Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michele (00:00):
It's Good Friday, April
18, and this is Today's Kus
Word.
It's Friday, baby, and you knowwhat that means Time to drop
another Friday freedom bomb.
I'm Michele Kus, your spiritualgrowth coach, and this is your
weekly Kus Word to launch youinto your weekend with some
(00:20):
truth, some grace and some holyfire.
Let's get into it.
Happy Good Friday.
Hey, I got a text message fromToronto Said Hi, Michele, Friday
was my birthday.
Ps.
I love the Kus word.
Hey, happy belated birthday myToronto friend.
(00:43):
So here's Today's Kus Word.
You ready for this?
Jesus was not God's wrath sponge.
Let me give you that one moretime.
Jesus was not God's wrathsponge.
All right, that's it.
That's the Kus word for today.
(01:04):
So you might be wondering whatare you talking about, girl?
So today is Good Friday.
It is the day that we rememberJesus being beaten, being nailed
to a cross, bleeding out,suffering and dying.
And I've been to a lot of GoodFriday services over the years
and I have to be honest, they'reusually pretty heavy, pretty
(01:26):
somber.
Sometimes they are downrightmorbid.
Can you relate?
So this begs the question whatis so good about Good Friday
anyway?
Great question.
For a lot of folks, it comesdown to a heaping dose of guilt.
You might have heard it framedsomething like this that should
(01:49):
have been me up there.
I deserve what Jesus got.
Jesus took my beating, mypunishment, in my place so God
wouldn't destroy me.
God, the Father, had to pourout his holy wrath on someone,
and Jesus volunteered histribute.
Jesus absorbed it all so Iwouldn't have to.
(02:12):
Do these messages soundfamiliar?
Well, if they do sound familiar,you are certainly not alone.
That right there is the storythat most of us were handed
about this day, that Jesus savedyou from an angry, wrath-filled
(02:33):
God, that God had to pour outhis wrath on someone to pay the
penalty for sins, and so Jesus,standing in your place, decided
to take that wrath and absorb itinto himself so that you could
go free.
Does that sound familiar at all?
If it does, you're in goodcompany.
(02:54):
Most of us, at least in theWestern evangelical world, have
heard some variation of thatmessage, and I am here today to
challenge that message.
So most of us are not eventaught in church that there's
another way to look at the cross.
So this particular view that Ijust talked about has a name.
(03:19):
This is called the penalsubstitutionary atonement theory
.
Sometimes it is just simplyreferred to as penal
substitution, or PSA if you wantto sound very fancy and
theological, but whatever youcall it, this is the dominant
(03:39):
view in modern Westernevangelical Christianity.
Here's the nutshell of thisview God is holy.
People are wretched sinners.
Sinful people can't be in thepresence of a holy God.
Somebody's got to be punishedfor all that sin.
(03:59):
So Jesus steps in and takes allthe punishment and absorbs all
the wrath on your behalf.
And now God, the Father, canlook at your sorry face without
throwing up.
Okay, that last part was myaddition, but that is the vibe.
(04:25):
So in this theory, the theory ofpenal substitutionary atonement
, Jesus is punished by Godinstead of you.
This line of thinking believesthat Jesus was punished by God
on the cross in your place foryour sin.
This theology depicts an angry,scary, vengeful, wrathful God.
(04:48):
In penal substitution, Jesusbecomes the wrath sponge who
soaks up all the wrath of theangry Father God and stands
between you and the Father,literally protecting you from
the wrath of the Father.
(05:08):
So do you see what I mean whenI say Jesus acts as the wrath
sponge, soaking up all thatdivine anger, that divine wrath,
in your place?
So you didn't have to.
So let's just break these wordsdown for a second.
Penal refers to punishment, soyou can think of like a penal
(05:31):
colony, or where we get the wordpenalty.
And substitution just refers toJesus acting as your stand-in or
acting as your substitute.
So when you say it should havebeen me on that cross, you're
saying Jesus stood in as mysubstitute.
(05:52):
And you are probably thinkingbut this sounds really familiar
and biblical.
And while this whole storymight sound very noble on the
surface, the bigger picture thatit paints is a picture of a God
who is angry and violent andvengeful and a father a father
(06:15):
God who needs blood before hecan forgive you.
