Trackback Thursday – In My Place Condemned He Stood

This week’s featured trackback title is In My Place Condemned He Stood by J.I. Packer and Mark Dever.

Check out our previous post in which Packer surveys how we have distorted the biblical gospel here. And Kindle readers, download your free copy here (available until the end of January).

A reminder of how Trackback Thursday works: Simply link to the blog post from your blog, leave a comment on Crossway’s Facebook Page, or re-tweet Trackback Thursday on Twitter @Crosswaybooks. Winners are picked on Friday morning.

J.I. Packer on what is the heart of the Biblical Gospel? (Excerpt from pp 41):

By this means justice has been done, for the sins of all that will ever be pardoned were judged and punished in the person of God the Son, and it is on this basis that pardon is now offered to us of- fenders. Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed himself to be “just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”

Do you understand this? If you do, you are now seeing to the very heart of the Christian gospel. No version of that message goes deeper than that which declares man’s root problem before God to be his sin, which evokes wrath, and God’s basic provision for man to be propitiation, which out of wrath brings peace. Some versions of the gospel, indeed, are open to blame because they never get down to this level.