Holy Week Blogosphere Reflections
Here are three blog posts worth sharing during Holy Week. Christ lived, Christ died, Christ rose again — We Enjoy So Great a Salvation!!!
J.I. Packer on the 6 Things You Should Tell Yourself Every Day
I am a child of God.
God is my Father.
Heaven is my home.
Every day is one day nearer.
My Savior is my brother.
Every Christian is my brother too.
J.I. Packer suggests that if we want to focus the New Testament message in three words, he would choose ADOPTION THROUGH PROPITIATION.
Kevin DeYoung’s post on Salvation by Propitiation
We are always in desperate need to more fully understand the depth of our salvation in Christ.
Kevin DeYoung: There are many biblical ways to describe Christian salvation.
Salvation can be understood ritually as a sacrifice, as the expiation of guilt through the death of Christ on the cross.
Salvation can be understood commercially as redemption, as a payment made through the blood of Christ for the debt we owe because of sin.
Salvation can be understood relationally as reconciliation, as the coming together of estranged parties by means of Christ’s at-one-ment.
Salvation can be understood legally as justification, as the declaration that sins have been forgiven and that the sinner stands blameless before God because of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.
3 Reasons I changed My Mind about Penal Substitution
Penal substitution cannot be tossed out as simplistic. Modern-day rants against the cross being a “form of cosmic child abuse” from a vengeful Father against an innocent Son cannot be sustained by a careful exegesis of scripture nor bear the weight of Trinitarian theology nor reflect the church’s historic witness of what truly transpired on Good Friday. So YES — we still glorify God during Holy Week because Christ lived the life I could never live and died the death that I deserved.
Daniel Hames: Yet as I began to read Scripture more deeply, I came to see these texts in the light of Scripture’s great themes and typologies. I could see no other way to interpret them—the animal skins in Genesis 3, the ram in Genesis 22, the Passover lamb and the firstborn sons, the darkness of judgment the night of the exodus from Egypt and the darkness that fell as Jesus died, all the undeniable language of propitiation and the blood on the mercy seat, and so much more.
Actually reading the Scriptures in their cohesive entirety, and seeing the Old Testament repeatedly preview the gospel, showed me that Jesus bearing our sin and its penalty is central—not peripheral, and not artificially imposed—to the story’s vast sweep.