Rachel’s Reviews > The Cross of Christ > Status Update

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement… If it is God‘s wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is God‘s love which did the propitiating.“

“For there is nothing capricious or arbitrary about the holy God…His anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable…because it is provoked…by evil alone. The wrath of God…is His steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms…What provokes our anger (injured vanity) never provokes His; what provokes His anger (evil) seldom provokes ours.“

“Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.“

“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting Himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices Himself for man and puts Himself where only man deserves to be.”

“Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy.“

“[God] is never provoked without reason. It is evil alone which provokes Him, and necessarily so since God must be (and behave like) God. If evil did not provoke Him to anger He would forfeit our respect, for He would no longer be God.“

Quoting Anselm of Canterbury’s “Cur Deus Homo?”: “‘there is no-one…who can make this satisfaction except God Himself…But no-one ought to make it except man; otherwise man does not make the satisfaction.’ Therefore, ‘it is necessary that one who is God-man should make it.’ A being who is God and not man, or man and not God, or a mixture…and therefore neither man nor God, would not qualify.”

“If we reinterpret sin as a lapse instead of a rebellion, and God as indulgent instead of indignant, then naturally the cross appears superfluous.”

“If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to His, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it.”

“We must, therefore, hold fast to the biblical revelation of the living God who hates evil…and refuses to come to terms with it. In consequence, we may be sure that, when He searched in His mercy for some way to forgive, cleanse, and accept evil-doers, it was not along the road of moral compromise. It had to be a way which was expressive equally of His love and of His wrath.”