GOD'S ACTIVE HANDS

'Theology teaches that God's hands were never more active than when fastened to the wood of the tree, "puntured by nails", causing blood to flow "as the price of a great salvation". This is a lesson to be pondered often and in silence.'

Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.74.

CAESAR VS. CHRIST

'Caesar occupied a palace Christ a cross, but the same Christ so split history into A.D. and B.C. that even the reign of Caesar was subsequently dated by his name.'

Martin Luther King Jr., 'The Death of Evil upon the Seashore' in The Gift of Love, p.81.

THE KINDNESS OF JESUS

'Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected, 

O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus hath undone thee.

'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee,

I crucified thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered; 

The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;

For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,

God interceded.

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,

Thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation;

Thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,

For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee.

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,

Think on thy pity, and thy love unswerving,

Not my deserving.'

Johann Heermann in Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday, p.12.

THE AUDACITY OF CHRISTIANITY

'To be a Christian is to believe that God became man, and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it - the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe - that serves to explain more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth.' 

Tom Holland, Dominion, p.524.

JESUS DIED OF A BROKEN HEART

'In the presence of this mental anguish, the physical tortures of the crucifixion retire into the background, and we may well believe that our Lord, though he died on the cross, yet died not of the cross, but, as we commonly say, of a broken heart.'

BB Warfield in Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, p.200. 

THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

'There is a centrifugal force at work in human nature; we want to spin out and away from the offense of the cross.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.61. 

WHAT THE CROSS REVEALS

'...the cross is our best picture of who God is: God providing from within his own life the gift of bringing us back into his life.' 

Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ, p.111. 

HE DIED FOR ME

'Awake, arise, lift your voice,
let Easter music swell;
rejoice in Christ, again rejoice
and on his praises dwell.

Oh, with what gladness and surprise
the saints in their Savior greet;
nor will they trust their ears and eyes
but by his hand and feet,
those hands of liberal love indeed
in infinite degree,
those feet still free to move and bleed
for millions, and for me.'
Christopher Smart in Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.612. 

PENAL SUBSTITUTION ONLY MAKES SENSE IN A STORY

'The difficulty with "necessity" in the context of the cross is the idea that God is subject to external logic rather than love for his fallen creation. When presented in narrative form, the motif of substitution has unparalleled warmth.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.496. 

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT

'It is not an exaggeration to say that in some circles there has been something resembling a campaign of intimidation, so that those who cherish the idea that Jesus offered himself in our place have been made to feel that they are neo-Crusaders, prone to violence, oppressors of women, and enablers of child abuse.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.464. 

HOW THE CROSS SHAPES MINISTRY

'The fundamental insight lying at the heart of the cross is the notion that God acts in the present in continuity with the way he has acted in the past...Just as God revealed himself, and worked salvation through a crucified Messiah, God still works in and through what is to conventional human understanding, weak, powerless and apparently irrational rather than through what is strong, powerful and reasonable.' 

Graham Tomlin in Jeremy R Treat, The Crucified King, p.229. 

THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

'The cross must be central but never solo.' 
Jeremy R Treat, The Crucified King, p.218. 

REPELLING THE ACCUSER

'When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: "I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made a satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also.' 

Martin Luther in Jeremy R Treat, The Crucified King, p.202. 

THE BEAUTIFUL IRONIES OF THE CROSS

'...it was appropriate that, just as death entered the human race through a man's disobedience, so life should be restored through a man's obedience; and that, just as the sin which was the cause of our damnation originated from a woman, similarly the originator of our justification and salvation should be born of a woman. Also that the devil who defeated the man whom he beguiled through the taste of a tree, should himself similarly be defeated by a man through tree-induced suffering which he, the devil inflicted. There are many other things too.' 

Anselm of Canterbury in Jeremy T Treat, The Crucified King, p.179. 

THE CROSS & RESURRECTION

'Jesus' death is not a defeat that needs to be made right by the resurrection, but a victory that needs to be revealed and implemented in the resurrection.' 

Jeremy R Treat, The Crucified King, p.152. 

CHRIST TRIUMPHANT!

'The suffering of Christians is a sign, not of Satan's victory, but of the saints' victory over Satan because of their belief in the triumph of the cross, with which their suffering identifies them.' 

GK Beale in Jeremy R Treat, The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology, p.126. 

ANSELM ON THE CROSS

'He freed us from our sins, and from his own wrath, and from hell, and from the power of the devil, whom he came to vanquish for us, because we were unable to do it, and he purchased for us the kingdom of heaven; and by doing all these things, he manifested the greatness of his love towards us.' 

Anselm of Canterbury in Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.164. 

THE CROSS NEEDS TO BRING JUSTICE

'The wrath of God falls upon God himself, by God's own choice, out of God's own love. The "justice connection" may not be clear to those who are accustomed to privilege, but to oppressed and suffering Christians in the troubled places of the earth, there is no need to spell it out. God in Christ on the cross has become one with those who are despised and outcast in the world. No other method of execution that the world has ever know could have established this so conclusively.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.143. 

GOD'S GRACE

'...the crucifixion of Christ for the sin of the world reveals that it is not only the victims of oppression and injustice who are in need of God's deliverance, but also the victimizers.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.141. 

THE DIVINE SELF-SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS

'...the crucifixion reveals God placing himself under his own sentence. The wrath of God has lodged in God's own self.' 

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p.132.