That’s where the God of the Bible is most radically different from the primitive gods of old. The ancients understood the idea of the wrath of God, they understood the idea of justice, the idea of a debt and a necessary punishment, but they had no idea that God would come and pay it himself. The cross is the self-substitution of God. . . . God created the world in an instant, and it was a beautiful process. He re-created the world on the cross—and it was a horrible process. That’s how it works. Love that really changes things and redeems things is always a substitutionary sacrifice.16
