Scandalous Quotes

“one of the things that validates faith is the truthfulness of faith’s object.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“The pressures of secularization allow us to be religious provided our religion does not really matter: even Christian faith is funneled into privacy.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Do you want to see the greatest evidence of the love of God? Go to the cross. Do you want to see the greatest evidence of the justice of God? Go to the cross. It is where wrath and mercy meet. Holiness and peace kiss each other. The climax of redemptive history is the cross.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Expiation, by contrast, aims to cancel sin. Expiation is the sacrificial act by which sin is canceled, removed, “expiated.” The object of expiation is sin. By contrast, the object of propitiation, as we’ve seen, is God. Expiation refers to cancelling sin, and propitiation refers to satisfying or setting aside God’s wrath. The particular word used in Romans 3:25 is used most commonly in the Old Testament to refer to a propitiating sacrifice that turns aside God’s wrath.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Propitiation is the act by which someone (in this case, God) becomes propitious, that is, favorable. Propitiation is the sacrificial act by which someone becomes favorable.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Paul insists that if you rightly read the Old Testament, you will discover that these very writings, rightly understood, point forward to, testify to, anticipate, and prophesy what has culminated in Christ. Yes, we are under a new covenant, but the old covenant anticipated what now is. The new covenant is the fulfillment of the old covenant.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“The cross spectacularly displays God’s love, but it also displays God’s wrath against sin; it massively underscores God’s condemnation of sin.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“I suspect that the reason we even think like that—even for a moment—is that in the Old Testament the pictures of God’s wrath are temporal, expressed primarily in historical terms. In the New Testament the pictures of God’s wrath are primarily (though not exclusively) in final eschatological and apocalyptic terms—and most of us do not really believe the latter, so we are not frightened of them. Our culture is so present-oriented that we filter out depictions of final judgment; we are not frightened of hell.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“First, while there is plenty of judgment in the Old Testament, those same Old Testament documents affirm, with equal fervor, God’s kindness, generosity, love, and grace. For instance:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.3 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever. . . . As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust. (Ps. 103:8–9, 13–14)”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Yet on the face of it Paul is convinced that the root problem is our rebellion against God, our fascination with idolatry, our grotesque de-godding of God.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Biblical Christianity results in transformed men and women—men and women who, because of the power of the Spirit of God, enjoy regenerated natures. We want to please God, we want to be holy, we want to confess Jesus is Lord. In short, because of the grace secured by Christ’s cross, we ourselves experience something of a transforming moral imperative: the sins we once loved we learn to fear and hate, the obedience and holiness we once despised we now hunger for.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will—and, within that framework, it was his love for sinners like me. He really could not save himself.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“To take up your cross does not mean to move forward with courage despite the fact you lost your job or your spouse. It means you are under sentence of death; you are taking up the horizontal cross-member on your way to the place of crucifixion. You have abandoned all hope of life in this world. And then, Jesus says, and only then, are we ready to follow him.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“The point is that under the terms of the old covenant, the temple was the great meeting place between a holy God and his sinful people. This was the place of sacrifice, the place of atonement for sin. But this side of the cross, where Jesus by his sacrifice pays for our sin, Jesus himself becomes the great meeting place between a holy God and his sinful people; thus he becomes the temple, the meeting place between God and his people.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“The kings and rulers and presidents of this fallen world order exercise their authority out of a deep sense of self-promotion, out of a deep sense of wanting to be number one, out of a deep sense of self-preservation, even out of a deep sense of entitlement. By contrast, Jesus exercises his authority in such a way as to seek the good of his subjects, and that takes him, finally, to the cross.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“Those who know their Bibles well know that Jesus is more than king of the Jews: he is king over all, he is Lord over all. Matthew himself makes this clear in his closing verses. This side of the resurrection, Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth is his (28:18); his authority is none less than the authority of God. He is king of the universe. He is king over the soldiers who mock him. He is king over you and me. And one day, Paul assures us, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. The man who is mocked as king—is the king.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

“However much the Bible insists on the historicity of these events, it never treats them as mere pieces of raw data—admittedly, rather surprising raw data—the meaning of which we are free to make up for ourselves. It is as important to know what these events mean as to know that they happened.”
― D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus