Theoretical Concerns in Atonement Theology – Part III of III
By Cameron D. Kirk-Giannini(For parts I and II of this series please click here and here)
My purpose this week will be purely destructive; I will be considering and rejecting three theories of the atonement in light of the criteria that I developed in my last two posts concerning atonement theology. I hope to treat them fairly, in their very best forms, so as to be as fair and convincing as possible (Author’s note: In retrospect, my commitment to neutrality seems to have waned rather quickly after this point in the essay. I have, especially in my discussion of penal substitution, caricatured views with which I disagree. I would go back and delete the offending sentence, but I feel like nothing should be subtracted from a piece’s first published form. My apologies for any confusion this might have caused.) If I don’t, I’d like you to tell me so I can give these theories whatever chances they deserve.
The first idea I’d like to consider is one that plagued me for many years because I thought it was the only scripturally sound account of the atonement. It has been presented to me in speeches short and long, well-rehearsed and impromptu, for (probably) over a decade. In fact, I’ve found recently that to call penal substitution scripturally sound would be overly generous. To summarize this doctrine as I understand it:
Humans are fallen and sinful. They deserve to die. But God doesn’t want them to die, because he loves them. So he sends Jesus, who dies instead (Author’s note: Specifically, Jesus receives the punishment that humans deserve). This solves the problem.
To begin, I’d like to point out that while the penal substitution model of atonement could possibly account for the forgiveness of sins, it offers no way whatever for the reparation of our sinful nature. This problem, as I understand it, is usually attacked by introducing the doctrine of imputed righteousness, which declares that God considers us to have Jesus’ righteousness in perfectly fulfilling the law. Imputed righteousness is also exceedingly problematic for reasons I don’t have space to talk about here. Check out N.T. Wright’s Justification for a book-length treatment. Furthermore, the notion on vicarious punishment is inherently problematic. On any normal understanding of punishment, a punishment must go to the perpetrator of the actions meriting the punishment in order for it to have any sort of debt-paying significance. If I perpetrate accounting fraud, it simply won’t do for someone else to suffer the penal consequences. Perhaps I am not being charitable enough; maybe the theory of penal substitution has some hidden inner logic. So I will simply conclude that if this account of the atonement makes Jesus into a whipping boy (and it is difficult to see how it doesn’t), it is unworthy of consideration.
As an aside, I point out that the penal substitution theory also doesn’t have much at all to say about God’s plan for Israel and that it makes God a poor planner by treating the Old Covenant as a great mistake.
The second account of the atonement I will consider is the exemplary model. According to this model, the significance of Jesus’ death is exhausted by its utility as a very good example of how we should behave. Foremost, such a model does not account for either our debt of sin or our sinful nature (in this way it is even less successful than the penal substitution model). Moreover, it fails to link the atonement with the theology of the incarnation and an account of Israel’s messiah. Why did the one who provided this example have to be the Son of God? Why did he have to be the Messiah of Israel? In what way could a mere example have fulfilled Israel’s expectations for its Messiah (i.e. the end of its spiritual exile, the return of God to His people, the final victory over evil)? Here, too, God is a poor planner.
While I think the above considerations are enough to lead us to reject the exemplary model of atonement, I think it is important to note its one very positive aspect – it’s thorough intelligibility. Everyone can understand how an exemplary life can inspire onlookers. There is no handwaving here, there are no ambiguous moral transactions. This is the sort of limpid theory one would like to have in the end. But, obviously, comprehensibility must be combined with orthodoxy, which the exemplary model distinctly lacks.
Finally, we come to the participatory model proposed by Bayne and Restall. This model, I think, is very close to correct. In fact, many factors (not the least of which being Scripture) lend credence to a theory of participation in the crucifixion and resurrection. I take issue not with participatory atonement per se but with Bayne and Restall’s particular version of it.
The first of the two problems I see in Bayne and Restall’s theory is that they posit that when we participate in the death and resurrection of Christ we cease to be morally culpable for the sins (or deserving of praise for the good deeds) we commit before the death-and-resurrection event. If this logic is applied to Jesus, we come out with the rather unfortunate conclusion that the resurrected Jesus is not to be commended for the faithfulness of the crucified Jesus. I take this to be evidence enough that culpability translates through death and resurrection. But it is also worrisome to try to make sense of how, say, the final judgment following the resurrection of the dead would be able to proceed on Bayne and Restall’s view.
