For a growing number of Christians, substitution has become a suspicious word. It sounds too violent, judicial, mechanical, and too tied to forms of Protestant scholasticism that seemed to describe salvation as little more than a legal transaction occurring somewhere above human life rather than within it. Many younger theologians and pastors now prefer different language. They speak of participation, union, communion, healing, restoration, deification, and shared life with God.

In one sense, this shift is understandable. Gustaf Aulén famously argued that Western theology often narrowed the atonement into excessively legal categories, obscuring the broader biblical drama of divine victory over sin and death.1 More recent scholars such as Michael Gorman and N. T. Wright have similarly emphasized participation in Christ as central to Pauline theology and Christian existence.2

A lot of popular evangelical preaching did, in fact, reduce salvation to a kind of thin exchange: my sins transferred to Christ, his righteousness transferred to me, case closed. Resurrection became an appendix. Union with Christ became secondary. The Christian life itself often shrank into moral effort fueled by gratitude for a transaction completed elsewhere. The New Testament speaks much more richly than that.

Paul does not merely say Christ died for believers. He says believers died with Christ. They were buried with him. Raised with him. Seated with him in the heavenly places. The Christian life is not merely imitation of Christ nor mere gratitude toward Christ. It is incorporation into Christ. Twentieth-century Pauline scholarship repeatedly highlighted this participatory dimension. Albert Schweitzer argued that union with Christ stands at the center of Paul’s theology,3 while Constantine Campbell contends that participation in Christ functions as one of Paul’s controlling theological categories.4 This recovery has been healthy in many ways.

The problem emerges when participation language begins functioning not just as umbrella concept for salvation but as replacement to all substitution language. In some discussions, substitution is pushed to the margins as though it were a theological mistake Christians are finally mature enough to outgrow. But the New Testament does not frame the cross that way. In fact, participation and substitution belong together far more deeply than modern debates often allow.

The clearest way to see this is with the unfolding logic of Scripture itself. From the opening chapters of Genesis, humanity’s problem is covenantal. Adam’s sin introduces guilt, corruption, exile, death, and alienation from the presence of God. Humanity is not merely uninformed or spiritually fragmented. Humanity stands under judgment. This covenantal structure shapes the entire biblical narrative.

Adam acts representatively for humanity. No one else was born in the Garden Paradise because of Adam’s rebellion. Subsequently we see this representative pattern throughout Scripture. The king represents the people. The priest bears the people before God. Sacrificial animals die in the place of worshipers. The servant in Isaiah bears the sins of many. Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly saves through representatives. Richard Hays and Simon Gathercole both note that Paul’s Adam-Christ typology depends fundamentally upon representative categories.5 Christ does not merely model obedience. He acts on behalf of humanity.

This pattern reaches its climax in Christ, whom Paul explicitly identifies as the “last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45). That title for Christ reveals larger paradigms of representation and recapitulation. Jesus as the “second Adam” is a covenantal and representative work. Christ does not merely inspire a new humanity or exemplify what that life should look like. Jesus stands for humanity and acts on its behalf (See Isa 53:4–6, 10–12; Mark 10:45; Rom 5:12–19; 1 Cor 15:21–22, 45–49; 2 Cor 5:14–15, 21; Gal 3:13; Eph 2:4–6; Phil 2:6–11; 1 Tim 2:5–6; Heb 2:9–18; 9:24–28; 1 Pet 2:21–24; 3:18. These texts collectively present Christ as representative mediator, covenant head, sacrificial substitute, and faithful human who acts on behalf of his people before God).

Substitutionary language appears everywhere in the New Testament.

• “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
• “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3).
• “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21).
• “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal 3:13).
• “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24).

Even those critical of particular formulations of substitution generally acknowledge that these texts contain unmistakably vicarious and representative categories.6 Recognizing the substitutionary language embedded within Scripture does not require uncritically embracing later theological formulations. Attempts to evade these themes altogether through strained exegesis risk flattening the texture of the biblical data. The central question is not whether Christ acts “for us,” but how that representative action should be understood within the broader narrative of Scripture.

