All right, Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. We’re continuing our studies on the doctrine of salvation. We have seen that God has, from eternity, designed a plan of salvation in which He would save His people from their sins. To do that, He sent His Son to accomplish salvation. So we’ve had redemption planned. And now we’re looking at this broad topic, this wonderful topic, redemption accomplished, where God the Son came on a saving mission. We saw that that saving mission consists in offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. And then we saw last time, narrowing it, that the essence of the sacrifice is that it’s a substitute standing in our place before God in sacrifice.
Today, we take it just a little bit further, narrowing it just a bit. What is it to be a substitute, or as we called it last Sunday, a penal substitute, taking the penalty of our sin? What does that mean? So we come to this doctrine of propitiation. Now, our text will be in chapter 3, but I want to see it in context, beginning here with Romans chapter 1, in verses 16 and 17. The Apostle Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Then verse 17, “For in it,” that is in the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'”
Now, this is something of Paul’s text that he takes for his exposition of the gospel throughout the Book of Romans, which is given to that purpose of expounding the gospel. Well, this is his starting point, and it’s something of a text that he takes from Habakkuk: “The righteous shall live by faith.” That’s the proposition that he wants to expound throughout the book. Just in brief, he tells us in verse 17 that the gospel is a revelation of the righteousness of God. Now he doesn’t say here that it’s a revelation of the love of God, or the goodness of God, or the grace of God. It is all that. But at the heart of things—and this is what he wants to deal with—the gospel is a revelation of the righteousness of God. That’s what the gospel reveals to us at its center.
And then it says “the righteousness of God,” that is, this righteousness that comes to us now from God—and we’ll see that further as we go along. Righteousness is not something we give to God; it is, in the gospel, something He gives to us “from faith for faith.” And then he quotes Habakkuk as his text: “The righteous shall live by faith,” or he who through faith is righteous, not by works—he who through faith is righteous shall live. And this comes to us, then—the righteousness of God comes to us by faith and nothing but faith.
The Problem of Divine Wrath
Well, that’s his starting point, and then we come to verse 18 of chapter 1, and here Paul begins to explain just why justification by faith alone is so necessary. Notice how he starts with the explanation: “For,” or because, “for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
So the first problem that the gospel must address is the wrath of God. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven, being revealed in many different ways. It’s revealed in the Scriptures as well. We can’t dwell on that now or we’ll never get done, but the wrath of God is the issue, first of all, that the gospel must address. That’s the first problem that we have. The most basic issue that we face is that God is against us because of our sin. That’s verse 18, and that’s in verse 19, and that’s the whole section that follows all the way through well into chapter 3 of this epistle, where Paul expounds this idea of universal guilt—that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, for various reasons (some have seen the revealed will of God, some have not) but all have rebelled against what they know.
Whether it is the law of God stamped in their heart or the law of God objectively given in the law of Moses, everyone has some degree of revelation from God, and every one of us down to a man have rebelled against it. Our problem is not our ignorance; our problem is rebellion. And that rebellion results in the wrath of God being revealed against all of us because of our sin.
And then we come to chapter 3, verses 9 and following, all the way through verse 18. Paul gives us sort of a summary conclusion of all that he’s been arguing before. And that conclusion is: everyone’s guilty. Everyone is under wrath. Look at verse 9: “What then? Are we Jews any better off? Not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, ‘None is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they’ve become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is on their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.'”
This is Paul’s broad conclusion now that he draws, that all of humanity is under this indictment from God, that they have rebelled against what they know to be right, and therefore are guilty before God and deserving of His condemnation and His wrath. Oh, that’s what he says up front in chapter 1 verse 18: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” And that’s what he sets out to establish now in chapters 1 to 3. The problem—the central problem that must be answered if anyone is to be saved—is how can we deal with this problem that God is angry? We have offended Him, and He is justly wrathful against us.