Second, their account cannot accommodate the forgiveness of sins committed after the baptism event, and indeed the presence of sinfulness after baptism seems to cause problems for the model. If there is some time t after which the believer becomes a new person, why does the believer continue to sin and have the desire to sin? Bayne and Restall’s account does not give sufficient weight to the constant struggle between flesh and spirit, the need to take up one’s cross daily, or the notion of continuous and progressive participation in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
So, having considered these three theories of the atonement, I continue to be compelled to keep searching. I will be sure to put into words whatever I find.
Comments (7)
Of course Jesus is made into a “whipping boy.” The whole Hebraic cultic system of animal sacrifice and priestly supplication has an inner logic of propitiation or “transfer of blame and punishment.” Jesus Christ took on the role of the Lamb Slain and the High Priest, offering himself for the sacrifice. As such, this supremely reveals the holiness and mercy of God — God’s just punishment for sin (death) is abolished and given freely to us.
In other words, this punishment, that Jesus bore, is a correlate of God’s holiness, or else God was unjust in giving Adam/Eve death. Thus, Jesus upholds this holiness by bearing the punishment. As such, he reveals a God who is both holy and merciful beyond all of our antecedent expectations.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
Isaiah 53:5-7
Nico, I commend you for your search for a biblical model of the atonement, and I would personally argue that there are multiple lenses through which we should view God’s work in Christ on the cross.
But, that being said (and know that I don’t say this condescendingly at all!), your presentation of and critique of the penal substitution view is completely uncompelling for me. What is strange to me is that N. T. Wright, who you clearly have profited from and admire, states over and over again in his writings that this model of the atonement is correct (if incomplete, in that it is not the whole story of what Jesus has done). I have often even heard Wright say that he has written the longest scholarly defense in the English language of penal substitution, in his treatment of Isaiah 53.
I’m on the road right now, but when I get a chance I’ll send along some of (what are in my mind) the best works written expounding and defending this view, and some usually ignored biblical arguments, too. Perhaps I’ll interact some with you in a post or two. Again, let me affirm I say all this in love, brother, and with a desire to be faithful to the truth, not an a priori theological system that gets in the way of the biblical narrative–but I do believe Jesus dying in our place, taking upon himself the curse and judgment that were due to us, is at the heart of the good news of Christianity.
I’d like to suggest that you go back to an earlier point in Christian history than the Western Anselm-Abelard debate of the Eleventh Century, which has colored Western soteriology to this day. Look no further than your local Orthodox parish priest for the original Christian answer to your questions concerning atonement theology. Orthodox Christians have always held to what might roughly be called a theory of ‘recapitulation’ (cf. Irenaeus « Adversus Haereses »); the juridical debates of the West have always been foreign to the Orthodox and, so we believe, to the Apostolic Faith. The Western debate is, at least in part, an artifact of an imprecise rendering of certain original Greek terms into Latin, of the reinterpretation of the Greek terms through the Latin lens, and later of the translation of the Greek terms into vernacular languages of the West using words whose meaning had already taken on the Latin juridical connotations.
For an introductory treatment of the theory from a Protestant perspective, I recommend Gustaf Aulén’s « Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement ».
Greetings in Christ from the Yale Logos.
John 8:36
First of all, I’d like to say that I’m extremely excited that people have engaged me on this issue. I pray that God will use the conversation that follows to draw all of us closer to him and to form in our minds a more perfect understanding of His plan for the world.
I have several things to say. First of all, as I have amended the post to indicate, I recognize that I haven’t given penal substitution a fair treatment. I don’t anticipate that giving it a fair treatment will reduce the weight of my objections to it, although (as always) I could be wrong. Insofar as the view of penal substitution I presented was a caricature, I am unsurprised that you (Nick) find my arguments unconvincing. But I am a little surprised that you take issue with my presentation of the view. Possibly it is incomplete, but is it incorrect? Would you affirm the negation of any of the propositions in my statement of the view (ex. It is not the case that humans are fallen and sinful. It is not the case that they deserve to die.)? If you would, then I think there is a problem of definitions.
As I have also indicated, I have realized that original my presentation of the view was ambiguous as to the nature of the saving power of Jesus’ death. As it was, it was merely a statement of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement (with which I tentatively agree) and not a statement of the theory of penal substitution. I have clarified this ambiguity in the text of the article and offer my sincere apologies for the unclear thinking that caused it. That said, I anticipate that anyone who would take issue with the first version of what I wrote will still take issue with the revised version because it is common practice in modern Christianity to read penal undertones into all discussions of substitutionary atonement.
