Who Told You God Needed to Be Paid? The Hidden History of the Cross | Who Told You That? | Chad Belew

I'm gonna start with a story today that has absolutely nothing to do with theology, but also has everything to do with it a

Few years ago a couple years ago

Some of you know that we've owned a apparel business an apparel shop for a while and

Make apparel and so a few years ago Jaden and I my oldest son

Went to Las Vegas together

He wasn't 21 so I don't know what that means. We just

We were there for work

but we went to Las Vegas and

We're in Vegas. We went to this

Apparel manufacturers show or we got to meet different

Manufacturers from all over the world that make make clothing that we could buy

in bulk in order to

You know make make stuff custom do all kinds of stuff so

While we were there we walked around. We talked to a bunch of different people and but while we're there

I found myself standing in a booth for a company that made socks. I

Know exhilarating

So there's there's a picture of

That's actually not the booth that looks way cooler. I couldn't find the picture that I took of the booth, but um

Imagine you're standing in this booth looking at these socks on the wall

Custom cool different kind of socks the one that we were standing in was a manufacturer of China that made

Like high-performance socks

Don't it's a thing who in here has high-performance socks. Yeah, there you go. Raise your hands high. Come on. Yes

Custom high-performance the maiden China and

This supplier

Supplies like some of the biggest brands in the world like the socks those high-performance socks that you wear

they probably make them or if not the

Manufacture right next to them. There's like a little town in China that is like the sock manufacturing town

but they make these like

Really highly technical socks compression zones moisture wicking

They're reinforced for impact in different areas. You know running. I don't have those kind, but I

Have uh, I have some socks it when I was doing motorcycle stuff. So I used to go go to the track and

would race around the the track and I had some socks that were

especially

Specifically for like riding with wick away compression certain areas protect from the high boots that you're wearing

and they were like I

Want to say even as a dealer at the time that was like buying them straight from manufacturer. I think I was paying like 40 bucks

They're not manufactured straight from the brand. I think I was paying 40 bucks a pair

for these socks. I

Know it's crazy, but they were super technical. So

But I'm standing there. I'm in this booth. I'm looking at these socks

They've got all the different pieces of the socks that I'm used to seeing and

The person's telling me like these we yeah, we do these for this brand and this brand and this brand

Wow, okay, cool

What are your minimums because when you talk to manufacturer they have a minimum number that you order from them in order for them to sell to you

What are your minimums? He says a thousand pairs of socks

Okay, that's a lot. That's a lot of socks. Um, but not if you're buying them to sell right

It's not not an outrageous number for fully custom accessories

And then we get to the question on a minimum thousand pairs

What's your costs on these socks landed to me taxes tariffs? This is before trump

Like

Shipping to me at my door all in what does it cost if I buy a thousand pairs of custom shoes or custom socks

And he looks at me and he says

Depending on the different aspects of the sock what you're wanting, um

Between 50 cents and a dollar 25

Us a pair like what what?

50 cents for a pair of socks that I pay 40 dollars for

And he's like those are probably a dollar 25

still

My 40 dollar motorcycle socks the ones that I buy because they're special and technical and worth every

penny

They're a dollar 25

Less than two dollars a pair and I'm like how many of those do I need a thousand divided by um

And then my brain went further like

And I asked like what if they were just like plain white socks

You know the bulk socks that you buy at like walmart like 12 pairs of socks for 12 dollars

And he's like those usually they're bought in

The thousands and thousands millions even it's like they're you're getting like under five cents a pair

Oh, what how

So even those socks that for those of you that don't like your technical socks

They're crazy

So you can imagine my problem

when I go to the store now

And I need to buy socks

And I'm like I don't what I don't want to pay this

But what do you do order a thousand socks pairs of socks? So what we're going to do is we're going to pull our money

We're going to figure out what we want

This is it's like an MLM this it works in churches guys

But this is what happens when you get new information

That reframes something that you thought you understood

Like you can't go back like I can not go into a store

Like I used I used to buy like stance socks and they're expensive

I don't know why I buy them because the NBA wears them

And I constantly put holes in them

Muddies always like how do you get holes in your socks so fast like

So there are a thousand pairs of socks so a pair of socks for 50 cents

Yeah thousand so

$500 we all pull our money. Yeah

Actually right now from China with tariffs they're probably they're probably like $17 a pair but

