N.T. Wright on Romans 8:3-4

Penal Substitution, but Perhaps Not as You Know it!

For God has done what the law (being weak because of human flesh) was incapable of doing. God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin-offering; and, right there in the flesh, he condemned sin. This was in order that the right and proper verdict of the law could be fulfilled in us, as we live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit (Rom 8:3-4, NTFE).

A couple of weeks ago, I was teaching on Romans 8, so I had a glance at N.T. Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans on Romans 8, which is a stunning, accessible, and engaging read of one of the most sublime and powerful passages in the New Testament.

Anyway, I thought I’d quote him on vv. 3-4 and his observations on the atonement!

Standing back from verses 3 and 4, we see more clearly how Paul’s version of ‘penal substitutionary atonement’ actually works. ‘There is no condemnation for those in the Messiah’ - because God condemned sin in the flesh (thereby opening the way for the spirit to perform the life-giving work that Torah by itself could not). That is definitely penal; it is definitely substitutionary; but it doesn’t work in the arbitrary fashion that theologians and preachers have often imagined. It works because of the vocation of Israel to be God’s covenant partner, and because of God’s sending his own son to be Messiah, bringing that vocation to its climax. We notice, once more, that Paul doesn’t say that God condemned Jesus. He condemned sin - in the flesh of Jesus. So Paul says that, on the cross, God condemned Sin itself. The word Sin, here and in Romans 7, appears to be a way of talking about the ultimate enemy, the sub-personal force we sometimes call ‘the satan.’ Here is the delicacy and inner complexity of Paul’s atonement theology. On the cross, God wins the victory over evil, through penal substitution. And penal substitution itself works through the Messiah representing his people, and thence the whole world. Thus the sacrificial system, here represented by the sin-offering, does the job, not of punishing an animal, but of cleansing the place where God will come to dwell; in the present case, making it possible for God’s spirit then to fill his people. Subsequent thought has often played these ideas off against one another, with frustrating results. In Paul they are tightly held together. (55-56).

Yes, there’s PSA, but it’s nuanced, related to Christus Victor, and fits into the context of Romans, and dovetails with Paul’s Christology.