The cross is not to be thought of as an abstract idea or a religious symbol; the meaning of the cross is what God declares it to mean. The cross was the place where God, by imputation, heaped the sins of his people upon his Son. On that cross there was substitutionary, curse-bearing. In the language of the apostle Paul, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13), and "He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The cross is not a nebulous, indefinable symbol of self-giving love; on the contrary, the cross is the monumental display of how God can be just and still pardon guilty sinners. At the cross, God, having imputed the sins of his people to Christ, pronounces judgment upon his Son as the representative of his people. There on the cross, God pours out the vials of his wrath unmixed with mercy until his Son cries out, "My Go...