This has an immediate and direct consequence, a result not directly found among by Wright's criticisms, although elements of it can be found in his work Jesus and the Victory of God. Specifically, the coming of the Kingdom in the ministry of Jesus Christ anticipates his atoning work on the cross, it is directly relevant for the ministry of the Church, and it cannot be left out of any comprehensive treatment of penal substitution.

Let me explain.

The authors begin, chapter one, first line, by defining penal substitution. By "penal substitution" they mean the belief 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 of sin.(3)

They then support the definition with biblical texts, theological arguments, and passages from Christian writings, and finally, in the second part, they defend penal substitution against its critics. All this is to the good, and frankly, with some qualifications, I am thankful to the authors for their work.

Succinctly put, they affirm, and to my mind we must affirm, that Jesus suffered the wrath of God on the cross for our sins, dying in our place. Having said that, however, one can scarcely avoid the conclusion that they justified penal substitution by selecting texts to defend the doctrine, rather than listening to the whole of Scripture and allowing the doctrine and its significance to take its rightful place.

How should Scripture be interpreted? Against false interpretations, the church of the first few centuries understood Scripture in light of the regula, the creed-like affirmations that became the creeds. From this perspective, Scripture needs to be interpreted theologically with the creeds providing the governing world-view.

Within this context, the biblical narrative is a single narrative with three primary events since God is understood as one in three. The single narrative is composed of events and revelations. Among the most important are creation, sin and the corruption of creation, law, prophets, apocalyptic literature, Jesus Christ, early church, and last things. By appropriation, seen in the Nicene Creed, the creation belongs to the Father. In regard to the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ is the one who overcomes sin and fulfills the law and the prophets, while the Spirit creates the church according to the redemption wrought by the Son and brings "the life of the world to come" (Nicene Creed).

Within that sequence, penal substitution belongs to the work of Christ. As such it comes after creation, law, prophets, and apocalyptic literature and before church and last things. According to Wright, the book by Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach leaves out the history of Israel (law, prophets, and apocalyptic literature) and truncates the gospels. This is true, and as a result, the authors do not see the doctrine in its proper context.

As the ten pages of high praise at the beginning of Pierced for our Transgressions makes clear, Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach belong to a tradition, the evangelical tradition. As such, the center of their biblical exegesis is Paul. That center needs to be Jesus Christ as known in the gospels for he and he alone fulfills the law and the prophets and provides the foundation for the Church and the hope of the "life of the world to come."

What portions of Scripture do Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach utilize as they affirm the biblical basis of penal substitution? With respect to the Old Testament, the authors discuss creation, sin, and the expulsion from the Garden and believe that Jesus restores creation, although they do not discuss how this concretely happened in Jesus' ministry prior to the cross.

They recognize the Exodus since they touch on it in their discussion of the atoning relevance of the Passover Lamb. They discuss portions of Leviticus and touch on Exile when they discuss Isaiah 53. Overall, however, they essentially ignore the social and economic relevance of the Exodus and the conquest of the land, its division according to tribes, clans, and families, and the giving of the law.

They do not incorporate the election of Zion and David, the Exile, return, and foreign domination. In regard to the New Testament, they discuss a fraction of Jesus' teaching but essentially ignore his deeds prior to the cross. They do, however, as one would expect, incorporate Romans and other Pauline texts. In short, they omit important sections of the biblical witness. Let me now address the critical significance of these omissions, beginning with what I consider to be the authors' clearest expression of penal substitution found in Pierced for our Transgressions.

This is the biblical portrait of the people for whom Christ died. We were objects of wrath, rightly facing the unmitigated, everlasting fury of an incensed God, but now in Christ we have found mercy. We have been brought from death to life, from corruption to glory. We were slaves to sin, the world and the devil, but are now adopted children of our heavenly father. We were stained with the filth of a wicked life and tormented by the pain of a guilty conscience but are now pardoned and forgiven, standing blameless before him as a pure bride, clothed in the clean, white robes of Christ's righteousness.

