Tom, by avoiding my question - Are you saying you think Sister White's insights are unbiblical? Do you agree she believed in penal substitution?

EW 38
I saw four angels who had a work to do on the earth, and were on their way to accomplish it. Jesus was clothed with priestly garments. He gazed in pity on the remnant, then raised His hands, and with a voice of deep pity cried, "My blood, Father, My blood, My blood, My blood!" Then I saw an exceeding bright light come from God, who sat upon the great white throne, and was shed all about Jesus. Then I saw an angel with a commission from Jesus, swiftly flying to the four angels who had a work to do on the earth, and waving something up and down in his hand, and crying with a loud voice, "Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold! until the servants of God are sealed in their foreheads." {EW 38.1}

Hebrews
9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once [for all].

Romans
3:25 Whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

Isaiah
53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
53:5 But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
53:8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither [was any] deceit in his mouth.
53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put [him] to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see [his] seed, he shall prolong [his] days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, [and] shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
53:12 Therefore will I divide him [a portion] with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

NOTE: The price paid for our sin debt of death was paid to satisfy the just and loving demands of law and justice. "His sacrifice satisfies fully the demands of justice." (FW 103)

NOTE: His willing sacrifice on our behalf demonstrates the love of God. It motivates us to serve and obey Him. "When we realize that His suffering was necessary in order to secure our eternal well-being, our hearts are touched and melted. He pledged Himself to accomplish our full salvation in a way satisfactory to the demands of God's justice, and consistent with the exalted holiness of His law." (1SM 309)

NOTE: But the death of Jesus serves more than to simply save us, more than to simply motivate us to love God. Equally important it also serves to maintain the honor and glory of law and justice. His life and death satisfies the just and loving demands of law and justice. Law and justice demands that sinners suffer and die for their sins. To save us, therefore, Jesus must obey the law on our behalf and He must suffer and die on our behalf. In this manner, the honor of law and justice are preserved and sinners are saved. Both are equally important. Both are necessary.

1SM 340
Justice demands that sin be not merely pardoned, but the death penalty must be executed. God, in the gift of His only-begotten Son, met both these requirements. By dying in man's stead, Christ exhausted the penalty and provided a pardon. {1SM 340.1}

LHU 24
The blood of beasts could not satisfy the demands of God as an atoning sacrifice for the transgression of His law. The life of a beast was of less value than the life of the offending sinner, therefore could not be a ransom for sin. It could only be acceptable with God as a figure of the offering of His Son. {LHU 24.3}

Christ has made a sacrifice to satisfy the demands of justice. What a price for Heaven to pay to ransom the transgressor of the law of Jehovah. Yet that holy law could not be maintained with any smaller price. . . . The law of God stands vindicated by the suffering and death of the only begotten Son of the infinite God. . . . . The transgression of God's law in a single instance, in the smallest particular, is sin. And the nonexecution of the penalty of that sin would be a crime in the divine administration. God is a judge, the Avenger of justice, which is the habitation and the foundation of His throne. He cannot dispense with His law; He cannot do away with its smallest item in order to meet and pardon sin. The rectitude, justice, and moral excellence of the law must be maintained and vindicated before the heavenly universe and the worlds unfallen. {UL 378}

1SM 363
Christ satisfied the demands of the law in His human nature. He bore the curse of the law for the sinner, made an atonement for him, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. {1SM 363.3}

NOTE: By living and dying the perfect life and death, Jesus earned the legal right to save us. Law and justice grants Him the legal right to save us.

1SM 309
What right had Christ to take the captives out of the enemy's hands?--The right of having made a sacrifice that satisfies the principles of justice by which the kingdom of heaven is governed. He came to this earth as the Redeemer of the lost race, to conquer the wily foe, and, by His steadfast allegiance to right, to save all who accept Him as their Saviour. On the cross of Calvary He paid the redemption price of the race. And thus He gained the right to take the captives from the grasp of the great deceiver, who, by a lie, framed against the government of God, caused the fall of man, and thus forfeited all claim to be called a loyal subject of God's glorious everlasting kingdom. {1SM 309.4}

Ok, good, I see some Scripture texts. Let's take a look.

By way of introduction, let me preface my remarks in saying that this issue to me is similar to someone trying to prove from Scripture that Sabbath was changed to Sunday. How does one respond to such a claim? One asks for proof. There are some half-dozen or dozen texts in the New Testament which talk about the first day of the week, and one goes through them one by one, seeing that not one of them says that Sabbath was changed to Sunday.

Similarly there are texts which are used to try to demonstrate penal substitution that can be cited, and the same tack can be taken of seeing where they teach that God required blood in order to have the legal right to pardon. There are no texts which teach this, which can be seen by simply examining the texts.

Also by way of introduction, it should be pointed out that at the time that the New Testament was written (and before, of course), the idea that God required a sacrifice in order to be legally able to pardon didn't exist. The idea of sacrifice was commonly understood, which was known to mean what Paul set out in Romans 12:



The idea was that by the animal sacrifice given, the one offering the sacrifice was dedicating himself to the service of the one being sacrificed to. Everyone understood this. The beauty of this symbolism, in the eye of faith, is that in truth it was God who offered Himself, in the person of His Son, for us. In response to that wonderful gift, that wonderful sacrifice, it is our privilege to be able to give ourselves for Him.

Ok, on to the texts:



This says the the shedding of blood was necessary. It doesn't say why.



