“It horribly skews the meaning of the cross when contemporary prophets of self-esteem say that the cross is a witness to my infinite worth, since God was willing to pay such a high price to get me. The biblical perspective is that the cross is a witness to the infinite worth of God’s glory, and a witness to the immensity of the sin of my pride. What should shock us is that we have brought such contempt upon the worth of God that the very death of his Son is required to vindicate that worth. The cross stands in witness to the infinite worth of God and the infinite outrage of sin.”
~ John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Book House, 1990), 32.
Categories: The Cross of Christ · The Glory of God
“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties whcih belong to man alone.”
~ John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press, 1986), 160.
Categories: Anthropology · God · Idolatry · Jesus Christ · The Cross of Christ · The Fall
“Meaning comes from God alone. In the person of Christ, the age to come, which alone will endure for all eternity, has arrived. It arrived in his person and was redemptively present in his work on the cross. In that work, not only is the eternal present in time, but so is the judgment of the end of time now exhausted within time. For the people of God the ‘end time’ judgment has already happened.”
- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 203.
(HT: Of First Importance)
Categories: Jesus Christ · Redemptive History · The Cross of Christ