This leads me to my next point, which is that rejecting penal substitution does not imply rejecting substitution. To affirm substitution, as I understand it, is to affirm that in some way Jesus’ death was in our place. The theory of penal substitution is a particular way of understanding substitution; it posits that Jesus’ death was in our place in virtue of the fact that Jesus was punished for our sins. But there are other possibilities; for example, one might say that Jesus’ death was in our place in virtue of the fact that it enables us (by spiritual participation) to leave behind our sinful natures and live “in Christ,” when otherwise escape from our fallenness would require our bodily deaths. This is something like what Bayne and Restall in fact say. I have already suggested that it is problematic, but I sense that there’s more than a grain of truth in it.
Since I do in fact affirm substitutionary atonement because of scriptural evidence, I don’t count the verses you (Kevin) quote from Isaiah against my position. “He was pierced for our transgressions.” Indeed, but how are we to understand “for”? Absent any understanding of Hebrew on my part, it seems like it could mean either “He was pierced as punishment for our transgressions,” using the language form we see in “He was whipped for stealing the captain’s whiskey,” or “He was pierced for the sake of our transgressions,” using the language form we see in “She gave her life for her country.” The former understanding is fully penal, the latter not necessarily even substitutionary. Absent external reasons to adopt the penal reading, the texts here do not point us in any particular direction. As for the second half of Isaiah 53:6, I can’t say much, but my untrained investigation into the Hebrew text suggests that it should actually be rendered something like “God strikes down in him the iniquities of all of us.” Studying the history of interpretations of this particular passage would be interesting. The Vulgate text appears to be fully in support of penal substitution.
To Nick: I very much respect N.T. Wright. Nevertheless, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he could be correct concerning certain topics and incorrect concerning others. Some of his writings have struck me on account of their exceptional clarity and brilliance. Others have seemed to be more representative of the wide and murky sea of average theology. Penal substitution in particular is an issue about which his stance is not entirely clear. You argue that he holds to a version of penal substitution. Many of the foremost proponents of penal substitution would disagree (http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=694 ; http://piercedforourtransgressions.com/content/view/107/51/). I consider the question open.
At this point, I feel like it will be constructive for me to reiterate my motivation for rejecting the account of penal substitution I presented above. I do this not only for the sake of clarity, but because I know that in challenging the doctrine of penal substitution I have stepped over a line that will cause some people to discount what I have to say out of hand or think me heretical. To be perceived as unorthodox is painful and not to be undertaken lightly, and I want to make known what brings me to it.
I am convinced that penalties are not transferable. That penalties are transferable from one person to another seems to be assumed in the doctrine of penal substitution, and yet I have never heard anyone actually take seriously the fact that, apart from Christian doctrine, no one ever advances vicarious punishment as a solution to any problem. We feel instinctively that it is a terrible thing for an innocent person to suffer, that a monstrous injustice has been perpetrated. When a man is sentenced to death and we find after the execution that he was innocent of the crime for which his life was taken we burn with anger against the system that allowed such a thing to happen. Even if the victim goes to his death willingly, though we are not so sorrowful that his life was taken from him without his consent, we feel like something has been left undone. The perpetrator of the crime, the one who deserves to be punished, remains at large. The justice that the punishment was meant to effect has not been effected. I mentioned in my post the idea of a whipping boy, a boy who is punished for the misbehavior of a prince. Why was the whipping boy paradigm effective? It was not because his punishments were deemed to have accomplished justice. It was because his punishment was so glaringly and painfully unfair that the prince could not help but try to behave so as never to cause the whipping boy to suffer again. In other words, it was precisely because we believe penalties are not transferable, because the very notion of transferable penalties seems to be the height of injustice, that the whipping boy is an effective tool. To say that Jesus is made into a whipping boy is, ironically, to make God into a cruel king who practices the greatest possible injustice to shock us into behaving. To point to the temple system merely broadens the scope of this objection; now we might feel compelled to take issue not only with penal substitution but with certain accounts of the temple system as well.
I ask that you not take lightly this sentiment. Perhaps you feel strongly that vicarious punishment is uncontroversial. I do not. It is not enough to declare me wrong; in doing so you shut out not only me but also, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of people.
