Supremely Silly Smartypants Notions
Friday, May 30, 2008 at 2:12PM J. I. Packer, in the introduction to In My Place Condemned He Stood, explaining why those who refer to the doctrine that Christ’s death is penal substitution as “divine child abuse,” as some have done, are impertinent and foolish:
It was with [Christ’s] own will and with his own love mirroring the Father’s, therefore, that he took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment and laid down his life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then he rose from death to reign by the Father’s appointment in the kingdom of God and from his throne to send the Spirit to induce faith in himself and in the saving work he had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption to the penitent, and to unite all believers to himself to share his risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come. Since all this was planned by the holy Three in their eternal solidarity of mutual love, and since the Father’s central purpose in it all was and is to glorify and exalt the Son as Savior and Head of a new humanity, smartypants notions like “divine child abuse” as a comment on the cross are supremely silly and as irreverent and wrong as they could possibly be.
