Penal Substitution
On various blogs there are discussions of penal substitution and other kinds of atonement “theory” about the Cross. As a Christian, I am not really interested in theory, but in reality. Theory may come and go, depending upon who you ask, but reality dictates where I spend eternity. What are some of the realities of redemption? John Lake puts it well:
The redemption of Jesus does not rest on His crucifixion alone. It rests equally in a combined victory of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Each step was an elevation in divine consciousness to one end, the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on us. Through crucifixion, he fulfilled the type and fact of Jewish sacrifice. Heb. 9:26; 10:12. Through resurrection, He demonstrated power over death and death itself was made a captive. Romans 6:9; II Timothy 1:10; Revelation 1:8. Through ascension to the throne of God, he was [became] equipped to bestow salvation. John 14:12-17; Acts 1:4-8; Acts 2:38.
There are those who preach about the kingdom and then there are those who preach the kingdom. Lake was one of those rare few that preached the kingdom.
I believe Lake had a real insight here… that the end of everything was not salvation (that was a step along the way)… but that the Father could send the promise of the Holy Spirit… I don’t think we still comprehend that… our salvation was to prepare a place where the Holy Spirit could dwell… Salvation if one looks at it is just getting us back to zero… where we were originally… he wanted to get us so much farther… Jesus could not wait to go away so the Holy Spirit could come and fill us… read Gal 3:14… the Blessing of Abraham came to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith… “so that” i.e. it had a purpose… and we sometimes look at the mechanism (i.e. salvation) as great as it is… and miss the purpose it was enacted…