compromise with His righteousness. 'Even when the Father hides His face, and "His sword awakes against the Man that is His fellow,"and the Son cries as one forsaken; even in that dark hour there is no evasion of heaven's light..... I think it is so significant that our Lord refused the wine mingled with myrrh when it was first offered to Him (Mark 15:23). '........There is no hiding then; no shrinking; no feeling as if truth might become a little less true, and holiness a little less holy, to meet the appalling emergency. The worst is unflinchingly faced. In the interest of light triumphing over darkness, not by any plausible terms of accommodation, but before the open face of eternal righteousness, pure and untainted, the Father gives the cup and the Son drains it to the dregs. In that great transaction, thus consummated, before all intelligences, between the Father and the Son, it is clearly seen and conclusively proved that "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all"' [Robert Candlish]

 

This is the complaint of the JW's concerning our doctrine of the Trinity. "It's an amalgamation of scripture, its a man made doctrine". I know this because my sister is a JW.

If one rejects 1 John 5:7 as scripture there is no proof text for the Trinity.

Indeed it was 300 plus years after the LORD's departure that the doctrine of the Trinity became church dogma.

However Isaiah 53 has been there for millennia pre-dating the Incarnation.
It has been documented that Penal Substitution (so called) was believed and taught by several of the early church fathers from very early on in the church predating even the officiating of the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

You keep ignoring the scripture we present to you.

Granted Isaiah 53 is the one that makes it very clear and is the scripture used from the 1st century onward by the church in support of the doctrine.

If we believe in the Trinity, The Hypostatic Union, The Kenosis, then the scripture "amalgamation" needed for the clarification for these doctrine is an important element of our faith.

The church for centuries, from the beginning taught penal substitution.

Are you prepared to reject these other doctrines aforementioned because they are only supported by "amalgamations" of scripture at the hands of men and early church fathers?

 

It is that very aspect in which the PS theory fails.

But rather then move away and see that the suffering was purposed, prophecied in every aspect, and approved by The Father, there are those that must cling to the some “divine justice” which is slanderous to the trinity, the Sovereignty, the prophecies, the types, and the consistency of Scripture.

It seems on this thread, that some would confuse the penal suffering and substitution as the total of the PS theory. It is not.

No one is denying the extent of physical suffering and the grevious sorrow of our Lord. But it seems that is what some posts would suggest.