Justification is not a relic of the past - it has direct relevance to us as Christians today. We often struggle with the thought of justification because of human pride; "I can't be that bad" and so justification is often undermined, wrongly presented or just plain ignored. Scripture though, is brutally clear: we have a real problem - the prospect of our lives marred by wrong-doing being laid out before an almighty God who is pure and will not forever let wrong go unpunished. We can't earn our way out of our predicament - as this is just "rubbish" according to the apostle Paul. We need something else, someone who can take the hit we so richly deserve - leaving us to be declared innocent instead.

Christianity Today 2022 Award of Merit (Biblical Studies)



Southwestern Journal of Theology 2021 Book Award (Honorable Mention, Biblical Studies)



Leading scholar Daniel Block helps students of the Bible understand the big picture of God's covenants with humanity as they play out in both the First and the New Testaments.

After fifty years of teaching and preaching around the globe, Block brings a lifetime of study and reflection on the First Testament and relationship with God to this comprehensive volume. The book focuses on God's covenants as the means by which God has reached out to a fallen humanity. It examines the heart and history of God's redemptive plan and shows why the covenants are essential for our understanding of the Bible.

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. . . . In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?" With compelling honesty John Stott confronts readers with the centrality of the cross in God's redemption of our pain-filled world.

Can we see triumph in tragedy, victory in shame? Why should 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?

From one of the foremost preachers and Christian leaders of his generation, The Cross of Christ is a classic, accessible, and compelling look at the work of Christ. At the cross Stott finds the majesty and love of God disclosed, the sin and bondage of the world exposed. More than a study of the atonement, this book brings Scripture into living dialogue with Christian theology and contemporary issues. What emerges is a pattern for Christian life and worship, hope and mission.

In honor of John Stott's one hundredth birthday, this centennial edition includes an updated foreword by Alister McGrath and a new timeline of Stott's life. A study guide equips individuals and groups to more deeply reflect on and apply the book's message.

A trinitarian exposition of Christian soteriology

The relation of God and salvation is not primarily a problem to be solved. Rather, it is the blazing core of Christian doctrine, where the triune nature of God and the truth of the gospel come together.

Accordingly, a healthy Christian theology must confess the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of salvation as closely related, mutually illuminating, and strictly ordered. When the two doctrines are left unconnected, both suffer. The doctrine of the Trinity begins to seem altogether irrelevant to salvation history and Christian experience, while soteriology meanwhile becomes naturalized, losing its transcendent reference. If they are connected too tightly, on the other hand, human salvation seems inherent to the divine reality itself. Deftly navigating this tension, Fountain of Salvation relates them by expounding the doctrine of eternal processions and temporal missions, ultimately showing how they inherently belong together.

The theological vision expounded here by Fred Sanders is one in which the holy Trinity is the source of salvation in a direct and personal way, as the Father sends the Son and the Holy Spirit to enact an economy of revelation and redemption. Individual chapters show how this vision informs the doctrines of atonement, ecclesiology, Christology, and pneumatology--all while directly engaging with major modern interpreters of the doctrine of the Trinity. As Sanders affirms throughout this in-depth theological treatise, the triune God is the fountain from which all other doctrine flows--and no understanding of salvation is complete that does not begin there.