A Review of "The Truth of the Cross" by RC Sproul

I just got through reading a pdf of The Truth of the Cross by RC Sproul from Reformation Trust and Ligonier Ministries. As I prepare to review this book I think it is important for you to know a little about me. I am not what you would call very academic in how I explain a book or in what I usually read. Getting my MDIV seemed to have burned me out on the world of overly academic religious writings. While I respect these theologians and their writings, I would call myself a reviewer for the ordinary man. So with that here it goes:

The title of the book is what first caught my eye, "The Truth of the Cross". In a Christian culture were most books are really christianityfied self help books it is always refreshing to see a title that is not about self but about the cross. I can see myself in Sproul's place as he just looks at the wasteland of christian literature in the bookstore. With this first chapter he has me hooked. Sproul does a fantastic job in starting with a broad introduction to theology, giving a short but concise explanation of Augustinianism, Semi-Palagianism, and Palagianism. This allows the book to take off in a way that has the reader wanting to know more. Which is the most biblical of these theologies, where do I fit in this, are just a few questions I asked myself as I read. As broad a scope as Sproul paints in the beginning of the book, he steadily begins to shed man made theologies and show Biblical truth. As the book goes on Sproul easily takes theological terms such as atonement, substitution, ransom, and explains them in a simple and easy manner. A few great thoughts from this book are Sprouls theology of the baptism of Christ (p.73), a hard but true statement about sustitutionary atonement (p. 81), explanation of total depravity (chapter 6) and Chapter 8 would be worth the price of the book alone as Sproul shows our dependency of understanding Old Testament covenants to understand how secure our faith really is. But then chapter 9, limited atonement. This is the only chapter were I thought here it is your are either a 5 point Calvinist or a heretic and lost. Why do we have to label ourselves either Calvinist or Armenian? Do you have to be in the middle or one or the other, please just teach like you taught in the last 8 chapters. But even with that Sproul nails it when he states, "

"What if I say Jesus went to the cross to make an atonement for believers, and only for believers? In that statement,I declare that it was God’s design that Jesus should die not for everybody indiscriminately, but only for those who would believe. If you accept that, you see that only the elect are believers and that only believers are the elect. I’m not saying anything different when I say that Christ died only for the elect" (p.146)

What a defining statement! If we could all let go of our sides and see that if we let go of our "pet" words we would see we really have nothing to argue about. Overall this probably the best book I have ever read about the cross. I would recommend it for anyone from the pulpit to the pew.

Thanks to Reformation Trust and Ligioner Ministries for the pdf. If you are interested in reviewing some great books by pdf go to http://www.ligonier.org/publishing_reformationtrust_blog.php

God Bless