God is No Longer Angry
Here is some of the Good News for today: God is no longer offended. Ever since the fall people have known that God is not happy with us. They have been so certain that they have been willing to give up their children in sacrifice, build large temples, and beat themselves mercilessly. All this from the idea that nobody gave them: the reality that God is offended by our Sin. God is offended by the sinful acts we do, and God is offended by the sinful nature of our hearts that has been going on since Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Here is the trouble: when God is offended it is not the same thing we think of when we say that we are offended. We may be offended because someone said something that bugs us. This is the lighter side of “offense.” The offence that we gave God can only be punishable by death (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:1-3). “Death” in Scripture is not usually physical death, but is an eternal separation from God. Having been put in this odd situation every story has two sides: God’s side and our side. From our side we need to be forgiven, we need to be redeemed from the Sin that we were enslaved to. From God’s side, his righteousness has to be satisfied. He cannot one day decide, “I am not going to be a perfect and righteous God. I’ll just forget about this whole sin thing.” If he were to do that He would compromise His very character and all of creation would blow apart because there would now be no difference between God and Satan, both parties would be compromised. Praise God, this can never be!
Thus, on God’s side He must be propitiated. The definition of this ten point theological egghead word is below. But essentially it means simply that God’s wrath must be appeased. God needs to punish the offence in order to remain true to His character as righteous and holy, just and perfect. If He does not do this He would be a liar, but we know that this can never be true (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2). But how can this happen? Can the offenders (us) propitiate Him? Yes, in a sense. We COULDpropitiate God by remaining forever out of fellowship with Him, bearing the consequence of our sin in eternal separation from Him in Hell. But this was not God’s original purpose in making man. He wanted to have a relationship with us (1 John 1:3). He wanted us to be instruments of His glory (Ephesians 1:5-6). So something had to be done.
The moment man fell God (being omniscient) already had a plan in place, and His plan was to be propitiated in another way. Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, eternally and forever God as the second member of the Trinity [John 1:1-3]). It is only because Jesus was God that He could propitiate God the Father completely. As stated earlier, the only way we could appease God’s wrath is to receive our just desserts for all of eternity. However, because Jesus is on the same level as God, He can propitiate God for all eternity and still have some left.
Think about this example: If my car rolls down the hill because the parking brake didn’t work then rolls through the living room of your house. What are you going to do? Obviously my car has incurred far more damage than it is worth (If we are talking about my personal car, the damage is astronomically more than it is worth)There are only two ways that you might be propitiated. It would almost seem strange to say that the only way you could be made happy is to take a bat to my car and have it destroyed. But in all likelihood you would actually spend your energy suing me and make me pay back the damages. My car can’t propitiate you (the closest thing that you can do to satisfy yourself is to destroy it) but I can (theoretically). You can sue my car, can only sue me because we are both humans. I don’t need to be destroyed to propitiate you, I simply need to make up the damages, which I can do because we are on the same level.
This is great news! God is no longer angry, if we have accepted His propitiation, His payment and provision, by putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, God is no longer angry! His wrath is satisfied! But there is yet more great news. It’s not just a fresh start, there’s more!
My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. 1 John 2:1-2
Not only is God propitiated for our past sinful actions before God, but he is also propitiated for the mistakes, and sins that we make going forward. We are in Christ, the perfect propitiation. This is a gift to us in Christ and there is no where that this gift can be earned. It is only found in Jesus because only He can give it. How great is the Salvation that Jesus Christ has won for us!
Webster’s Dictionary:
Propitiation
Pro*pi`ti*a"tion\, n. [L. propitiatio: cf. F. propitiation.]
1. The act of appeasing the wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the act of making propitious.
2. (Theol.) That which propitiates; atonement or atoning sacrifice; specifically, the influence or effects of the death of Christ in appeasing the divine justice, and conciliating the divine favor.
He [Jesus Christ] is the propitiation for our sins. --1 John ii. 2.[1]
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