“The best part of the best news that the world has ever heard” by J.I. Packer

“Throughout my sixty-three years as an evangelical believer, the penal substitutionary understanding of the cross of Christ has been a flashpoint of controversy and division among Protestants.

Since one’s belief about the atonement is bound up with one’s belief about the character of God, the terms of the gospel, and the Christian’s inner life, the intensity of the debate is understandable. If one view is right, others are more or less wrong, and the definition of Christianity itself comes to be at stake.

As I grow old I want to tell everyone who will listen: ‘I am so thankful for the penal substitutionary death of Christ. No hope without it.’

That is where I come now as I attempt this brief vindication of the best part of the best news that the world has ever heard.”

–J.I. Packer, “Penal Substitution Revisited,” In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 21-22.

“Here, human justice condemns itself” by Donald Macleod

“Jesus was acquitted by the same lips as condemned Him: ‘I find no basis for a charge against this man,’ (Luke 23:4).

Here, human justice condemns itself. The criminal is on the bench, not in the dock, just as in the person of Caiaphas the blasphemer is the one at the altar, not the One on the cross.

The judge acquits the prisoner, and then sentences Him to be flogged and crucified.”

–Donald Macleod, Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 32.

“Slow motion” by Donald Macleod

“When it comes to Good Friday the Gospels go into slow motion. They have passed over in silence whole decades of Jesus’ life, and even when they pick up the threads of the public ministry there are weeks and months of which they say nothing.

But when it comes to the crucifixion we have the sequence frame by frame; almost, indeed, an hourly bulletin. The crucifixion narrative goes into slow motion.

It is the pivot on which the world’s redemption turns, and it involves such a sequence of separate events that we assume, instinctively, that they must have occupied several days. Instead we find to our astonishment that they all occurred on one day; and the events of that one single day are reported in meticulous detail.

Our printed Bibles do not, unfortunately, highlight the significance of Mark 14:17, where the evangelist introduces his account of the Last Supper with the words, ‘when evening came’. Unpretentious though they sound, they are momentous.

The Jewish day began with the sunset, and this ‘evening’ marks the beginning of Good Friday. Fifteen hours later, Jesus would be crucified, but these intervening hours would themselves be crammed with drama: the Last Supper, Gethsemane, the betrayal, the arrest and the trial; then the crucifixion, followed by the entombment.

From the Last Supper to His burial, a mere twenty-four hours; and so detailed is the account of His last few hours that we know exactly what happened at 9 o’clock in the morning (the third hour), at midday (the sixth hour) and at 3 o’clock (the ninth hour).

Against the background of the previous indifference to chronology, such detail is remarkable, and serves to underline once again the evangelists’ concentration on Jesus’ death.”

–Donald Macleod, Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 22-23.

“He is one with us and has taken our place” by Sinclair Ferguson

“Because Christ bears our name and our nature even the weakest believer may look to Christ and find assurance of grace and salvation in Him.

Here Calvin’s exposition of the Gospels’ testimony is profound and telling: Jesus’ ministry reveals to us the humanity of a Saviour who can be trusted, who understands, and who is able to bring reassurance of the adequacy and fittingness of His grace.

Much of what He does and experiences is intended to show us how near to us He came. The revelation of His frailty and weakness is all intended to assure us that He is one with us and has taken our place.”

–Sinclair Ferguson, “Manifested in the Flesh: The Reality of the Incarnation,” in Some Pastors and Teachers (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2017), 81.

“His measureless benevolence” by John Calvin

“Godly souls can gather great assurance and delight from this Sacrament. In it they have a witness of our growth into one body with Christ such that whatever is His may be called ours.

As a consequence, we may dare assure ourselves that eternal life, of which He is the heir, is ours. And that the Kingdom of Heaven, into which He has already entered, can no more be cut off from us than from Him.

And again that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt He has absolved us, since He willed to take them upon Himself as if they were His own.

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of His measureless benevolence, He has made with us:

that, becoming Son of man with us, He has made us sons of God with Him;

that, by His descent to earth, He has prepared an ascent to heaven for us;

that, by taking on our mortality, He has conferred His immortality upon us;

that, accepting our weakness, He has strengthened us by His power;

that, receiving our poverty unto Himself, He has transferred His wealth to us;

that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon Himself (which oppressed us), He has clothed us with His righteousness.

In this Sacrament we have such full witness of all these things that we must certainly consider them as if Christ here present were Himself set before our eyes and touched by our hands.”

–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; vols. 1-2; The Library of Christian Classics; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), (4.17.2-3), pp. 1361–1362.

[HT: Matt Merker]

“The punishment of our iniquity is accomplished” by Charles Spurgeon

“The punishment of our iniquity is accomplished. Remember that sin must be punished. Any theology which offers the pardon of sin without a punishment, ignores the major part of the character of God.

God is love, but God is also just—as severely just as if He had no love, and yet as intensely loving as if He had no justice. To gain a just view of the character of God you must perceive all His attributes as infinitely developed.

