class tonight. I hope that you're doing well and glad that you could make it to Intermediate Biblical Counseling. This is, I believe, session number 13, and we're looking at Theology exam number 13 tonight, and I think we're going to be in for a very encouraging study tonight. We're in the section of our essays where we're dealing with the doctrine of Christ, Christology, and so what that means is we're writing our essays on our favorite topic, which is the person of Jesus Christ, and if you're a Christian who loves Christ, then obviously we love to read about Christ, hear about Christ, and learn about Christ, and we get to write some essays here about Christ, and so I think we're going to be in for a good study tonight, and so thanks for joining us, and hope you had a great week, and hope you're working your way through the essays and the studies, and that this material has been useful for you.

Just as a word of devotion for tonight, I want to start off our class by looking at a section of Scripture that is packed with meaning. I'm just going to pull out one devotional thought from Matthew 3, verses 13 to 15, and just introducing the whole concept of substitution.

Theology exam number 13 is dealing with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and so the concept of substitution, one person standing in place of another, is going to be the simple concept that we're going to be looking at for an hour in this webinar, and also that you're going to be thinking about and writing about in your essay in the week to come, and it's a simple concept, a beautiful concept.

It's repeated time and time again in the Scripture, the concept of substitution, one man standing in place of another, and that is, as we'll see, the essence of the gospel, and this was just, I think, a number of years ago. I did some reading on this topic, on this particular passage from Matthew 3, verses 13 to 15, where you have the baptism of Jesus, and it says in verse 13 that Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. So, here we are at the beginning of Jesus's public ministry.

John the Baptist has been preaching a message of repentance. John the Baptist, as you know, has come to prepare the way for the Messiah, and his message was just simple and clear and a very hard message. It was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," and so John's message was very simple.

You all are sinners, and you need to repent. He preached baptism of repentance, so he was calling sinners to repent and confess their sins. Then he would baptize them in the Jordan as a public demonstration of their contrition. What a person was saying when they were baptized by John in the Jordan was essentially, "I'm a sinner, and I need forgiveness, and I need repentance." They were confessing their sins as they were being baptized by John.

So, John had this very hard message, "Repent." He had no patience for the religious sort of virtuosity, this exterior religion that was practiced in Israel in that day. He even preached to the Pharisees, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?" He went to the religious leaders of his day, and he basically called them, "You bunch of snakes, you need to repent, and you need to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Don't just tell me that you're repentant. Show in your actual life that you have turned from your sin and turned to the Lord." So, John was just preaching this hard message. And so, it was just a very simple picture of being baptized by John. You were saying, "I am a sinner, and I need to repent." And so, here is this amazing scene in Matthew 3 verse 13 as the context where it says that Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

That's really just a stunning scene. Why is that? You remember that John knew who Jesus was, that Jesus was the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. Jesus was the Messiah, and John the Baptist knew all of that. And yet, here comes Jesus who needs no repentance, and he wants to be baptized by John.

And John's looking at this, and it says in verse 14, "John would have prevented him." And you know why. John understood, "Jesus, you're not a sinner. You're the Lamb of God who's come to take away the sin of the world. You're the Messiah. You're the light. You don't need to stand in the place of a sinner." And he wanted to stop Jesus from being baptized.

And then to carry the thought even further, he was protesting not only that Jesus would stand in the place of a sinner, but he was protesting that he would be standing in the place of a righteous man baptizing Jesus. And verse 14, John's basically saying, "The roles are reversed here.

I need to be baptized by you. I'm the sinner, Jesus. I need to be in the place of sinners. You're the righteous man. You need to be in the place of a righteous man. We have our roles reversed." He says, "Do you come to me?" And Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.

Now, there's been pages and pages of reflection on this simple scene of why was Jesus baptized and what is the significance of all of that. And I just want to pull out a devotional thought for us tonight as we consider this whole concept of substitution. And my devotional thought is simply this, that Jesus began his earthly ministry the same way he ended it, and that is he stood in the place of a sinner even though he had no sin.

That was why Jesus came. He came to be a substitute for sin and to stand in the sinner's place. And what results from Jesus standing in the sinner's place is that you have this role reversal, which is seen in, you know, the theme is already here. It's going to come to full crescendo and climax at the end of the gospel records, but you begin to see the theme here of because Jesus says, "I'm going to stand in the place of a sinner," then John is saying, "Why are the roles reversed?

Why am I not in the place of the sinner? Why am I in the place of a righteous man?" Now, you get the concept here. This is initial, the beginning of Christ's ministry. This isn't in full clarity what we're going to see in the fullness of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, but you begin to see the themes start to emerge, and they will come to a full climax at the cross of Calvary where Jesus will, at the cross, stand in the place of a sinner.

He will be the perfect substitute for sin. He will take our penalty. He will die our death. He will take our curse. He will take the wrath of God that a sinner deserves, and he will stand in the place of a sinner so that the sinner who trusts in Jesus for salvation will stand in the place of a righteous man.

