"Why did the suffering and execution of a man who was convicted and condemned as a pretender to the throne of Rome unleash, in the next three centuries, a power to suffer and to love that transformed the Roman Empire, and to this day is shaping the world." 

"This is what sin is - dishonoring God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences...Therefore, failure to love him is not trivial - it is treason."

"For our sake God did the impossible: He poured out his wrath on this own Son - the one whose submission made him infinately unworthy to receive it."

~John Piper, The Passion of Jesus Christ