But once I go like I can't go back I cannot look at socks the same way the same thing happens with t-shirts and pants and shoot like it's

Don't don't do this guys don't look at it

like you see differently

the

Old way of seeing it

The one that you never even questioned you just picked them up you bought them

It starts to look like a story that maybe someone just told you

That you just believed because

You thought you had to because nobody ever told you to look at it any closer

Which is exactly where we are in this series

Like who told you that who told you that this is the way this all works

Today I want to give you some information what

We're going to kind of continue from last week. We give you some information about a framework

You've probably been living inside of your entire spiritual life

One you were handed as simply this is the bible. This is what it says. This is the gospel

This is the simple way things are and

We're going to look at this and once you see it more clearly

You're not going to be able to unsee it just like I can't unsee the cost of socks

It's not a threat. It's an invitation. We're going to have some fun

Because what's on the other side of like new perspective on something

Is not less information. It's not watered down faith. It's not a softer gospel or a god with lower standards

It's not cotton candy gospel. I explained that last week, but it's just this idea of like bigger, truer

More beautiful picture of what god is actually like

And then I think it leads to a life with christ that's not driven by fear

Or this idea of debt and and management, but by love

As the actual source of everything

So we're going to take a little a little closer look today

Last week we ended with the father running to meet his prodigal son

Before the the son could make a speech before payment before the son could get his repentance formula out of his mouth

The father was already running towards him

And I left with a question who told you that god waits with crossed arms until the penalty has been paid

Today I want to answer this question more directly than we have yet in this series

Because there's actually an answer to it. It's it has a name. It has a history and I think a lot of people in this room were handed it as if

It was just this is the bible is what it says. We believe it that settles it however that saying goes

As if it were the only way that christians have ever understood god and we were told

That this is the framework. This is it

But the the reality is it is a framework. It is built by someone at a specific moment in history for specific reasons

And once you see a framework for what it is

A framework not just not a fact

You can start to ask whether it's true

And we teach all the time here and I believe that growth happens in the questions

But before I name the framework, I I want to back up just a step and I want to ask you a question

I want you to sit with it for a second

The question is this

Why did Jesus die?

Not what have you been told

Not the sunday school answer

What do you actually believe in your gut about what the cross was for?

If you take a second, I think most of us

If we answered honestly, it would sound something like this

Jesus died because god required a payment for sin and Jesus stepped in and took the punishment we deserved

God's justice demanded a price

Jesus paid it

And because he paid for it

We don't have to and we can experience salvation and we can experience eternal life in heaven

It's probably the version that most of us grew up with

it leads to

This phrase a word that I want to introduce today

A word that you've probably heard that you

Maybe you've never like had it fully explained the word is atonement

Atonement simply put it's the theological answer to the question. What did Jesus do and why did it matter?

How does what happened on the cross actually deal with the problem between god and humanity?

And what I want you to understand today is that

Christians

Have not always agreed on the answer to this question

Although most of us would probably have a very similar answer that has not always been the case

In fact, it's still not the case

There have been multiple theories of atonement

Throughout church history that multiple frameworks for understanding what the cross accomplished not one

multiple

And the one most of us grew up with

This idea that god there was punishment that had to happen it had to go on someone Jesus takes our place

He takes that pun that

Atonement theory is not even the oldest atonement theory that the church has held

It's not the one that the earliest church believed

It came later. It has a specific history. It has a very specific name of specific reason

And once I give you that name and show you where it came from, I think something's going to click for you

The same way that it clicked for me when I found out

But those socks actually cost

The framework is called penal substitution area atonement

Anybody heard this before?

Okay, I got two three

Four five, okay

Who has not heard this word these words? Okay

If you grew up in a western evangelical church in the u.s. Abaptist church non-denominational church Pentecostal church

Most expressions of american christianity you grew up inside of this atonement theory

There was a water you were swimming in this. This is it. You just didn't know it had a name

Here's what

penal substitution area atonement or psa for those in the business

This is what it says

God is holy humanity send

Send requires punishment the punishment for sin is death

God's justice demands that penalty be paid

Jesus steps in

Takes the punishment in our place absorbs the wrath of God on our behalf

And the debt is satisfied

And if you accept that

The charges against you of sin which which leads to death they are dropped you are acquitted

It's called psa

And you're kind of acquitted because you better be perfect after you accept it

Penal is punishment

like penalty

substitution someone takes your place

And then atonement the debt gets paid

Which is interesting if you start thinking about this because if there is a debt to be paid

And you don't have the money to pay for it and Jesus comes along and he pays your debt

Then the debt has been satisfied

So the debt's no longer there

But then we say that we receive forgiveness

Why don't have to forgive your debt if a debt is paid?

