I want to start with a question, and I want you to answer it in your own head before you read any further. Who killed Jesus?

Some of you said the Jews, and you would have a case. When Pilate asked the crowd what to do with Him, they shouted, "Crucify Him!" Others of you said the Romans, and you would have a case there too. Pilate was the one in charge. He gave the order, and Roman soldiers drove the nails. Somebody is thinking about Judas. Somebody else is thinking, Preacher, it was my sins that put Him there. All of that is true as far as it goes.

Paul gives an answer in Romans 8 that ought to stop you in your tracks. Some of the new age preachers like to argue and whine about it, and they will tell you it makes God out to be a monster. It is true nonetheless. Once you see Paul's answer, two more questions come right behind it. Why would God do such a thing? How could a just God do it to an innocent man?

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who indeed did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction, or turmoil, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE COUNTED AS SHEEP FOR the SLAUGHTER." But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31–39 (LSB)

My subject is the blessings of penal substitutionary atonement. That is a mouthful, so we will take the words one at a time as we go. Start with the last one. T.P. Simmons said that atonement refers to what was accomplished in the death of Christ, and everything else here hangs on that. Here is the whole of it in one sentence: the Father did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over to bear in our place the penalty our sins deserved, and every blessing of salvation flows to us through that substitution.

The Father Who Delivered Him

Paul answers the question in the first few words of verse 32: "He who indeed did not spare His own Son." Look at the subject of that sentence. One verse earlier Paul has already told you who he is talking about: "If God is for us, who is against us?" The One who did not spare is God the Father.

So who delivered Jesus over? The LSB uses those very same words in Mark 15. The chief priests "had delivered Him over because of envy" (Mark 15:10). Pilate, wanting to satisfy the crowd, "delivered Him over to be crucified" (Mark 15:15). Judas sold Him for silver. Each one of them handed Jesus along to the next man. Paul pulls back the curtain and shows you the hand behind all those hands. The Father delivered Him over.

Peter preached both sides of this on the day of Pentecost:

this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of lawless men and put Him to death. Acts 2:23 (LSB)

Both truths sit in one sentence. "You nailed" Him to a cross. Man is held responsible, and every lawless hand at Calvary will answer for what it did. He was also "delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God." God is sovereign over this. He settled the cross in His own counsel long before Pilate ever took office, so heaven was never scrambling to clean up a mess.

Some seven hundred years before the Lord came, Isaiah prophesied it:

But Yahweh was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If You would place His soul as a guilt offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in His hand. Isaiah 53:10 (LSB)

Do not misread that word "pleased." The Father took no cruel delight in His Son's agony. This was His purpose and His good pleasure, and He delighted in what it would accomplish. Read the rest of the verse: "He will see His seed." The Father looked past the cross to a people redeemed by it.

Paul chose his words carefully when he said "His own Son." If you know your Old Testament, those words ought to take you to a mountain called Moriah. God told Abraham to take Isaac, the son he loved, and offer him up. Abraham went. He built the altar, laid the wood, bound the boy, and raised the knife, and the angel of the Lord called out of heaven and stopped his hand. Listen to what God said next:

Then the angel of Yahweh called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, "By Myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you have done this thing and have not spared your son, your only one, Genesis 22:15–16 (LSB)

It is the same language. God said Abraham had "not spared" his son, and yet Isaac walked down that mountain alive, because God provided a ram caught in the thicket. On Calvary there was no voice from heaven to stop the hand and no ram in the bushes, because the Lamb Himself was on the altar. Isaac was spared. God's own Son was not.

It is easy to sit back and point a finger at Caiaphas and Pilate. Do not do it. Peter looked that crowd in the eye and said "you nailed," and the sins that sent Christ to the cross were ours as much as theirs. Do not ever think of Calvary as a good man's life cut short either, some tragedy God could not stop. The cross was God's doing from first to last. Before we gather at the Lord's Table again, sit down with Mark 15 and read it with both truths in front of you: my sin put Him there, and my God sent Him there for me.