As I said at the end of my post, I am still in the process of thinking about this issue. One sentence from Wright I find particularly interesting here:
It is because Jesus, as Israel’s representative Messiah, was therefore the representative of the whole human race, that he could appropriately become its substitute.
What intrigues me in this passage is not the notion of representation, which I don’t think is adequate to escape the difficulty with vicarious punishment. It is the idea that Jesus is able to be our substitute in virtue of the fact that he is the Messiah of Israel. A full explication of this doctrine would, I think, shed a great deal of light on the issue of atonement.
I am open to a fully satisfactory account of penal substitution. I think, though, that such an account would need to involve a great deal more theory and philosophical work than is usually presented/has ever been presented to me/I have been able to find in my research on this issue. It would need to include full explications of covenant, culpability, and embodiment. To dodge the weight of common objections to penal substitution is to surrender to the pathological and insincere anti-intellectualism that has plagued American Christianity for three hundred years.
Hey Nico, thanks for your thorough response. Let me preface this by saying that I did not mean for my (brief) reply to give reasons for my disagreement, only to point out that I don’t think many (or any) who hold to penal substitution with any historic understanidng of what it means will be swayed by your arguments. But your well-written follow up definitely makes me want to engage you in conversation in some blog posts soon!
For now, just a couple of points I’d make. First, as to N. T. Wright, I am aware that many uber-orthodox (i.e. those for whom penal substitution is the first and only creed of Christianity) often charge Wright with denying this doctrine, but again I would point to Wright himself who has said over and over that he holds it, who interprets Isaiah 53 that way, and whose commentary on Romans is quite clear on Romans 8:1-4 on what the atonement involves. This is not to say that Wright understand PSA (short hand from now on) in the same way that others do, but in that even John Piper acknowledges, in his recent book that critiques Wright, that Wright affirms and defends PSA.
Second, and I’ll definitely come back to this thought in the posts, I’m leary of starting with philosophical considerations that (a priori) rule out certain things ahead of time that the Bible henceforth isn’t allowed to say. Saying punishment can’t be transferred misses the point for me. What I want to know is if Jesus, Paul, Peter, and/or the other biblical characters & writers thought this! Then, we can talk philosophy. And for me, it is quite clear that a number of passages indicate that biblical writers understood Jesus’ death to be vicarious, penal, substitutionary. I’ll try to give a defense of this biblically soon, as well as point out some recent work on this theme that should be read by all who want to enter the discussion.
Next, I would disagree with you that punishment CAN’T be transferred. Of course it can, and everyone knows it. In “Last of the Mohicans”, the British officer takes the place of Daniel Day Lewis’s character in being burned alive by the Huron. In Tale of Two Cities, the two main characters “switch” at the end. I could today choose to hit someone else in my brother’s place if he wrongs me, and no more punishment would be doled out. It happens all the time, and always has. The question isn’t whether it CAN happen, but whether it SHOULD occur. That is, when we come to philosophical considerations, penal substitution has nothing to do with metaphysics, and everything to do with ethics. The question is: is God unrighteous to have Jesus punished in our place, so that we are forgiven and off the hook?
Lastly, and this is only a teaser for more to come, I think it is absolutely crucial to distinguish between the transfer or “guilt” and the transfer of “punishment”. Historically, it is the idea that “guilt” is transferred that has occasioned the great protests against PSA. In fact, I actually agree: guilt cannot (yes, metaphysics here!) be transferred, and Scripture does not seem to teach that it is. However, there is a difference between the guilt that sin accrues to our account, and the punishment or “consequences” that guilt then calls down upon us. My argument is this: by virtue of union with the crucified and risen Jesus, our guilt remains ours, but Jesus experiences the consequences for it. And, of course, “payment for sin God cannot twice demand.” The hymn writers of the church have been gloriusly on target here! One quick analogy: if my wife (who is “mine” and I am “hers” by virtue of union) accrues great, unpayable debts in her life, the government considers me just as responsible for them as she is. In many cultures, that is true of the parent/child relationship, too. Yet if I pay off my wife’s debts through my own riches and resources, no one thinks afterwards that her guilt has been transferred to me. Of course not. But, I have experienced the consequences of her sin, and she has not and never will. If she owes a million, the collectors cannot take said amount from me, and then from her again. She is “righteous” or “forgiven” or innocent legally, henceforth. Her debt has become mine, and my riches have become hers. I experienced the curse, so that the blessing might come to her. I became sin, though I knew no sin, so that she might become the embodiment of righteousness. I, for her sake, became poor, in order that she might become rich by my poverty. This is the wonderful exchange, and it is grounded (as Wright and Piper know) in union. To be “in Christ” means many things, but in my mind never less than this.