And you and I look at the cross, and we are saying a similar thing that John said at Jesus' baptism, which is, "Jesus, what are you doing in the place of a sinner at the cross? And Jesus, what am I doing in the place of a righteous man that you have died my death, and I now live your life?

You have taken my curse, and I now receive your blessing. You, the Son of God, were forsaken by the Father so that I, as a child of wrath, would be accepted by the Father." The role reversal of the gospel is just stunning, and yet that is the essence of Christianity.

That is the good news that we proclaim is not just Christian ethics, not just Christian morals, not just Christian behavior, but we proclaim Christ as substitute. He is the perfect substitute who stood in our place so that we would receive all of the blessings that he earned through his perfect life and his obedience to the law.

And I just want to encourage you as counselors in training that that is not just a theological truth that we tuck away, and we write an essay about, and then we kind of put that essay aside, and we never see it again. If you're going to minister to people who are struggling with sin, you are going to need to learn to teach them about Jesus and his saving work on the cross.

You have good news to tell to those who are struggling with sin, to those who are weak in their faith, to those who are downcast and downhearted because of all of the issues of life. You and I have encouraging news to give to both those who are strong in faith, those who are weak in faith, and we have good news.

We have the gospel to proclaim even when our counselee is an unbeliever, even when we realize that they've never placed their trust in Jesus Christ. We have the gospel, the good news, the evangelion to proclaim to our counselees, and I just hope that that truth will shape your counseling ministry, that you will be, as we'll discuss tonight, you will be constantly relating the message of your counseling back to Jesus and Jesus Christ and him crucified, back to his work on the cross and all that he accomplished for us, and that you will learn to minister that truth to marriages who are in need of transformation, to fellow saints who are struggling with sin, to those who have lost hope.

We want to minister the message of the cross, and back to our defense of biblical counseling, only biblical counseling can minister that message. It's those counselors who are most committed to the Scripture who will be the most Christ-centered and cross-centered, gospel-centered in their message and their counseling ministry, so I hope that encourages you as we prime the pump to look at the great doctrine of substitutionary atonement tonight.

Let me pray for us, and we'll dive into our study tonight. Father, thank you for Christ, and thank you for the message of Jesus and him crucified. We thank you for our perfect substitute. We thank you that Jesus obeyed the law perfectly and earned the blessings of the law, and at the cross, he stood in the sinner's place, that though he had earned the law's full blessing, that he took the full cursing of the law of God so that those who had only sinned against you and who had only rebelled against your law would receive the full blessings of his obedience.

We thank you for this amazing role reversal that has taken place, that we as sinners stand in the place of a righteous man while Christ, the righteous man, stood in the place of a sinner. We pray that this doctrine of substitution, the full atonement that's been made on our behalf, would shape our lives, that would shape our ministry, and that it would be an essential component of the content that we communicate to our counselees, that we believe in Jesus Christ and him crucified, and therefore we have hope for life and we have hope for those who are struggling under the weight of sin.

Thank you for my brothers and sisters tonight who are tuning in and desiring to hear your word and to learn from your word, and bless each one, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, well we're going to dive right into theology exam number 13, and the exam question is provide an explanation of and the biblical basis for the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

That's my comment there. Note the concept of substitution is there. Explaining the implications of this doctrine for human guilt over sin and relate your understanding of this to the concept of false guilt. So a very important essay question, and I trust that this will be a rich study for each of you.

You're going to have to address this exam in two parts. There is, first of all, the explanation of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and then secondly, you will want to deal with the issue of guilt under the heading of objective guilt and subjective guilt. You'll also want to deal with the concept of false guilt, and we'll do some overview of those topics tonight, and so this is a wonderful study, and I hope this will be a blessing and encouragement to you.

So on your handout, I have some resources that I've put into your hands. Paul N's Moody Handbook of Theology has an excellent section on the atonement and the whole concept of substitution. He goes into great detail on the grammar, the Greek grammar in the New Testament that deals with the concept of substitution, and so that is a very good read and resource for you.

I also want to highlight that Paul N's in that book has a good section on the false theories of atonement that you'll want to be familiar with to contrast with the biblical view of atonement, and we'll do a little bit of work on that tonight. I won't be able to get to all of the false views on atonement, but if you want more on that, you can read Paul N's Moody Handbook of Theology.

Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology is excellent on that topic as well, and Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology is very good on this topic. I think I would recommend reading N's and Ryrie first and then going to Grudem after that. You'll find a lot of overlap in those resources, but each of those works are excellent, and I think it'll be helpful to you to nail down this whole doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

And then on false guilt, we have Jay Adams, A Theology of Christian Counseling, pages 144 to 146. You may need to purchase the whole book to get those three pages. I don't know any easier way to do that, but I guarantee you that if you do purchase that book, that the rest of the book is worth the price of admission, so you won't be wasting any money, but those three pages from A Theology of Christian Counseling really go into this whole concept of false guilt.