Now, this doctrine of the wrath of God has fallen on hard times, as you can imagine. But the Bible insists on it from beginning to end. God is necessarily angry, and His justice demands to be satisfied. This idea of the wrath of God permeates the entire Bible, both Old Testament and New. There are some 20 different Hebrew words that are used to express God’s wrath. We have language like wrath, fury, hate, anger kindled, the wrath to come. The Old Testament pronounced, under the Mosaic law, judgments against the violation of the Mosaic law that God had given. So here’s the law of God given to His people. And violation of the law demands punishment. Commit adultery? Death. Murder? Death penalty. And so on it goes. We have in the prophets the continued warning of the day of the Lord that is to come, where God comes in wrath and in fury against all sinners. And we have something of a summary statement of that in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 29: “Our God is a consuming fire.”
So when God’s creatures fail to live up to His demands and honor Him in the way that we live, they offend His majesty. They offend His righteousness and inevitably it arouses His settled indignation against us because of our sin. And it’s important to recognize here—this is important to Paul’s argument when we get here now to chapter 3, late in the chapter—that God is not capricious in His anger. It is a very principled wrath. It would be unjust if God were to allow sinners to go unpunished. We have a God who is Himself righteous. One aspect of that righteousness is to demand righteousness of His creatures. Another aspect of His righteousness is to demand punishment of any of His creatures who do not render to Him the righteousness that He deserves. It is a just wrath that God has. He is a God of love, but He’s also a God of justice.
The Old Testament sacrifices are designed to tell us this, that our sin demands punishment. It demands death—a capital offense. And so in a sacrificial system, the sacrifice must be slain. In fact, this is the rationale for hell as well. Offense against God must be answered. And one reason hell is forever and endless is because it is such an immeasurable, infinite evil to offend the majesty and the righteousness of this God. John chapter 3, verse 36: “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” So the biblical perspective is every man and woman outside of Christ, because of their sin, stands already under God’s righteous condemnation. God is wrathful. He is righteously wrathful, and they must be punished.
Well, that’s the problem. That’s the central problem that we face if we are to be saved. How can this problem of God’s wrath be removed? It’s not enough to say God is love. He is loving. But this is a question of justice, and it must be satisfied. And you might think that, well, the answer would be then: give me the law of God. Tell me what God requires, and I’ll do it. Paul answers that question here in chapter 3, verses 19 and 20. “We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
So, give me the law, I’ll do it. That sounds great, and then there’s that big problem: we don’t do it. And because of that, God is wrathful for sin and in the end, all that the law of God has done for us—it has not justified us. It’s just pointed out our sin and shut our mouths. That’s the issue we face before anything else in terms of salvation. So this is a real problem. We have sinned. We have offended God. We’ve provoked His wrath. God is angry. His justice will be satisfied. There’s no compromising of it. And there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s the spot we are in before God. And the answer is not to find some way to turn God’s justice into His love. He’s already loving. The question, the problem is: how do we satisfy His justice, the rightness of His wrath against us for our sin? How do we answer that and still go free? That’s the problem of salvation.
The Logic of the Atonement
Well, the whole thrust then of Romans 1 to 3 is to tell us that the wrath of God is justly owed against every man and woman. It’s often recognized that late in chapter 3 and through the following chapters, Paul gives himself to expounding the gospel. What we have to recognize to understand that exposition rightly is that we have to understand that he is saying in the first three chapters that the reason we need this gospel is because God is wrathful against sin. That’s what must be answered. And so in chapter 3 verses 21 and 22, Paul tells us there is an answer. Notice the first two words: “But now.” And he’s going to tell us about Jesus. Here’s our spot we’re in: condemned by God justly because of our sin, and there’s nothing we can do about it. “But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
That is, the righteousness of God has been—the righteousness of God that he said back in chapter 1—is provided for us. Righteousness coming to us from God, received by faith, not by earning it, but by trusting in Christ. The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. That is to say, the very law that condemns us also points us away from itself to the Lord Jesus Christ to find the solution. And in fact, the righteousness of God through Christ is given to us by faith.
Now that’s the short answer, verses 21 and 22. How do we take care of this problem of divine wrath? Answer: Jesus. That’s the short answer. All who trust in Jesus receive the righteousness that God’s righteousness requires them to have. That’s the short answer. But now Paul wants us to understand just how that works. How is it Jesus is the answer? Just what did He do and what’s the significance of what He did that it would answer this problem of divine wrath?
