More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Secondly, I was defeated. I knew the kind of person I was, and also the kind of person I longed to be. Between the ideal and the reality there was a great gulf fixed. I had high ideals but a weak will.
‘what brought me to Christ was this sense of defeat and of estrangement, and the astonishing news that the historic Christ offered to meet the very needs of which I was conscious.’
But gradually I grew, as the diary I was writing at the time makes clear, into a clearer understanding and a firmer assurance of the salvation and lordship of Jesus Christ.2
The first section offers a survey of Christian history, reflecting on the remarkable way in which the cross became the central theme and foundational image of the Christian faith.
John Stott demonstrates our incapacity to change our own situation. We are sinners;
‘Neither Christ alone as man nor the Father alone as God could be our substitute. Only God in Christ,
God the Father’s own and only Son made man, could take our place.’
it is actually denying or disowning ourselves, renouncing our supposed right to go our own way.5
the meaning of the atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross he took our place and bore our sin.
This distinction between an ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ understanding of the atonement needs to be made clear in every generation.
the basic question was not Anselm’s ‘why did God become man?’ but ‘why did Christ die?’.
In developing my theme, I have had in mind the triangle of Scripture, tradition and the modern world.
thirdly, I have tried to understand Scripture, not only in its own light and in the light of tradition, but also in relation to the contemporary world.
The Christians’ choice of a cross as the symbol of their faith is the more surprising when we remember the horror with which crucifixion was regarded in the ancient world.
It is probably the most cruel method of execution ever practised, for it deliberately delayed death until maximum torture had been inflicted. The victim could suffer for days before dying.
They made no distinction between a ‘tree’
and a ‘cross’, and so between a hanging and a crucifixion.
the centrality of the cross originated in the mind of Jesus himself. It was out of loyalty to him that his followers clung so doggedly to this sign.
Jesus’ baptism and temptation were both occasions on which he committed himself to go God’s way rather than the devil’s, the way of suffering and death rather than of popularity and acclaim.
began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
been deceived by the devil to deny the necessity of the cross.
paradoxically states that as Son of Man he will suffer and die, thus with daring originality combining the two Old Testament Messianic figures, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and the reigning Son of Man of Daniel 7.
Important connection between the two passages
he said that he himself had come to serve, not to be served, and ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’.
Bethany home he described the pouring of perfume over his head as preparing him for burial;
Yet he bears witness to the same phenomenon by his seven references to Jesus’ ‘hour’
‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’
His crucification is linked to his glorification
began with his death, and added that he could not ask to be delivered from it because this was the reason he had come into the world.
purposive death.
three intertwining reasons for its inevitability. First, he knew he would die because of the hostility of the Jewish national leaders.
divine preference for the Gentiles, ‘all the people in the synagogue were furious
The inclusion of Gentile to the Christian faith was a contentious issue
Secondly, he knew he would die because that is what stood written of the Messiah in the Scriptures.
He predicted the falling away of the apostles by quoting from Zechariah that when the shepherd was struck the sheep would be scattered.
Isaiah 53 that Jesus seems to have derived the clearest forecast not only of his sufferings, but also of his subsequent glory.
The third and most important reason why he knew he would die was because of his own deliberate choice. He was determined to fulfil what was written of the Messiah, however painful it would be.
He felt under constraint, even under compulsion: ‘I have a baptism to undergo,
Baptiam to undergo? How is the crucification related to baptism for Christ? Certainly it is different for Christ than for us
he freely embraced the purpose of his Father for the salvation of sinners, as it had been revealed in Scripture.
Despite the great importance of his teaching, his example, and his works of compassion and power, none of these was central to his mission. What dominated his mind was not the living but the giving of his life.
To Jews Paul spoke of the God of the covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but to Gentiles of the God of creation,
First, although the apostles attributed the death of Jesus to human wickedness, they declared that it was also due to a divine purpose.
So the apostles repeatedly emphasized that the death and resurrection of Jesus happened ‘according to the Scriptures’.
Thessalonian synagogue Paul ‘reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead’ (Acts 17:2–3).
apostolic preaching of the cross was not undoctrinal.
they called the cross on which he died a ‘tree’.
The only possible explanation is to be found in Deuteronomy 21:22–23,
‘because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse’. The apostles were quite familiar with this legislation,
‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree’ (1 Pet. 2:24).
‘you killed him, God raised him, and we are witnesses.’36 In other words, the resurrection was the divine reversal of the human verdict.
told the Corinthians, to renounce worldly wisdom and instead to know nothing among them ‘except Jesus Christ and him crucified’
first importance’ (he said) was ‘that Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared...’ (1 Cor. 15:1–5).
