Why the Atonement Debate Needs a Bigger Story
Reading The Cross Through Eden
The way God operates is more often a mystery to sit with than a map to follow and understand. How and why He does what He does can often be a hang-up, and one of the things we really have to deal with is the question: “Why would a loving God need to punish His Son?” And, honestly, theology is all fun and games until someone hits you with this question.
It’s arguably the question I hear the most when I talk to people who are either going through a crisis of faith or who have walked away altogether. The atonement, the punishment necessary for the wrong things we’ve done, is in and of itself a messy topic because it stirs up the inference that we’re bad people, and no one really wants to do business with that fact in the first place.
Someone near and dear to me (who will remain anonymous for this piece), who I grew up with and went to church with from elementary school through high school, sat down with me right before we graduated high school, and then we went our separate ways: me to college, him to the military. Towards the end of our junior year, he dropped the bomb that he didn’t really think the church thing was for him. He just didn’t feel it anymore and was going to take a break. No worries, I thought. He’ll come back.
But he didn’t. We sat next to each other in most of our classes, and I would ask him periodically when he would be at Wednesday night services. “Um, I don’t know.” I didn’t think much of it.
But a few months before graduation, he finally had a real conversation with me. “Jacob, I just don’t get it. I can’t get past why a loving God would kill His Son. Why He didn’t just stop the whole sin thing from happening. He can’t be a good God, if He even is real.”
I never did give him a good answer. Not because I didn’t believe one existed, but because the answer I had, which was more procedural and sterile in nature, didn’t seem to reach the place where the question actually lived. That gap between the answer I had and the question he was asking? Last summer, it became the biggest theological controversy on the internet.
In August 2025, John Mark Comer, arguably the most influential Christian voice among Gen Z and younger millennials, posted an Instagram story endorsing Andrew Rillera’s book Lamb of the Free as the “final biblical/exegetical knockout blow” to penal substitutionary atonement (PSA), which is simply “[t]he view of the atonement that holds that Christ in his death bore the just penalty of God for our sins and did so as a substitute for us.”1
If you’re not terminally online in theology circles, it’s hard to overstate how fast that detonated. Within days, Owen Strachan had published a lengthy Substack rebuttal. Denny Burk went after Comer directly on X/Twitter. Derek Rishmawy wrote a more irenic response for The Gospel Coalition. While not my preferred source, Allie Beth Stuckey dedicated a full podcast episode to it (it’s a long one, but I’ve linked it if you really want to watch). I wrote my own piece at the time, and I stand by every word of it.
But here’s what I’ve sat with since: almost every response (including mine) was a legal defense. We defended the courtroom. We cited Isaiah 53 and Romans 3:25. We clarified propitiation. We were technically and categorically right. And we mostly talked past the very people we were trying to reach.
Because this debate didn’t happen in a theological journal. It happened on Instagram Stories. In tweet-length hot takes that reduced 2000 years of atonement theology to a team sport. Pick a side. Repost. Move on. The medium didn’t just carry the conversation; it deformed it. Everything became position and counter-position, and the people who needed the conversation the most — the ones actually wrestling, actually asking — got lost in the crossfire.
And that’s the part that haunts me. The real audience in this debate was never the theologians. It was the 23-year-old who saw Comer’s post while scrolling before bed and thought, “Maybe I was right to be uncomfortable with the cross.” It was my friend from high school — ten years later, a million times over — still carrying the same question and still not finding an answer that lands anywhere deeper than a legal brief.
The surface-level question in this whole controversy is straightforward enough: Is PSA true? And the answer is yes. I believe that with my whole chest, and the biblical witness is clear. But that question — “Is PSA true?” — is not actually the question most people are asking. The question underneath, the one my friend was asking at that lunch table, the one Comer’s audience resonates with, whether they can articulate it or not, is this: Is God violent? And if He is, can I trust Him?
That’s not an exegetical question, but a character question. It’s a question about what kind of God stands behind the cross — and whether that God is someone you’d want to spend eternity with. You cannot answer a character question with a louder legal argument. You can be right about propitiation and still miss the person sitting across from you who needs to know that the God who demanded the penalty is the same God who paid it, and that He did it not because He is violent but because the rupture was that deep and His love was that relentless.