If this is the version of GoodFriday that you were handed,
guess what?
You are not alone.
That's what I was taught inchurch too.
That's what a lot of us weretaught, if not most of us.
But there is a better storythat most of us haven't even
(06:38):
been exposed to, and today we'regoing to get into it.
This theory might sound verybiblical to your ears because
it's been preached so widely andso confidently for so long that
we're not even aware of howterrible it sounds.
But here's the deal.
This theory, penal substitutionit's not ancient, this is not
(07:03):
what the early church believed,this is not what the early
church taught, this is not evenwhat the early church fathers
believed or preached at all.
It's not even close.
So penal substitution didn'teven show up until the
Reformation era in the 1500s,especially through guys like
(07:25):
John Calvin.
And here's the kicker JohnCalvin wasn't even a theologian
by training, he was a lawyer.
Let that sink in for a minute.
That's important becauseCalvin's entire framework for
understanding Jesus, salvationand the cross, his entire
(07:48):
understanding was shaped bycourtrooms, punishment, and
legal transactions.
So that legal mindset deeplyshaped how John Calvin
interpreted scripture andtheology.
So this whole idea that Jesustook the punishment so God the
(08:10):
Father wouldn't have to punishyou, this whole idea is rooted
more in Western legal theorythan it is in the message of the
early church.
It was a brand new concept whenJohn Calvin introduced it and
then began to propagate it inthe 1500s.
(08:30):
So how did we get here?
Well, let's back up for aminute and talk about how the
early church actually understoodsin, because, this might
surprise you, in the earliestcenturies of Christianity, sin
was not viewed as a crime.
Sin was viewed as a kind ofsoul sickness.
(08:57):
It was viewed as a type ofdisease of the soul that needed
healing, not punishment.
So Jesus didn't come like somecosmic lawyer to negotiate a
plea deal.
Jesus came as the GreatPhysician, the healer of our
(09:21):
hearts and minds and spirits.
And the early church believedthat salvation was about
restoring the image of Godwithin us, the image that sin
had damaged but had notdestroyed, and the cross.
This wasn't about Godunleashing his fury.
This is about Jesus defeatingsin and death and the powers of
(09:44):
evil once and for all.
That's the view called ChristusVictor.
It's a Latin phrase that meansChrist the victor or Christ the
conqueror, the liberator.
The goal of salvation wasn't toavoid the wrath of God.
It was to become whole again,to become fully alive, to become
(10:09):
reunited with God.
Salvation was about healing andrestoration and union with God,
not about crime and punishment.
But centuries later you havethinkers like Augustine to some
degree, and later Anselm andJohn Calvin the view began to
(10:31):
shift and sin started to beframed less like a soul sickness
and more like a crime,something that violated God's
law and it demanded legalpunishment.
So the cross got entirelyreinterpreted.
So now Jesus was the one tostep in and take the legal
(10:58):
penalty to satisfy God's justice.
So over time salvation becamethis whole thing about being
forgiven for your guilt.
It became about a legal matterand someone's got to be
penalized.
There has to be a penalty forsin.
But the original understandingwas that sin was a soul sickness
(11:22):
, a disease of the soul thatneeded to be healed and
transformed into somethingbeautiful.
So what do we get with penalsubstitution?
We get a picture of God as anangry judge demanding justice,
ready to smash someone.
And Jesus, he jumps in front ofthat wrath train and takes the
(11:45):
hit for you, which sounds verydramatic, that's for sure, but
it's not exactly biblical andhonestly it's kind of messed up.
I mean, penal substitutionaryatonement paints a God who is
violent and vengeful andemotionally unstable.
(12:06):
It creates a father that youdon't feel safe with and for
anyone who has had a history ofabuse or a distant father, this
theology doubles down on thatwound.
So in this version ofquote-unquote salvation, Jesus
(12:27):
doesn't reveal the heart of theFather.
Jesus protects you from theFather.
Jesus becomes your shield fromthe Father, standing between you
and a God who supposedly lovesyou but also cannot bear to look
(12:48):
at you unless someone takes abloody beating first.
That, my friends, is not love.
That is a hostage situation.
So here's why this whole theoryjust falls apart.
It separates the Father and theSon like they're playing some
cosmic game of good cop, bad cop.
