Rebecca Writes

So said J. Gresham Machen, as quoted in Contending for Our All by John Piper.

From the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name “gospel” or “good news” implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened. And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth then there was Christian doctrine. “Christ died”—that is history; “Christ died for our sins”—that is doctrine. Without these two elements joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.

And so says D. A. Carson in his sermon What Is the Gospel?

Had we been among the watchers at Calvary, we should have seen nailed to the cross Pilate’s notice of Jesus’ alleged crime. But if by faith we look back to Calvary from where we now are, what we see is the list of our own unpaid debts of obedience to God, for which Christ paid the penalty in our place. 

—J. I. Packer in the intro to In My Place Condemned He Stood.

J. I. Packer, in the introduction to In My Place Condemned He Stood, explaining why those who refer to the doctrine that Christ’s death is penal substitution as “divine child abuse,”  as some have done, are impertinently foolish:

It was with [Christ’s] own will and with his own love mirroring the Father’s, therefore, that he took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment and laid down his life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then he rose from death to reign by the Father’s appointment in the kingdom of God and from his throne to send the Spirit to induce faith in himself and in the saving work he had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption to the penitent, and to unite all believers to himself to share his risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come. Since all this was planned by the holy Three in their eternal solidarity of mutual love, and since the Father’s central purpose in it all was and is to glorify and exalt the Son as Savior and Head of a new humanity, smartypants notions like “divine child abuse” as a comment on the cross are supremely silly and as irreverent and wrong as they could possibly be.

From The Great Exchange, by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington: 

The cross is not a mere first step toward spiritual development; is is the all-encompassing foundation for Christian growth. ..[I]t first provides complete forgivenss of past, present, and future sins, and then it becomes a means of the deliverance by which we are freed from bondage to sin….

 
By tying the transformation of the believer to the cross, Paul makes his point aboundantly clear: everything we need for life and eternity is provided by virture of Christ’s great atonement. Furthermore, in everything God is for us; he is for us in Christ wisdom instead of ignorance, justification instead of condemnation, sanctification instead of sinfulnees, and redemption instead of slavery. “[God] is the source of [our] life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and santification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). In view of this, it is no wonder Paul is adamant and unwavering regarding the centrality of the cross of Christ. The fulfillment of every hope we have is blood bought by the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. And the work of Christ on the cross must remain our only hope.

Expect a review of this book to be posted here soon.