Countdown to Easter: The Wrath of Love?
Trevin Wax has written another insightful and illuminating piece over at Kingdom People about what he sees as the deficiencies of the new presentations of the gospel message, admitting that the message has historically been over-condensed, but also warning of the dangers of marginalizing hugely significant aspects of the message in an effort to give a more prominent place to themes that may have been historically overlooked or muted. Again, I am greatly indebted to and support Trevin in his effort to bring us all back into a proper balance when we're talking about fresh ways to communicate the truth of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ in today's world. But one aspect of the piece struck me, and it struck me precisely because it incorporated a phrase that, I believe, has gone a long way in marginalizing what both Trevin and I believe to be an nonnegotiable component of the gospel. The passage in question reads as follows: The substitutionary atonement gets left out in man...