Richard Mouw: Getting to the Crux of Calvary

From Christianity Today online.

The man recounted a time when he was increasingly successful in his business dealings, while increasingly dissolute in his personal lifestyle: drinking heavily, unfaithful to his wife, distant from his children, his marriage headed toward divorce. His wife and daughters were active in church life, but he never attended.

One Saturday evening, after he had downed several martinis, his 10-year-old daughter pleaded with him to come to church the next morning. Her singing group was going to participate in the service, and she wanted her father there. He reluctantly agreed, something he greatly regretted the next morning when he woke up with a hangover. But he kept his promise.

In that service, he said, he heard for the first time in his life that he was a guilty sinner who needed salvation, and that Jesus had taken his sin and guilt upon himself on the Cross of Calvary. The man wept as he heard the sermon, and he pleaded with God to take away his burden of shame. From that point on, his life took a new direction.

I would have loved to have asked the young pastor at the conference what he thought about that testimony. Suppose, for example, the man whose story I heard had gone instead to that young pastor’s church that morning, and heard a sermon about how Christ has on Calvary encountered “the powers” of consumerism, militarism, racism, super-patriotism, and so on. I don’t think that such a message would have effected the life-transforming change that took place.

The good professor does a good job in talking about atonement theories, why they matter, and why we need to get it right, as best as we can. Read it all.