Propitiation - Gospel Thoughts for the Week

Propitiation (prō-pĭsh'ē-ā'shən) .
Now there's a word you don't hear very much. What does it mean?

Systematic theologian Wayne Grudem explains it like this: a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor (Systematic Theology, page 575). It isn’t a ‘doing away’ with wrath, but a transfer of wrath from one object to another.

Is the 'God of love' angry and wrathful? You bet. Consider Psalm 7:11, "God is a righteous judge and one who has indignation every day", and Ephesians 2:1-7 where rejecters of God are called "children of wrath". Romans 9:22 makes reference to "vessels of wrath". Consider also the account of Adam and Eve, specifically in Genesis 3:8: "They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day". In a book on marriage (ironically) Charles Swindoll describes that the Hebrew phrase ‘cool of the day’ is RUAH or WIND. He goes on to say that research into this phrase suggests it could mean "during the wind of the storm". When we experience a storm, a severe storm, don't we imagine fury and wrath? This explanation of this phrase makes perfect sense when we consider what just happened between Adam and Eve and God.

Consider also the following quotes on the wrath of God from great men of God:

Jonathan Edwards (from his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God) - "They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow."

William Gurnall (1660) said: "When I consider how the goodness of God is abused by the greatest part of mankind, I cannot but be of his mind that said, The greatest miracle in the world is God’s patience and bounty to an ungrateful world. But think not, sinners, that you shall escape thus; God’s mill goes slow, but grinds small; the more admirable His patience and bounty now is, the more dreadful and unsupportable will that fury be which ariseth out of His abused goodness".

John Piper says that we have preferred other things… "God is not indifferent to that. Our sin is not small, and in fact is quite insulting to our Creator. The seriousness of an insult rises with the dignity of the One being insulted. Failure to love God is not TRIVIAL- it is TREASON".

Back to Ephesians 2:1-7 mentioned above... read this passage. God doesn’t take bad people and make them good, he takes dead people and makes them alive. How does he do this? By sending Jesus to absorb the wrath (diverts that wrath) that we deserved, taking the full brunt of the force in the cross. Christ is our SUBSTITUTE. He bore the wrath we deserved and thus SATISFIED the Father’s JUSTICE.

What is our response to this? When we recognize the seriousness of our sin, and the wrath that we’ve avoided because of the finished work of Christ on the Cross we, the only response is to be awestruck!

I like this word 'propitiation'.