“True Christ-centeredness is, and ever must be, cross-centeredness. The cross on which the divine-human mediator hung, and from which He rose to reign on the basis and in the power of His atoning death, must become the vantage point from which we survey the whole of human history and human life, the reference point for explaining all that has gone wrong in the world everywhere and all that God has done and will do to put it right, and the center point for fixing the flow of doxology and devotion from our hearts.
Healthy, virile, competent Christianity depends on clear-headedness about the cross; otherwise we are always off-key. And clear-headedness about the cross, banishing blurriness of mind, is only attained by facing up to the reality of Christ’s blood-sacrifice of Himself in penal substitution for those whom the Father had given Him to redeem.”
–Mark Dever and J.I. Packer, In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 147-148.