And here’s what I think both sides of this debate are getting wrong — and I include my earlier self in this. Both camps are extracting the cross from the larger story and arguing about an isolated event. Comer and Rillera strip away the legal dimension — the penalty, the wrath, the substitution — and reduce the cross to solidarity and example. The Reformed response strips away everything else — the victory, the reconciliation, the cosmic restoration — and reduces the cross to a courtroom verdict. Both sides are arguing about a single scene as if it were the whole movie. And neither side is asking the most important question: what story does the cross belong to?
Because the cross doesn’t appear in a vacuum. It appears inside a narrative that starts long before Calvary and ends long after it. And when you rip the cross out of that narrative — whether you’re deconstructing it or defending it — you lose the very thing that makes it make sense.
What if the atonement debate doesn’t need louder voices? What if it needs a bigger room?
The Cross Starts in a Garden, Not a Courtroom
Before there was a cross, there was a garden. Before there was wrath, there was abundance. Before there was a debt to pay, there was a world given freely — an act of sheer, unconditioned generosity.
Genesis 1–2 gives us a God who creates not out of need but out of overflow. He doesn’t build a courtroom; He plants a garden. He doesn’t issue a legal code; He gives a vocation. He places humanity in a world of staggering abundance and says: tend this, name this, enjoy this, do this together. The first divine act toward humanity is a gift.
This matters enormously for how we read the cross. If the story of God begins with a legal transaction — with obligation and penalty — then the cross becomes the resolution of a contract dispute. But if the story begins with intimate, generous, relational abundance, then everything that follows, including the cross, must be read inside that frame. The question isn’t whether God’s justice is real. It’s what kind of story God’s justice belongs to.
What Actually Broke
When Adam and Eve eat the fruit in Genesis 3, something ruptures, but the rupture is far more comprehensive than a legal violation. Yes, a command was transgressed. But look at what actually breaks: intimacy with God (they hide), intimacy with each other (they blame), their relationship to creation (the ground is cursed), their vocation (toil replaces cultivation), and their future (death enters the story).
The Fall is not merely guilt before a judge. It is the shattering of an entire relational ecosystem — cosmic, vocational, interpersonal, and spiritual. Guilt is real, and it is part of this. But guilt is one dimension of a multidimensional catastrophe. When we reduce the Fall to a legal problem, we inevitably reduce the cross to a legal solution. And when we do that, we lose the very thing that makes the atonement breathtaking.
“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” — Genesis 3:8–9
Notice: God’s first response to the Fall is not a verdict. It’s a question. It’s pursuit. The judge is searching for the defendant — not to condemn, but to find. This is the heartbeat of the atonement long before Calvary.
The Cross as God Entering the Rupture
Here is where Redemptive Correlation reframes the entire debate.
If the Fall shattered an entire relational ecosystem, then the cross must repair an entire relational ecosystem. Penal substitutionary atonement is not wrong — it is essential. The legal dimension is real because the transgression was real. The penalty is real because the rupture between a holy God and sinful humanity demands a cost that we cannot pay. Christ bore that penalty in our place. This is the clear teaching of Isaiah 53, Romans 3:25, 2 Corinthians 5:21, and 1 Peter 2:24.
But PSA is not the whole cross. It is the legal dimension of a multidimensional act of restoration. The same cross that satisfies divine justice also defeats the powers (Colossians 2:15 — Christus Victor), reconciles enemies to God and each other (Ephesians 2:14–16 — reconciliation), exemplifies the pattern of self-giving love we are called to follow (1 Peter 2:21 — moral influence), and accomplishes the ransom that liberates captives (Mark 10:45).
Herman Bavinck said it well: the work of Christ is so multifaceted that it cannot be captured in a single word or summarized in a single formula. That is not theological weakness. That is theological precision. A multidimensional rupture demands a multidimensional repair.
This is what both sides of the current debate are missing. Comer’s camp reduces the cross to solidarity and example, stripping away the legal dimension that Scripture clearly affirms. The Reformed polemicists reduce the cross to penal substitution, treating every other dimension as secondary decoration. Both are extracting the cross from the story it belongs to. Both are reading one facet of a diamond as though it were the whole stone.
