Over at Pure Church there is a good article about how we should talk to children about race. It is well worth a read. I have included the headlines here:
- Talk with your children about ethnicity (the nations) rather than “race.”
- Talk about ethnicity in a way that magnifies the power and wisdom of God. We should be amazed more often than we are (excuse me for projecting my dullness onto you!) at the sheer power and wisdom of God who can create “difference” and “same” in His creation …
- Talk about the need of all men for the Savior. Not only are we alike in our humanity, but we are therefore alike in our sin, guilt, shame, and need for divine rescue. We are far more alike than we are different …
- Talk about the Gospel and the Church as the plan of God to demonstrate unity across such diversity and to display His wisdom.
In Romans 15 there is one more excellent summary of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.
“For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’.” (Romans 15:3)
Thus, Jesus takes on Himself what we deserve. It is important to see that the reason Paul speaks of this here is to demonstrate that Jesus is an example for us. Just in case anyone thinks that in all our emphasis on the penal aspects of the atonement we have forgotten that it is an example to us, let’s leave this exploration of Romans with a short quote from John Piper on how Jesus was indeed our example on the cross:
“Christ is the example and empowering inspiration for us in these two things: he did not please himself, but he took on himself reproaches that were not his to bear, so that good could come to others.”
— John Piper
UPDATE
I thought I would share a couple of quotes by others who take this verse in a similar way to the way I do, and who explain it better than I can:
“Every sin is a kind of reproach to God, especially presumptuous sins; now the guilt of these fell upon Christ, when he was made sin, that is, a sacrifice, a sin-offering for us. When the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all, and he bore our sins in his own body upon the tree, they fell upon him as upon our surety. Upon me be the curse. This was the greatest piece of self-displacency that could be: considering his infinite spotless purity and holiness, the infinite love of the Father to him, and his eternal concern for his Father’s glory, nothing could be more contrary to him, nor more against him, than to be made sin and a curse for us, and to have the reproaches of God fall upon him, especially considering for whom he thus displeased himself, for strangers, enemies, and traitors, the just for the unjust.”— Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible
“The quotation is verbatim from the LXX of Psalm 69:9 [LXX 68:10]. The psalm is one of the most powerful cries of personal distress in the Psalter, and for that very reason would hardly commend itself to Jewish thought as messianic in character. Just as naturally, however, the earliest Christians scanning the scriptures for prefigurations of what had happened to the Messiah in the event found this psalm to become luminous with meaning in the light of Jesus’ suffering and death. After Pss 2, 22, 110, and 118, it is about the most quoted psalm in the NT (see on 11:9–10)—the most explicit allusions usually with direct reference to Christ’s passion and the events surrounding it.”
James D. G. Dunn, Vol. 38B, Word Biblical Commentary: Romans 9-16 (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2002), page 838.
To be continued . . .
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