Now contemplate the blistering holiness of our God, the Holy One of Israel, the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity. His eyes are too pure to look on evil; his voice shatters the heavens; at his sight the angels in glory hide their faces. Who can dwell with this consuming fire, with this everlasting burning? Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? Who can stand in his holy place? Yet this God took pity on us, this God stooped down to us and lifted us up to enjoy the blessing of restored relationship with him, that we might gaze upon his face for all eternity.

What love it is, that this holy God should give his Son - his only Son, his beloved - to suffer and die in place of rebels. He gave him ... and fulfilled those precious words, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."(4)

Against the liberals who would trade God's holy love for an insipid caricature, Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach have affirmed the saving truth: that love without judgment is an utter travesty. They have affirmed the great fact that God's love is a holy, righteous love, a love that entails his wrath, and most stunning of all, a love revealed in the cross where Christ himself endured the wrath of God in our place. There, justice and mercy kissed each other and nothing less should be affirmed by the church and proclaimed to the world. In short, Pierced for our Transgressions proclaims a great, saving doctrine.

But then one wonders: What concretely does it mean to be "brought from death to life, from corruption to glory?" What has to happen in order for us to be liberated from "sin, the world and the devil," so as to become "adopted children of our heavenly father"? And what does it mean to "ascend the hill of the Lord" and "stand in his holy place"? In other words, what happens when we enter the presence of the living, holy God? But let us first ask another question, "What happens when God becomes present to us here on earth?" That question is clearly and decisively answered by Scripture in its description of Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection, as the presence of God acting upon earth. What, then, happened when God came among us in the person of Jesus Christ and how does that relate to penal substitution?

In the second part of their book, Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach respond to criticisms of the doctrine of penal substitution. One such criticism is that the doctrine of penal substitution "diminishes the significance of Jesus' life and resurrection."(5) Against this claim, the authors note that "Christ's entire life on earth was part of his atoning work, for he lived in perfect obedience to the law of God, which was binding upon us but which we failed to keep."(6) In other words, Jesus led a sinless life and therefore was able to make a sinless sacrifice on the cross for our sins.

Is that the only real significance of the life of Jesus Christ? Yes, N.T. Wright is correct. Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach see little relevance for Jesus' earthly ministry except for some of his teaching as it pertains to penal substitution. They omit or scarcely consider the healings, the exorcisms, the consorting with the poor, the confronting of injustice, Jesus' radical treatment of wealth and power, his cleansing of the temple, his denunciations of the powerful, his stance in regard to war and insurrection, his final meal in the upper room, his promise of the Spirit, and much, much more.

These deeds and their teaching, when seen in order, fulfilled the law, the prophets, and Eden, and laid the foundation for the radical life of the early church which was then, and is even now, a foretaste of the heavenly Kingdom. Eden was restored in the healings and exorcisms; the Exodus break with the oppressive Egyptian ideology of raw power and accumulated wealth was fulfilled in Jesus' social, economic teaching and actions; the prophets and all before were fulfilled in his confronting injustice, his cleansing of the temple, the upper room, and his atoning death and sacrifice. Apart from the atoning sacrifice, all this is missing in Pierced for our Transgressions because Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach essentially mine Scriptures for passages that directly defend their interpretation of penal substitution and do little with the rest.

Do these omissions have any pastoral consequences? Or, how do Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach understand the pastoral implications of penal substitution? Their treatment, chapter four, is brief, focusing on penal substitution as the assurance of God's love, confidence in his truth, a reflection of God's passion for justice, and a realistic understanding of sin. This is all quite positive.

At no point, however, do the concrete, objective deeds of Jesus prior to the crucifixion inform their understanding of pastoral care. This, to my mind, is a terrible omission, severely crippling the pastoral practice of the church. In regard to God's justice, they mention God's righteous law, but say nothing on how the law and the prophets proclaimed a just social and economic order, nor how this was fulfilled in Jesus. But this raises a question, "Is the kingdom ministry of Jesus prior to the cross directly relevant to penal substitution?" Or, should a text seen as a comprehensive treatment of penal substitution include the earthly ministry of Jesus?