Justice must have its infinity acknowledged as much as mercy. Sin must be punished. This is the voice which thunders from the midst of the smoke and the fire of Sinai:

‘The soul that sinneth it shall die;’ ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’

‘Sin must be punished’ is written on the base of the eternal throne in letters of fire. And, as the damned in hell behold it, their hopes are burned to ashes.

Sin must be punished, or God must cease to be. The testimony of the Gospel is not that the punishment has been mitigated or foregone, or that justice has had a sop given it to close its mouth.

The consolation is far more sure and effectual. Say ye unto the daughter of Zion that ‘the punishment of her iniquity is accomplished.’ Christ hath for His people borne all the punishment which they deserved.

And now every soul for whom Christ died may read with exultation—’The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished.’ God is satisfied, and asks no more.

Sin deserved God’s wrath; that wrath has spent itself on Christ. The black and gathering clouds had all been summoned to the tempest, and manhood stood beneath the dark canopy waiting till the clouds of vengeance should empty out their floods.

‘Stand thou aside!’ said Jesus—’Stand thou aside, My spouse, My Church, and I will suffer in thy stead.’

Down dashed the drops of fire; the burning sleet swept terribly over His head, and beat upon His poor defenceless person, until the clouds had emptied out their awful burden, and not a drop was left.

Beloved, it was not that the cloud swept by the wind into another region where it tarries until it be again called forth, but it was annihilated, it spent itself entirely upon Christ. There is no more punishment for the believer, since Christ hath died for him.

In His dying, our Lord has satisfied the divine vengeance even to the full. Then this, too, must satisfy our conscience.

The enlightened conscience of a man is almost as inexorable as the justice of God, for an awakened conscience, if you give it a false hope, will not rest upon it, but crieth out for something more.

Like the horse-leech it saith—’Give, give, give.’ Until you can offer to God a full satisfaction, you cannot give the conscience a quietus.

But now, O daughter of Zion, let thy conscience be at rest. Justice is satisfied; the law is not despised: it is honoured; it is established.

God can now be just, severely so, and yet, seeing that thy punishment is accomplished, thou mayest come with boldness unto Him, for no guilt doth lie on thee.

Thou art accepted in the Beloved; thy guilt was laid on Him of old, and thou art now safe.

‘In thy Surety thou art free,
His dear hands were pierced for thee;
With His spotless vesture on,
Holy as the Holy One.’

Come thou boldly unto God, and rejoice thou in Him. Lest, however, while God is reconciled and conscience is quieted, our fears should even for an instant arise, let us repair to Gethsemane and Calvary, and see there this great sight, how the punishment of our iniquity is accomplished.

There is the God of heaven and of earth wrapped in human form. In the midst of those olives yonder I see Him in an agony of prayer. He sweats, not as one who labours for the bread of earth, but as one who toils for heaven.

He sweats ‘as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ It is not the sweat of His brow only, but ‘All His head, His hair, His garments, bloody be.’

God is smiting Him, and laying upon Him the punishment of our iniquities. He rises, with His heart exceeding sorrowful even unto death. They hurry Him to Pilate’s judgment-seat.

The God of heaven and earth stands in human form to be blasphemed, and falsely accused before the tribunal of His recreant creature. He is taken by the soldiery to Gabbatha.

They strip Him, they scourge Him; clots of gore are on the whip as it is lifted from His back. They buffet Him, and bruise Him with their blows; as if His robe of blood were not enough, they throw about His shoulders an old cloak, and make Him a mimic king.

Little knew they that He was the King of kings. He gives His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that pluck off the hair; He hides not His face from shame and spitting.

Oh! what shall be said of Thee, thou Son of man? In what words shall we describe Thy grief? All ye that pass by behold and see if there was ever any sorrow like unto His sorrow that was done unto Him!

Oh God, thou hast broken Him with a rod of iron; all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over Him. He looks, and there is none to help; He turns His eye around, and there is none to comfort Him. But see, through the streets of Jerusalem He is hastened to His death.

They nail Him to the transverse wood; they dash it into the ground; they dislocate His bones; He is poured out like water; all His bones are out of joint; He is brought into the dust of death; agonies are piled on agonies.

So now that man may reach to heaven, misery is piled on misery, what if I say hell on hell! But Jesus bears the dreadful load.

At last He reaches the climax of anguish, grief could go no higher. ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!’ was the sum total of all human misery.

The gathering up of all the wrath of God, and all the sorrow of man into one sentence. And thus He dies! Say ye unto the daughter of Zion that her punishment is accomplished.

‘It is finished!’ Let the angels sing it; hymn it in the plains of glory; tell it here on earth, and once again say ye unto the daughter of Zion that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins!

This, then, is the joyous note we have to sound this morning.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “A Message From God for Thee” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 8 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1862), 638–640. This is from a sermon on Lamentations 4:22, preached on November 16, 1862, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.

“Christ-centered means cross-centered” by Mark Dever

“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.