Equipping Center

Review Comments

This is one of the outstanding works on the subject of Christ's cross and its meaning. It is supremely a book about the gospel and the glory of Christ. It is scholarly yet accessible, not novel yet profound. Rightly considered by many a masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Publisher's Description

Why should the cross—an object of Roman distaste and Jewish disgust—be the emblem of our worship and the axiom of our faith? And what does it mean for us today? In the centennial edition of this study of Scripture, theology, and contemporary issues, John Stott brings you face to face with the centrality of the cross in God's plan of redemption.

Excerpts

A universally acceptable Christian emblem would obviously need to speak of Jesus Christ, but there was a wide range of possibilities. ... Any of these seven symbols would have been suitable as a pointer to some aspect of the ministry of the Lord. But instead the chosen symbol came to be a simple cross. Its two bars were already a cosmic symbol from remote antiquity of the axis between heaven and earth. But its choice by Christians had a more specific explanation. They wished to commemorate as central to their understanding of Jesus neither his birth nor his youth, neither his teaching nor his service, neither his resurrection nor his reign, nor his gift of the Spirit, but his death, his crucifixion.