Jones on Penal Substitutionary Atonement

 Martyn Lloyd Jones Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

“It is therefore, quite fitting to say that no-one really begins to understand the love of God and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who does not believe the substitutionary and penal doctrine of the Atonement.

Think it out. Where do you see the love of God, if God’s Son is simply suffering the cruelty and all that men are doing to Him, in a useless manner? What is the point of it? If it achieves nothing, if it is not substitutionary, if it is not penal, if He is not really dealing with sins, it is useless suffering. It is pointless, it is sheer cruelty, there is no love there. Oh, the tragedy, that men should think that they are exalting the love of God in that way, whereas in reality they are evacuating it of its real essence and of its endless and eternal profundities!

Here is where you see the love of God, that ‘God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all’! He did not spare Him anything; He poured upon Him the vials of His wrath against sin. He did not spare Him anything. And it was for us, and because of His love for us! Not what men did to Him, but what God did to Him as the Judge of the world, the righteous Judge eternal, the Holy Father—that is the supreme issue in the ‘death of the cross’! And the Son gave Himself willingly, there was no compulsion. He set His face steadfastly. His one desire was to do His Father’s will and thus to bring about our salvation.

And it is only as you see Him as the innocent Victim, the Substitute, who has voluntarily put Himself in our place to receive our punishment, that you even begin to understand and to measure the eternal love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. And the Apostle Paul confirms all that we read elsewhere in Scripture—‘as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.’” “The Atoning Work of Christ”, Darkness and Light, An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17, 310-311.

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