Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Earlier this month, pastor and best-selling author John Mark Homer posted that a new book

was now a, and I quote, knockout blow to penal substitutionary atonement, or as the theology nerds call it, PSA.

Now, I asked Dr. Thaddeus Williams, assistant professor of systematic theology at Biola

University, to weigh in on this historic Christian doctrine that's proclaimed throughout

scripture and championed by several of the church fathers.

Here's what Dr. Williams had to say.

Penal, as in the word penalty,

points to the fact that as Christian apologist Francis Schaefer says, man is guilty before the

lawgiver of the universe, doing what is contrary to his character. Therefore, man has true

moral guilt. Guilt isn't just about subjective guilt feelings, it's about our objective

problem before God, the lawgiver, and judge, a problem that needs a solution whether or not we feel

like it. Yes, God as judge offends postmodern sensibilities in which the only publicly recognized sin is the

sin of judging others. But we must take our cues from God and His Word, not the feel-good gurus of our age.

The Bible speaks of the just God's wrath when we break his good laws over 500 times.

The substitutionary part of PSA is what Peter was after when he describes Christ's suffering

as, quote, the righteous for the unrighteous.

This astounding swapping of places, what Martin Luther called this wonderful exchange is echoed

by Paul in 2 Corinthians 521. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him

we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus himself speaks of giving his life as a ransom for many in Mark 1045.

Isaiah 53-5, which scholars say, looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha,

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