The Bible Never Says God Punished Jesus - Here's Proof

Did God the Father punish Jesus on the cross? A lot of believers think Isaiah 53 proves the Father poured out His wrath on the Son. But what does the Bible actually say when we read it carefully?

In this episode we walk through Isaiah 53 verse by verse and compare it with the New Testament picture of the cross. You might discover the cross was never about the Father turning against the Son—it was about their united love rescuing us from sin and death.

We also look at clear passages that show God does not transfer guilt from one person to another. My hope is that this will give you a clearer, more confident view of the Father, the Son, and the cross.

Full length videos here https://youtube.com/@archivedrift1?si=Fpm2cuvpVCQ42-fr

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to talk tonight about one of the most common searches on the good old interwebs right now. And uh one of them was about the nature of Jesus' resurrection. Um so especially now that see we're in the like later, much later than Easter, and um in particular, one thing that got me thinking about the events that led up to Jesus' resurrection, and one question kept coming up. It was, did God the Father punish his own son on the cross? And most of us have heard the idea that Jesus on the cross took the full punishment for our sins that the Father poured out, and he poured out his wrath upon the Son so that we could be forgiven. And tonight I want to show you from the Bible why I do not believe that this is what the Bible actually teaches. I'm going to walk through key passages people usually point to, which is usually Isaiah 53, the suffering servant passage. Many use as a false proof text that God punished the Son. I also want to show you how the rest of the Bible describes what was happening on the cross. And my my hope is that we we will all come away with a clearer picture of what God was really doing when Jesus died. So if, like I always say, if you've never heard of this perspective before, that's perfectly fine. No, no issue with that. Um, I'm going to we are going to open the Bible together and try to read it carefully, verse by verse, without bringing in later explanations or presuppositions that we may have heard along the way. Um, so let's begin by looking at how the New Testament itself presents the cross. Um so, like the New Testament writers describe the cross first and foremost as a rescue from what? Well, from permanent death, um, cleansing from sins and a victory over death itself. Um, God was acting in Christ to save us from sin and from death and the powers that held us captive under those things. So if you look at 2 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter five, Paul writes, he says, All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Now that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not countering or excuse me, not counting their trespasses against them. So notice who's doing the work. God himself is reconciling the world to himself through Christ. And the Father is not turning against the Son, the Father is working with the Son to bring us back to Himself. And that same, the same unity appears in Romans 8. So he's it says, He who did not spare his own son, but then gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? And the phrase gave him up is the exact language the Bible uses when it says Jesus was delivered into the hands of sinful men. If you look at Acts 2, um, Acts 4, it it'll it'll show this. Now it's about God allowing the events of the cross as part of his rescue plan, not about the father personally punishing the son. Jesus himself explained it in in this way in John 10. I believe it was John 10. He said, I laid I laid down my life that I may take it up again, and no one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it up again. So this he says, This charge I have I have received from my father. And the father and the son are working together in perfect love and obedience, as always. That has never stopped. So the Bible's own picture of the cross, I mean, it's literally one of united love and uh divine love accomplishing our deliverance, not the father directing wrath at the son. So, with that foundation in place, if you would turn to the passage that is most often used to argue the opposite, which is Isaiah 53, it's the main point of this episode. So if you if you look at Isaiah 53, it's it's basically it's a prophecy that was written about 700 years before Jesus, and it's describing God's um suffering servant, whom the New Testament clearly identifies as Jesus himself. So look at the verses people most often quote, and let's see what the text actually says. So many point to verse four, where it says, um, it says, stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted, right? But the prophet is describing what the onlookers thought they were seeing, what they thought they were seeing. Just as people looked at Job and assumed God was punishing him in anger, the crowds at the cross saw Jesus suffering and then concluded the very the same exact thing. The the verse is is reporting the crowd's mistaken perspective, their mistaken perspective, not God's actual action. You have to please remember that. Verse 5 says, He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, and the punishment that brought us peace was on him. And and it's it goes on, it says, and by his wounds we are healed. So yes, Jesus suffered because of our sins, but who actually did the piercing and crushing? Right? So Acts 2 says this pretty plain. It says, This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. And the suffering came at the hands of wicked men here. So God planned to allow it so that our sins could be dealt with. But the agents who carried out the violence explicitly was mankind that were present there at the time. So you look at verse 10 where, and this is very important. So it says, Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him and cause him to suffer. The Hebrew word for crush here can mean to bruise or break something in the process, like in the process of making it whole again, if you will. Like, I mean, like pressing grapes to produce wine. And the very next part of the verse says that when the when the servant makes his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. And so God's will was to accomplish our healing and justification through the suffer the servant's suffering, not to