(13:10):
It messes with the Trinity, asif the Father and the Son aren't
of one heart and mind.
It puts forth the idea of therebeing some kind of hierarchy
within the Trinity, which isabsolutely not scriptural.
It assumes that justice isabout punishment rather than
(13:33):
healing and restoration.
And it creates a fear-basedfaith where Jesus doesn't show
us the Father.
He saves us from the Father.
I'm not sure if you've everthought about it this way.
And this penal substitutionmessage?
(13:56):
Of course it's not called thatright, it's just called the
gospel, it's just called themessage of the cross, as if
that's the only way to view it,is this way.
But this message is calledpenal substitutionary atonement
or penal substitution.
(14:20):
And this message is preached inchurches all over the world on
Good Friday.
As a matter of fact, some ofyou are going to a Good Friday
service tonight and verypossibly will hear some version
of this penal substitutionmessage.
In fact, this message is notjust reserved for Good Friday.
(14:41):
We hear messages that involvepenal substitution on Sunday
mornings, many Sunday morningsin church, in Bible studies.
I did a year-long Bible studylast year with a group of ladies
called The Bible Recap, withTara-Leigh Cobble.
No shade to Tara-Leigh Cobble.
(15:02):
I do realize she's doing thebest she can with the knowledge
that she has, but I probablyheard penal substitution
language in her Bible studyduring the course of the year at
least a dozen times or more andevery time I heard it it made
my skin crawl.
(15:22):
So we do the best we can withthe knowledge that we have right
, and I'm so grateful that thereis a Bible Recap out there
getting people into the Word andgetting people excited to read
through the Bible in a year.
I'm excited about that.
But let's do a little moredigging, a little more research
and make sure our messaging andour studies are giving people
(15:48):
the right information or atleast another way to look at
things.
So, speaking of another way tolook at things, the early church
didn't believe anythingremotely like penal substitution
, not for the first thousandplus years of the church, from
(16:09):
the time of Jesus until the timeof John Calvin, basically, this
whole penal substitutionframework simply was not the way
that Christians understood thecross.
They believed something waymore beautiful and way more
powerful.
Nobody thought that Jesus, youknow, paid God off or absorbed
(16:32):
God's wrath or anything likethat.
This idea that Jesus paid forour sins makes it sound like
God's some kind of cosmic debtcollector and Jesus is throwing
down his blood payment.
Jesus didn't say I pay you.
He said I forgive you.
So Jesus didn't pay for oursins.
(16:53):
Let's pause on that for a second, because we hear that language
a lot in church as well thatJesus paid for our sins.
Jesus didn't pay for our sins.
Jesus forgave our sins.
And you can think of thedifference like this: If you
walk into a restaurant, you havea delicious meal and at the end
of the meal you get your checkand you realize you cannot pay
(17:17):
that restaurant bill, two thingscan happen.
Someone else can come along andpay for your bill, or they can
just come over and tear up therestaurant check.
So Jesus didn't pay yourrestaurant bill, he tore up the
check.
That's what it means.
When he forgave your sins, hetore up the check completely.
(17:43):
He didn't pay it, he tore it up.
So we've been taught this theoryin church over and over.
It sounds so normal, it soundsso gospel.
But it's just one theory, andpenal substitution, it's not
even a very old one and I'm notmad at the people who repeat it.
It's probably the only thingthat they've ever heard.
(18:05):
It's probably the only thingthey were taught in Bible school
or seminary or whatever.
But today we are going to peelback the layers on a much older,
much more ancient, and muchmore beautiful truth.
So if the cross is not about anangry God needing a blood
payment to appease his wrath,then what is the cross about?
(18:30):
Well, the cross is aboutvictory.
Let me introduce you to the OGunderstanding of the cross,
something that the early churchcalled Christus Victor, which is
a Latin phrase that meansChrist the Victor.
So the early church believedthat sin was not a legal problem
(18:53):
.
It was a sickness, a soulsickness, an infection that
warped our hearts, that brokeour communion with God and held
us captive to fear, death, andthe powers of evil.
So Jesus didn't come to makeGod less mad at us.
(19:13):
He came to make us whole again.
He entered into our pain, oursin, our death, and he defeated
it all from the inside.
He overthrew the powers ofdarkness, he unmasked the lies.
He showed us what God is reallylike.