The Penalty He Bore

The Father delivered Him over. That raises a hard question. If God did not spare His Son, what exactly did He not spare Him from?

That brings us to the first of our big words. Penal has to do with penalty, the punishment the law of God demands for sin. J.E. Cobb put it this way: when we use the word penal, we mean Christ shed His blood for the guilty. We were the guilty ones. He bled anyway.

To spare somebody is to hold back what is coming to them. A judge spares a man when he suspends the sentence. A daddy spares his boy when he hangs the belt back on the nail. God the Father held nothing back from His Son, and every bit of the sentence our sin deserved came down on Him. Watch how Mark describes it:

And when the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?" which is translated, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" Mark 15:33–34 (LSB)

The sixth hour is noon. Picture the sun going dark at midday and staying dark for three hours. When the sins of God's people were placed on the Son, the Father darkened the whole land as He poured out His wrath on Him. Then out of that darkness comes the cry. The Son, who had known unbroken fellowship with His Father from all eternity, was forsaken. He took my place and suffered the hell I deserve.

You might say, wait a minute, how could He do in three hours what mankind would have to suffer for an eternity? It is a fair question. The difference is that Jesus is God, and being God He is infinite. An infinite being can undergo any amount of suffering in as brief a time as it may please Him to do. Not so with finite beings like myself.

Think of it this way. Suppose you owe a million dollars and all you have is a coffee can full of pennies. You can stand at that counter paying a penny at a time till the Lord comes back, and you will never get it settled. A man with the means can walk in and settle the whole thing with one signature. A lost sinner in hell pays forever and never finishes paying, because a finite creature cannot pay off an infinite debt. Christ suffered in His human nature, but the One who suffered is the eternal Son of God. The worth of what He suffered is measured by the worth of the One who suffered it, and His worth has no limit. In three hours He paid it all.

Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. John 19:30 (LSB)

The wrath of Almighty God was poured out on Jesus until divine justice was satisfied, and He cried out, "It is finished!" That is the shout of a Savior announcing the work is done, and He meant every word. Then He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. Nobody took it from Him.

And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Hebrews 9:22 (LSB)

Jesus had to die! God does not wave His hand over sin and pretend He did not see it. A judge who lets the guilty walk is a crooked judge, and our God is not crooked. Sin had to be paid for in blood. Either you pay for it forever, or Christ paid for it at Calvary.

Some of you are still trying to pay for something Christ already paid for. You replay it at night. There is a sin from twenty years ago that you figure you have not felt bad enough about for long enough, so you keep the Lord at arm's length. You will come to church, but you will not pray out loud or take a step of service, because down deep you believe you are still on probation. If Jesus said "It is finished," then quit trying to add your coffee can of pennies to what He paid. The next time that old sin comes back to haunt you, answer it out loud with John 19:30.

The Place He Took

Christ bore a penalty. Whose penalty was it? He never committed a single sin, so He had none of His own to pay. That brings us to the last three words of the phrase: "for us all."

Here is our second big word. Substitutionary means the suffering of Christ was a substitute for the suffering that believers would have undergone in hell. He stood where we should have stood and took what we should have taken. "For us" means on our behalf, in our place. Isaiah saw it seven centuries ahead of time:

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our peace fell upon Him, And by His wounds we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. Isaiah 53:4–6 (LSB)

Watch the pronouns. It was our griefs He bore and our sorrows He carried. He was pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Every line is a trade. We did the straying, and "Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him."

Paul says the same thing in one sentence:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (LSB)

The Father made Jesus to be sin for us, Jesus who knew no sin. Jesus never became a sinner. He never had one sinful thought in His life. What happened at the cross is that our sin was charged to His account, and the Father treated Him as the guilty party. Then the trade goes the other way, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. He got our record, and we got His.