This goes along with the well-known idea of sacrifice I presented earlier. We are set apart for service (i.e. sanctified) by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Paul sets out the idea here:





If this verse said that Jesus Christ propitiated God, then this would be along the lines of the theory of penal substitution, but it doesn't say this. It says that God set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. If God were propitiated by Christ's blood, faith would not be necessary.

Waggoner, of whom Ellen White said, "E.J. Waggoner can teach righteousness by faith more clearly than I can," comments on this text here:



As Waggoner correctly points out, we are the ones needing the sacrifice, not God.

This text, like the previous ones in Hebrews, say nothing about God's needing blood in order to have the legal right to forgive us. Propitiation has nothing to do with obtain a legal right.

Regarding the text from Isaiah, this is a most beautiful text, of which much could be said, but I'll comment just briefly.



Actually, rather than comment myself, I'll quote from the 1897 General Conference Bulletin, a portion of a beautiful sermon:



This is one of the most moving things I've ever read, especially the second paragraph.

In summarizing, there's absolutely nothing in any of the verses cited which says anything at all about God's required blood to be shed in order to have the legal right to forgive. This idea obscures the true idea of sacrifice.

Tom, do you believe Sister White believed in penal substitution? I'm still waiting for you to answer this question. I need to know before I can address anything you might say about the topic.

If God needed blood in order to obtain the legal right to offer pardon, then God could not have offered Lucifer pardon. Yet Ellen White says that God offered Lucifer pardon "again and again." Therefore the reason for Christ's death could not have for this reason, because if pardon requires blood, from God's end, that would have just as necessary to pardon Lucifer as to pardon man. Therefore the meaning of the blood, according to Ellen White's writings, is something else.

I think her thinking on the subject is similar to the Fifield statements I quoted. Fifield's book "God is Love" was one of her bedside books.

You opened a thread asking the question if penal substitution is Biblical, and it wasn't until something like a dozen posts into the thread that any Biblical texts appeared. None of these texts state that God needed blood in order to be able to legally provide.

In addition to their being no Biblical evidence to support this theory, the historical evidence is such that such an idea simply did not exist at the time of Paul, or before. It wasn't until many centuries later that the penal substitution idea was invented.

I've also been asking for a couple of weeks now, I think, for any evidence whatsoever from the life and teachings of Jesus Christ that He believed that the Father needed the Son to die in order for Him to have the legal right to forgive us. So far all you have cited are some quotes where He said that His time had not yet come, which is hardly evidence for the idea that Christ had to die in order for God to have the legal right to pardon us.

Tom, once again we disagree. I do not believe God can pardon willful sinning without shedding the blood of Jesus. Again, Sister White is consistent: No death, no pardon!

Step by step [Paul] led his hearers on, showing the importance of honoring the law of God. He gave due honor to the ceremonial law, showing that it was Christ who instituted the Jewish economy and the sacrificial service. Then he brought them down to the first advent of the Redeemer, and showed that in the life and death of Christ every specification of the sacrificial service had been fulfilled. {GW 118.1}

To many it has been a mystery why so many sacrificial offerings were required in the old dispensation, why so many bleeding victims were led to the altar. But the great truth that was kept before men, and imprinted upon mind and heart, was this, "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. 9:22). In every bleeding sacrifice was typified "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). {AG 155.2}

The cleansing, both in the typical and in the real service, must be accomplished with blood: in the former, with the blood of animals; in the latter, with the blood of Christ. Paul states, as the reason why this cleansing must be performed with blood, that without shedding of blood is no remission. Remission, or putting away of sin, is the work to be accomplished. {GC 417.3}

The Jews saw in the sacrificial offerings the symbol of Christ whose blood was shed for the salvation of the world. All these offerings were to typify Christ and to rivet the great truth in their hearts that the blood of Jesus Christ alone cleanseth from all sin, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Some wonder why God desired so many sacrifices and appointed the offering of so many bleeding victims in the Jewish economy. {1SM 106.4}

Every dying victim was a type of Christ, which lesson was impressed on mind and heart in the most solemn, sacred ceremony, and explained definitely by the priests. Sacrifices were explicitly planned by God Himself to teach this great and momentous truth, that through the blood of Christ alone there is forgiveness of sins. {1SM 107.1}

The blood of Christ, while it was to release the repentant sinner from the condemnation of the law, was not to cancel the sin; it would stand on record in the sanctuary until the final atonement; so in the type the blood of the sin offering removed the sin from the penitent, but it rested in the sanctuary until the Day of Atonement. {PP 357.5}

MM, if you're going to have a thread on "Is Penal Substitution Biblical?" it's not too much to ask that you present and address Scriptural arguments, is it?

Regarding the Spirit of Prophecy, it is clear that God was willing to pardon Lucifer, without Christ's having died. The issue could not have been one of God's needing to have something done in order for Him to have the legal right to pardon, because that would have had to have been done in order for God to pardon Lucifer.

Are we the ones being propitiated? Are we the ones being sacrificed to?

MM: Would you prefer my biblical commentary over Sister White's? Quoting her is similar to her participating on this thread.

Your main argument against penal substitution is based on your private interpretation of Sister White's comments concerning Lucifer's rebellion in heaven. Who are you to complain about me quoting the SOP?

You think she implied God was willing to pardon Lucifer's willful sinning without shedding the blood of Jesus, therefore, death is not required to give God the legal right to pardon sinners. This conclusion is unbiblical [i.e., uninspired]