What is the overwhelming impression that one receives when one reads the gospels in a straightforward fashion in the context of the whole of Scripture? The time is at hand, the Kingdom is dawning, the loss of Eden is reversed, and the Exile is over. Sinners can enter into the "blistering holiness" of the "Holy One of Israel" because Jesus is the presence of God upon earth. Jesus' penal sacrifice for our sins took place on the cross, but the power and the wonder of his sacrifice began with his person, his saving deeds as the presence of God upon earth in the midst of sinners.

That is a decisive significance of penal substitution that cannot be found in the text, Pierced for our Transgressions. People were blessed and healed by Jesus, a new social and economic order dawned, because sinners entered into God's presence when they entered into the presence of Jesus. Jesus suffering the wrath of God and the sin of the world in our place made this possible, but it began when Jesus announced the Kingdom of God and put it into practice. All four gospels proclaim this, and all four see the cross and resurrection as the culmination of his earthly ministry. Jesus' atoning death and kingdom ministry are integrally related, and in the end, we cannot have the one without the other.

What do we think when we read Pierced for our Transgressions and learn that we can pass from "death to life, from corruption to glory," that we were "slaves to sin, the world and the devil, but are now adopted children of our heavenly father," that we can "enjoy the blessing of restored relationship with him," that we might "gaze upon his face for all eternity," that we are "pardoned and forgiven," and that we are "clothed in the clean, white robes of Christ's righteousness"?

Readers will undoubtedly understand these abstract phrases in whatever light has been given them. But their meaning is rooted in the concrete, specific, words and deeds of Jesus. Passing from "corruption to glory" means healing, body and soul, restoring God's original intended goodness before the corruption of sin. No longer being a slave to sin and the devil entails a ministry of deliverance from evil spirits, clearly practiced by Jesus and the early church.

Being able to "gaze upon his face" is the vision of God, a real possibility today for the pure in heart. Being clothed in Christ's righteousness means that Christ was righteous, and he was righteous because he fulfilled the law and the prophets. His life was and still is a radical social, economic, and political way of life based upon his association with the marginalized, his renunciation of wealth, and his refusal to endorse a violent political option. And all of this is possible because Christ's suffering in our place results in our being "pardoned and forgiven," but this pardon only happens when one repents, and a terrible sin of the churches is that they domesticate Jesus with omissions and abstractions rather than doing the deeds that Jesus did.

If all of us were to proclaim the doctrine of penal substitution, not simply as a doctrine, not simply as a teaching, not simply as another sermon, but rather, as the door for entering the Kingdom of God, then the doctrine would have its proper significance. Through the work of the Spirit, Christ's atoning death and resurrection would become the foundation for a living body of Christ that did the deeds of Jesus. Having passed through the veil of his flesh and entering into the presence of the living God (Hebrews 10:20), believers would heal the sick, cast out evil spirits, renounce wealth and power, become servants of the poor, befriend the marginalized, and confront injustice in all forms, both ecclesial and political.

Then the stunning message of Christ's great work of penal substitution would sound forth in praise of the living God who gave his only begotten Son that we might know life everlasting, not only in the life to come, but now, albeit it ever so dimly, here upon earth. This reality, Christ's Kingdom upon earth, actualized by the Spirit, given to us by his atoning death, would then be a foretaste of the life to come where the redeemed would give glory, honor, and praise to the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world, forever and forever, amen.

Endnotes

1. Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach. Pierced for our Transgressions. Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2007.
2.http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/20070423wright.cfm?doc=205 In the same essay, N.T. Wright uses the term "sub-biblical" rather than "unbiblical." That, to my mind, is a more accurate assessment.
3. Pierced for our Transgressions, p. 21.
4. Pierced for our Transgressions, pp. 152-3.
5. Pierced for our Transgressions, p. 212.
6. Pierced for our Transgressions, p. 213.

---The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D. is VirtueOnline's resident cyber theologian. His website can be accessed here: www.rsanders.org