Verses 23 through 25 now. We have a compressed statement, and it really is a very compact, compressed statement here that you have to read very carefully and thoughtfully and repeatedly to make sure we see what Paul is saying. It’s very compressed here and we have to take our time and work through virtually each phrase. Verse 23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
Okay, that is a lot. Every phrase here is important in building on the thought of the passage and in explaining further what he has proposed in verses 21 and 22. So let’s read it carefully. He’s giving us here what you might call the mechanics of the atonement, or the logic, the rationale of the atonement. How is it that it works? That when Jesus died for us, it answered this problem of divine wrath. Verse 23—that’s a conclusion that he reached in chapters 1 to 3: universal sin and universal guilt, and so universal condemnation. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And yet, verse 24, they are “justified.”
Now think about that. Sinners, condemned, deserving of divine wrath—Paul says they are justified. Now we’ll unpack the nature of justification in a couple of weeks, but you know the definition of the word justified. I mean, it’s a courtroom scene. It means to be declared righteous. The judge looks at you and says, “Righteous.” So see the logic of this. Verse 23: everyone’s guilty. Everyone deserves condemnation. Verse 24: these sinners who are guilty are justified. Now that is virtually scandalous. How can God, who is righteous, justify sinners? What about His justice? What about His wrath?
In fact, he presses it further in verse 24. They are “justified by his grace.” And then to clarify, in case you don’t know the meaning of the word grace, “as a gift.” They are justified by grace as a gift. Well, if we are sinners, then justification can only come by grace. But the question is, how in the world can God do that? You can’t buy Him off. He’s a righteous judge. How can a righteous judge righteously pronounce sinners to be righteous? How can He do that? Seems like He’s cutting corners.
Well, He answers that. They are justified by His grace as a gift “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Now, there’s another term we’ll have to unpack; that will be next week. Redemption has to do with deliverance by payment of a ransom. We are delivered from the demands of the law, delivered from the punishment of the law, delivered from sin through Christ’s blood. We are delivered, we are redeemed, so we are justified because we’ve been redeemed. That’s the logic he’s giving us here. We’re justified because we have been delivered through Christ’s ransom paying. Freedom from the law, freedom from its demands, freedom from its condemnation through the redemptive work that is in Christ Jesus. I love that expression, by the way: “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” It’s not just the redemption that Jesus accomplished in His death, but Christ Himself is the Redeemer and having done the redeeming work on the cross, we then can have redemption only in union with Him. Redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
All right, we’re guilty, but we’re justified in Christ, freely as a gift. How do we have that? Well, through the redeeming work of Christ. Well, then the next question is just how is it Christ’s death justified us, or how did His death constitute a redemptive work? Verse 25: “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Notice verses 24 and 25 together. We’re justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood. So justification comes to us—notice the flow here—justification comes to us because of Christ’s redemptive work. Christ’s work constituted a redemption for us because He was a propitiation for our sins. We are justified because we’re redeemed. We’re redeemed because God is propitiated in Christ’s blood.
Here we get to the heart of the gospel: propitiation. This is a word that simply means to appease, to satisfy. God is wrathful, and Paul tells us now, through Christ’s blood, God is appeased. His wrath is averted from us. He’s satisfied. That’s the word propitiation. So this is how we were redeemed. Christ in our place, taking our wrath, bearing that wrath as our substitute, dying in our place, and because He bears the wrath of God against us in our place, God’s wrath is averted from us; He is appeased, He’s satisfied, and He’s no longer wrathful against us. This is the answer to the problem of divine justice that faces us in order to be saved. There’s a sense in which the first problem of the gospel, the first problem that is faced if we are going to be saved—there’s a sense in which the first problem is a problem that faces God. How can a just God declare sinners to be righteous? Answer: He sends His Son to be a propitiation in His blood in our place, constituting a redemptive work by which we are freed from condemnation and so justified in Christ Jesus.
