JRE#067: Fortnite, the Cross, and Atonement
Host: Welcome to the Jogan Roe Experience. Weaver, Packer, why do we need Jesus’ atonement?
View on Sin
Packer: Jesus is dealing with sin. We rebelled against God through our wrongdoings and failed His standard for us. Sin, or the breaking of God’s law, renders us guilty criminals and separates us from God. The Bible says there’s nothing we can do to undo our offenses. Thus, we are cut off from God. We are hopeless under sin’s effects and God’s judgment.
Weaver: I agree that we are enslaved by sin. However, your view feels like an abstract legal concept. I view sin as abandoning the rule of God and participating in the rule of evil, which are forces of oppression. This includes violent acts: murder, war, rape, but also systemic violence like racism, sexism, and poverty. We are captives in these systems of violence.
Packer: So the issue is just humans trapped by evil powers?
Weaver: I say we are both captives and active accomplices of evil powers.
Packer: The main issue is our guilt in front of a holy judge. I don’t deny that oppression is sinful, but these are the consequences of sin. It is our violation of God’s law and separation from Him resulting in these violences. The core problem isn’t that we’re stuck in a sinful rule, but that our hearts have rejected God. Since God is just, he can’t handwave away our offense against His holiness.
Justice & Retribution
Weaver: You seem to assume justice requires retribution. I think this is a false projection of human ideals onto God, which is really from medieval feudalism and modern criminal justice systems. Our culture and desire tell us justice is served only when the crime is met with the corresponding level of punishment. Why does God have to share our desire for payback? Couldn’t God achieve restoration without punishment?
Packer: Good point. If we understand retribution as a desire to punish, it would indeed be a reflection of our culture. However, I think retributive justice is revealed in Scripture. Romans 1:18 says the wrath of God is revealed against ungodliness. Justice isn’t just following some arbitrary legal code, but a divinely instituted order that condones nothing. Retribution is God ensuring the principle that past wrongdoing always impacts the future, as a reflection of His holiness. We may not like this reality, but this is what God has instituted.
Weaver: I’m not convinced that retributive justice is divinely instituted. While your conclusion is a plausible reading of Romans, I say it is heavily culturally influenced. It looks suspiciously like the modern sense of justice: maintaining order through violent punishment. I find God’s restorative justice indisputably shown in the Gospels. In Luke 4:18, Jesus said he came to set the captives and oppressed free. You ignored the life of Jesus to maintain a particular reading of Paul, forcing Jesus to fit your sense of justice. The Bible points to a person, not a legal code.
Packer: I don’t deny restoration as a crucial element to God’s justice and salvation. Yet, if there is only restoration, we are minimizing God’s holiness to a cheap love. A judge who restores a murderer without punishment isn’t loving. He's corrupt and unrighteous. If our past wrongdoings don't matter, then neither do the wrongdoings themselves. Retribution affirms the significance of sins by ensuring consequences for wrongdoings. You isolated the Gospel from its God-inspired interpretation to fit your pacifist preference. The Pauline letters are not just opinions but a God-given didactic model. How do you reconcile the Bible’s description of “God as judge” with your understanding of a God who does not give retribution?
Weaver: I admit there is tension. Unlike the medieval image of justice, God’s judgment doesn’t have to be punitive or violent. I see judgment not as punishment but as revealing truth. In Revelation 19, Jesus, represented by the white horse rider, defeats worldly kings by sword from his mouth, which is his words. Unlike human judges, God judges by exposing deceptions and bringing the reign of God with truth, not punishments. In contrast, your understanding paints God as a malevolent dictator who operates on a vengeful desire, giving terrifying punishments to us. Such a god does not deserve our worship.
Packer: I’ll concede that the image of a wrathful God bringing retribution is a dim image. To think that our guilt demands a horrible punishment we cannot bear is a tormenting nightmare. However, thank God the story doesn’t end here! God gave us a saving plan through Jesus. The terrible punishment we deserve makes God’s salvation so much more valuable. Whenever I think of Jesus bearing such great cost to save me from such great punishment, I cannot stop myself from shouting my gratitude and praise.
Penal Substitution
Host: Woah. What's this solution you are talking about? Explain atonement with a simple analogy.