Mark tells us about a man named Barabbas, who "had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mark 15:7). Barabbas was guilty, and he knew it. Picture him in that cell, hearing the crowd roar through the stone walls, then hearing the key turn in the lock. He walked out into the daylight a free man, and Jesus of Nazareth went to a cross that by all rights belonged to Barabbas. Every believer reading this is Barabbas.

Some yell, "UNFAIR, UNFAIR!" They accuse God of child abuse and everything else. How could a just God punish an innocent man for what guilty men did? Those folks do not understand the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Father did not grab an unwilling victim off the street. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, and the Son came to the cross of His own free will. Listen to Him:

"For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one takes it away from Me, but from Myself, I lay it down. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father." John 10:17–18 (LSB)

"No one takes it away from Me." Nobody dragged Him to Calvary. He went there on purpose.

who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:6–8 (LSB)

The One who existed in the form of God humbled Himself all the way down to a cross. Call that abuse if you want to, but the Bible calls it love, the Father and the Son of one mind about saving sinners. The Judge stepped down from the bench and took the sentence Himself. The real unfairness would be a God who let sin slide. At Calvary, Paul says, God showed Himself to be "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).

So who is the "us all" of verse 32? Look at the next verse: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect?" The "us all" are God's elect, the same people Paul says in verses 29 and 30 were foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Christ died to actually save, and every last one of them for whom He was delivered over will be brought home to glory. Not one of them gets left behind.

Somebody will try to bring that charge. The devil will, and so will your own conscience at two in the morning. Sometimes it is people in your own family throwing your past in your face. When the accuser brings up your record, do not argue about how bad it was. He is probably right about that part. Point him to your Substitute. Open your Bible to Isaiah 53 and read verses 4 through 6 out loud, and every time you see "our" or "us," say your own name. Paul made it that personal when he wrote of "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20).

The Blessings That Follow

The Father did not spare His Son, and the Son took the penalty in our place. A dead Savior in a sealed tomb cannot give anybody anything, though. Verse 32 does not stop at the cross, and neither does the gospel: "how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?"

Notice the words "with Him." Paul is not talking about a dead Christ. Look two verses down: "Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised." He says it again back in chapter 4:

He who was delivered over on account of our transgressions, and was raised on account of our justification. Romans 4:25 (LSB)

Delivered over, then raised. He was buried three days and three nights, just like He said He would be:

for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12:40 (LSB)

Try fitting that into a Friday to Sunday. But then He arose, conquering death, hell, and the grave. The empty tomb is the Father's own declaration that the payment was received in full. That is what Paul means when he says Christ "was raised on account of our justification."

Paul is arguing from the greater to the lesser. If God has already given us His Son to die for us, then how in the world will He refuse anything else that is necessary? The hardest gift has already been given. Everything else God does for His people is small change next to Calvary.

The word "graciously" matters too. Paul uses a word built on the word for grace. You did not earn these blessings. Christ earned them at the cross, and the Father gives them freely for His sake.

So what are the "all things"? Paul does not leave you guessing. Read the very next verses, and every blessing in them was bought with blood.

"Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies." The accuser can bring his whole list, but the Judge has already ruled. God declares the believer righteous, and He can do it justly because the sentence was carried out on Christ.

Then Paul asks, "who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died." Look at how Paul answers the threat of condemnation. He points to a death. The condemnation already fell, and it fell on Him. Paul opened this chapter with that very truth:

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1 (LSB)

Verse 34 goes on to tell you that Christ "is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us." The One who paid the debt now stands before the Father on behalf of the very people He paid for, and He will not lose one of them.

Paul runs through everything this world can throw at a Christian, all the way from affliction and famine to death itself, and he says none of it "will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." That love was proven at Calvary, and nothing can undo what was done there.

Our Constitution has a rule called double jeopardy. Once a man has been tried for a crime and the case is settled, the government cannot haul him back into court and try him for the same thing. God's justice is better than ours. The case against every believer was tried at Calvary, and the full sentence was carried out on the Substitute. Nobody in heaven, earth, or hell can reopen it.

