I am going to begin a series of posts that will focus on the idea of propitiation of Jesus. I am doing this because (1) I recently preached on it, (2) an extraordinary amount of Christians have no concept of it, (3) I want my students to know and love the gospel of their salvation, (4) propitiation is central to atonement and the character of God, (6) people have attacked me because of their misunderstanding of this concept (or because they understand it and don’t like it). If, you have questions about any post feel free to comment below or email me for further discussion. I hope these are helpful.
As said above, just recently I preached on Jesus as our propitiation. If you weren’t there then odds are you have no idea what propitiation means. To put it simply, propitiation is the sacrifice that turns away God’s anger. When used in relation to Jesus, the teaching of propitiation means that Jesus’ death was the sacrifice that turned away, or satisfied, God’s anger against sinners (Romans 3:35; Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10).
If you think of the definition provided above about propitiation (the sacrifice that turns away God’s anger), then you’ll notice something is implied in it. What is implied? God is really angry at sinners. This is where a lot of people jump off the boat, but don’t do so before you check your Bibles. I don’t have enough time here to outlay a full defense of God’s anger against sinners, but let me point you toward a couple standard truths that will help you begin to think in the right direction.
WHO IS GOD?
What does the Bible say about God? Well, many things, but there are a few central to this discussion. First, we must see God is holy (Is. 6:3), that is, entirely without sin and unique from creation. Since God is holy, He righteously (or rightly) hates all evil. Did you know God hates things? Yes, He does. But only evil things. God hates evil. Hebrews says Jesus, “loved righteousness and hated wickedness” and that God blessed Him for that. Why does God hate evil? Because He is Holy and Good. In a similar way how we hate evil things like rape, murder, genocide, theft, and injustice so God does, but perfectly. We love that God hates evil. What kind of God would He be if He was unmoved by the dealings of Hitler? How would you think of God if He did not get angry by the actions of Ted Bundy (who confessed to more than 30 homicides of young women he tortured and sexually assaulted before killing)? But God does get angry about these things, because God is good and holy. So when we scan the pages of the Bible, we should conclude that God is holy, without sin, and doesn’t compromise an inch of His holiness for anything. He was, is and always will be wonderfully holy and that will never change for anything.
WHO IS MAN?
The second thing we must confess if we believe our Bibles is that we are evil. We didn’t begin this way when God first created us. In the beginning, Man was the crown of God’s creation. He made us in His image (Genesis 1:26-27), He blessed us with dominion over the rest of His creation (Genesis 1:26-27), He blessed us with partners (Genesis 2:18) and marriage (Genesis 2:24) and we were spoken of as being “very good” (Genesis 1:31). But, 2 chapters later we jacked ourselves up in a really bad way. Genesis 3 records what Christians call “The Fall.” The Fall was the point in history when man became what he was not, but now is, that is, sinful. Our father Adam, from whom all Mankind descends from, sinned with his wife Eve and broke the Law of God and personally offended God Himself (Genesis 3). From that point, Mankind has been defiled and corrupted and guilty in the eyes of God (Is. 64:6). Now we live in the reality of The Fall. Just read a newspaper and ask yourself, “How is Mankind fairing today?” I trust your answer will not be positive.
Sin has distorted God image in us and has corrupted everything us. Genesis 6:5 says, “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” Romans 3 explains all of mankind in these terms, “”None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:11-13). Paul continues on for a bit after that description, but the point is easily seen; all men are evil to their core. This is an especially powerful section when you understand Paul is pulling from numerous texts from the rest of the Bible and not just having a particularly nasty rant (Psalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Eccles. 7:20; Psalm 5:9; Psalm 140:3; Psalm 10:7; Isaiah 59:7,8; Psalm 36:1). After looking into the pages of Sacred Text soberly, one is confident that, though we once walked in God’s perfection, we now live in our defilement and failures.
I must emphasize this one point, when the Bible says all men are evil, it means all men. From the worst of men/women (such as Hitler, Stalin, etc.) to the not seemingly bad men/women (Ghandi, your nice next door neighbor) to even the religious folk (Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, etc.); all have the same and equally grave problem of sinfulness. Some may not act out as badly as others but we all share the same evil nature as the worst of criminals. Watson wisely says, “What is in another’s practice is in my nature.” All must say, “the same sickness of the most evil men lays in my soul.”
In addition to a shared corrupted nature, we are all guilty of the most grievous evil. When asked what the worst thing man can do, many may respond with wicked things like murder, theft, adultery, etc. But what is the worst crime according to the Bible? The most important commandment is; to love God with everything you have (Matthew 22:34-37). If this is the greatest commandment then to break it is the greatest sin. This means that the worst sin we can do, the vilest, most grotesque and wicked thing that can be done is to not love God with all we have. How is this so? Because He is that worthy. To not love God above all things is to participate in the most foolish, vain, worthless and evil act one can do because nothing else deserves that place because all has come from Him and is for Him. The worst thing we can do is to not exalt God as the greatest there is; the most heinous crime in heaven’s eyes is to love something more than God. So we must understand that evil is not based on the standard of the fallen world, but evil is based on that one commandment that sums up the meaning of Man’s existence; to love God with everything and more than anything. So, although people differ from one another in degrees of evil, all men are equally responsible for committing daily the most evil thing, that is, to deny God what is rightfully His; which is our unshared and absolute love.
HOLY GOD + EVIL MAN = HOLY WRATH
Now we must do some theological math. What happens when we take a Holy God who hates evil and add unrepentant, hard-hearted, evil and sinful men? We get wrath, that is, intense anger toward evil. God gets angry at sin (Ex. 4:14; 15:7; Lev. 26:27-33; Num. 11:1; 12:9; 22:22; 25:3; Deut. 3:17; 29:24-29; Josh. 7:1; Judg. 2:14; 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Kings 14:15; 15:30; 16:2; 25:53; 2 Kings 13:3; 17:11; 23:19; 1 Chron. 13:10; 2 Chron. 28:25; Ps. 7:11; ; Heb. 10:27) and sinners themselves. God gets angry at men, so angry the Bible describes it as a type of hatred. Psalm 5 says, “the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” Psalm 11 says, “the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.” Leon Morris records that God’s anger against sin and sinners is spoken of in the Old Testament more than 580 times. God is very angry (and rightly so) with sinners because the sinning they do comes from the heart they have. Jesus says that Man does evil because He is evil (Matt 15:19). There would be no sinning if we were not sinners. What we do is because of who we are. So now we see from the Scriptures that God is Holy and Man is evil. Our predicament then is obvious: God’s anger must be dealt with if men are ever going to have hope of life. God’s righteous anger must be satisfied justly if we are ever going to smile in eternity. He will not compromise His holiness and we cannot dissuade His anger. Something needs to be done and Man is completely unable to do it.
But God’s anger toward sinners is not the last word Scripture gives us.
Enter Jesus, God’s gracious gift and our wonderful propitiation….