A final word: I do not think you are a heretic, Nico, nor did or would I say such a thing! To say that PSA is necessary to be a Christian shrinks the church down awfully small throughout church history. I do think it is massively important, though. Likewise, I want to affirm that the atonement is about much, much more than PSA. This, by itself, is adequate to respond to your objection that PSA can’t solve the problem of our sinful nature. Fortunately, no one that I know of who has held PSA has ever thought that it did! Here is where participation comes in, and I would agree with Hans Anderson that Christus Victor is also true biblically: on the cross, Jesus triumphed over Satan and ended our slavery to evil spiritual reality. It is important for all in the conversation to realized that PSA is not, even by those who hold it, understood to be the “whole show” when it comes to expounding what Jesus accomplished on the cross. Looking forward to interacting with you on this, Nico. May God open all of our eyes and bring us more deeply into His truth, for surely we all fall quite far short of it. I know I do, and am looking forward to learning from you on this. Grace and peace.
Here’s a clear statement from Wright’s commentary on Romans:
“No clearer statement is found in Paul [i.e. Rom. 8:3], or indeed anywhere else in all early Christian literature, of the early Christian belief that what happened on the cross was the judicial punishment of sin. Taken in conjunction with 8:1 and the whole argument of the passage, not to mention the partial parallels in 2 Cor. 5:21 and Gal. 3:13, it is clear that Paul intends to say that in Jesus’ death the damnation that sin deserved was meted out fully and finally, so that sinners over whose heads that condemnation had hung might be liberated from this threat once and for all.” (N.T. Wright, Romans, pp. 574-75)
Hey Nico. I thought my musings might help you out. I really appreciated Nicks thoughts as well. I don’t think I believe in Penal Substitution anymore. I wrote these thoughts in a Journal I keep-
I believe I am formalizing my understanding of the atonement of Christ:
It is based upon the broadening my understanding has achieved by some online articles I’ve read lately by Robin Collins and Tim Bayne with Greg Restall. They refer to it as the Incarnational Theory of the atonement, or Participatory Model of the atonement, respectively.
These theories are really pretty equivalent to what has been articulated by Patristic Fathers and their commentators for over a thousand years, so they are not so much new theories as they are new, systematic descriptions of theories which heretofore been described in very mystical and not very scientific terms. (Terms I’ve admittedly had a hard time wrapping my head around.) At least that is my hope, I’d hate to be buying into anything novel or new.
Does God enjoy the death of sinners? No. Why not? Because he loves them. So God has a plan to save sinners as opposed to blinking them out of existence. He becomes one of them, a human being in every way, except he never fulfills a self-centered desire. Instead he pours himself out to God with every inch of his being, for his entire life. He loves God and his neighbor continuously- even unto death.
Christ was punished. Who punished him? God? Why would God punish someone who never sinned? Even more, why would God punish himself? No, twas’ human beings punished Christ. Sinners punished Christ. (Behold the depths of God’s humility!) Did Christ experience the penalty of sin? What is the penalty of sin? Death. So then, yes, Christ experienced the penalty of sin. Not because he deserved to. He voluntarily chose to suffer an excruciating death at the hands of his own creation, for the sake of his own creation.
But what does that mean? What does Christ’s death accomplish? “It is finished.” Christ’s death was the climax, the completion of an entire human existence given in perfect humility and love unto God.
Suddenly there is a man, for the first time in history, who has embodied the image of God perfectly. The whole purpose behind mankind being brought into existence has finally occurred! Mankind is acquitted of its lack of faithfulness. He paid our debt to God in this way.
But what was that debt? And how is all Mankind acquitted by his vicarious payment?
The answer to the first question is Love. Love is the currency of Heaven. But wasn’t Christ’s death the payment? In a very real sense, his death was part and parcel, even the epitome, of his love payment. He loved God even in the face of death, and dying for the sake of his fellow man, made perfect his payment with the ultimate sacrifice. Actually, if he had died a peaceful death, it would not have accomplished this same complete victory as well it did.
