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Regardless of how trendy and popular it may be to say that the Cross, understood Biblically, demonstrates “child abuse” – (usually by people who seem to make a characteristic of their faith by cigars and brew) here is a significant and crystal-clear reminder:
“It is Christ set forth in His blood who is a propitiation; that is, it is Christ who died. In dying, as St. Paul conceived it, He made our sin His own; He took it on Himself as the reality which it is in God’s sight and to God’s law: He became sin, became a curse for us. It is this which gives His death a propitiatory character and power; in other words, which makes it possible for God to be at once righteous and a God who accepts as righteous those who believe in Jesus. . . . I do not know any word which conveys the truth of this if ‘vicarious’ or ’substitutionary’ does not, nor do I know any interpretation of Christ’s death which enables us to regard it as a demonstration of love to sinners, if this vicarious or substitutionary character is denied.”
– James Denney, quoted by J.I. Packer in “What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution” reprinted in In My Place Condemned He Stood (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 75.