Jay Adams is writing in order to address the issue of Freud and how Freud dealt with the issue of false guilt. Freud basically said that false guilt is guilty feelings that aren't rooted in any objective truth. It's just the battle between the ego, the id, and the superego. And so, psychotherapy according to Freud was working out all of these guilty feelings that weren't rooted in objective truth.

And so, Adams is responding to that whole concept of the Freudian concept of false guilt and outlining a biblical view of guilt that is really rooted in objective guilt that we believe that we feel guilty because we are guilty. There is real actual guilt and violation of the law of God that results in guilty feelings.

So, the contrast between the Freudian view of guilt is that we as sinners have actually transgressed the law of God, and therefore, we feel guilty. So, Adams talks about the biblical view of dealing with guilt is we deal with subjective guilty feelings by dealing with the objective guilt problem where Freud just said you have these guilty feelings.

They're not really rooted in anything. So, the answer is you talk about them in psychotherapy, and that can go on for years, and there's no real guarantee that psychotherapy will actually make substantive change in your life. But it was a model that Freud espoused and promoted. So, just realize Adams is responding to that, and he has good three pages there in the Theology of Christian Counseling.

So, I would feel guilty recommending that to you to get the entire book for three pages of reading material, but my guilty feelings are not rooted in objective guilt. I think you'll be well-served to get the entire book, and that entire book is a great resource for anyone who's training to be a biblical counselor.

And then I want to recommend Robert Jones's work, I Just Can't Forgive Myself. He has a journal article version of this material, A Biblical Alternative to Self-Forgiveness, and then Jones also has a booklet that's available. I think it's $2 on Amazon, or you can go to biblicalcounselingbooks.com and get a copy.

And I think the title of that booklet is Forgiveness, I Just Can't Forgive Myself. So, either the journal article or the booklet will be extremely helpful to you in really expanding this whole idea of false guilt. This idea that counselees will say, "I know that God has forgiven me for my sin, but I just can't forgive myself." How do you deal with that in a counseling session?

And Jones walks you through some possible options as to what is happening in the counseling room and how you can address those issues. And if I have time tonight, I'll be able to touch on that briefly, but I really encourage you to get those resources in relation to the issue of false guilt.

It's probably too much material to incorporate in your essay, but it is a very good foundation to biblical counseling ministry, and you'll find it very helpful in future ministry opportunities. So, think through those resources, and I hope that's a helpful introduction to you. So, let's move to your handout on page number two.

We're introducing the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and just some general kind of primer type of quotes to stir up your thinking on the cross. John Stott has written that "the cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough to it for sparks to fall on us." I think what Stott's saying there is that you would do well to spend much time studying the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I highly recommend Stott's book, The Cross of Christ. That is a must read. I would rank that up with J.I. Packer's Knowing God as one of the top 10 or top 20 books that every Christian should have. The cross of Christ, where he goes into the meaning of the cross and all the implications of Christ's death on our behalf for the Christian life.

It's a very foundational work and one that will help you see and appreciate the love of Christ. I love what Spurgeon said, "Oh give me the story of the cross, the veritable story. Yes, let my eyes behold the wounds of Jesus as I stand and bow before the crucified." Just this wonderful language.

"Here I see atonement completed, satisfaction rendered, justice honored, grace expounded, love struggling, bleeding, contending, conquering. In the actual death of Christ upon the cross, I see the safety of his elect whom he has purchased with his precious blood." Just another wonderful perspective that calls us to consider the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So we see that the cross is at the center of biblical Christianity and the implication should be the cross should be at the center of our counseling ministry. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 3 says, "For I deliver to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures." So as it has well been said, there are many things that are important but there are only a few things that can be categorized as being of first importance and what is the first importance in the church and in our lives ought to be the essential truths of the gospel.

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Now at the risk of overstating the obvious, I mean that is Christianity is the belief in Jesus Christ and him crucified and this is the simple focus that we want our counselors to embrace and to communicate to counselees and you have to ask the question if it's so simple then why doesn't everyone do it?

Why doesn't everyone counsel and tell people of how their problem relates to the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified and when you survey the scene that's going on in the counseling world today, you realize that this is actually a lot more rare than you might first think. Secular counselors don't minister Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Integrationist counselors, there's a wide range of Christian integrationists but that is not the focus or the center of their message to counselees. It's really the distinction of biblical counseling that we minister Jesus Christ and him crucified and then we relate every counseling issue back to the cross. I have hope when I counsel someone dealing with an anger problem because if that person is a believer then Jesus died to save that person from their sins and not only to save that person from the penalty of sin but also from the power of sin and so I can reason from the counseling issue which is anger to the cross and give that believer hope and encouragement that because Jesus died to save you from the power of sin you can make progress and you can grow and overcome this anger issue.

You would hope and think that that kind of counseling would be going on all the time but you realize that's just not the case in the counseling world and so because the cross is at the center of biblical Christianity, we want it to be at the center of our biblical counseling ministries.