This is the good news of GoodFriday.
(19:37):
God was not punishing Jesus.
God was in Jesus reconcilingthe world to himself.
You can read it right in 2Corinthians 5, verse 19, For God
was in Christ reconciling theworld to himself, no longer
(20:01):
counting people's sins againstthem, and he gave us this
wonderful message ofreconciliation.
The cross isn't the moment thatJesus saves us from God.
It's the moment that Jesusreveals to us the heart of God.
It's a love that would go tohell and back to heal us from
(20:23):
our sin sickness.
So this view says that Jesusdidn't die because God needed to
beat someone up.
He died to defeat the powers ofdarkness that enslaved us.
Sin, death, the devil, all ofit.
This was not a legaltransaction.
(20:43):
This was a rescue mission.
That's why the cross is good.
It's not because someone gotpunished.
It's because death wascompletely defeated, sin was
defeated.
Love had the final word.
That is Christus Victor, andI'm happy to say that many
(21:04):
theologians and many pastors areactually re-embracing a much
older, much more beautiful viewof the atonement, one that is
rooted in relationship and notlaw, one that is rooted in love
and not wrath, one that isrooted in restoration, not fear.
(21:26):
That is the ancientunderstanding of Christus Victor
.
Jesus was not punished insteadof us.
He willingly laid down his lifefor us, and he did this to
(21:48):
break the power of sin and deathand to set us free from the
power of those things forever.
So this wasn't God the Fatherpunishing the Son.
The cross was a divine act offorgiveness, of breaking the
stranglehold of sin and deathover humanity once and for all
time.
This was the Trinity unitedchoosing together to rescue and
(22:13):
restore humanity.
It's the Trinity unitedchoosing together to heal a
broken humanity and restore herto her original design.
This is the view I personallyhold.
I don't believe penalsubstitutionary atonement theory
(22:34):
.
I don't believe in a God whoneeded someone to punish.
I believe in a God who came toheal, to reconcile and to
restore and to make all thingsnew.
I believe that's the heart ofour Father.
Jesus confronted the powersthat had hijacked humanity and
he utterly defeated them.
(22:56):
Colossians, chapter 2, verse 15, says it loud and clear: He
disarmed the powers andauthorities, making a public
spectacle of them triumphingover them by the cross.
That's why it's called GoodFriday.
(23:17):
And I want to talk for just asecond about one thing that
Jesus said on the cross that isvery often not taught correctly,
and that is this section.
You can find it in Matthew 27:
46, where Jesus cries out from (23:28):
undefined
the cross on Good Friday my God,my God, why have you forsaken
me?
Many people say see, even Jesusthought that God had turned his
back on him.
See, see, God abandoned Jesuson the cross.
(23:51):
But hold on, Jesus wasn'tabandoned on the cross.
This is a common teaching thatJesus was being punished, he was
separated from the Father, hewas abandoned by the Father.
But hold up, hold up.
That line is not a cry ofdespair, it is a quote.
Jesus, when he says my God, myGod, why have you forsaken me?
(24:19):
Is quoting the first line ofPsalm 22.
If you don't believe me, pausethis podcast and go look up
Psalm 22.
Let me know what you read there.
This is a deeply propheticPsalm that paints a vivid
picture of a righteous suffererwho is mocked, who is pierced,
who is surrounded by enemies.
Does that sound like a familiarscene?
So in Jewish tradition, whenyou quote the first line of a
(24:44):
psalm, it's like saying thewhole psalm.
So if I were to say, here shecomes, just a-walking down the
street singing, you wouldimmediately think do a diddy
diddy, dum diddy, doo, like yourbrain just moves on with the
song, right?
That's exactly what Jesus wasdoing.
(25:04):
So by quoting the first line ofPsalm 22, he is triggering in
their hearts and minds the wholerest of the psalm.
And how does the psalm end?
For he has not despised orscorned the suffering of the
(25:27):
afflicted one.
He has not hidden his face fromhim, but has listened to his
cry for help.
Let that sink in.
Jesus was never abandoned.
The Trinity was never, not fora second, broken apart.
This is one of the greatestheresies of modern Christianity
that the Trinity was somehowbroken apart.
(25:50):
Jesus wasn't expressing hishopelessness.
He was calling us to lookdeeper.
