Atonement and Union with Christ: Rethinking Penal Substitution in Light of Scripture’s Priestly Participatory Logic

What if the cross accomplishes more than a legal transaction?For centuries, penal substitution has been one of the dominant ways many Christians have understood the cross. In this view, Christ's death satisfies God's wrath by bearing the punishment we deserve, so the ledger can be cleared. It's a familiar picture. But is it the picture Scripture actually paints?In Atonement and Union with Christ, Drew Whitton returns to the priestly and sacrificial patterns of the Old Testament, the tabernacle, the Day of Atonement, and the language of purification and cleansing, and asks what they reveal about how God deals with sin. Rather than reducing atonement to a courtroom transfer of guilt, Scripture presents Christ's saving work as encompassing cleansing, restoration, reconciliation, and union with the living Christ who intercedes for His people even now.Careful and irenic, this book doesn't set out to divide Christians who already share the confession that Jesus is Lord. Instead, it invites readers to reconsider whether one of the church's dominant frameworks for explaining the cross tells the whole story, and to discover a fuller vision of atonement in which Christ's death cannot be separated from His life, resurrection, ascension, priestly ministry, and union with His people.