To further make the point, consider if his death in and of itself was the debt paid in our stead. First off, this death could never be considered spiritual death, for God cannot die spiritually. That is nonsensical. If Christ physically dying was our debt, and if he paid this debt so we wouldn’t have to, then why do we continue to pay it ourselves? Why do we die physically? Physical death is still the lot of every sinner, every mortal born. Christ’s death doesn’t change the formula instituted by God in the Garden. Death is a corrective, instituted for the repentance of a stiff-necked people and the salvation of those pained by the suffering sin brings.
But what about the rest of us? Christ was unjustly put to death, and justly resurrected by God as evidence of his perfection, so what? What has that to do with sinners?
First ask, who does God forgive? Anyone who sincerely asks for forgiveness. Why? Because Love always forgives. That is the right kind of love. That is just love. That is holy love. But God’s affection for us, his forgiving nature, does not correct our nature. Forgiving a person is a decision isolated from the actions of the person forgiven. And so we struggle on in our sin.
But now there is a difference. Before hand the repentance of sinners was the realization of our doom before God’s judgment in the Garden, and the doom given in the Garden to mankind not only did not lead men to repentance but actually increased their bondage to sin (establishing a cycle of sin and repentance that no one had any power to escape).
We can acknowledge God’s decision to forgive mankind even while at enmity with him, but the activity of God’s love toward man is in his intimate communion with him in the incarnation. God’s forgiveness is indeed (in-deed) the act of Christ living and dying unto God, establishing peace between God and man.
There is solidarity between Man and creation. It is of the created world that he is born, and the created world is his God-given domain to preside over. The sacrifices in the Old Testament established solidarity, identification, between the sacrifice (the product of his God-given domain) and the sacrificer (the caretaker of that product). The sacrifice was a possession of the sacrificer, given in repentance, a reminder to the sacrificer of God’s mercy in sparing his life, while yet establishing the very real consequences of his estrangement from God.
If the epitome of sin is taking our life into our own hands, and the epitome of love is laying our life down for another, and if Christ came as the representative High Priest of Man, and if that Great High Priest was the selfsame sacrifice of Mankind unto God, and the sacrificial system God intended was a solidification between the sacrifice and the sacrificer, then this solidarity, this identification, is the same identification that man shares with the sacrifice unto God given by Christ. Christ’s actions come to represent the actions of the entire world. All mankind becomes identified with that sacrifice.
And if that isn’t ontological enough for you, if that isn’t scientific enough for you, consider the fundamental truth that Mankind is part and parcel of the created order. He is matter, and energy, and atoms, and quarks, and at those atomic and subatomic levels there is no differentiation between man and his environment, or between one man and another. Creation is all one mass of material. And if God becomes incarnated into the very fabric of that material order, not as a tree or a stone or the sun or stars but as Man, the cognitive intellect- the very soul of the created world; then we see how it is that God perceives the solidarity of mankind, and the solidarity of men with Christ his very Son, and the identification we have with his actions is a reality.
Of course, further still it is our lot now to actualize that reality by truly being Christ in our practical lives. And our lack of actualizing that is a refusal to change with the times, a refusal to partake of Christ’s representative measures. A rejection of Christ’s life within the world.
We said before that God’s forgiveness is indeed the act of Christ living and dying unto God within the material realm, establishing peace between God and Man. It’s that peace which allows the indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost for all who accept Christ as their sacrifice unto God. He is the only acceptable sacrifice ever made to God, and the only path the Holy Spirit could tread in His descent towards man.
If we are one with Christ, we have died with him, resurrected with him spiritually, and will resurrect like him bodily after our own physical deaths. We were one with Adam before Christ, not in guilt, (our actions are our own), but in kinship. He became a dead person, and every man, woman, child, and infant has been born dead like unto him. Likewise, We are one with Christ, not in righteousness, (our actions are our own), but in kinship. He is alive, and every man, woman, child, and infant has been baptized into him. (Rom 5:12-19; Rom 6:3-11)
This reasoning is the answer as to how Christ can have justified us, yet still hold us responsible for our own actions (Rom 2:6). Christ’s actions are our own if our actions are actually Christ’s. Its not really smoke and mirrors at all. And if we sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. You can see that there is no longer a spirit of fear here (2 Tim 1:7). Not only is he faithful and just to forgive us ours sins just as he always has done history over, now this repentance really will cleanse us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).