Book Review - "In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement" - Packer & Dever

"In My Place Condemned He Stood" by J.I Packer and Mark Dever brilliantly unpacks the doctrine of Penal Substitution. Understanding the cross of Christ and what happened at Calvary is the cornerstone of the faith that we hold. When we come to understand what took place on that hill upon that tree we are driven to our knees in humility and our hearts burst forth with gratitude and fresh love for our Savior. This book accomplishes that task.

My reading and comprehension skills were put to the test as I worked my way through the sound theological arguments that Packer describes. He is a much higher intellectual being than I am and I found myself having to re-read sections often to fully grasp the logic, reasoning and doctrine being presented, but it was well worth the repeating! This book is not a new work of new thoughts, but a collection of 4 works brought together in one book -3 contributed from J.I. Packer and 1 from Mark Dever. There is also an annotated bibliography included at the end that instantly increases ones "BOOKS TO READ" list on the subject of atonement and penal substitution. I would highly recommend this book - while academic in places - it clarifies the biblical view of salvation and the work of Christ at the cross. THIS IS ESSENTIAL - you mess this up and you are no longer building upon rock, but upon sand. Below are some quotes from the book that I found to be helpful.

• "a gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached." - Packer, pg 32

• "The wrath of God against us, both present and to come, has been quenched. How was this effected? Through the death of Christ. 'When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son' (Rom.5:10). The "blood" - that is, the sacrificial death - of Jesus Christ abolished God's anger against us and ensured that his treatment of us forever after would be propitious and favorable. Henceforth, instead of showing himself to be against us, he would show himself in our life and experience to be for us. What, then, does the phrase "a propitiation...by his blood" express? It expresses, in the context of Paul's argument, precisely this thought: that by his sacrificial death for our sins Christ pacified the wrath of God." - Packer, pg. 34

• "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.'" - Packer, pg. 41

• "The notion that the phrase 'penal substitution' expresses is that Jesus Christ our Lord, moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won us forgiveness, adoption, and glory. To affirm penal substitution is to say that believers are in debt to Christ specifically for this, and that this is the mainspring of all their joy, peace, and praise both now and for eternity." - Packer, pg 77

• "(When man justifies the wicked, it is a miscarriage of justice that God hates, but when God justifies the ungodly it is a miracle of grace for us to adore [Prov. 17:15; Rom. 4:5].)" - Packer,pg.89

• "God has reconciled us, dealing with the barrier of hostility between himself and humanity by means of Christ's death (2 Corinthians 5)." - Dever, pg. 107

There are many more that I left out - you will have to read the book!!!