Redemptive Correlation says: go back to Eden. Read the Fall in its full scope. And then let the cross answer everything the Fall broke — not just the legal violation, but the relational rupture, the cosmic disorder, the vocational collapse, and the existential despair.
Where the Story of the Cross Is Heading
The cross is not the end of the story. It is the hinge of the story. And where the story is heading tells us what the cross was ultimately for.
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” — Revelation 22:1–2
The end of the biblical story is not an eternal courtroom where the acquitted sit in rows. It is a garden-city where the tree of life reappears, the river flows again, the nations bring their cultural goods in, and God dwells with His people face to face. It is Eden restored, expanded, and consummated.
If that’s where the story ends, then the cross was never merely about canceling a legal debt. It was about opening the road back to the garden. The penalty had to be paid — yes. The powers had to be defeated — yes. The example had to be set — yes. The ransom had to be given — yes. All of it, together, because all of it was broken, together.
This is why penal substitution is central but not sufficient as a standalone framework. The penalty satisfies the justice dimension of the rupture. But God is not merely just. He is the God who planted the garden. And He is making all things new — not all things legally acquitted.
So where does this leave you?
If you’re in the Reformed camp, and you’ve been defending PSA by shouting it louder — stop. Not because you’re wrong about PSA, but because you’ve been defending one facet of the diamond while the person across from you is asking about a different facet. When someone says, “I can’t worship a God who would pour out wrath on His own Son,” they are not asking a legal question. They are asking a character question. And the answer to a character question is not a louder legal argument. It’s a bigger story — one that starts with a generous God planting a garden, and ends with that same God wiping every tear from the eyes of the people He fought to bring home.
If you’re drawn to Comer’s instincts — if the language of wrath and penalty has always felt cold to you — hear this gently: the legal dimension is not an invention of angry Calvinists. It is woven into the fabric of the narrative. Isaiah 53 says He was crushed for our iniquities. Paul says God put Christ forward as a propitiation by His blood. You cannot strip that out without leaving a wound in the text that will not heal. But you can situate it. You can see it as one dimension of a love so comprehensive that it addresses every single thing the Fall destroyed.
Either way, here is the invitation: stop reading the cross in isolation. Read it inside the story. Start in Genesis 1, and let the sweep of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration show you a cross that is bigger, more costly, more beautiful, and more healing than any single theory can contain.
Read one of the atonement passages you’ve been arguing about — Isaiah 53, Romans 3:21–26, Colossians 2:13–15, 1 Peter 2:21–25 — and before you form an opinion, ask: what dimension of the Edenic rupture is this passage addressing? You may find that the text is doing more than you thought.
Imagine a theological conversation about the atonement where Reformed believers didn’t treat PSA as the whole story — and where those questioning PSA didn’t treat it as the enemy. Imagine a church where the cross was preached in its full scope every Easter: the penalty paid, the powers defeated, the pattern set, the captives freed, and the road to the garden reopened. Imagine an Instagram feed where the theology wasn’t team sport, but exploration — where the goal wasn’t winning but wonder.
That’s what happens when you read the cross through Eden. You stop defending your theory and start worshiping a Savior whose work is so vast that no single framework can exhaust it. You stop reducing the most consequential event in human history to a debate point and start letting it reshape everything — how you pray, how you suffer, how you forgive, how you hope.
The goal of Redemptive Correlation was never to settle the atonement debate. It was to give the debate a bigger room to live in. The room is as big as the story of God — from Eden to the New Jerusalem, from a garden to a garden-city, from the first “Where are you?” to the final “Behold, I am making all things new.”
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” — Romans 11:33
The cross is not a problem to be solved. It is a mystery to be inhabited. And it is deep enough to hold all of us.
The hope of articles like this and the few that follow is to point you and others to a better way to view the world around you. I hope you find them beneficial and inspiring, ultimately pointing you to love Jesus more. If you enjoyed reading this, I’d love for you to do two things:
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Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, ed. Alexander Grudem, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022), 611.