If you look at your handout in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 2, Paul makes this amazing statement, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." So that's a pretty good counseling conviction. I have determined my heart to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

You say, "Then why are we in training for biblical counseling? Why are we dealing? Why are we studying the topics of anger and anxiety and depression and conflict resolution?" Well, it's not so that you can think less of Jesus Christ and him crucified. It's so that you can relate all of those counseling issues and as Spurgeon said, you take any issue in life and you make a beeline to the cross.

It's dealing with two believers who are in conflict with one another and taking them to the foot of the cross where they can both behold Jesus Christ and him crucified and see that their conflict really needs to be resolved with grace being extended to both parties because Christ has given so much grace to us.

So when Paul says, "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified," he's not saying I don't study other issues. He's saying every topic that I study, I relate it to the message of the cross and the fundamental truths of the gospel. This is how D.

A. Carson has explained it. He said, "Focus on Christ crucified." That is what Paul did. "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." This does not mean that this was a new departure for Paul, still less that Paul was devoted to blissful ignorance of anything and everything other than the cross.

No, what he means is that all that he does and teaches is tied to the cross. He cannot long talk about Christian joy or Christian ethics or Christian fellowship or the Christian doctrine of God or anything else without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered. He is Christ-centered.

I love that language of tying everything to the cross. Friends, tie your counseling to the cross, and God will use and bless your ministry greatly. The Spirit loves to exalt the person of Christ, and the Spirit especially loves to exalt the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified because that is the central theme of all of Scripture.

And so learn to tell people of the finished work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. There's so many counseling scenarios that we could draw up and just relate back to the cross, but one comes to mind is that when you're counseling someone who's going through a physical illness, a chronic illness, or just some form of suffering in a season of disappointment, to minister the message of the cross is one of the most powerful things that you can do for that person.

Just taking them to Calvary, assuring them of the love of Christ, telling them of the height and the length and the breadth and the depth of Christ's love for each believer, and then showing them that the greatest demonstration of Christ's love for them is not in the circumstances that they're facing.

It's not in whether their preferences are fulfilled. It is in the final work of Jesus on the cross. That is the greatest demonstration and proof of Christ's love for every believer. So learning to minister that to believers is one of the greatest things that a counselor can do. Let me move to page three, and I'll cover some of this quickly, but letter b would be the truth that the cross is a demonstration of the attributes of God.

You have here the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the love of God, the wrath of God, the wisdom of God, the sovereignty of God. All of these attributes are put on full display at the cross of Calvary where Jesus died for our sins. I love the language of Eric Raymond who wrote this, "Stand with me in the shadow of the cross and see God's attributes perfectly illuminated, tremble at his holiness and the demands of his sacrifice.

Be convicted and comforted by the unfathomable love that demanded and accomplished Calvary. Feel your knees knock as you behold the gasping sun drink dry the eternal vat of condemnation that was due you as he bears all of the burden of divine righteousness. Stand in the shadow of the cross to learn of God for it is here where the son of God was set for to amplify and supremely demonstrate all of the divine perfections.

Stand here and fall in love with this dangerously lovely God and his supremely beautiful son. Stand here and marvel, stand here and worship, stand here and don't move for you are right where God wants you." I just love that idea of standing in the shadow of the cross to learn of God.

It says, "We stand in the shadow of the cross and behold Jesus and him crucified that we behold the holiness of God." This is how much God hates sin. We see God's holy wrath and judgment upon sin. It says, "We behold the wondrous cross upon which the prince of glory died that we behold the righteousness of God." The righteousness that is given to the sinner by grace alone through faith alone.

A righteousness that's not earned through works of the law but a righteousness that is given by grace through faith. We behold the love of God as we behold the cross. That Jesus loved us even when we were his enemies and he laid down his life for us in order to redeem us and to bring us to himself and to reconcile us to God the Father.

We behold the wisdom of God that makes foolish the wisdom of man. We behold the sovereignty of God that this is God's salvation plan that he has determined before the foundation of the world and that he has unfolded through the generations of time to culminate in the sacrifice of the Son of God at the cross of Calvary.

It's as we stand in the shadow of the cross that we learn of the attributes of God. That the attributes of God are not to be learned only in abstraction or in principle but we see each of these attributes put on display as the Son of God laid down his life at Calvary.

And so as C.H. Spurgeon has well said, "Abide hard by the cross and search the mystery of his wounds." All of that to say as we move to the next page of your handout on page four that I really hope and believe that the writing of this essay ought to be a life-changing experience for all of us.

Any contemplation of the cross of Jesus Christ, the perfect substitute, the perfect Lamb of God, ought to drive us to worship and to be lost in wonder, love, and praise at the greatness of who Jesus is. It ought to stir us to love one another for if Jesus has loved us in this way and so we ought also to love one another and it ought to assure us of the greatness of Christ's love for us.

