What God Did to Save Us from Himself
God insists that He alone is God.
We are born insisting God is on our throne.
This is why we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2.3).
The first thing we need to be rescued from is an angry God.
Since we weren’t about to change, something had to be changed on God’s end – and God had to do it. We couldn’t and wouldn’t.
Our church’s statement of faith says “we believe that…Jesus Christ…died on the cross a sacrifice for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
Sacrifices are offered to God to affect God. The apostle John wrote: “[Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2.2). We stumble at the word “propitiation”. It’s not a word we use every day. It’s not a word we use at all because it’s a technical term for a specific kind of sacrifice to affect God in a particular way. We no longer offer sacrifices, so that terminology is lost on us.
Societies develop technical terms for fields that have specialized and detailed meaning to them. For example, the Inuit people of the Arctic distinguish between almost two dozen kinds of snow and have specialized technical terms for each kind of snow! In a similar vein, the cultures of the ancient world offered different sacrifices to God (or the gods), each intended to have a different effect on the deity.
A “propitiation” was designed to turn away God’s (or a god’s) wrath. With wrath satisfied and justice done, sin could be forgiven. Four different New Testament writers employ the Greek words for “propitiation”.
In Luke 18, Jesus tells us about a self-righteous Pharisee boasting about himself to God, and then points us in a better direction – to a repentant tax collector crying out “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” The phrase “be merciful” is the technical term “be propitiated” – Turn away from me the anger that I so justly deserve!
Hebrews 2.17 says that Jesus as our high priest “makes propitiation for the sins of the people”, i.e. Jesus offers the sacrifice of Himself to turn away God’s anger at our sins.
Finally, both Paul (Romans 3.25) and John (1 John 4.10) emphasize that God put Jesus forward and sent Him to be the propitiation for our sins. God did what He knew was necessary to turn His own justified anger away from us. This had to be done to save us from HIM!
God wanted to show mercy but His anger at sin was justified. He couldn’t just forgive us. That would be unjust. It wouldn’t “feel right” to Him. Sin deserved His anger. His wrath had to be poured out. It was only right. Instead of pouring it out on us, He poured it out on His own Son, who willingly agreed to bear the brunt of His Father’s anger for us.
The world saw the crucifixion of a Jewish teacher; God saw a propitiation – a perfect spotless “Lamb” offered on an “altar” to Him to appease His wrath and satisfy His sense of justice. With the demands of justice met once and for all in that sacrifice, God was able to justly offer forgiveness for sin.
That arrangement between God the Father and God the Son, God carried out in history at the cross to save us from Himself.
We are born insisting God is on our throne.
This is why we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2.3).
The first thing we need to be rescued from is an angry God.
Since we weren’t about to change, something had to be changed on God’s end – and God had to do it. We couldn’t and wouldn’t.
Our church’s statement of faith says “we believe that…Jesus Christ…died on the cross a sacrifice for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
Sacrifices are offered to God to affect God. The apostle John wrote: “[Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2.2). We stumble at the word “propitiation”. It’s not a word we use every day. It’s not a word we use at all because it’s a technical term for a specific kind of sacrifice to affect God in a particular way. We no longer offer sacrifices, so that terminology is lost on us.
Societies develop technical terms for fields that have specialized and detailed meaning to them. For example, the Inuit people of the Arctic distinguish between almost two dozen kinds of snow and have specialized technical terms for each kind of snow! In a similar vein, the cultures of the ancient world offered different sacrifices to God (or the gods), each intended to have a different effect on the deity.
A “propitiation” was designed to turn away God’s (or a god’s) wrath. With wrath satisfied and justice done, sin could be forgiven. Four different New Testament writers employ the Greek words for “propitiation”.
In Luke 18, Jesus tells us about a self-righteous Pharisee boasting about himself to God, and then points us in a better direction – to a repentant tax collector crying out “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” The phrase “be merciful” is the technical term “be propitiated” – Turn away from me the anger that I so justly deserve!
Hebrews 2.17 says that Jesus as our high priest “makes propitiation for the sins of the people”, i.e. Jesus offers the sacrifice of Himself to turn away God’s anger at our sins.
Finally, both Paul (Romans 3.25) and John (1 John 4.10) emphasize that God put Jesus forward and sent Him to be the propitiation for our sins. God did what He knew was necessary to turn His own justified anger away from us. This had to be done to save us from HIM!
God wanted to show mercy but His anger at sin was justified. He couldn’t just forgive us. That would be unjust. It wouldn’t “feel right” to Him. Sin deserved His anger. His wrath had to be poured out. It was only right. Instead of pouring it out on us, He poured it out on His own Son, who willingly agreed to bear the brunt of His Father’s anger for us.
The world saw the crucifixion of a Jewish teacher; God saw a propitiation – a perfect spotless “Lamb” offered on an “altar” to Him to appease His wrath and satisfy His sense of justice. With the demands of justice met once and for all in that sacrifice, God was able to justly offer forgiveness for sin.
That arrangement between God the Father and God the Son, God carried out in history at the cross to save us from Himself.