It's already been taken care of so the what is forgiveness in that

It's done. It's been paid for so there's not even a forgiveness involved

Right

Interest I guess yeah, we're paying the interest Jesus didn't pay that

One of the verses I think is interesting that gets used most often to support this framework

Is this verse in a habit cook habit cook 113

And you'll notice

It says 113 a the bottom you see that

Because habit cook 113 says your eyes are too pure to look on evil you cannot tolerate wrongdoing habit cook is

Saying this to god

You're you're too holy

You're too pure you cannot look on evil and we were told some of us maybe you

Um, I know I was that God could not look upon sin

He had to turn his back. He can't look upon in fact

I was told when Jesus was on the cross and the sin entered Jesus

That's why Jesus says my god my god

Why are you forsaken me because we've been taught that Jesus god turned his back on Jesus on the cross

You're too holy. You can't look on it. We use this this verse and habit cook to say that

But the a at the end of 13 means that that's just the beginning of this verse

Because if you complete the verse

It actually says

Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?

Habakkuk says

You too holy to look on sin

So why do you?

And we say

Well, god can't look on sin and then we just end it there

And somehow we split god from Jesus because Jesus hangs out with sinners and so if Jesus is god

How can he look upon

A sinner if there sit how why?

Can god who is Jesus?

Do something that he's not supposed to be able to do?

I think because Jesus is saying no, no, I am like the father

I if you've seen the seen me you've seen the father

Because I can sit here

and have these conversations

You're not too broken or disgusting

for me to look upon

in this verse habit cook is not

Writing the systematic theology about god not being able to look upon sin. He is arguing with god

He's lodging a complaint to god

in the very same sentence

Where he says you can't look upon sin he undercuts that proof text that has been used for six centuries of western theology

To build a framework who told you that this verse meant

What you were told it means

Who told you that god cannot look upon sin?

And I want to be clear about what i'm doing today what we're going to go through

I'm going to be careful or i'm not i'm not i'm not going to be careful

And balanced about this. I'm not going to say well it contains some truth

I'm going to tell you where it came from and then i'm going to ask you to look honestly of what it has produced

And I think that that's going to be enough for you to start having some questions

Psa does not come from the first thousand years of christianity

Say that again psa does not come from the first

1000 years of christianity

For a lot of us that grew up in the in the us and jaden and i were talking about this the other day like

When I was in boston this last week

Um, I skipped some of the classes that I was supposed to be in and and I went to harvard

Just because I wanted to be able to say I went to harvard but

We're walking around the campus and one of the guys who was with us had gone there and got his master's degree from there

And he was explaining like harvard's about to turn 400 years old

And I was talking to jaden my 21 year old and he was like I just can't even what does that even mean?

I can't fathom

400 years and it's the same way I felt when I was standing in the lisban cathedral and lisban

Portugal and they said that this cathedral is 900 years old. I was like that doesn't that what do you mean?

That's not real

It's the first thousand years of christianity this

Psa was not the normal not the believe not even a thought

But for most of us we were told that this is what you the bible says

This is simply what the bible is when it says

This is what christians have always believed

It is not

For the first thousand years of church the dominant understanding of what jesus did was not primarily about satisfying a legal penalty

It was about healing a broken human condition

It was about rescuing people from death and corruption

It was about restoration and union with god

It was not legal jargon it was healing

irenaeus is one of the earliest theologians that we have like solid records of

Describe the human problem as corruption

Something had gotten into humanity into us

We were bent out of shape and jesus came into the human condition fully from the inside and began to heal

And restore what had been broken

This is second century like 200 ad i think he died in 202 ad so like

130 140 ad you guys you know how that stuff works

Second century

Then you get to athenatius athenatius is a fourth century

theologian

I mentioned last week

But his idea was like death corruption restoration healing kind of in the same vein the same line of irenaeus