And I just pray that that'll be your experience as you study these things and as you write these essays that it'll be more than an intellectual experience but that it will be a devotional exercise in abiding hard by the cross and allowing the greatness of Christ's love to encourage and to sanctify you.

As we move to page four and we're looking here at the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and we'll just break that up in terms of its concepts and make it as simple as we can. Just beginning here with that first word, substitution, the concept of substitution, which simply means that Christ died in the place of sinners, that Jesus took our place at Calvary.

This is the simple message of the gospel and yet we never move on from it that Jesus Christ is our perfect substitute. And this concept of substitution is made very clear throughout both Old Testament and New Testament scriptures and I want to spend a little bit of time on that just to show you that it's not that when Jesus died on the cross in the gospel records this was the first time we saw the concept of substitution in the Bible.

That's not true at all. We see this concept of substitution repeated throughout all of Old Testament history and then into New Testament history is repeated and emphasized in so many ways in so many different places. Charles Ryrie has defined it this way, "Substitutionary or vicarious atonement simply means that Christ suffered as a substitute for us.

That is, instead of us, result in the advantage to us of paying for our sins." And just looking at the clear scriptures which speak of this concept of substitution, Isaiah 53 verse 4, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed." Just the clear language there articulating the concept of substitution, Jesus standing in our place. Verse 10 says, "Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities." So again, the concept of substitution being closely tied to this idea of role reversal.

That he is going to take our iniquities. He is going to take our griefs. He is going to be crushed for our sins. And the result is that many will be made righteous. Many who have sinned and gone astray will receive righteousness. This of course is more clearly articulated by the Apostle Paul in the epistle to the Romans.

And yet even here in the Old Testament, you begin to see the concept of substitution being articulated and the idea of a righteousness that we have not earned being given to those who do not deserve it. Moving to the New Testament, we have among many passages, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 24, which says, "He himself, that is Christ, bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds you have been healed." So many elements of this. Jesus dies our death. We take his life. Jesus takes our curse. We receive his blessing. Jesus takes our sins. We receive his righteousness. Here in verse 24, you have, "He is wounded so that we receive healing." So many different aspects of the wondrous grace of God in this respect.

We point out the grammar. I mentioned Paul Enns has some good material there looking at the grammar of the New Testament, the preposition ante, meaning instead of, as Ryrie explains, the root meaning of this preposition, which occurs 22 times in the New Testament, is face-to-face opposite as two objects placed over against each other and one being taken instead of the other as in an exchange.

So you can call it a role reversal. You can call it an exchange. It's the idea of two objects being placed over against each other. The preposition ante, Ryrie says, supports substitution. We see this preposition used in Luke 11, verse 11, where Jesus says, "What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, will instead ante of a fish give him a serpent?" So in that passage, the two objects being exchanged are a fish and a serpent, one being exchanged in place of another.

But we see that same preposition being used by Jesus to describe his redeeming work on the cross. Matthew 20, verse 28, "Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." So Jesus stands in the place of many as he dies on the cross for our sins.

1 Timothy 2, verse 6, "Who gave himself as a ransom," using that same preposition, "ante lutron," a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. So that preposition in the Greek supports the language of substitution. And then you have the preposition "who pair" with the meaning "for the sake of" or "on behalf of." Romans 5, verse 6, "For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Again, supporting the idea of substitution. These quotes aren't on your handout, but I couldn't resist sharing them with you because they're so helpful. John Gill, who was an expositor of the days of old, he writes, "Becoming the surety of his people, he was made under the law, stood in their place, and having the sins of them all imputed to him, the law finding them on him, charges him with them and curses him for them.

The curse of God in vindicating his righteous law was on Christ when he hung on the cross, for he was made a curse not for himself or for any sins of his own, but for us in our stead, for our sins, and to make atonement for them." And John Stott in his work, The Cross of Christ, has said this, "The concept of substitution may be said then to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man puts himself where only God deserves to be. God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone.

God accepts penalties which belong to man alone." That is amazing grace. How sweet the sound. And I hope you will celebrate that this week and also in your counseling ministry. Our counselees need to hear this. They need to hear that Christ stood in their place for their sin. It should not be assumed.

It should not be something that you touch on once and then you never come back to again. It is a truth that we ought to teach our counselees and then come back to and enrich and deepen their understanding of the cross. And that is what makes for a powerful counseling ministry.

So moving on then from the broader concept of substitution, letter B, you have the doctrine of penal substitution. The doctrine of penal substitution. And that simply can be defined as Christ bore in our place the full penalty for sin. This is in the work, "Pierce for Our Transgressions, Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution." The authors write, "The doctrine of penal substitution states 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 for sin." And so this is the biblical teaching that the demands of the law needed to be satisfied, that there was a penalty for transgression of the law and the only man who ever fully kept God's law was the one who took the penalty of the law and he fulfilled the law's demands in full, allowing the law's blessings to be placed upon us.

