The Penalty Paid Defines the Penalty Required

Did Jesus suffer in hell? Is endless torment the penalty He paid?

Willie Francis and Wenseslao Moguel were condemned to die but didn’t. At least not the first time. Willie survived the electric chair; Wen, the firing squad.  

Convicted and sentenced to death for murder, Willie, seventeen, was strapped into the electric chair known as “Gruesome Gertie” on May 3, 1946. Though severely shocked and traumatized, Willie survived the insufficient surge because the contraption was improperly hooked up by an intoxicated prison guard and inmate.

Wen was discovered by “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” twenty two years after being horribly scarred by ten shots from a firing squad. The final shot, called the coup de grâce (French for “blow of mercy,” a death shot to end suffering), was to his head from point blank range. Sentenced to death in 1915 as a member of Pancho Villa’s rebel forces in the Mexican Revolution, Wen painfully crawled to safety after his executioners left his presumably dead body lying in the street.

Like Willie and Wen, Jesus was sentenced to die. It was death by crucifixion, a most cruel means of execution. He did not survive it. It’s a good thing for us He didn’t because He was there in our place. The glorious truth of the vicarious (in place of another) and victorious (death was conquered) atonement (at-one-ment with God) blows away the smoke of the myth of endless torment. As our substitute, Christ paid the price for our sin. What He paid is the very thing required. When someone pays your bill you can know what you owed by the amount they paid.

So what was it? What was the penalty He paid? Romans chapter five sums it up: “Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6); “Christ died for us” (5:8); “when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (5:10). There it is. Christ died. It was His death that paid the penalty; therefore death is the penalty. That's what He paid. That's what we owe. The penalty paid defines the penalty required.   

That Christ died “for” us is the wording of Scripture: 

“he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15) 

“For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:9, 10) 

It was the giving of himself: 

“Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4) 

“the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20) 

“Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us” (Ephesians 5:2) 

“Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity” (Titus 2:14)  

From Bethlehem’s manger to Calvary’s cross, Christ was born to die: “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9). To “taste” (the Greek geusētai) death was to “experience” it in full.

For traditionalists and conditionalists there is no disagreement that Christ died. And we agree that He “died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). But what does that mean exactly? If Christ paid the penalty for our sins, was he tormented in hell? Wouldn’t that be necessary if that indeed is the penalty for sin? If that's what we owe, then that is what he would have had to pay. But if He died in the plain and primary sense of death, that would attest that death, in the same sense, is the penalty the lost must pay. The penalty paid defines the penalty required.  

So what does it mean that Christ died? That may seem to be a simple question with as simple of an answer, but it has been quite the unresolved theological quagmire. Could God die? Did only his human side die? Was he conscious? If so, of what? Where did he go? What did he experience? What did he do? Is this when he descended “into the deep” (Romans 10:7) “led captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8), or “preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19)?   

Whatever we don’t know, of this we do. Scripture says His death was the laying down of his life: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16); “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said. “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”  

Christ clearly defined His death as the laying down of His life: “I lay down my life for the sheep… I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:11-18). For a man to “lose himself” (Luke 9:25) is equivalent to “lose his life” (Matthew 16:25), therefore Christ giving “himself for us” was the giving of his very life.  

But we also know so well that He suffered so much: “it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day” (Luke 24:46). But it was “the suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:9), death itself, that paid the penalty of sin. No matter the extent of His suffering, and it was great, had He not died He would not have paid the penalty. It was not the scourging, beating, crown of thorns, or the means of crucifixion that paid the penalty. It was his death. “The rulers… derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ” (Luke 23:35). Ah, but if he had saved himself, he could not save others.

Willie Francis suffered in the botched attempt in “Gruesome Gertie,” so much so that a case was made that he had suffered enough. An appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court, but failed. Willie was returned to the chair where he was pronounced dead at 12:10 pm, May 9, 1947. Though Willie had earlier experienced great pain, the sentence was death, not suffering, and to pay the penalty of taking someone else's life, he had to lose his. Willie had to die.

So it was with Christ's death. It was not suffering before, during, or after death, but death itself, the laying down of His life, that paid the penalty. If that was all the scripture we had, it would be enough to prove that death is the penalty of sin- death, an end to life, not endless life in torment. Again, the penalty paid defines the penalty required.  

But we have so much more. Wen, nicknamed El Fusilado, "the Executed One," incredibly lived sixty more years after being left for dead. It was not until the age of eighty-five that the executioner finally caught up to him. Miraculously surviving the firing squad, El Fusilado could not escape El Grim Reaper.    