Now we should notice here the expression in verse 25, “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood.” The idea is not, as it has too often been misrepresented—the idea is not that of God the Son working so as to persuade an otherwise unwilling Father. It is God who put forward His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. I’ve mentioned that this doctrine of propitiation, this doctrine of the wrath of God even, has fallen on hard times. That’s inevitably the case when we are a society like we are, that thinks way too highly of ourselves. But it’s also the case since this idea of satisfying the wrath of an angry God is considered by many today to be sub-Christian or even pagan. But the Bible insists on both. God is necessarily angry with us because of our sins. His justice demands to be satisfied and it will be without fail. And that is the whole meaning of the cross. The central problem we face, answered in Christ, bearing the wrath of God and so appeasing Him with regard to us and our sin. And the kicker of it all is that this God of wrath, who’s angry with us because of our sins—He is the one who put forth His own Son to satisfy that wrath in our place.
How is that all received then? Verse 25: “to be received by faith.” A gift—a gift purchased by Christ at great cost and yet given to us and received by faith. Now notice again in verse 25 the purpose of Christ’s death. Why was His death necessary? “To show God’s righteousness, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness.” So first off, the significance of Christ’s work Godward. There’s something He had to do to remove our sin; there’s something He had to do with respect to God. God’s wrath had to be satisfied. This is the amazing thing about this doctrine—it’s considered sub-Christian by so many, an idea of a wrathful God, but here we have God Himself putting forth His Son as a propitiation for our sins. So committed was God, both to our salvation and to His own righteousness, that He will not cut corners or compromise His righteousness, but amazingly—off-the-charts kind of love—sent forth His own Son to be the propitiation for our sins, to bear the wrath of God in our place.
This answers another question that often has come up over the centuries in Christian theological discussion. Was the cross necessary? Could God have saved another way? I heard an evangelical minister saying that just recently in a message that I heard online: “God is God, He can save us any way He wants to.” Is that right? And there have been various answers given over the centuries. It was not necessary for God to save us. But given His determination to save, His justice had to be satisfied. His wrath had to be satisfied. It had to be poured out. There’s no escaping it. And so, in order to accomplish both—to satisfy His justice against our sin and to save us at the same time—He put forth His Son as our substitute, who in our place bore the wrath and propitiated God. Hebrews chapter 2 seems to argue just like this. God determined to save His children, the seed of Abraham, their flesh and blood, and so it was necessary for the Son Himself to be made flesh and blood just like us. And in Hebrews chapter 2, again, the rationale for the incarnation is propitiation. He became our very blood and flesh to make propitiation to God.
This answers another problem, verse 25, at the end of the verse: “because in his forbearance he had passed over former sins.” The question is going to come up: well, if all of this redeeming work through Christ’s propitiation, appeasing God in His death—what about those who lived and died before Jesus? What about David? What about Moses? What about the prophets? How were they saved then? And Paul says, in effect here, it was all on credit. They were saved by Jesus’ propitiatory work, the same way we are. Theirs—in their case—the propitiation came after the fact. But it was on credit, as it were, and just the same, they are saved through the work of Christ.
I’ve told you before about it, I think. It’s been a while. For the sake of you who don’t remember or haven’t heard it, I think it’s so helpful to observe: some years ago, I was sent a tract from an atheist. They always come anonymously. I don’t know why that is the case, but they always come anonymously. And he had a tract here challenging Christianity. And his argument went like this: Abraham lied and endangered his wife. Jacob was a deceiver. David was the man after God’s own heart, and yet he was guilty of adultery and murder. So we have Abraham, guilty of lying, endangering his wife, yet he’s called a friend of God. And we have Jacob, who’s a deceiver and a liar, and God says, “Jacob, I’ve loved.” And then you have David, who’s guilty of adultery and guilty of murder, and God says he’s the apple of His eye. And the argument went like this: if God does not punish their sin, He is not the righteous God that He says He will be. And you think, yeah, we agree with that. That’s the heart of the gospel, isn’t it? That David was punished, Abraham was punished, Jacob was punished in the person of their substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not proclaiming a gospel that says God just decided not to be angry. We’re not proclaiming a gospel that says God has lowered the bar, cut corners. We’re saying that He was so committed to His righteousness that He gave His own Son to bear the wrath of sinners in their place so that for them God is appeased. Wrath is turned away from them, borne by their substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 26 then emphasizes the same thing again: “It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he may be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Now God, the righteous judge, can righteously, righteously declare sinners to be righteous because His righteousness has been satisfied in the work of Christ, their substitute. I keep saying it, this is the first problem in saving us: divine wrath, divine justice. And that’s precisely what Christ’s death was given to answer. So propitiation—this is the heart of the heart of the heart of the atonement. When we were on sacrifice a few weeks ago, I said that this is the heart of the atonement. Last week with substitution, I said this is the heart of the atonement. And now it’s propitiation. This is the heart of the heart of the atonement. This is what it means for Christ to become a sacrifice. It is to be our substitute. In what sense our substitute? A penal substitute, taking the wrath of God in our place.