Packer: Ok. I must first give a disclaimer. Atonement is one of the most mysterious and wonderful works of God. Human analogies only go so far in helping our understanding. Models are meant to help us praise God more fully, not explain everything or resolve every paradox. Let’s make an analogy with Fortnite.1
Imagine a Fortnite server admin. He wrote the server code and oversees the server. The code contains a hard rule: if you cheat, the anti-cheat system will ban you. It will be a hardware ID ban, preventing your PC from ever connecting to the server.
Weaver: So the admin is God, the server is the world, and the code is God’s law. The admin can edit the code whenever he wants, right?
Packer: Not really. The admin wrote the code according to his nature, so it would be against his nature to change it. Let’s say you used a wallhack. You cheated to access information and privileges that rightfully belong only to the admin. You ruined the game for everybody. The anti-cheat system flags you, and the admin can’t bend the rules. It’s not him losing his cool or hating you. It’s that he loves fair play. The code is written, so it must execute the ban, or the game is broken.
Weaver: Ok, so the cheater is permanently banned.
Packer: Exactly. However, the admin loves the players, even this cheater. So he sends the lead developer, who co-wrote the code and also loves the players, to log into the game. He is distinct from the admin, but also has full administrator privileges. He somehow logs in as a regular player while still having full administrator privileges. This is the mystery of the incarnation. He plays a perfectly fair game with zero hacks.
Now, here is the mystery: the lead developer forces a link between his clean account and your flagged account. He merges his hardware ID with yours. Somehow, you two are in solidarity. You are still you, he is still him, but the system now reads your hacking history as His liability. When the ban executes, instead of targeting you, the code targets the lead developer. Of course, the ban in my analogy does not capture the gravity of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Weaver: That sounds like God exploited his own system to punish the wrong guy. That's a glitch, not justice. You have the admin (Father) punishing the developer (Son). That’s divine child abuse. You have a Father arranging the crucifixion of the Son to satisfy his law or “code.” It paints God as a cosmic abuser who needs violence to forgive.
Trinity & Dereliction
Packer: You miss the unity between the admin and the developer. The Father and Son are united in the Trinity. As revealed in Galatians 2:20, the Son gave himself, not forced by the Father. The developer experiences the full consequences, getting disconnected from the server. He takes it lovingly, so you don’t have to.
Weaver: Are you saying the cry of dereliction is a rupture of the Trinity?
Packer: No, the Son and Father are always united in their works and motivation. The Son experienced the Father withholding love, yet they are always in unity, acting as one in saving us out of love.
Weaver: You are creating a new problem. If they are one, God is punishing Himself. That’s divine suicide. It paints God as a schizophrenic judge who cannot loves us unless if he beats himself up first.
Packer: That’s a fair critique. God did indeed arrange His own death. However, I see it as a sacrifice out of love. It is the cost of sustaining moral order while saving us. I can see how you might call it a suicide if the story ends here. However, it didn’t.
Back to Fortnite. Because the developer’s admin status is stronger than the ban, his account reconnects. That's Jesus’ resurrection. Because your accounts were linked, when he comes back online, your account also reconnects. The system now sees your account “whitelisted,” no longer a cheater. Not because you stopped cheating or fixed the damage, but because he took your ban.
Extent of the atonement
Weaver: So, salvation is only a legal status change? Getting on the white list?
Packer: Only? This changes everything! It changes how you play the game. You play out of gratitude and love, not fear of being banned. Moreover, this isn't just a second chance. Because the lead developer paid the price for your violation, your spot on the whitelist is guaranteed. The payment was effective, so the ban cannot be applied twice. This is justification. Jesus didn't just make salvation possible. He secured it for his chosen elect.
Weaver: You made God a moral monster who arbitrarily selects some for salvation and withholds the payment for others. Revelation 7 shows a countless multitude from every nation standing before the throne. Salvation is not just for a list of pre-selected people. God invites everyone to join the reign of God.
Packer: A choice from us implies we can take some credit for our smart choice. I respect God's sovereignty over confidence in human ability. If my salvation depends on my ability to choose God ongoingly, I can fall away at any moment. If it depends on Jesus’ effective payment, he gets all the glory, and I can rest in the joy of assurance.
