High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Technically speaking, substitutionary atonement is the name given to a number of Christian models of the atonement that all regard Jesus as dying as a substitute for others, "instead of" them. It is thought to be expressed in the Bible in passages such as "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness," and "For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." (although other ways of reading passages like this are also offered).