I will probably be back to this passage again when we look at the doctrine of justification. But notice it here quickly again, how the atonement works. What’s the rationale? Verses 23 to 25. How are sinners justified? We’re justified because we’re redeemed, freed from the curse of the law. How are we redeemed? We’re redeemed because God has been propitiated by the death of His Son. First and foremost, the claims of God against us had to be answered. And this is what Christ’s death was given to do.
What Does Propitiation Mean To Me Now As A Believer?
All right, then, propitiation is central to every saving benefit. This is the whole ground and means of our justification, of our redemption, our reconciliation. We’ll unpack all of those terms in time to come. But the next question is: what does this mean now to the believer? How do we come to God and be accepted by God? Well, through the redemptive, propitiatory work of Christ. All right, I’ve come to God through Christ. He has accepted me. What does that now mean to me as a believer? And the passage given to answer that is 1 John 2. “What does propitiation mean to me now as a believer?”
1 John 1, verse 5, and then through into chapter 2, verse 2. John here now, the apostle, gives us an answer. 1 John 1:5: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I’m writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
I tried to emphasize this as we read through, but notice the “but if, if, but if” structure of the passage. Verses 6 and 7: we can’t claim to have fellowship with God, who is light, while walking in darkness. “If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and don’t truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship.” Righteous behavior is demanded of God’s people. It’s one of their characteristics. Verse 8: we can’t claim to have no sin. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us.” But now we have the contrast: “But if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And then verses 10 and following: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar. His word is not in us. My little children, I’m writing these things to you so that you do not sin. But if anyone does sin,” here’s what’s offered to the believer, “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.”
The whole thrust here is that a Christian is not one who denies sin. In fact, a Christian is one who acknowledges his sin, but he just has a gospel answer to it. That’s the long and short. But notice in verse 1 of chapter 2, John gives a twofold purpose in writing this passage. Verse 1, he’s written: “I write this so that you do not sin.” That’s why I’m writing this—all about God being light and the responsibility to walk in the light and not in darkness. It’s a matter of not denying that we have sinned, but confessing our sins. “All of this I’ve written so that you do not sin.” But then next, his purpose is to give us assurance when we do sin. I want you to see that in this passage. It’s absolutely essential. “I’ve written so that you do not sin, but I’m writing so that you have assurance even if you do.” This again, verse 1: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He’s the propitiation for our sins.”
So notice how Jesus is the answer to our sins as believers. First of all, He’s “Jesus Christ the righteous.” That’s important. Not just Jesus Christ the loving. He’s Jesus Christ the righteous, the righteous one who stood in place of sinners taking their place. Jesus Christ the righteous. Specifically, he says He is the “propitiation for our sins.” So this righteous substitute has come. He has stood in our place. He’s rendered acceptable sacrifice to God. God has accepted Him. His wrath has been averted from us because it fell on Him. And John says this is the answer for your daily sins. Christ is the propitiation for our sins. Jesus Christ, the righteous. If you have Jesus, God is satisfied with Him. And His wrath is no longer against us.
So here’s the assurance that John is offering us here. When you sin, remember: Jesus Christ, the righteous, is the propitiation for our sins. In other words—and I want to say it this way; it can be stunning to think of it, it can almost sound scandalous—John is writing to us to give assurance to the sinning Christian. Isn’t that what he’s doing here? John is writing and tells us that propitiation is the ground of assurance for the sinning Christian. I’m really glad John made this application because we’d be hesitant to do it for fear of taking sin too lightly. He has tried to answer that already with the requirement to walk in the light and the demand to confess our sins and all of that. But here he says, “I write to you so that you don’t sin. But if you do, we have an advocate with the Father,” a defense attorney, someone to argue our case before the judge. Who is it? “Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And he is the propitiation for our sins.”
