“How can the Christian Gospel be morally just if God punishes an innocent person for the guilt of someone else?" How the incarnation, corporate solidarity, and the law reveal what God actually accomplished in Christ There is a way of explaining the cross that most Christians have heard many times: We sinned. God required punishment. Jesus took our punishment. He paid our debt. Therefore God can forgive us. There is truth in the language of substitution. Christ died for us. Ch

There is a question beneath many of the great debates about salvation that is rarely asked directly: How can one person’s actions have consequences for an entire human family? The Bible repeatedly presents humanity in ways that challenge our modern instinct to think of every person as completely independent. Scripture speaks about Adam and the human race, Abraham and his descendants, Jacob and Esau as nations, Levi existing “in the loins” of Abraham, Israel as a corporate peo

The Two Adams, universal grace, and the question of human choice Here is an argument I recently encountered that stopped me in my tracks: “All believers are universalists when it comes to all have sinned in the first Adam, but have a hard time believing all are made alive in the last Adam (Jesus).” That's a provocative statement. And to be fair, it raises a question that Christians really should wrestle with. Paul's comparison between Adam and Christ in Romans 5 is enormous.

What Really Happened at the Cross? For centuries, Christians have often been taught to understand the Cross primarily through the language of transfer: We were guilty. Christ was innocent. Our punishment was transferred to Christ. Christ was punished instead of us. But Scripture gives us a deeper category—one that reaches all the way back to Genesis: corporate solidarity. The Cross cannot be properly understood until we first understand who Christ became and whom He represent