He made the same argument earlier in this letter:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Romans 5:8–10 (LSB)

Paul says we are justified by His blood, saved from the wrath of God through Him, and reconciled to God through the death of His Son. You can hardly state penal substitution any plainer than that. Then come the two words that carry the argument: "much more." If God did all that for you while you were His enemy, how much more will He keep you now that you are His child?

So "all things" means everything that belongs to your salvation, from the day you were justified to the day verse 30 promises you will be glorified. Christ bought the whole of it, and God will not hand you half.

Some of you treat your standing with God like a report card. You have a good week, read your Bible every morning, hold your tongue with your wife, and you feel saved on Sunday. Then you lose your temper on Tuesday and skip your prayers Wednesday and Thursday, and you walk into church wondering if God still wants anything to do with you. Brethren, Christ settled your standing with God at Calvary, and a bad Tuesday cannot unsettle it. That is no license to sin. Confess it, make it right with your wife, and get back in your Bible. But come to the Father as a son who has been reconciled, because the blood of Christ says you are. When you fail, go straight to the Father and confess it, and in the same prayer thank Him that the penalty for that sin has already been paid.

Who Killed Jesus?

Go back to the question we started with. Who killed Jesus? Wicked men did, and they will answer for it. The chief priests delivered Him over out of envy, and Pilate delivered Him over to satisfy a mob. Behind every one of those hands was the hand of the Father, who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all.

He did it on purpose. He did it so the penalty our sins deserved would fall on Christ, and so Christ could stand in the place where we should have stood. Every blessing a believer has, from the moment he is justified to the day he is glorified, comes to him through that substitution. Take penal substitution out of the gospel and you have nothing left worth preaching.

This is the gospel in a nutshell:

Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I proclaimed as good news to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I proclaimed to you as good news, unless you believed for nothing. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15:1–4 (LSB)

Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised. That is the good news. I need to tell you plainly what verse 32 means if you are not in Christ, because the logic of this verse cuts both ways. If God did not spare His own Son when sin was laid on Him, He will not spare you if you stand before Him in your own sins. The wrath that fell on Jesus in those three hours of darkness will fall on every sinner who has no Substitute, and a finite sinner can never finish paying. That is why hell lasts forever.

The call of the gospel is not, "Do you want to go to heaven?" Plenty of folks want heaven who do not want God. The call of the gospel is, "Do you want God?"

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring you to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 1 Peter 3:18 (LSB)

"So that He might bring you to God." Heaven without God would be no heaven at all. The cross is how a holy God brings guilty sinners home to Himself, and there is only one road there:

Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6 (LSB)

If you have never turned from your sin and trusted Christ, the door is open. You do not have to clean yourself up first. He died, as Peter said, "the righteous for the unrighteous," and that is exactly the kind of person you are. Come to Him today. Confess that you are guilty and that He is your only hope, and lean your whole weight on the One the Father delivered over.

Child of God, here is what this text means for you. The penalty has been paid, and God will not collect it twice. No charge will stick against you, because "God is the one who justifies." When the devil tells you that you are still under condemnation, hold up verse 32. The Father spared nothing at Calvary, and He will not withhold one blessing His Son died to secure for you.

Church, here is what I want you to do this week. Memorize Romans 8:32. Write it on a card and keep it in your Bible, and when your conscience starts accusing you over sin you have already confessed, say the verse out loud and thank God the penalty has been paid. Then learn this doctrine well enough to explain it at your own supper table. Walk your children or grandchildren through what penal substitutionary atonement means, one word at a time. If somebody tells you the cross makes God guilty of child abuse, you ought to be able to open John 10 and show him that the Son laid down His own life.

There is a man at work or a neighbor down the road who has never once heard that Jesus took the punishment he deserves. Tell him before Sunday comes again. You do not have to be a preacher to say, "God didn't spare His own Son, and He did it for sinners like me."