In My Place Condemned He Stood

We are back! The blog is officially back up and running!

For training purposes I have been reading a book called "In my place condemned He stood" which is on penal substitutionary atonement. I wanted to share a couple of passages from the book which struck me.

"The incarnational principle is that when the Son took Himself all the powers and capacities for experience that belong to human nature and began to live through His human body, mind, and identity, His sense of being the Father's Son was unaffected, and He knew and did His Father's will, aided by the Spirit, at all times. It was with His own will and His own love mirroring the Father's, therefore, that He took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment" and here is the good part... "and laid down His life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then He rose from death to reign by the Father's appointment in the kingdom of God and from His throne to send the Spirit to induce faith in Himself and in the saving work He had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption to the penitent, and to unite all believers to Himself to share His risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come."

This is powerful stuff, very clearly stating what Jesus did for us in His incarnation. What He offered us, He offered us our lives if we were willing to die to the things of this world, not our temporary, earthly lives but our eternal, perfect lives. After all the sins we commit, after all the times we have turned our backs towards Him, He still "laid down His life as a sacrifice for them" a sacrifice for us!

The other text I wanted to share was written by J.I Packer(as was the previous) in which he offers us nine insights basic to our personal relationship with God that are directly related to penal substitutionary atonement. These are points I would encouraged you to reflect on and be edified because of them.

1. God, in Denney's phrase, "condones nothing," but judges all sin as it deserves: which Scripture affirms, and my conscience confirms, to be right.

2. My sins merit ultimate penal suffering and rejection from God's presence (conscience also confirms this), and nothing I do can blot them out.

3. The penalty due to me for my sins, whatever it was, was paid for me by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in His death on the cross.

4. Because this is so, I through faith in Him am made "the righteousness of God in Him," i.e., I am justified; pardon, acceptance, and sonship [to God] become mine.

5. Christ's death for me is my sole ground of hope before God. "If He fulfilled not justice, I must; if He underwent not wrath, I must to eternity" (John Owen)

6. My faith in Christ is God's own gift to me, given in virtue of Christ's death for me: i.e., the cross procured it.

7. Christ's death for me guarantees my preservation to glory.

8. Christ's death for me is the measure and pledge of the love of the Father and the Son to me.

9. Christ's death for me calls and constrains me to trust, to worship, to love, and to serve.

Those are powerful! I hope you guys enjoyed them as much as I did!

Tim Shrout