Author Archives: St. John Studies

Exodus 20: 12 ““Honor your father and your mother” Romans 1:21 “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God” “If the early Greek fathers represented the cross primarily as a ‘satisfaction’ of the devil…and the early … Continue reading →

“How…can we possibly believe that God needed some kind of ‘satisfaction’ before He was prepared to forgive [man], and that Jesus Christ provided it [satisfaction] by enduring  as our ‘substitute’ for the punishment we sinners deserved” [112, The Cross of … Continue reading →

“We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ which does not have at its centre the principle of ‘satisfaction through substitution’, indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution. The cross was not a commercial bargain with the devil, … Continue reading →

“No two words in the theological vocabulary of the cross arouse more criticism than satisfaction and substitution.”  With these words John Stott begins Chapter Five of his book The Cross of Christ.  Stott makes it clear that the next two … Continue reading →

Blogging has been a real adventure for me.  When I started writing on January 6th, 2015 I began with a discussion of a book by Kyle Idleman  Aha: The God Moment that Changes Everything.  I remember the book and the … Continue reading →

If you have been a believer in God and His Son Jesus Christ for any reasonable length of time, you have been encouraged to read The Bible.  My history of Bible reading has been circuitous at best; maybe a better … Continue reading →

In Chapter Three* of his book Basic Christianity, John Stott is trying to introduce Jesus Christ to people who really don’t know Him well.  In the previous post entitled “The Character of Christ,” I commented on Stott’s argument that Jesus’ … Continue reading →

As I turn from Stott’s analysis of how man and God handle sin and forgiveness in The Cross of Christ [Chapter Four] I refocus our attention on Stott’s book Basic Christianity [Chapter Three].  I don’t want to spend much time … Continue reading →

I am going to write a statement that is extremely elementary. Man struggles with the problem of sinning. Yet in Chapter Four of John Stott’s book, the title is “The Problem of Forgiveness,” which explores man’s sinning from God’s perspective.  … Continue reading →

It was 1971 and I was enrolled at college.  I was an impressionable, inquisitive young guy from a rural upbringing, seeking an education and enjoying exploring ideas that were new to me.  My college had a movie theater where they … Continue reading →