That is the doctrine of penal substitution, that Jesus fully satisfied the penalty for sin at the cross. Now that's a simple truth, but I want you to just contrast that with some false views of what happened at the cross. These are some false views of atonement that are explained in Paul Enz's work and also in Charles Ryrie's work.

You'll find more detail on this, but just to give you a flavor of how you can go wrong on this doctrine, the false view would be number one, the ransom to Satan theory. This is the idea that Satan held people captive as a victor in war and so a ransom had to be paid in order to set people free.

The ransom needed to be paid not to God, but to Satan. And so this false view is the idea that Jesus paid a ransom to Satan in order to free men from Satan's power. In response to this view, the biblical teaching is that the ransom was made to God, not to Satan.

Satan did not have the power to free man. God alone had the power, and so this theory is false because it makes Satan the benefactor of Christ's death. A second false view would be the moral influence theory. This view taught that the death of Christ was not necessary as penal substitution, or rather Christ merely set a moral example to influence people to have a softened heart, and through the moving of people's emotions, they will be led to repentance, and therefore the death of Christ was not substitutionary in nature.

It was merely a death that was meant to morally influence others and bring emotions that would lead them to repentance. Obviously, that is a false view of what happened at the cross. And then a third false view would be the example or martyr theory. This view, which is more liberal than the moral influence view, suggests that the death of Christ was unnecessary in atoning for sin.

Christ was an example of obedience that was meant to inspire people to live as Christ lived, so there was no penal substitution that took place under this view. It was merely Jesus set a good example so that we would love as he loved. We want to articulate an understanding of the cross which emphasizes penal substitution.

There was a penalty that needed to be paid because of sin. The wages of sin is death. There was the wrath of God that needed to be satisfied in order for men to be reconciled to a holy God, and so at the cross, a holy God unleashed his holy wrath on a holy sacrifice and Jesus made the full payment for sin at the cross and satisfied God's wrath in full.

That is the doctrine of penal substitution. Very briefly, letter C, you may want to bring into your essay and your understanding of penal substitution just the Old Testament pictures of substitution, which are many. They're all over the Old Testament. You can go all the way back to Genesis and how God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin of an animal, and you see even in those very first pages of the book of Genesis, you have the concept, at the very least, of an animal being killed in order to cover man.

That's not a full, clear explanation of substitution as we find in the New Testament, but you do see some initial echoes of that teaching even in the very beginning of the book of Genesis. You have in Exodus 12, you have the Passover, the lamb being slaughtered, the blood of the lamb being placed over the doorposts, allowing the wrath of God to pass over the Israelites' homes, and you have this idea that there was an innocent life that needed to be a substitute, that an innocent life needed to die in order for God's people to be redeemed.

And then you have the Old Testament sacrificial system, Leviticus chapter 4, the sin offering. You have Leviticus chapter 16, the day of atonement. You have the blood of bulls and goats and lambs being slaughtered in order to be a picture of atonement and forgiveness of sin. Obviously, those bulls and goats could never fully take away sin, but they could only point forward to the perfect sacrifice that would come in God's time that would effectually pay for all of man's sin.

But just think about living in the Old Testament and just celebrating the Passover and observing the sacrifices, and you have blood everywhere, you have animal sacrifices being offered on behalf of sinners, and it would have been hammered into your heart and into your mind that in order for atonement to be made for sin, in order for a sinner to live, that there must be one who takes the sinner's place.

There must be an innocent life that is taken, and blood must be shed in order for the sinner to have life. And that would have been hammered into your heart and mind over generations of Old Testament history so that when Jesus comes in the fullness of New Testament revelation and John the Baptist proclaims, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." If you have all of this Old Testament language and picture of substitution having been hammered into your heart and mind, that statement would have landed with incredible power.

That this is what all the Old Testament pointed forward to. This is the Lamb of God who fully takes away the sin of the world, and that statement, that proclamation by John, would have landed with great impact. That here is the perfect substitute that all Old Testament sacrifices could only point forward to and anticipate.

So that leads us to letter D, and I believe this is, I think that's a typo at the bottom of page 5, but pretend that's a letter D, the result of substitution. And this is the good news, is that because Jesus is our substitute, that the wrath of God has been satisfied on our behalf.

The word "propitiation" in the New Testament simply means "satisfaction." That is good news. God is satisfied with the work of Jesus on our behalf. This is why God the Father calls us to come to his throne of grace and calls us to come with confidence, because he's satisfied in the work of his Son.

And I think what you're going to find in counseling is that in many believers' lives, they claim to not be Catholics. They claim to be Protestant and to believe in grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, the scriptures alone, the glory of God alone. They claim to believe in the biblical gospel, and they do.

But functionally, on a practical level, there may be this idea that I have to do penance because of my sin, that I can't fully come into the holy presence of God through the work of Christ, that God looks on me with disfavor, or God is punishing me for my sins.

You'll find that many counselees struggle with this whole idea of, "Yes, I know I have sinned, and so I have to do some form of penance in order to make it up to God." And that's where we as counselors need to minister the biblical gospel, that any believer in Christ has full access into the throne of God, because God is satisfied with the Son's sacrifice.

