Dr. Matthew McKellar, Pastor

"... we will sooner have our tongue cut out..."

In our ongoing study of I Peter on Sunday mornings at Sylvania, we have been confronted with a steady stream of significant biblical doctrine and teaching. One of the most weighty concepts covered in I Peter is the idea of the substitutionary death of Christ. Sometimes referred to as "the doctrine of penal substitution", this teaching should not be dismissed as a theological debate relevant only for ivory-tower academicians. No, this doctrine is the very heart of the gospel. Reflect for a moment on this excerpt from the book, Pierced For Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution, by authors Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey and Andrew Sach: "The doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin. This understanding of the cross of Christ stands at the very heart of the gospel. There is a captivating beauty in the sacrificial love of a God who gave himself for his people. It is this that first draws many believers to the Lord Jesus Christ, and this that will draw us to him when he returns on the last day to vindicate his name and welcome his people into his eternal kingdom. That the Lord Jesus Christ died for us - a shameful death, bearing our curse, enduring our pain, suffering the wrath of his own Father in our place - has been the wellspring of the hope of countless Christians throughout the ages."

Sadly, I must report, this "wellspring of hope" is under Fire today. Perhaps more alarming is the source of that Fire. It comes not from muslims, eastern mystics or self-avowed agnostics. Rather, it is an opposition flown under the flag of professed evangelical Christianity. In a 2003 book, The Lost Message of Jesus, authors Steve Chalke and Alan Mann liken the concept of penal substitution to "a form of cosmic child abuse." Apparently, these authors and others like them find the biblical concept of God's wrath (settled hostility toward sin) archaic and insulting to the comfortable idea that humans are really good at heart. This form of crossless, substitution-less Christianity is attractive to many today because doctrine is minimized, feeling is emphasized and self-worth is deified. When one sidesteps the issues of God's perfect holiness and wrath toward sin and our desperate need for reconciliation to Him, he or she also minimizes the message of God's saving and sacrificial love in Christ. Consider this perspective from Jeffery, Ovey and Sach: "A penal substitutionary understanding of the cross helps us to understand God's love, and to appreciate its intensity and beauty. Scripture magnifies God's love by its refusal to diminish our plight as sinners deserving of God's wrath, and by its uncompromising portrayal of the cross as the place where Christ bore that punishment in the place of his people. If we blunt the sharp edges of the cross, we dull the glittering diamond of God's love."

Please know and be assured that at Sylvania we have no plans to "bail out" on biblical reality simply because it is unpalatable, politically incorrect, or inconsistent with the increasingly popular tendency to deflate God and inflate man. I agree with the prophetic and profound sentiments of Charles Spurgeon on this subject: "If ever there should come a wretched day when all our pulpits shall be full of modern thought, and the old doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice shall be exploded, then will there remain no word of comfort for the guilty or hope for the despairing. Hushed will be for ever those silver notes which now console the living, and cheer the dying; a dumb spirit will possess this sullen world, and no voice of joy will break the blank silence of despair. The gospel speaks through the propitiation for sin, and if that be denied, it speaketh no more. Those who preach not the atonement exhibit a dumb and dummy gospel; a mouth it hath, but speaketh not; they that make it are like unto their idol...Would you have me silence the doctrine of the blood of sprinkling? Would any one of you attempt so horrible a deed? Shall we be censured if we continually proclaim the heaven-sent message of the blood of Jesus? Shall we speak with bated breath because some affected person shudders at the sound of the word 'blood'? or some 'cultured' individual rebels at the old-fashioned thought of sacrifice? Nay, verily, we will sooner have our tongue cut out than cease to speak of the precious blood of Jesus Christ."

Standing with you on the sweet truth of substitution,

Pastor Matthew