With all the recent challenges on the gospel, a passage in 2 Corinthians 5 is becomming ever more precious to me. The key verse is 21, but I will here set it in context. This passage alone seems to me to demolish N.T.Wright's new perspectives on Paul as well as Steve Chalkes criticisms of the penal substitution view of the atonement:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.