SATISFYING THE LAW??

In Chapter 5 of The Cross of Christ, Stott continues in the discussion of who is satisfied by the cross by asking the question 'Is it the law that is satisfied'?
He summarises this argument succinctly:

Sin is lawlessness (1 Jn 3:4), a disregard for God's law and disobedience to it. But the law cannot be broken with impunity. Sinners therefore incur the penalty of their law-breaking. They cannot simply be let off. The law must be upheld, its dignity defended and its just penalties paid. The law is thereby 'satisfied'.

The strength of this argument is that it recognises the justice or righteousness of God – in that His law is right and true demands an appropriate punishment.

The Cross – Who is Satisfied??

Chapter 5 of John Stott's The Cross of Christ is on 'Satisfaction for Sin'. As Stott says, there are no words more likely to cause offence in discussions of the atonement than 'satisfaction' and the related term 'substitution'. He quotes Sir Alister Hardy, former professor of Zoology at Oxford and researcher into religious experience who describes his inability to come to terms with the 'crude' beliefs of many 'orthodox churchmen. Quoting from The Divine Flame (c. 1965) he says:

I feel certain that he [Jesus] would not have preached to us of a God who would be appeased by the cruel sacrifice of a tortured body. . . I cannot accept either the hypothesis that the appalling death of Jesus was a sacrifice in the eyes of God for the sins of the world , or that God, in the shape of his son, tortured himself for our redemption. I can only confess that, in my heart of hearts, I find such religious ideas to be among the least attractive in the whole of anthropology. To me they belong to quite a different philosophy – a different psychology – from that of the religion Jesus taught.'

Stott reminds us that opponents will often caricature the Christian understanding of the Cross in order to more readily condemn it. "The real question", he says, "is whether we can hold fast to the saving efficacy of the death of Jesus, and to its traditional vocabulary (including satisfaction and substitution) without denigrating God". His answer is "I believe we can and must."