Yesterday I shared a quote from Wayne Grudem on the atonement. Today it’s Spurgeon’s turn: “All the love and acceptance which perfect obedience could have obtained of God belong to you because Christ was perfectly obedient on your behalf. Those who set aside the atonement as a satisfaction for sin also murder the doctrine of justification by faith. They must do so. There is a common element which is the essence of both doctrines; so that, if you deny the... Read more
Over the next couple of days I will be sharing some of my favorite quotes from others on the atonement. This will finally conclude my Atonement series. We begin today with Dr. Wayne Grudem: “ . . . there is an eternal, unchangeable requirement in the holiness and justice of God that sin be paid for. Furthermore, before the atonement ever could have an effect on our subjective consciousness, it first had an effect on God and his relation to... Read more
I was going to try and think of something thoughtful to say today. I then realized that what I said last year couldn’t be improved on by me, except that it already had, the year before. So here are the last two years of Independence Day blogging from me.Incidentally, it is interesting to see that several of the topics I said I wanted to get back to blogging about, I still haven’t! Having said that, there has been progress on... Read more
Some say only Christians, some say the whole world. The “L” of the TULIP acronym is definitely one of the most controversial and most misunderstood. I refer you to my previous series for more detail on the “limited” nature of the atonement, but today I want to stress some points that we can surely all agree upon. Firstly, we can surely agree that Jesus’ death was enough for the whole world, but will not be permanently applied to the whole... Read more
I received the following two articles from the communications director of the UCCF, and they have been kind enough to give me permission to republish them here. The first article is by J. I. Packer, and the second one is by Richard Cunningham, and were originally published in a UCCF magazine. Penal Substitution RevisitedJ. I. PackerThroughout my 63 years as an evangelical believer, the penal substitutionary understanding of the cross of Christ has been a flashpoint of controversy and division... Read more
As we finally draw towards the close of our series on the atonement, I thought it would be helpful to use the following tool to help us review where we have been. I found this helpful quiz online. Many of these questions address doctrinal issues that we have discussed, although some of them are factual and may not have been answered directly in my posts. The quiz is meant to be answered from the perspective of what John Stott says... Read more
This week was meant to be almost a crescendo as I had hoped to finish off my long-running blog series on the atonement last week. Blogger ruined all that sadly! Due to some kind of bizarre fault, I was unable to publish my blog for several days at http://adrianwarnock.com/, which in blog years is a lifetime! So I thought of a neat work-around. I would simply move the blog to a new server and domain name that was co-operating with... Read more
UPDATE In January 2008, the following post was identified as the 25th all-time most popular post with readers of this blog. The 26th most-read post was “25% Off Logos Bible Software by Libronix. This post summarizes some of my series on the atonement, and links to a number of other posts on the subject. There are many other posts within this series—the most popular of which was one entitled “J. I. Packer on the Atonement.” *************** As we finally draw... Read more
UPDATE – Steve Chalke has expressed his views more fully in a chapter in The Atonement Debate, and I have posted a response to this. —– A reader recently pointed me to the following passage from a longer article on The Resurgence about Brett Kunkle’s concerns about the Emergent movement. I hope my American readers appreciate that the atonement issue is far from being just a UK problem at the moment; this quote certainly makes that plain! “My first area... Read more
Sometimes we get so caught up in our doctrine of the cross that we forget the ULTIMATE PURPOSE FOR WHICH CHRIST DIED AND WAS RISEN. It was, in fact, not first and foremost for us, rather it was for Him. It was—like everything God does—for the sake of His own name and His own glory. He died and rose again so that one day everyone would acknowledge His supremacy and His right to rule over the entire universe. The following... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In