“Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
Hebrews 9:22
The author to the Hebrews is keenly aware of how Jesus’ death fulfills Old Testament Law. Jesus is referred to as the new Moses (3:3), the Great High Priest (4:14-16), the Mediator of a new covenant long promised by the Prophet Jeremiah(8; 9:15). And, inasmuch as Jesus is preeminent in all things, so too is his sacrifice preeminent. Jesus’ sacrifice is the fulfillment and goal of the OT sacrificial system. Not only is he the Great High Priest of a new covenant, he is also the sacrificial offering on which this covenant is based. Through his sacrifice Jesus brings about the forgiveness of sins, and only when sins are forgiven can human beings begin to fully enjoy communion with God (Hebrews 8-9).
This was the basic gist of a sermon I preached for the completion of my Methodist Local Preacher training. The feedback, thankfully, was extremely positive, but I had been rather nervous about it. Not only was it my final assessed service, I’d also chosen to focus on substitutionary atonement as the mechanism by which this forgiveness takes place…in a moderately liberal Methodist church. Which is partly why the positive feedback surprised me.
One comment that I didn’t entirely agree with was that ‘a sermon on substitutionary atonement might not have been appropriate for an all age service.’ While I admit that my preaching might not have been well tailored to all ages I think that teaching young people about substitutionary atonement is vital. Like most evangelicals I believe penal substitution to be a central facet of Jesus’ atoning work. Any victory over sin, death and Satan or moral influence that the cross might procure is ultimately dependent on Jesus’ substitutionary death.
If this is the case, and substitutionary atonement is central to the gospel, and we intentionally leave it out of our of preaching to young people, then we offer an impoverished gospel. If we avoid this subject then we simply reinforce religious trends that seem to be taking the younger generation of Christians by storm. In recent studies it was shown that many young Christians believe in a kind of ‘therapeutic, moralistic, deism’. They believe that Christianity is primarily a belief system that offers comforting experiences, a moral code, and a belief in some sort of God ‘out there’ but that he isn’t particularly involved in the world. Christ isn’t particularly important.
But when we place substitutionary atonement in its proper place, when we take sin seriously and locate Jesus’ death centrally, ‘therapeutic, moralistic, deism’ begins to fall apart. Since, in Jesus we see our sin challenged and dealt with, God intimately related and involved in his world, in a way that brings people into life giving communion with himself. Substitutionary atonement is central to the gospel, and the gospel is for all ages.
For more on moralistic therapeutic deism see: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/mtd-not-just-a-problem-with-youth-ministry/
Geometric Theology 