“Jesus’ sacrifice is not God replacing the bait in the mouse trap, it is God getting onto the mouse trap, letting it snap, and breaking it apart. God never needed a bloody sacrifice, but he used it to shame our religions and do away with them forever.”
For us to reframe our doctrine of God according to Jesus, as I argued here, we need to tackle the issue of God’s relation to sacrificial practices. This, to my mind, is what is going to allow us to coherently say that Jesus and the Father are in sync in their hearts, and are of one mind. A Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory perspective, though, will admittedly force us to say that there are two sides to the Father, one that wants to forgive (because it is merciful) and one that needs to punish (because it is just).
A main concern with Penal Substitution is that, in it, Jesus is demoted: he’s no longer a gift from God, but a solution to the problem of sin – and it becomes more problematic when we understand that it is not ourproblem, but God’s! Heis the one who cannot…
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New Horizons 