I actually have a copy of his book. I keep doing this

I didn't bring it up. It's probably up there in the booth

The book's called um on the incarnation jacks are you up there? Is there a little green book there

What are you bringing it to me or jaden boy

You guys fight over who's going to help me? Come on

Hurry run okay. Well, this is a book from the fourth century dude. Let me throw

This is it

on the incarnation

St. Athenatius wrote this book in the fourth century

About the incarnation of jesus and in fact i mentioned this one last week, but at the beginning of this book

CS louis

wrote the foreword to this and the foreword is incredible as well so on the incarnation great book

You should get it and read it

I don't make any money off it's okay

But before before I go to athenatius's book

the foreword

That's written by cs louis louis louis says something I think

Is exactly what this series is trying to do he says

that every age

Has its own blind spots

And that the only way to see past them is to read people who stood outside of your moment entirely

Every age of human existence has its own blind spots. We have our own way of doing things our own cultural understandings

CS louis says you should read people that are outside of your time

Which means you have to go backwards because you can't read anybody before or later

To understand some things

And what athenatius does for us is is that

He's writing 300 years before a guy named anselm that we're going to talk about in a minute

Before this idea of penalty

And substitution came into theory and understanding

Athenatius is writing about like a disease in humanity that needed to be healed

CS louis actually says that if you're going to read a book if you're going to read some nonfiction

You're going to learn about these things you want to study some theology

He says it's good to read a current theologian someone who you you liken you is in your word and phrasing

That's good, but he says

If you're going to read one new one then you should go back and read an old one after that

And if you can't do that he says at least if you're going to read three new ones then read an old one

Because it shifts

the perspective of the age

And athenatius is one who does this fourth century who tells us that

Jesus came because he was trying to heal

humanity

Not to solve a punishment issue

He describes humanity as an image made in the image of god that has been defaced

His argument is that when a portrait is ruined you don't throw it away

You bring back the original subject and you have them sit again so the portrait can be restored

And he says this is what the incarnation is

There was an original

An original image an original design the humanity was that that design was defaced something something corrupted it

So Jesus came back the original subject the word he enters the canvas and he restores the image from within

It's taking this portrait and and painting the face back to the way that it was supposed to be

Restoring the image athenatius goes on to say that Jesus became what we are so that we might become what he is

For instance, what it was a south african current theologian who has a translation of scripture called the mirror

He says this and he's translated flippians to for it as this to discover your own completeness in christ frees you to turn your attention away from yourself

and to others

And the verse five says the way Jesus saw himself is the only valid way to see yourself

That's not legal language

It's healing language

It's identity language. It's a mindset shift language and it predates psa by thousand a thousand years

The atonement in this framework is not a legal transaction. It is more like a doctor entering the disease to defeat it from within

And this was the theological stream that christianity swam in for thousand thousand years

It remains the primary like view and instinct of the eastern church the the greek speaking orthodox tradition

They have never centralized psa the way that the western church does

So what happened well around

1,097 the year 1,097 a theologian named anselm

He was the archbishop of cantorberry. It just sounds cool. He wrote a book

called cour des homo

Why did god become human?

And anselm it was a brilliant man, but he lived in this like feudal world

Like imagine you're a peasant farmer in medieval euro

You don't own the land you live on

The lord of the region owns everything you guys have seen the shows right

The land the village

Probably your livelihood all owned by the lord of that land

You exist under his authority his protection and that arrangement comes with a clear set of obligations in that world

There is one thing that matters more than almost anything else

honor

Specifically the honor of the lord

If you offend the lord if you disrespect him you violate his rules you you fail your obligations

It's not just a personal issue between the two of you. It is a disruption of the entire social order

And the offense cannot simply be overlooked

The lord's honor has to be satisfied

Debt is owed

Then that debt has to be paid in a way that matches the weight of who was offended

So this is the world that ansel lived in

See air he breathed every relationship every social structure every legal instinct around him operated on that logic

And when he sat down to ask questions about why did god become human that was his framework

It's it's what he was sitting inside of it his imagination

He didn't invent this out of thin air. He translated the world that he was living in into theology

Anselm took the cultural logic the logic of the medieval feudal court

And he applied it directly to the relationship between god and humanity

Humanity offended an infinite god and infinite debt is owed no finite human can pay an infinite debt

