So say J.I. Packer and Mark Dever in this Crossway interview on their recent book, In My Place Condemned He Stood. Here are some snippets:
Dever: If there is no propitiation, then there is no gospel. To have a gospel without wrath is to have a gospel with no reality to it, because God doesn’t exist.
Dever: The truth is that there’s a soundly biblical and logically compelling case for considering various biblical images of the atonement, and that the image of penal substitution is legitimately considered central.
Packer: It was the Father’s wisdom to make his incarnate Son our representative substitute who endured the punishment due to us. Liberal Christianity regularly denies this.
Dever: So if you try to tell the story of [Christ's] life without the cross, you distort his life story. If you look at the Gospels, 25-50 percent are the last week of his time on earth—the events leading up to the cross.
Dever: The implications of God’s sovereignty and our being fully, happily subject to him are huge, running into every sphere of our lives. I can’t name any hour of my day that isn’t significantly affected by the meaning of God’s sovereignty.
(HT: JT)