pour out personal wrath on him. So the whole, like the whole chapter shows the servant, Jesus, suffering for our transgress transgressions and iniquities, so that we can receive peace and healing. If we go on, verse six, it says that the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This simply means that the servant endured the painful results of our rebellion as part of God's plan to redeem us. Okay, so like meaning, meaning that those who have believing loyalty or faith, but that's the same thing, will not be held by permanent death. That by by faith in Jesus we are forgiven of our sins. And this is an ongoing cleansing. It's not a one and done. So importantly, the Bible never teaches this as a like a illegal transfer or imputation, as the big word is, of our personal guilt on onto Jesus. That idea is not found in the text itself. In fact, scripture repeatedly emphasizes the the exact opposite principle. Like each person is responsible for their own sin, and God does not transfer guilt from, he doesn't transfer guilt from one person to another. Like that doesn't even make sense. This, but this also means that Adam's sin does not transfer to us as well. Only your sin and my sin we are held responsible for. So listen to what God says in Ezekiel 18. It says, the the soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. Iniquity means sin or breaking of the law. So, like the the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. That's the text. So we see the same clear teaching in Deuteronomy 24. It says, um, it says, fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. So each one shall be put to death for his own sin. Imputation does not work. It's unbiblical. So, like we'll do another one. How about Jeremiah 31? It makes the identical point, rejecting the old proverb that one generation bears the guilt of another. Now, God declares that every person will answer for their own actions or in action. Now, these passages show that God uh does not operate by legally transferring guilt from one individual to another. Okay. When Isaiah 53, I believe this is verse 6, it says that the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. It's describing, it's describing the servant willingly bearing the painful consequences of our rebellion as part of um as part of God's plan to rescue and heal us. Not a courtroom style imputation of guilt that would allow the Father to punish the Son in our place. Okay. What the rest of Scripture teaches, um, Isaiah 53 does not, it doesn't stand alone in this. So when we look at the rest of the Bible, the same picture emerges. Um so we like we already saw 2 Corinthians uh chapter 5, what we talked about earlier, God was in in Christ reconciling the world to himself, and the Father is the one doing the reconciling, not the one, not the one turning against the Son. So let's do Rome. Like we said earlier, Romans 8, God gave him up for us all. The language is the same language used for delivering Jesus to the cross, not for inflicting punishment directly from the Father. Acts 4. It adds that both Gentiles and the people of Israel, it says they did whatever did whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. So God's plan permitted the cross, but the actual inflictions of suffering came through human agents or mankind itself, uh mankind themselves. So every one of these passages show the perfect unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together to rescue us, to redeem us. The cross was not an act of divine punishment directed at God's own son by the Father. It was it was the greatest act of self-giving love that the world has ever seen and ever will. And the implications for, excuse me, um how we how we view God and the cross. So it means so like what does all this mean for us, like to wrap this up? So, like, first the cross stands at the as the clearest display of self-giving love, not redirected wrath. Um, remember it says in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. And second, it protects the perfect unity of the Trinity. So like the Father never turns against, never turned against the Son. The Son willingly laid down his life in obedience, and the Father raised, then raised him from the dead, it says in the text. So third, this removes any it removes any idea that God needed to be appeased by punishing someone else. Pagans do that. So like Jesus himself bore the he bore the cost of our of our sin so that we could be forgiven and healed. So this this frees us from any fear-based view of God or worm theology. We do not have to wonder if the father is still angry and needs to be satisfied, right? So like he doesn't require a pound of flesh, as the saying goes, like the pagan gods do. Like we can come to him confidently as the loving father who sent his son for us. Um so like this week, the encouragement is to read Isaiah Isaiah 53 without presuppositions, along with the accounts of the cross in the gospels. So, like, ask the text what it actually says and let the scriptures shape your understanding rather than layers, layers of later explanation or even commentary. Not that commentaries are a bad thing, but just let the Holy Spirit will teach you. And it's not predetermined or predestined for you to believe heresy or to believe something wrong. We we are edified as we go along, right? So, like you're we read the scriptures and you trust God and rely on Him to teach you along the way. Now that isn't to say that people can't help you or don't help you along the way. What I'm saying is one of the main thrusts of doing these things is to try, and it's difficult, to remove presuppositions or like the lens, your glasses that you put on um implicitly to read the scriptures. So, like you already have these preconceived notions and beliefs in your mind based on what we've grown up hearing and what we're taught by some churches, uh, some groups or whatever, or whatever you might have heard from wherever. And then you backload that and reinterpret the Bible based on what you're what what pair of glasses you're wearing. Does that make sense? So let the text speak for itself and and rely and pray and ask God to give you wisdom in what you're reading. And it says, if you ask for wisdom, he'll give it to you. It's a promise. So so with that, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you, may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you, and may the Lord lift up his countenance to you and grant you peace. Good night.