14. The Moral Influence of Christ’s Passion

Amultifaceted atonement theory should also include the moral influence of Christ’s death upon humanity, which helps to draw people to faith in Christ and to persevere in faith through trials and even martyrdom.

Taken in isolation, the moral influence theory is hopeless as an atonement theory. Not only is it biblically inadequate, but, pace Abelard, it is powerless to explain how redemption is accomplished for all those believers who lived prior to the time of Christ and who had no expectation of his coming, upon whom his death had therefore no influence whatsoever. Moreover, taken in abstraction from penal substitution, the moral influence theory becomes bizarre. In his classic work The Death of Christ, James Denney contrasts the case of someone who drowns to save me from drowning with the case of someone who throws himself into the water and drowns to show his love for me. The first case prompts me to say, “Greater love hath no man than this,” but the second case is unintelligible. Penal substitution thus lies at the heart of the moral influence of the death of Christ.

Although moral influence will properly play a role in any penal substitutionary theory, non-necessitarian penal substitution theorists like Hugo Grotius have especially stressed the moral influence of Christ’s substitutionary death, which motivated God’s contingent choice of satisfying His justice through penal substitution. Blaine Swen, taking his cue from Thomas Aquinas, finds in God’s choice of penal substitution the provision of both disincentives for human beings to continue in their sinful state of alienation from God and positive incentives for them to embrace God’s offer of reconciliation. These are critically important in bringing people freely to a state of reconciliation with God.

Second, God, by insisting on exacting so high a price of salvation at Christ’s hand, demonstrates the high value of His offer of salvation. Given the deity of Christ, the price of our salvation is nothing less than divine, penal Self-substitution. As Turretin maintains, the divinity of Christ’s person makes his sacrifice of infinite value. Consideration of the cost that was paid as a condition of our salvation could discourage the sinner from ignoring the value of the offer of salvation and persisting in an alienated state.

Second, penal substitution demonstrates God’s justice, thereby encouraging victims of injustice to be open to a loving relationship with God. The demonstration of divine justice in punishing Christ can help to quell fears of the victims of injustice that God is not just. While God could waive the debt of punishment we owe, so doing would not be an act of justice that is visible to human victims of sin. It would be, as we have seen, an act of mercy rather than retributive justice. By choosing instead to exercise active wrath through penal substitution God visibly displays His justice and demonstrates His seriousness about sin. Knowing that God is just can help victims of injustice to be open to reconciliation with God.

Third, penal substitution demonstrates God’s love of sinners, as He substitutes Himself for them in bearing their just desert, thereby encouraging in turn a loving response to Him. Since Christ is himself God, we can see in the cross the extent to which God will go to win sinners back to Him. While God could simply pardon sinners without satisfaction, penal substitution affords God the opportunity, through Self-substitution, to convincingly display the depth of His desire for reconciliation with fallen humanity. Through penal Self-substitution God offers “a shocking display of God’s deep love for sinners,” a display “so shocking that it can combat our ability to ignore or doubt it.”

Although for Grotians like Swen such incentives and disincentives play a more crucial role in motivating God’s choice of penal substitution than they do in necessitarian theories, still it is evident that such disincentives to persistence in alienation from God and incentives to freely embracing God’s offer of forgiveness will attend necessitarian theories as well. And, of course, even on necessitarian theories, God’s choosing the particular means of Christ’s substitutionary punishment remains contingent, in which case Christ’s passion may be motivated by its production of such benefits.

Swen might be accused of exaggerating the thoughtfulness of unbelievers concerning Christ’s atoning death. But there can be no doubt, I think, about the impact of the graphic display of God’s wrath and mercy in Christ’s passion. The moral influence of Christ’s self-sacrificial death upon mankind has truly been inestimable. Repeatedly represented figuratively in literature and graphically in art, the death of Christ has, even more than his teaching, more than his character, made Jesus of Nazareth an arresting and captivating person for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people and has inspired countless people to bear with courage and faith terrible pain and even death. As mentioned earlier, it is not at all implausible that only in a world that includes such an atoning death would the optimal number of people come freely to love and know God and so to find eternal life. As Gregory of Nyssa saw, God’s wisdom, as well as His love and holiness, are thus manifest in the atoning death of Christ.

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.