So let me move to the last page here, and I will cover this briefly. What the essay question is asking you to do is to not only articulate an understanding of the cross and the concept of substitutionary atonement, which is this idea that Christ paid the penalty for our sins.

It wasn't just that He was a moral influence. It wasn't just that the cross of Christ was meant to move us emotionally, but it was an actual payment for the penalty of sin that satisfied God's wrath. And so then the essay is asking you to relate that to the issue of guilt.

And I cover this in my year one training, and so I'm not going to do this in full depth here, but just to lay the foundation, what you're going to need to do under this topic is to distinguish between objective guilt and subjective guilt. Objective guilt is the actual guilt that we have incurred because of our disobedience to God's law.

Subjective guilt is the feelings that result because of the fact that we are actually guilty. So as I said, that's the contrast with the Freudian view, which said that subjective guilt has no objective basis. The biblical understanding is we feel guilty because we are guilty. Miller Erickson says that guilt is the objective state of having violated God's intention for man and thus being liable to punishment.

Stuart Scott defines objective guilt as a legal liability or culpability to punishment. So if you look at that passage in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve felt guilty. They were ashamed because they were guilty. They had disobeyed God's command. And so ideally speaking, your subjective guilty feelings always correspond to your actual objective guilt.

That would be the functioning of a healthy conscience. A healthy conscience registers subjective feelings of guilt when you have actually incurred objective guilt. Now, the counseling problem is that most people's consciences aren't always healthy. They malfunction or they register guilty feelings where you're not actually guilty or they don't register guilty feelings when they ought to make you feel guilty.

And so that is where this whole category of false guilt comes in. And I'll just define false guilt very simply. It can be defined as subjective feelings of shame that are not rooted in an objective state of wrongdoing. So the perfectionist feels guilty because he or she did not get straight As.

So your GPA is a 3.8 instead of a 4.0. And so the perfectionist feels guilty over that. But you have to ask the question, where does it say in the Bible that you have to get a 4.0 in your academic career? Where does it say that? I mean, you can relate that to a perfectionist may feel like very guilty that I don't do home-cooked meals every day for my children.

And I have to do takeout and feed the McDonald's every once in a while. My wife and I gave up on that issue many years ago. We don't feel guilty anymore for feeding them McDonald's. They live. But perfectionist may feel that way that, gosh, I should feed them something more healthy and nutritious.

And I feel so guilty not cooking every meal. And you have to go back to where does the Bible say that that is the standard for cooking meals? Where does the Bible say that that is the standard for academic careers? So you see that false guilt is you're registering guilty feelings where there is no actual objective guilt.

And so the counseling implication here is that we need to help people train their conscience with the Word of God so that their guilty feelings correspond to actual guilt. And then where they actually are guilty, we need to take that guilt to the cross and minister the grace and the hope that is in the truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

We need to minister that to our counselees. We need to let them know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We need to let them know that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is more than sufficient to pay for all of your sins—past, present, future—sins of omission, sins of commission, sins of attitude, sins of action.

Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to pay for all of your sins. And we need to minister the gospel to objective guilt. When we do that, the guilty feelings will be dealt with. Where the guilty feelings are not related to objective guilt, then we need to help train our counselees' conscience with the Word of God so that their conscience starts to register subjective guilt where there is objective guilt.

So I hope that's a helpful overview for you. Okay, I took some time with that. I was hoping to get to the issue of self-forgiveness, but I'm not going to have time to get to that. But I'll commend to you the link that I sent out with Robert Jones's work on false guilt, as well as his booklet, "I Just Can't Forgive Myself." If you want to get some more perspective on this whole idea of false guilt and the counseling implications of that, get Robert Jones's work, and he will help you with that.

Do read the link that I sent you from Jones on objective guilt and subjective guilt. He also deals with false guilt and works through those categories. I think you'll find that that is very helpful and very practical. So thank you for joining us tonight. What I'm going to do is I'm going to pray, and I'm out of time.

So I'm going to pray. Close our time. I will hang on for another five minutes if any of you have questions about the essays or anything I can help you with practically, but I hope that was a good overview of substitutionary atonement and how it relates to false guilt.

I hope you have a wonderful week of study on these topics. Let me pray for us. Well, Father, we thank you so much for Christ, and we just thank you so much for that glorious truth that we can never really get enough of, the truth of Jesus Christ, our perfect substitute.

We just thank you that, Lord, we are accepted on the basis of His merits and not on the basis of our own merits. And because we come to you through the Son and His perfect work, that we can be assured of your love and your affection toward us. And we just glory in these things.

We thank you for your Spirit who ministers this truth to our hearts and assures us that we are indeed children of God in Christ. And we pray that we would be able not only to rejoice ourselves in these truths, but give us grace that we may be able to minister the truth of the cross and Jesus Christ and Him crucified to those who are struggling and weighed down with the issues of life.