Romans 5 depends entirely upon representative logic. Humanity dies in Adam because Adam acts as covenant head. Believers live in Christ because Christ acts as covenant head. Paul’s comparison collapses without representation. This is often where the modern conversation often becomes confused. Some theologians speak as though participation offers a more biblical or more patristic alternative to substitution. Historically, the church fathers do not support such a clean division. Irenaeus teaches recapitulation, the idea that Christ recycles Adam’s path in faithful obedience and therefore represents his people in his perfection. But recapitulation itself is representative. Christ succeeds where Adam failed so that humanity may be restored in him.7

Athanasius famously declares that the Son became man so that humanity might become divine by grace. Athanasius also insists that Christ assumes mortality and offers himself unto death on behalf of humanity.8 Deification is not opposed to substitution. It depends upon it. Modern patristic scholars such as John Behr and Khaled Anatolios likewise argue that participation in divine life occurs precisely through Christ’s mediating identification with fallen humanity.9 Even in the Greek fathers, participation is not the denial of mediation. It is the fruit of mediation.

Ironically, this same integration appears in the Reformed tradition so often caricatured as merely legal or forensic. John Calvin places union with Christ at the center of salvation. In Institutes 3.1.1 he writes: “As long as Christ remains outside of us…all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”10 That sentence should permanently challenge the myth that classical Protestant theology cared only about legal categories. Calvin insists that all the benefits of Christ become ours only through living union with him. Union with Christ never removes substitutionary logic. Contemporary Reformed scholars such as J. Todd Billings and Marcus Johnson have similarly argued that union with Christ functions as the integrating center of justification, sanctification, and participation in divine life.11

This is the key point modern discussions often miss: participation is not an alternative to substitution. Participation is what substitution accomplishes (Rom 5:18–19; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13–14). Believers are united to Christ because Christ first enters their condition as representative mediator (Heb 2:14–18; 1 Tim 2:5–6). He bears sin so that sinners may share his righteousness (Isa 53:4–6; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24). He enters death so that humanity may enter life (Rom 6:3–5; Heb 2:9–15). He receives the covenantal curse so that his people may ascend into communion with God and receive the blessing of Abraham through the Spirit (Gal 3:13–14; Eph 2:4–7). The concept of salvation is therefore both substitutionary and participatory at once: Christ for us, Christ with us, and Christ in us.

Remove substitution entirely and participation loses much of its biblical depth and logic. Sin becomes reduced to alienation rather than rebellion. The cross becomes solidarity without sacrifice. Christ identifies with sufferers but no longer bears judgment or removes guilt. Salvation begins sounding therapeutic rather than redemptive. The opposite reduction is also possible. Some presentations of penal substitution become so narrowly transactional that salvation scarcely appears connected to resurrection, new creation, sanctification, communion with God, or the gift of the Spirit. In such accounts, the Christian life risks becoming little more than moral response to a completed legal event.

We should refuse both reductions. The Son joins believers to himself so completely that Paul can say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). None of those themes cancel the others. These motifs empower and inform one another. We do not need less participation language or less substitution language. We need a recovery of the biblical vision large enough to hold both together within the doctrine of union with Christ.

1. Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor (London: SPCK, 1931), 4–6.
2. Michael J. Gorman, Participating in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 3–20; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 788–95.
3. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 1–10.
4. Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 27–45.
5. Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 57–65; Simon Gathercole, Defending Substitution (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 21–40.
6. See, e.g., Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000), 29–45.
7. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.18.1.
8. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 20–21, 54.
9. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 95–112; Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius (New York: Routledge, 2004), 62–79.
10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 3.1.1.
11. J. Todd Billings, Union with Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 11–34; Marcus Peter Johnson, One with Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 15–39.