So god himself enters humanity as the god man

Jesus pays the infinite debt humanity owes honor is satisfied. Justice is served

It's a remarkable piece of like theological engineering

And it has it's what deeply shaped and was deeply shaped by the world that anselm lived in

Not by the early church

Not by the first millennium of christian thought

by an 11th century theologian

a thousand years

after

The church began

This framework

Wasn't psa was a satisfaction theory

This framework from anselm in the years right around reformation 1500

martin luther

And i got him john calvin

Calvin was a trained lawyer and

In the 1500s they took this idea of satisfaction theory

And they sharpened it a little bit

They used their own understanding of their current culture in the way that they operated and john calvin as a lawyer said i know what this is

And calvin in particular he pushed it toward what we now call penal substitution

Not just that honor was satisfied, but that punishment was transferred

god's wrath was poured out onto jesus

So it it didn't have to be poured out onto you

And then from calvin in 1500s it went into the the puritanism which which came across the ocean

We talked about last week. I mentioned jonathan edwards and his

Sinners in the hands of an angry god

This is all fed from the calvin martin luther psa stream

Because puritanism to the revivalism of the 1700s and 1800s from revivalism into an altar call

And from the altar call into gospel tracks like the chick tracks i showed you last week

From the gospel tracks it gets into us

Psa becomes so dominant in the western evangelical christian christian church

That it stopped being a theological framework and it started being the air people breathe

The only way to see the scripture the only way to see god

There was no longer one way of understanding what jesus said it was the way the obvious way the unquestioned way

And if you grew up in it right now you're like what is jad talking about

The picture of god that it hands you is is a picture of a god who is primarily a judge

Humanity is primarily guilty and love god's love is somehow downstream of god's wrath

Or god's justice

God had to find a legal mechanism to be kind to you without compromising the courtroom

Who told you god was like that?

Because this picture came from an 11th century feudal court in england and it was handed to you as the gospel

You

This turns into a christianity

Organized around guilt and debt and punishment and wrath

It's a christianity where the primary grammar for human failure is that you oh god

And it doesn't stay in the churches

It shapes culture

It shapes politics

It shapes the way that a nation thinks about sin and consequences and who deserves what

This us versus them mentality runs through so much of what

Gets called christian politics in this country

It's not accidental

It's downstream of a theology that sorts people into the acquitted and the condemned the good and the bad

The us and them

The saved and the lost the righteous and the wicked and once you're sorted

And once you've sorted people that way it becomes very easy to decide

Who's suffering matters and who's doesn't

We have people in our state right now

Who are fighting to put up the 10 commandments

in public school classrooms

Celebrating that the texas supreme court overturned a ruling and said no no this has to happen

Framian is christian language calling it heritage calling it values

And I find it kind of remarkable because paul the guy who wrote

Most of the new testament and second carinthians three actually

describes the law written on tablets of stone

Which would be the 10 commandments he describes the 10 commandments as a ministry of death and condemnation

And you're all like wait what

Yeah, that he says this is death and condemnation. There is no life found in the law of the tablets

It's not my phrase. It's the the apostle paul

So let me make sure I understand what's happening a a group of people who have refused to

Like repeatedly consistently year after year refused to pass meaningful legislation to protect children from being shot in those same classrooms

One opposed what paul called a ministry of death and condemnation on the walls

A shame producing

Impossible condemning framework for our children

This is what psa produces when it leaves the church and it runs a country

Not love

Not healing not restoration

control

condemnation

Sorting people into who's in and who's out

And if that doesn't sound like jesus to you

It shouldn't because it isn't

So what does jesus actually say about the human problem

We'll talk about it next week

Mike drop. No, yeah, we'll talk about next week. How about that? It started 12 20

Look

What's one

second Corinthians three

verse seven through nine

Is where paul talks about

And I know you're thinking chat so the 10 commandments don't matter

Yes kind of

But if you need laws written on tablets

To tell you how to love people

Then you're not living in a love that christ has given you so that you can share that love

Because law doesn't produce real love

It produces compliance

Or rebellion and compliance never called us to love someone well

We love because he first loved us. That's what jesus teaches us

Talk about next week

beloved

Experience the love of god

And go share that love

with those around you and go love well. It's who we're meant to be.