Make us into biblical counselors who are also Christ-centered counselors, we pray. I thank you for my brothers and sisters here and bless their week and make it, we pray, fruitful for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, amen. I will hang on for a couple of minutes here. And if you have any questions, otherwise I will encourage you to have a great week of study in these doctrines.

Okay, we have one question that came in. Can you continue with your counseling example on false guilt and forgiveness? I'm trying to remember the example that I gave. It's a good question. I think the Jones material is going to help you work through the whole idea of people who say, "I can't or haven't forgiven myself." You know, "I know that God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself." And he gives a number of options there that what they might be saying.

And one of those options, possible things that a counseling might be saying is that, "I have a standard." For example, the perfectionist who believes that he needs to get a 4.0 on all academic work and feels guilty if he gets a B in a class. Well, there's no biblical standard that says you have to get all A's in every class, but the counselee has made an extra biblical standard and is holding himself to a higher standard than the Word of God.

And so, part of the biblical counseling ministry, I think, is to help people with that. It's just to say, point them to the standards of God's Word that God's commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5 verse 3, "Jesus promised an easy yoke and a light load." And if you have loaded yourself up where your Christian life is so burdensome that you feel oppressed because there's so many standards that you're consistently failing to measure up to, then you have to ask yourself, "Is that the commandments of God, or is that your own standard for yourself that you have made?" And you do find that in counseling ministry that people have made their own standards, that they will labor to exhaustion trying to fulfill standards that are not in the Bible.

You think of parents today, especially here in Orange County, where there's every option for parents to put their kids in art class, in athletics, in music class, as well as every academic class and tutoring that you could possibly imagine. It's just parents are drowning in options, and high-performance parents who feel that everything in their parenting revolves around their performance and their ability to have their children in the best programs will drive themselves to exhaustion and drive their children to exhaustion trying to meet some kind of standard that they perceive is a standard of excellence, but it's not God's standard.

There's no Bible verse that says you must raise your children to be athletic, artistic, musical, academic, and you have violated God's commands if you don't fulfill that. That's a standard you may have made for yourself, but the Bible hasn't made that for you. Working with parents on that and just what is the biblical standard?

Well, Ephesians 6.4 says, "Bring your children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger." If you don't make your children mad, then you're halfway there. It's not a complicated parenting paradigm that the Bible presents to us. Just don't make them angry and raise them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Then aside from that, there's just a whole lot of freedom of how you're going to apply that. I do think that a lot of false guilt is related to legalistic standards that we make for ourselves and we don't experience the easy yoke that Christ has given to us. It's an excellent question.

There's probably a longer answer than you wanted, but it's an excellent question on false guilt and forgiveness. A second question came in. "What about those that have sinned against someone and has honestly repented toward that person, but that person refuses to forgive them and the one who already repented still feels guilty because that person did not forgive them?" It's an excellent question.

The issue is you have Believer A who has repented. It looks like the second person may be a believer, may not be a believer, but the second person is refusing to forgive them. I would try to help that person understand what is their responsibility versus what is the other person's responsibility.

Romans 12, "As far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men," and you cannot take the responsibility of the other person's responses toward you. You're responsible before God to repent, to confess sin, to pursue peace. There is an element of if a person has seriously sinned against another person and has repented of that sin and confessed that sin, then there is an element of you need to give the other person time to process that and not demand forgiveness, but to request forgiveness.

I think you're probably describing an issue of more of that the person is weighed down with unnecessary guilt because there hasn't been reconciliation in the relationship. I would just be trying to help that person understand their responsibility before God versus the other person's responsibility. Take a look at Paul Tripp's Circles of Responsibilities.

I think that's in his appendix in Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. That's an excellent tool that I use in counseling just to distinguish what is your responsibility as a believer versus what is God's responsibility. Your responsibility is to be as obedient as you can to the Word of God, and God's responsibility is to work a number of these issues out.

For example, my responsibility is to be faithful to raise my children. It's not my responsibility to make them Christians. I can't take that responsibility for myself. If I do, I'm going to labor under a lot of unnecessary guilt because I'm trying to take responsibility for something that God has not given me grace to accomplish.

Just think trying to help people understand their limited responsibility in this world is something that happens in counseling. You counsel people who are afflicted with insomnia, and some of it is they're afraid to go to sleep because the universe is going to fall apart without their labor. They're burning the candle at both ends because it all depends on them and their work to get things accomplished.

Part of helping people sleep is to help them realize their limited responsibility in this world. If you look at Paul Tripp's Circles of Responsibility, and you look at our responsibility, you'll find that our responsibility is actually a lot smaller than we might think it is. Excellent question, and I hope you can encourage that believer to fulfill their responsibility before the Lord.

God bless you guys. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. We'll be back here next Sunday at five o'clock p.m pacific time, and we'll look at theology exam number 14. In the meantime, have a great week, and God bless you. Thanks so much for your encouragement, and we'll see you next week.