'Justice divine is satisfied' - The early Methodists and penal substitution

In the recent debate over the nature of the atoning work of Christ, it has been suggested that teaching on penal substitution belongs particularly to the Reformed tradition, especially to a line leading from John Calvin, through to Charles Hodge.

This appears to be an attempt to marginalise the doctrine into belonging to only one strand within evangelicalism, and to suggest that teaching on penal substitution is the historically unrepresentative child of 19th-century American Reformed thinking. Certainly the understanding of the atonement as a work of propitiation has been strongly held by those in the Reformed tradition (to which this writer is happy to belong).

However, this view has been strongly maintained across the evangelical constituency, as was ably demonstrated during the 18th-century evangelical revival. From well-known names such as Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys, to unheralded and obscure lay preachers, from Calvinist to Arminian, all preached the gospel urgently, convinced, as John Wesley put it, that nothing in the Christian system ‘is of greater consequence than the doctrine of the atonement’. Crucial to their understanding was that the saving work of Christ on the cross was a propitiatory sacrifice.

Great importance

For both John and Charles Wesley, penal substitution was of great importance. After his conversion in May 1738, Charles was able to declare: ‘No condemnation now I dread: Jesus, and all in him, is mine!’ Within a year he was boldly proclaiming the theme before the University of Oxford: ‘God sent his only Son our saviour Christ into this world to fulfil the law for us, and by the shedding of his most precious blood, to make a sacrifice or amends to his Father for our sins, and assuage his wrath and indignation conceived against us for the same’.

The same emphasis echoes through John Wesley’s sermons. These were not simply published as a record of what the great leader of Methodism had preached, but were to be expository models for other preachers, and a summary of Methodist teaching. The substitutionary work of Christ is asserted: ‘To him that is justified or forgiven… God will not inflict on that sinner what he deserved to suffer, because the Son of his love hath suffered for him’. The language of propitiation is also much used: ‘Jesus Christ is “the whole and sole propitiation”’. To Wesley, the plain tenor of the gospel message was: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God hath given to be the propitiation for thy sins, and thou shalt be saved’.

Propitiation

In his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, the same views are set out with startling clarity. So, on Romans 3.25, Wesley writes: ‘25. Whom God set forth — before angels and men, a propitiation — To appease an offended God. But if, as some teach, God never was offended, there was no need of this propitiation. And if so, Christ died in vain. To declare his righteousness — To demonstrate not only his clemency, but his justice… whose essential character and principal office is, to punish sin.’

The propitiatory sacrifice of Christ demonstrated both God’s justice towards sin, which had to be punished, and his mercy, for the just punishment for sin was willingly paid by his Son. It was crucial to Wesley that God’s justice and mercy should be held in perfect harmony, as he adds: ‘The attribute of justice must be preserved inviolate. And inviolate it is preserved, if there was a real infliction of punishment on our Saviour. On this plan all the attributes harmonise. Every attribute is glorified, and not one superseded no, nor so much as clouded.’

Merely forgiving, or doing away with sin, without the due punishment being dealt with, would not have maintained the integrity of God’s character. John Wesley also saw the ‘mercy seat’ in Exodus 25.17-18, as awesomely foreshadowing the cross: ‘This propitiatory covering, as it might well be translated, was a type of Christ the great propitiation, whose satisfaction covers our transgressions, and comes between us and the curse we deserve.’

Absolutely fundamental

Penal substitution was, to the founder of Methodism, absolutely fundamental to Christianity. When Andrew Ramsay in his Principles of Religion rejected these teachings as ‘frivolous and blasphemous notions’, Wesley objected strongly: ‘These “frivolous and blasphemous notions” do I receive as the precious truths of God. And so deplorable is my ignorance, that I verily believe all who deny them, deny the Lord that bought them’. In 1756 Wesley protested over the denial of the doctrine of justification by faith contained in some of William Law’s later statements, such as, ‘There is no wrath in God, no fictitious atonement, no folly of debtor and creditor’. Wesley responded, quoting an unnamed 16th-century author:

‘As man owed his Creator the perfect obedience of his whole life, or a punishment proportioned to his transgression, it was impossible he could satisfy him by a partial and imperfect obedience… There was need, therefore, of a Mediator who could repair the immense wrong he had done to the Divine Majesty, satisfy the Supreme Judge, who had pronounced the sentence of death against the transgressions of his law, suffer in the place of his people, and merit for them pardon, holiness, and glory’.

