“Test your view of the Cross. Where does this statement about ‘declaring’ His righteousness and so on come into your thinking? Is it something that you just skip over and say: ‘Well, I don’t know what that means. All I know is, that God is love and that He forgives.’ But you should know the meaning of this. This is an essential part of the glorious Gospel. On Calvary God was making a way of salvation so that you and I might be forgiven.
But He had to do so in a way that will leave His character inviolate, that will leave His eternal consistency still absolute and unbroken. Once you begin to look at it like that, you see that this is the most tremendous, the most glorious, the most staggering thing in the universe and in the whole of history. God is there declaring what He has done for us. He is declaring at the same time His own eternal greatness and glory… God was declaring publicly once and forever His eternal justice AND His eternal love. Never separate them, for they belong together in the character of God.”
–D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross: The Vindication of God (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976/1999), 19-20.
