Jesus Our Propitiation…

… 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. (I John 2:1-2)

In my previous article, I mentioned that certain evangelicals are currently denying the very heart of the christian gospel, that is, the death of Jesus as our substitute in judgment.

The only gospel I have ever known is that Jesus died in our place to pay the price for our sin. On the cross he bore the full penalty under the law of God, and suffered the wrath of a holy God as our substitute.

Incredibly there are christian teachers, and thinkers who vigorously deny this truth. One example of this, Steven Chalke, an evangelical author in England, shockingly referred to the doctrine of Penal Substitution as a form of “cosmic child abuse”,

“John’s Gospel famously declares, ‘God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son’ (John 3:16). How then have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Son? The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement ‘God is love.’ If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” (Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 182-183.

There are several fallacies in this paragraph which I believe isrepresentative of the thinking of an ever-growing number within the evangelical world, which have led them to this apostate denial of the meaning of the cross.

* The fallacy about love- Chalke erroneously holds that it is a contradiction to say that the God of love is also a God of wrath. But what is love? The Love of God is holy love, it is a Love that of necessity ‘hates’ all that is false, evil, unjust, immoral, rebellious and ungodly.

Our Holy God didn’t “suddenly decide to vent his anger…” on His Son, as Chalke blasphemously suggests. The wrath displayed on the cross was a necessity, anticipated by the Father and the Son, from the very foundation of the earth.

* Misunderstanding Propitiation – Jesus offered Himself unto the Father as a Propitiation,  that is, as a satisfaction offering. The term “propitiation” (hilasmos) means “satisfaction,” “appeasement.” The idea is to make someone favorable again by satisfying the claims against them.

Jesus’ death on the cross, is described as the propitiation, which God himself has set forth,

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 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; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.(Romans 3:21-26)

The word Propitiation presupposes the wrath that deniers of penal substitution are ashamed of. We are told in Exodus 34 that God will “by no means clear the guilty”, yet at the same time, that God will have mercy for thousands…how can this situation be reconciled?

* The fallacy confusing “personal” versus Judicial violence –Chalke says, If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son…it violates the sermon on the mount.

Our God is violent, that is the part of the message of the flood, David and Goliath, Ananias and Saphirra, and of the crucifixion of Jesus. The world is slated for a violent end, a baptism of fire by the hand of the Holy God.

But He is not violent in the ‘personal insult sense’ rather in a responsible, judicial sense. “The wicked shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God…”. God will do whatever it takes to remove evil out of His Holy universe.

How can a Holy God have saving, forgiving mercy on sinners, yet at the same time, “by no means clear the guilty”? Will He forgive sinners at the expense of his Holiness? Did God sweep sin under the carpet, arbitrarily forgiving sinners?

The cross of Calvary is the answer, for there on that cross, the Holy God “by no means cleared the guilty”, pouring out His infinite wrath against all that is evil and false, fully punishing with Holy vengeance every transgression against his Holy order. The cross is the demonstration of the Righteousness of God.

But  the death of Jesus as our substitute, is also the supreme revelation of the Love of God. This is Holy love. God made a righteous way to save His fallen children, salvation had to be accomplished in a way that would be consistent with his righteousness.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.(I John 4:10)

God’s universe is a moral universe. There is a strict law of cause and effect, sowing and reaping, and punishment/reward built into the very fabric of creation. God himself is the Righteous judge of all men, and will require of every man “according to what he has done”.

Substitution is the way God has ordained to satisfy the claims of broken law of God. The terms and execution of this substitution were set by the Father and the Son, and the resurrection of Jesus is the sign of accomplishment of it.  God’s wrath has been satisfied against sinners once and for all by the offering of Jesus.