Why did Jesus die on the cross?

[The liberal theologian's] Jesus isn’t much different from a Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela, great leaders who inspired people to suffer and die for the sake of others, but he cannot take your sins away. I’m all for justice and helping the vulnerable, but I do that from the strength of the “sweet exchange” that Jesus made atonement for my sins, that I’m forgiven, redeemed, reconciled, and justified. At Easter I don’t sing hymns that go:

On that cross condemned for died
By corporate forces who have lied
Called us to global protest
Jesus bids us to do our best

Rather I sing:

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!


-- Michael Bird, "Why Jesus Died on the Cross"

When our wickedness had reached its height...

"But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!"  (Ep Dio 9:2-5).

-- Epistle to Diognetus (second century A.D.)

How to Put Sin to Death

A very helpful 8-minute teaching video lab from John Piper.

Freedom of Conscience

"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." -- Thomas Jefferson

The Spirit Leads by the Word

"It seems so much more exciting to live with a freewheeling openness to the leading of the Holy Spirit rather than practicing the laborious discipline of mastering His Word. This is exceedingly dangerous ground. If we want to do the will of the Father, we need to study the Word of the Father—and leave the magic to the astrologers." —R.C. Sproul

Not That Bright

Excellent meditation on John 1:8 from Kevin DeYoung:  "Not That Bright"

Do you really have a God?

"For you do not have a god if you [just] call him God outwardly with your lips...but [only] if you trust him with heart and look to him for all good, grace and favor...."

"Such faith and confidence can be found only when it springs up and flows from the blood and wounds and death of Christ.  If you see in these that God is so kindly disposed toward you that he even gives his own Son for you then your heart in turn must grow sweet and disposed towards God and in this way your confidence must grow out of pure good will and love, God's toward you, and yours toward God." [lightly edited]

 -- Martin Luther

Don't be a fool...

"Consider now, tempted one, which of his whispered promises to you the Devil has ever kept."

Christ's Gift of Peace

"Peace is Christ’s distinctive gift—not money, not worldly ease, not temporal prosperity. These are at best very questionable possessions. They often do more harm than good to the soul. They act as clogs and weights to our spiritual life. Inward peace of conscience, arising from a sense of pardoned sin and reconciliation with God, is a far greater blessing. This peace is the property of all believers, whether high or low, rich or poor."

— J. C. Ryle

This world is passing away

"....the world with all its allurements is passing away..." (1 Jn. 2:17)

“You are surprised that the world is losing its grip, that the world is grown old? Think of a man: he is born, he grows up, he becomes old. Old age has its many complaints: coughing, shaking, failing eyesight, anxious, terribly tired. A man grows old; he is full of complaints. The world is old; it is full of pressing tribulations. . . . Do not hold onto the old man, the world; do not refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you, ‘The world is passing away, the world is losing its grip, the world is short of breath. Do not fear. Thy youth shall be renewed as an eagle.'”

-- Augustine, quoted in Peter Brown, "Augustine of Hippo" (Berkeley, 1967), pages 297-298.

This Seems Obvious

"Nothing seems more reasonable to me than that lasting joy will never be found by a person who ignores or opposes his Creator." -- John Piper

What God Wants Us to Be

"When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted." -- C.S. Lewis

Communing with the living Christ

"Meditating on Scripture can and should be a real-time experience of communion with the living Christ" (John Jefferson Davis).

Can a man ask a question God can't answer?

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half of our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that."

-- C.S. Lewis, “A Grief Observed”

Behind the Cultural Changes -- a War of World-views

The story of any society is the story of its primary beliefs and fundamental ideas about the nature of reality. For a long time in America and in the West, those primary beliefs were significantly shaped by Biblical (Judeo-Christian) teaching. Now, that is less and less true. A new fundamental belief system (virtually religious in the way it functions in society and culture) is becoming more and more dominant in the inevitable contest of ideas.

And so for example, the Old Wisdom said that man was fallen, and thus there was a strong current of evil and folly at the core of his nature that kept leading him to choose self-destroying and shalom-shattering ways. The "New" Way of Thinking teaches that human beings are basically good, and following one's own heart is the best course to take in the whole range of choices that one faces in life.

But even apart from divine revelation, how anyone, in light of the actual events of human history (including current events), and the honest assessment of one's own heart, and in light of the increasing manifestations of folly and vice in popular culture and media -- how anyone, defying all this evidence, can seriously maintain that human beings are essentially good is incomprehensible to me.

The "New" Beliefs may well prevail in the clash of the core ideas that shape the West; but the Old Reality will still play out too....we will reap what we have sown.