Atonement
Benjamin Franklin is famous for saying, among many other things, that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. If he were writing today, I suspect he might want to alter one of those terms—not so much death and taxes, but debt and taxes. Debt has become as much a part of our […]
Atonement and the Death of Christ: An Exegetical, Historical, and Philosophical ExplorationBy William Lane CraigBaylor University Press, 2020328 pages (hardcover), $24.95 In Atonement and the Death of Christ, William Lane Craig sets out to defend a theory of the atonement that is biblically grounded, historically informed, and philosophically coherent. The book has three parts, one […]
The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ’s Work by Joshua M. McNall Zondervan Academic, 2019 336 pages (paperback), $34.99 The Christian teaching that God has reconciled sinners by Christ through the Spirit has been central and pervasive in the worship, contemplation, discussions, and debates of every generation of the church age. This is […]
You can almost create the scene from memory, having seen it played out so many times for so many different reasons. A crime is committed. The guilty one takes to the airwaves to issue a mea culpa. The crowd surges forward, intent on enacting swift and unmerciful justice. But no amount of public shaming, isolation, […]
At the heart of the Christian story are the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. The significance of Christ’s atonement for sins (the very basis of his name and his mission) is what makes Christianity truly Christian: a religion with Christ at its redemptive center. The way that evangelical Christians have spoken […]
Like many white upper-middle-class mainline Protestants, I’ve long taken issue with the concept of divine wrath, believing it to conflict with the God whose most determinative attribute is goodness itself. Whenever I’ve pondered the possibility of God’s anger, I’ve invariably thought about it directed at me—I’m no saint, sure, but I’m no great sinner either. […]
Ask any Sunday school scholar why Jesus died on the cross, and you’re likely to get the same answer: “For our sins!” There’s no question that penal substitution and propitiation get a lot of air time in confessional Protestant circles. If there’s one thing the reformational church is known for, it’s a keen awareness of […]
Joseph was told by an angel to name his son Jesus, because he would save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). In times past in Egypt, the Passover lamb had borne people’s sins, but now Jesus came into the world to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world […]
“Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” (1 Cor. 1:22–23) No one likes a loser. An eccentric religious scholar who may or may not be a political revolutionary and has managed either to anger or alienate a fair amount of both […]
Substitution is at the heart of the story of God’s people. Rather than staying removed far from his cursed creation, the Creator became one of us. God the Son became a son of Adam: living the life we could not live and dying the death we all deserved. This “Great Exchange” ”all of my sin […]
When I walked into the art gallery, it was the painting that simultaneously took my breath away and brought me to tears. It was a lamb, but it was like no other lamb. A slim stream of blood was draining from the lamb’s neck, and the title beside the painting read, ‘Behold the Lamb of […]
In the Lutheran tradition, three names stand out above all others: Martin Luther (1483-1546), Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), and Johann Gerhard (1582-1637). As the father of the Reformation, Luther needs no introduction, even among non-Lutherans. Chemnitz is also well-known, primarily for his role in the production and propagation of the Formula of Concord (1577) and his […]
A term I have found to be in more and more regular use in Reformed circles is "Amyraldianism." I have a suspicion that it is one of those terms, like "supra-" or "infra-lapsarian" or "realized eschatology," that sounds hip to the ears of a certain type of theological geek, even though its exact meaning may […]
Most of the many theologies of the cross that proliferate in our day (including those influenced by liberation theology) seem to fit this pattern [moral influence]. In them not only does revelation subsume soteriology but, so the reformers would say, law absorbs gospel. This is what happens when the crucified God is first of all […]
"In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement" by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever
The cross is the heart of the Christian faith. It is the center of the gospel. It is, pardon the pun, the crux of the matter. There really is no need to justify another look at the death (and, of course, the resurrection) of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consideration of the atonement is essential to […]
