HoHum:
And the man that wrote the Home Sweet Home,He never was a married man. She'll meet you at the door when you go to come in And knock you down with a rolling pin, And the man that wrote the Home Sweet Home, He never was a married man.
To talk about propitation I like to use an illustration from my own life. Especially early in our marriage my wife was justified in her anger. Stay out many nights. Not answer the pager. On my way home I realize that things are going to be tough at home. Stop by and get some flowers. My wife meets me at the door with a frying pan but I pull out the flowers. Her attitude changes somewhat and she lets me come into the house and we are able to talk in a calm fashion.
WBTU:
A. To “propitiate” means to appease or pacify someone’s anger.
Main Scriptures on propitiation are:
“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;” Romans 3:24, 25, KJV.
“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:1, 2, KJV.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10, KJV.
Maybe noticed that I used KJV here. Most current translations do not use this word. Why?
1. It is archaic.
2. Many do not want to talk about the wrath of God. However, the wrath of God is talked about in the Bible over 580 times. “The morning is come unto thee, O thou that dwellest in the land: the time is come, the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding again of the mountains. Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will recompense thee according to thy ways and thine abominations that are in the midst of thee; and ye shall know that I am the LORD that smiteth.” Ezekiel 7:7-9, KJV.
3. The word propitiate came into our language from pagan concepts of trying to appease the gods through gifts, sacrifice, or suffering. Does God accept bribes? Can offerings or rituals cool God’s anger? Are we really to believe that Jesus by his death propitiated the Father’s anger, convincing him to turn from it and to look upon us with favor instead?
D. If we are to have a truly biblical doctrine of propitiation, it is necessary to tell it apart from pagan ideas at 3 points
Thesis: Talk about these 3 questions: 1) Why is propitiation necessary? 2) Who made the propitiation? 3) What is the propitiation?
For instances:
Why is propitiation necessary?
Sin arouses the wrath of God. Talked about the OT, this idea is not foreign to the NT.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:36, KJV.
“Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Ephesians 5:6, KJV.
Not just God the Father but also Jesus Christ has wrath. “And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:” Revelation 6:16, KJV.
Must understand that our God does not fly off the handle at trivial things, and that he does not lose his temper for no apparent reason. “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.” Psalms 103:8, KJV.
There is nothing whimsical or arbitrary about our holy God. Neither is he malicious, spiteful or vindictive. His anger is not mysterious or irrational. God is faithful and like a rock.
God’s anger is predictable, because it is provoked by evil, and evil alone. The wrath of God is his unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising opposition to evil in all its forms and manifestations.
God’s anger is not like ours. What provokes our anger (injured ego) never provokes his; what provokes his anger (holiness) seldom provokes ours. Righteous indignation.
Human anger is usually arbitrary and uninhibited; divine anger is always principled and controlled. Our anger tends to be uncontrolled outbursts, aroused by irritations and seeking revenge; God’s is a continuos, settled antagonism, aroused only by evil.
The kind of God who appeals to most people today would be easygoing in his tolerance of our offenses. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating, and would have no violent reactions. He is more like a benevolent and undisciplined Grandparent trying to spoil the grandkids than God our Father who is disciplining us in his wrath.
Sin separates us from God. God must not only respect us as the responsible beings we are, but he must also respect himself as the holy God he is. Before the holy God can forgive us, some kind of “satisfaction” is necessary.
Who made propitiation?
In pagan way, it is always human beings who seek to turn away gods anger either by performance of some ritual, or by constant repetition of some words, or by offering sacrifices. Such things were thought to pacify the gods anger.
However, the NT says that there is nothing we can do, say, or offer to compensate for our sins or turn away God’s anger. There is no possibility of persuading, influencing, or bribing God to forgive us, for we deserve nothing at his hands but judgment.
The sacrifices in the OT were provided by God in order that He might act graciously toward his sinful people. “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Leviticus 17:11, NIV. God owns everything, we not giving him something He does not have.
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” Romans 3:25, KJV.
It was not that we loved God but that He loves us. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10, NAS95.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the result, of the atonement. God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loves us. If it is God’s wrath that needed to be propitiated, it is God’s love that did the propitiating. Must understand that Christ by his sacrifice did not twist God the Father’s arm to pardon us. The drive to do something was taken by God himself in his mercy and grace.
P.T. Forsyth said this, “The distinction I ask you to observe is between a change of feeling and a change of treatment. God’s feeling toward us never needed to be changed. But God’s treatment of us, God’s practical relation to us- that had to change.”
Through Christ’s propitation, God forgave us and welcomed us home.
What is the propitiation?
What is the gift that is offered? It is not a thing at all, but a person.
The person God offered was not somebody else. He offered His Son. Now this Son is not something separate from Himself. In giving His Son, He was giving Himself.
“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” 1 Peter 2:24, KJV.
“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” Hebrews 9:28, KJV.
Oswald Chambers once said, “We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us. It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because he died. It is not earned, but accepted. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.”
Conclusion and invitation:
God himself is the answer to the difference between the Gentile beliefs of appeasing their gods and the true faith in God of propitiation. It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating and God himself who in the person of His Son died for the propitiation of our sins.
God took the initiative to appease his won righteous anger by bearing it his own self in his own Son when he took our place and died for us.
Either Christ turns away God’s wrath or we suffer His wrath for all eternity. Hebrews 10:26-31
