QUOTE : I hope you are seeing what’s at stake here. The problem with affirming Christus victor and the ransom motif or any other facet of the atonement to the exclusion of penal substitution is that we render impersonal what Christ did on the cross. He conquered the powers and the principalities and death itself. He achieved justice for the socially downtrodden and persecuted. He did anything and everything, all the wonderful and multitudinous things the Bible says he did, but he didn’t do the one thing that would make me right with God. He didn’t take my punishment.