This is the more we have. The Bible speaks in the plainest of language that you and I, like Willie and Wen, have also been sentenced to death:

Romans 5:12: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:22: For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Hebrews 9:27: It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

James 1:15: Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

It started in the garden: “the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16, 17).

What did that mean? God defined it as a “return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). The Bible's built-in dictionary contrasts death to “all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:17). Thus this original sentence of death distinctly defines death as an end of life, not life in another place.

There is nothing here defining death in the classic speculation of separation of the soul from the body. And not to discount the idea of spiritual death (“dead in trespasses and sins”- Ephesians 2:1), but God did not explain the penalty to Adam as a spiritual loss of life, but as the loss of his physical life.

Loss of life is the penalty of sin, and that's the penalty Christ paid. “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This lamb analogy is so very relevant and revealing! The law of Moses defines the penalty of sin as death, both in its criminal jurisprudence and substitutionary sacrifices. Think of it! The severest penalty for the most heinous transgression was death. There were no jails in Israel, and certainly no torture chambers. Death, not torment (and death without torment), was the most extreme punishment, as we saw in the previous chapter.  

And if a sacrifice was required, it was killed, not afflicted: “And the priest… shall kill the lamb of the trespass offering” (Leviticus 14:24, 25); "they killed also the lambs, and they sprinkled the blood upon the altar" (2 Chronicles 29:22); “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7).

"Shedding of blood,” not infliction of pain, was the propitiation: “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). The Lamb of God “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 8:26). "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain" (Revelation 5:12). We have been "redeemed... with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot“ (1 Peter 1:18, 19). “Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2) and “needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27).  

Yes, behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world! And behold the perfect picture the Lamb portrays of the penalty of sin. The sacrificial lamb was slain, not tormented. The Lamb of God did not endure undying agony, but in agony he died.

But didn’t Jesus go to hell? Yes, verily. Peter expounded: “For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (the Greek Hades for the Hebrew Sheol), neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Acts 2:25-27). 

There are two defining consequences of his not being left in hell - his flesh would “rest in hope” and he would not “see corruption” (the decaying of the body). Both phrases bear witness to death, not torment, and to hell as the figurative “chambers of death” (Proverbs 7:27), not the torture chamber of the damned.  

Make no mistake, Christ went to hell. But don’t make the mistake of turning hell into something it’s not (see chapter twenty-three, “Sheol: a Hole or the Whole”). Christ was placed in the grave of a sepulchre, and was in the gravedom of Sheol. Simply put, he really and truly died. He did not revive from a near-death experience; he “rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41; 1 Corinthians 15:12)! Any attempt to squeeze hellish torment out of his death is creedal conjecture - there is nothing in Scripture to substantiate or even suggest that Jesus suffered in hell, but plenty to confirm that He gave his life. The penalty paid - death - defines the penalty required.  

The incredible prophetic revelation of Isaiah 53 integrates all the elements of the vicarious atonement:  

It was for us: “he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… the chastisement of our peace was upon him” (vv. 4, 5)  

It was for our sin: “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all (vv. 5, 6)  

And it was death: “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter… cut off from the land of the living… made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death” (vv. 7, 8, 9). It was the very giving of his life that made “his soul an offering for sin” (v. 10). 

Perhaps the most convincing proof that death was the penalty paid, not suffering in hell afterward, is Christ’s final words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30). He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). If the penalty was torment in hell, then it wasn’t “finished;” it hadn’t even begun. “He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” That was “the death of the cross.”

And though it’s a popular notion that Christ actually endured the wrath of God on the cross before his death, thereby suffering the equivalent of endless torment in hell, I can find no scripture whatsoever to support it. It’s based on the assumption that when Christ was made “sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21) God poured out his wrath on him. This paid the penalty of eternal hell, it is argued, because Christ is eternal. Writers of this persuasion believe this took place when Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) because God could not look upon sin. If this were indeed the case, it would appear to speak of the Father turning his back (“why hast thou forsaken me”), not pounding his fist. It is also speculated that this is when Christ drank “the cup” (presumably of God’s wrath) of which he prayed in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39, 42).  

All of that is obviously a theoretical maybe, not any kind of textual verity. The utter impossibility of this interpretation should be evident by how it makes the actual death of Christ unnecessary to pay the penalty. If he had already paid it at that point, then he should have called ten thousand angels to set him free. If redemption was by then already obtained, then he could save himself and others, too.  

Nonsense! He had to die. And so do we. But we do not have to finally perish in the second death, but can receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ who conquered death by rising from it. Death, loss of life- that’s what he paid; and that’s what we owe. The penalty paid defines the penalty required.