Now don’t tell me that learning is not important—to learn biblical and theological vocabulary. Propitiation is a word you want to know. Whenever conscience nags me, I want to remember this wonderful word, propitiation. Christ is the propitiation for my sins. God is not wrathful toward me. Jesus Christ took that wrath in my place. Knowing this doctrine of propitiation, we can face the hard questions of sin honestly. It’s where every other religion—even the skewed versions of what they call Christianity—this is where they go wrong. How do you face this hard question of sin? Is God just going to surrender His justice, let bygones be bygones, decide not to be angry? That’s not God, as our atheist friend rightly reminded us. But knowing this doctrine of propitiation, we can face the hard question of our sin and we can say, “Yeah, I have sinned. And yes, because of my sin, I’m condemned. Yes, my sin evokes God’s wrath. But the Lord Jesus Christ has stepped into my place. He has offered Himself to God. He has satisfied every demand of justice in my place. In my place, He has borne the wrath of God against my sin. God’s wrath against me has been averted. He is satisfied. He’s been appeased by Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is the propitiation for my sin through Christ’s curse-bearing, wrath-absorbing, sin-removing sacrifice.”
Even though I sin, God is not wrathful toward me. Jesus Christ has answered for it all. He is the propitiation for my sins. That’s what John says here. “I’ve written so you don’t sin, but if you do, here’s the assurance: we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.” Any of you who are not in Christ, the pressing question that you face—you can suppress it, one day you will face it—the pressing question that you face is: how will you answer this problem of divine wrath against you because of your sin? Did you really think that your feeble, faltering attempts at goodness and even your greatest accomplishments in goodness are enough to answer this problem of divine wrath because of your sin? Worse yet, you think God’s going to cut a corner for you? The reality is you stand under condemnation before this righteous God, and that sentence of condemnation will be served. And the only way for you to escape is to find one in your place who has satisfied the demands of justice. Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins.
The great relief that we all sensed when we came to Christ at first was that God is no longer against me. The great value that we found in Jesus was that here’s one who took the wrath of God in my place. Every day of my life, I want to be reminded that Jesus Christ, the righteous, endured the wrath of God in my place. Anytime I’m reminded of my sin, I want to remember this wonderful word, propitiation. When I bow my head to pray and conscience accuses—”You’ve got no right to be here. You’ve got no right to ask for more. Remember what you did yesterday”—I go to pray and conscience accuses. I want to remember Jesus Christ is the one that God put forward as propitiation in His blood. That God so loved us that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
There is in every one of us an inexpungable sense that we deserve judgment for our sins. We all see that. We can suppress it to one degree or another, but we all see it. We’re created in God’s image. In God’s image we have a sense of justice and rightness and right and wrong and good and bad. We all recognize that we’ve done the bad and we all recognize that we deserve judgment. There’s this sense in every one of us innately that after death, we’ll come to accounts payable. We’ll have to settle up with our Creator. That is a standard feature of virtually every religion in the world. We just can’t escape this sense that after death, accounts have to be settled. When it comes time for me to die, I want to remember this word, propitiation. I want to know that Jesus Christ the righteous stood in my place and He took all the wrath of God for me. And that God is satisfied.
There are a number of benefits that come to us because Christ has borne the wrath of God in our place. We’ll see them in the coming weeks. Redemption, justification, reconciliation. We’ll unpack those in the days to come, but this is basic. This is first. Here we’ve come to the heart of the atonement: the Lord Jesus bearing the wrath of God in our place. This is the ground of our acceptance before God. It’s the ground of our redemption. It’s the ground of our justification, the ground of our reconciliation. This is the ground of Christ’s ongoing intercessory work because of our daily sins. And John tells us this is the ground of our assurance as well—that even in light of my sin, God has been propitiated, His wrath is appeased. He hasn’t just decided not to be angry anymore, but Christ has stood in our place and answered for our sins and bore the wrath of God for us. Amen. Let’s pray.