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The Lie That Led To Penal Substitution Theology

The Lie That Led To Penal Substitution Theology

God is the Creator who built all reality—space, time, energy, matter, and life. His laws are the laws that reality is constructed to operate upon; the laws of gravity, physics, thermodynamics, health, and the moral laws. These are fixed principles upon which life is constructed to exist.

Created beings cannot create reality, so we make up rules, call them “laws,” and then inflict punishment when our rules are broken. Christianity replaced the New Testament principle of love and design law, with a human, imposed law construct—the distortion that God’s law functions no differently than that of human law, imposed rules requiring infliction of punishment.. This led to all types of abuses and the world went into an age of darkness. 

Because imperial/imposed-law requires punishment for wrongdoing, the church of the Dark Ages taught that sin must be punished. This led to the doctrine of purgatory, where after death, conscious souls have their sins purged through punishment. In Roman Catholic theology, entrance into heaven requires the “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven,” for which indulgences may be given which remove “either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin,” such as an “unhealthy attachment” to sin.[1] Those who die in grace, but who have not yet fulfilled the temporal punishment, due to their sin, can do so in purgatory.

One of the major doctrines that the great reformer Martin Luther rejected was the teaching that conscious souls are punished in purgatory. He disagreed with this doctrine in two ways:

  • First, he did not believe in a conscious soul that could experience punishment, and instead taught that the saints sleep peacefully: “It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace.”[2]
  • Second, Luther put forth a new theory designed to free people from both the fear of purgatory and the exploitation of indulgences to buy loved ones their freedom from further punishment in purgatory. He expanded Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement by adding inflicted punishment. Luther taught the idea that all sin by all humans from all time were placed on Christ at the cross and punished by God at the cross. Thus, for the saints, there were no unpunished sins remaining to be punished, thus there was no need for purgatory.[3]

Unfortunately, the same root lie underpins both purgatory and Luther’s solution—that God’s law functions like human law and that breaking the law (an act of sin) requires punishment. This is Satan’s lie about God’s law from the beginning.

E.G. White, one of the founders of the SDA church, describing Satan’s opening lies, writes:

In the opening of the great controversy, Satan had declared that the law of God could not be obeyed, that justice was inconsistent with mercy, and that, should the law be broken, it would be impossible for the sinner to be pardoned. Every sin must meet its punishment, urged Satan; and if God should remit the punishment of sin, He would not be a God of truth and justice. (DA 761.4, emphasis supplied)

The completion of the Reformation requires the rejection of this imposed law lie, in order to take the eternal gospel to the world, to prepare the world for Christ’s return. We must return to worship our Creator and Designer and realize His laws are the protocols upon which life is built. We must realize that sin changes the sinner, causing a state of being which is incompatible with life in God’s universe, because the sinner is no longer operating upon the law (protocols) that God constructed life to exist. Thus God, through Christ, has been working to heal and restore sinners back into perfection. This is healing substitution theology, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Cor 5:21). This is the message of the three angels of Revelation 14. This is the true mission of the church—one that we will only fulfill when we eliminate imposed law, with its penal substitutionary distortion, from our pulpits, books, doctrines, universities, and institutions.


[1]     Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The celebration of the Christian Mystery.” The Holy See. The Catholic Church. Retrieved 14 March 2017. 

[2]     Weimarer Ausgabe, 43, 360, 21–23 (to Genesis 25:7–10); also Exegetica opera latina, Vol 5–6 1833 p. 120 and the English translation: Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols. (St. Louis: CPH), 4:313.

[3]     Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers, 7th ed. (1994), 179, 191-195.

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Testimony 30

God lead me to your book “The God-Shaped Brain” while I was searching for another book about the brain and then to your interview about your book on HeartWise Ministries [where] I found out about [Come And Reason Ministries]. I’m now devouring the webcasts of your Bible studies. I have been so greatly blessed and I thank God so much for your courage to speak the Truth in love no matter what. Listening to you contrast the two opposing systems (laws) and digging deep to unearth the hidden treasures in the Bible makes me so incredibly happy and I feel very blessed to be part of your Bible Study Group although I live far away. I am just so excited that there is a group of people that is spreading the Truth about the character of God and it saddens me how few realize what our Father in Heaven is really like.

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Testimony 32

The message [of Come And Reason Ministries is] for all Christians (and those who may become Christians) and not just Adventists or any other group. It is difficult to imagine why any [anyone] with intellectual and spiritual honesty could find fault with the way you explained the healing substitution concepts and the truth about God’s character, though I know some will reject and criticize. On behalf of those in our group near Tacoma, WA, thank you and your staff for all of the hard work and for sharing the Gospel in this manner. God’s message of healing love will be carried to the whole world and then Jesus will come – He promised it.

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Testimony 35

I am so pleased with the response your message is receiving at my church from the middle-aged to the young adults. I have given out 100 copies of the first two seminars and there are more request every week. One of my [class members] came to me after viewing the series, grateful and impressed with how easy the message was retained. He had been a Seventh-day Adventist in fear all his life, and felt like the scales were removed from his eyes after viewing the seminars. I am so impressed by the change I see in members who have received this message, we are in one accord. However, I am sadden by the negative response of the older people. I am verbally attacked anytime I talk about imposed laws, but I believe my mission is to enlightened everyone I can. I watch your Bible Study Class on YouTube every Friday night and I feel like I am apart of the class. All of you are in one accord and I am so blessed to have found you. I pray that all of you continue to spread this message and I am committed to doing my part.

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Testimony 55

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Testimony 38

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