Weaver: I see your point. I think it belittles God's love in the name of logic. A bigger issue is that your salvation theory is ahistorical and a-ethical. It’s like a transaction in the backend server code, ignoring the actual gameplay on the screen. It doesn't require the player to stop hacking. You reduced Jesus’ life to a prequel for death. If his life is irrelevant to the transaction, Jesus could have been born and immediately teleported to the cross to die.
Packer: Jesus’ life of perfect obedience to the law is not irrelevant, but crucial in qualifying him to make the sacrifice. While it’s true our obedience is not a requirement of justification, it is an inevitable result, as Jesus’ sacrifice evokes our hope, faith, and love for him. My analogy is imperfect. Again, I’m using it to demonstrate what God has done, not explain the “why.” Weaver, what do you think happened on the server?
Narrative Christus Victor
Weaver: You’re obsessed with the backend code (law), ignoring the narrative on the screen (history). Let’s focus on the actual gameplay. Imagine a group of cheaters hijacked the server. They use cheats like aimbots and wallhacks to dominate the noobs and ruin the game.
Packer: So, the violation of the admin’s code isn’t the problem?
Weaver: I say the hijackers are the main problem. They aren't the admins, but they act like it, using violence and fear to control. They rigged the game so it’s impossible to win without cheating. This is the cosmic battle in Revelation 12. The devil and the powers like Rome or modern systemic injustices hold players hostage in this rigged game.
The developer logs in to the game as a regular player, not to satisfy some program or bear punishment, but to start a resistance. The developer plays the game perfectly without cheating. He protected the noobs and oppressed players. This exposed the hijacker’s lies and threatened their power and systems of oppression. The hijackers hated this. They gang up to use the most egregious cheat to silence him: they swatted2 the developer. The swatting damaged his PC, forcing him to go offline.
Packer: So the crucifixion is by humans, not God?
Weaver: Yes. It’s a murder, not a payment. The admin didn’t ban or punish the developer. The hijackers did. They think they won. Then, the admin builds the developer a new PC and brings him back online, not merely as a player, but as the winner. This proves the hijackers are powerless frauds. The victory is that the developer played the game perfectly, withstood the hijackers' worst attack and came back, surviving their worst violence.
Packer: So, Jesus is a model player?
Weaver: More. He is an invasion of the reign of God. Jesus overthrows the evil powers not with violence but by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and helping the oppressed. This is the narrative.
Packer: But how does that save me? My account is still flagged for cheating.
Weaver: Seeing the reconnect crushed the Hijacker’s power through fear. Salvation isn't a backend database edit, but defecting from the hijackers' team to the developer’s team, playing fairly without cheats. You are saved from the power of the hijackers, not the admin’s code.
Packer: You explained joining God’s team, but dodged how the anti-cheat system’s ban is lifted.
Ethics & Violence
Weaver: There is no anti-cheat system that the admin has to follow! The admin is greater than his code! You made God a slave to His legal system! Moreover, your view validates violence. By including violent retribution as part of salvation, you teach that violence is how justice works and encourage Christians to use violence in maintaining order. Your reading made the gospel compatible with war, slavery, and racism. This theology allowed slave owners to preach the gospel to those exact slaves they are mistreating. Your reading made Jesus a passive victim voluntarily submitting to violence, framing “following Jesus” as enduring abuse rather than resisting it. This is very harmful to survivors of abuse, violence, and systemic injustice.
Packer: You conflate God’s righteous use of force with humans’ unjust use of violence. God’s wrath and retribution are judicial and just. It is not comparable to human emotional venting. Moreover, misuse of a doctrine does not prove a truth wrong. The proper response to Christ’s penal substitutionary atonement is obeying His command and giving glory to Him. Knowing he paid my penalty makes me humble, not violent.
Bibliography
Packer, J. I. n.d. “What Did the Cross Achieve?: The Logic of Penal Substitution.” 9Marks. Tyndale House Cambridge. Accessed December 6, 2025.
https://www.9marks.org/article/what-did-the-cross-achieve-the-logic-of-penal-substitution/.
Weaver, J. Denny. 2006. “Atonement and Violence.” Abingdon Press. Accessed December 6, 2025.
https://ece.pages.dev/wyt1101/AtonementAndViolence/text/part0006.