Over at The Crux blog of Midwest Christian Outreach Ron Henzel, Christian apologist and Senior Researcher at MCO, continues his look at the cardinal Christian doctrine of the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross, which he began in Behold The Lamb and The Lamb That Was Slain.

In this edifying and well-researched piece Henzel brings out:

I like things to be simple. I like them to be clear. What can I say? I’m a simple guy. I prefer bullet points to paragraphs, illustrations to explanations, and maps to directions… I get irritated when people make things more complicated than they need to be. I become especially annoyed when Christians hide the light of the Gospel under the bushel of sophisticated theological jargon…

But, alas, simplicity has its limits… I play lead guitar for my church worship band. When it’s time to set up I go into our equipment closet and some of the first things I reach for are my amplifier cables… Amp cables appear to be the simplest things on Earth, but they’re tricky little guys. If you lay one on top of the other you can have a tough time separating them…

So what should be a quick and simple process is regularly complicated by—well, by procrastination and neglect. The same thing happens with the teachings of Scripture. If we neglect them, over time they become difficult to untangle. It’s not the Bible’s fault. It does not change over time and somehow become more complicated in itself. The problem is with us…

This is what happened to the most foundational truth within the doctrine of salvation, Christ’s atoning death on the cross. Over time the church neglected it, and it became tangled up with unbiblical ideas. Untangling it became a complicated process that could only be resolved by paying close attention to Scripture…

You can read Henzel’s article in its entirely by clicking here.