Even in his agony on the cross,in that moment, he was saying
to us look, God is here, Godsees, God hears, he is with me.
He was pointing us to thistruth that even in his suffering
(26:11):
, God was near him.
He was not turning away indisgust.
He was leaning in with love.
He was redeeming all of thesuffering from the inside out.
And if you have ever feltforsaken in your darkest moments
(26:32):
, if you have had lonely nights,anxious thoughts, huge regrets,
you need to know God did notturn away from you.
You may have felt abandoned,but like Jesus on the cross,
quoting Psalm 22, the truthunderneath all that pain is
this (26:52):
he has not hidden his face
from you.
You are seen, you are heard,you are held.
God is not the angry judge thatsome of us have been taught to
fear.
He is the ever-present,ever-loving Father who enters
(27:18):
into your suffering andtransforms it from the inside
out.
You are not a problem thatneeds to be punished, just a
soul that needs healing.
If you only have one takeawayfrom today's episode, let it be
the cross was never about
Jesus saving you from God.
(27:40):
It was always about Jesusrevealing God.
It was love in action, God withus even in the darkest hour,
and that is what makes GoodFriday good.
Jesus didn't die to changeGod's mind about you.
(28:03):
He died to change our mindsabout God and to destroy
everything that stood in the wayof our healing.
The cross was not a punishment,it was a rescue mission, it was
an invasion of love into thedarkest parts of our reality,
and Jesus walked right into itfor the joy set before him,
(28:25):
which was you, because he knewwhere he was headed, he knew
Sunday was coming.
Okay.
So I know that this is probablynew for many of you, and some of
you probably didn't evenrealize there was another way to
view the cross.
So I offer you this littletidbit from Bible school because
(28:51):
I don't want you to justswallow everything that you're
hearing without thinkingcarefully about it.
Does this line up with who weknow God, our Father, to be?
Jesus himself said if you'veseen me, you've seen the Father,
and I don't know about you, butI, in the scripture, have never
(29:12):
seen a Jesus who is punishingor wrathful.
So feel free to research all ofthis out for yourself and, of
course, as always, you arepowerful to disagree.
Let me pray.
Jesus, thank you for showing usthe heart of the Father, not a
(29:33):
heart full of wrath, but a heartthat overflows with mercy,
compassion and relentless love.
Thank you that you didn't cometo shield us from God, but you
came to reveal him to us, toheal us and to rescue us from
sin and death and from every liethat's kept us in fear.
For every listener today whohas carried shame or who's been
(29:57):
afraid of God or who's wonderedif they are too far gone or if
God has abandoned them, wouldyou break every lie right now
and replace it with the truththat they are deeply loved,
fully forgiven, and they are notjust tolerated but celebrated
(30:17):
and forever invited into unionwith you.
Make this truth go deep, fromhead to heart, from information
to transformation.
Let it be like a balm on everywound in their soul.
We forgive the Church formisrepresenting the heart of the
(30:38):
Father in this penalsubstitution teaching.
And we thank you, Jesus, foryour victory.
We thank you for the cross.
We thank you for Good Fridaythat really is good.
In Jesus' mighty name, amen.
Friends, as we come into Easterthis weekend, let's remember
(30:59):
that the cross was aboutforgiveness and not punishment,
that we are in union with theTrinity, and the good news is
God is always for you, he'snever against you.
He is celebrating you, notmerely tolerating you.
He is one with you, not distantfrom you.
He is the Good Father and, asmy friend says, not the
(31:24):
Godfather.
So happy Good Friday and, ofcourse, happy Easter.
And that is what I got for youtoday.
If this episode challenged youor maybe brought some clarity to
a topic that you felt likenever quite sat right in your
spirit, would you share it witha friend?
(31:46):
Maybe that friend needs thatsame freedom?
And, of course, you can alwayssend me a text message.
There's a link down in the shownotes that says Text Michele.
Just tap that link on yourphone, send me a text message
and let me know what you thinkof this episode.
It's a long one.
I'd love if you text me yourbiggest takeaway from this
(32:09):
episode and I'll share those onthe next one.
Thanks so much for joining metoday and I will see you again
next Friday for another Kus Word.
Until then, have a great weekand a wonderful, blessed
Resurrection Sunday.
He is risen!