To Wesley, this was no cold, legal transaction, it was the ‘inmost mystery of the Christian faith’, the supreme proof of the love of God. The propitiatory death of the Saviour was no personal act of violence inflicted on him by the Father; rather it was an act of free, willing, loving submission within the Trinity, in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit, were at one: ‘The Mediator voluntarily interposed himself between them and the just Judge. And the incomprehensible love of God, that he might spare them, “spared not his own Son”.’

Next generation

The same emphasis remained strong in the following generation of Wesley’s followers. The famous Methodist scholar and commentator Adam Clarke, dealing with the words of Isaiah 53.6, ‘The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all’, declared: ‘Those fiery rays, which should have fallen on all mankind, diverged from divine justice to the east, west, north, and south, were deflected from them, and converged in him. So the Lord hath caused to meet in him the punishment due to the iniquities of ALL’.

The teaching of penal substitution also became foundational to the army of lay preachers and class leaders, who were the key players in the local Methodist circuits and societies. Manuscripts from lay preachers in the circuit around the Shropshire town of Madeley, scene of the faithful ministry of Wesley’s one-time right-hand man, John Fletcher, show how cross-centred Methodist lay preaching in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was. As one preacher, using Romans 3.25 as a text, put it: ‘A propitiation means an atoning sacrifice, by which the wrath of God is appeased. But how did he become this propitiation? I answer, by putting himself in our place, and drinking the cup of justice due to our sins’. The cost, the preacher emphasised, was awful and immense: ‘He must drink the whole cup to the very dregs — that he might become in the fullest sense our propitiation’. Penal substitution was teaching that brought a profound challenge to love and obedience: ‘How cold are our returns of love to him who hath given himself to bear our curse and suffer all our punishment… Here is the foundation of all our blessings …’.

Singing the cross

Not only did the early Methodists delight to preach the cross, they loved to sing its story. In their hymns, the language of ‘penal substitution’ was never far away:

For what you have done
His blood must atone:
The Father hath punished for
you his dear Son,
The Lord, in the day
Of his anger, did lay
Your sins on the Lamb, and he bore them away.

Or again:

Accomplished is the sacrifice,
The great redeeming work is done;
‘Tis finished! All the debt is paid;
Justice divine is satisfied;
The grand and full atonement made;
God for a guilty world hath died.

This awesome message these lay preachers gladly sang, and earnestly shared. They proclaimed it to the agricultural workers, the colliers, the tradespeople of Madeley and the growing industrial Black Country. They and countless other Methodists across England preached what they had learned from Wesley, and Fletcher and Clarke, but more than that, they proclaimed the fruits of their plain reading of the Bible, which echoed with their personal experience.

This evangelical message was spiritually liberating, and propelled them out into barns and cottages and kitchens, to tell what God had done through Christ for them. Their sermons brought comfort in distressing and troubled times, and hope of an eternal future with Christ. They filled Methodist class meetings and chapels: many ordinary, hurting, struggling, needy people heard them gladly, and embraced their message. The teaching of penal substitution brought blessing to souls then, and lovingly, wisely, and reverentially preached now, evangelicals can have every confidence that it will continue to do the same.

Dr. Ian. J. Shaw,
Lecturer in Church History, International Christian College, Glasgow

This article is an extract from The Divine Substitute, a forthcoming book on the atonement in the Bible and church history written by Dr. Ian J. Shaw and the Rev. Brian Edwards, to be published by DayOne in April.