Errors Concerning Propitiation, Part 1

Review of Propitiation

0:02 Assuming that the great majority of those of you gathered here this morning were present last Lord's Day morning, I shall be unusually brief in surveying the thrust of the previous message and move as quickly as possible to the heart of the concerns today, which in reality are simply an appendage to the exposition of last Lord's Day morning.

0:29 As we presently contemplate the central figure in the salvation we receive and proclaim, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, we are presently concerned with the majesty of his offices. And as we have seen from the scriptures, his priestly office is his central office. The scriptures demonstrate this in that more materials are given to us concerning the priesthood than concerning his office as prophet or king, and in a very real sense the priesthood is the rationale for the kingly and for the prophetic offices of our Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, we have discovered from the scriptures that the essential priestly functions of our Lord are those of oblation or sacrifice and intercession. Now for several Lord's Day mornings our concern has been to grapple with the fundamental significance

1:26 of his priestly act of sacrifice. Thus far we have established that the essence of the sacrifice is to be found in the language of Hebrews 7.27, where we read that he offered up himself. He offered up himself.

1:47 Our Lord fulfilled the role both of the passive substitutionary victim. He was the Lamb who bears away the sin of the world and the active representative priest who himself offered up himself unto God in his death as a sacrifice. Furthermore, we saw that bringing together the biblical concept of what precisely was accomplished in that sacrifice was

2:15 The classic words of Christian theology are of tremendous help to us. In offering up himself, our Lord made a real, that is, an objective, vicarious, penal satisfaction for sin. In so doing, he secured our access to and our acceptance with God.

2:38 Now, when we turn to the Scriptures, we find that the sacrificial work of our Lord is described in specific biblical categories. We started last Lord's Day to consider the first of these, namely propitiation. And we laid out from the Scriptures the necessity of contemplating the priestly sacrifice as a propitiation. Both the Old and the New Testaments press upon us this demand. For in such passages as Hebrews 2.17...

3:07 we are informed that as a priest he made propitiation for the sins of the people. And then we sought to grapple with the meaning of propitiation. And we saw that from Old and New Testament and the secular use of the word, the concept of appeasement of divine wrath by sacrifice lies at the heart of the term propitiation. It assumes, you see, divine wrath as the context in which Christ offers up himself as a sacrifice, divine wrath involving God's aversion to sin, his displeasure at the sinner, and his purpose to avenge sin in the person of the sinner. When therefore it is said that our great high priest in offering himself made propitiation, it means nothing less than this, that by his sacrificial death for our sins, Christ pacified the wrath of God

4:06 So that in your mind, propitiation, wrath, and pacification should be an inseparable trilogy. Propitiation, wrath, pacification. Jesus Christ pacifying divine wrath in making himself a sacrifice for sin. Now a truth such as this, so central to securing the glory of God in redemptive activity...

Why Address Errors: Teaching by Contrast

4:34 so fundamental to the comfort of the awakened sinner, so strategic for the stable faith of the people of God, it should be no surprise to us that such a truth as propitiation has been the constant victim of diluting tendencies, of denying tendencies, of perverting and misstating tendencies. And Professor Murray says, classic work on this subject in redemption accomplished and applied, that there is perhaps no truth of the atonement which has been more viciously attacked and more vehemently denied than the atonement of Christ considered as propitiation. You see, the more central a truth is, the more violent will be the attacks of the spirit of error against that truth. The more a truth is calculated by God to comfort and console the saints, the

5:30 the more it will be attacked by the devil to disrupt the consolation and the peace of the saints. And therefore, for the next several messages, or next two today and the following exposition at least, I want to speak regarding the three major mistakes and errors or heresies with regard to the doctrine of propitiation. Now in doing this, my purpose is not to magnify errors.

5:57 Some people wonder, why don't you preach against this, pastor, and why don't you preach against that and preach against the other? Well, you see, the great task of a Christian minister is not to magnify error by expounding it, but it's to replace error by implanting truth clearly in the minds of God's people. And the only time we deal with error is in order to set the truth in bolder relief and to immunize the people of God against that error. For instance,

6:28 If my concern is to teach a young child what a horse is, he's never seen a horse, but he's heard the word horse. Well, I would start by taking a picture or drawing a little rough diagram of a horse. And I would tell him a horse is an animal that has four legs. A horse is an animal that has a long neck. A horse is an animal that has two ears and has a tail. A horse is an animal that when full grown is usually bigger than the average man or woman.

6:56 Now, if I passed on all that information, the youngster to whom I was passing it on would have some notion of what a horse was. But he might see a giraffe and say, Pastor Martin, look at the horse. And I said, that's not a horse. He said, well, it must be. It's got four legs. It's got a tail. It's got a long neck. And it's got two ears. Ah, but I say, it's not a horse. Well, he said, why isn't it a horse?

7:23 And then I differentiate between a giraffe and a horse. And I say, you see, the giraffe has two front legs that are much longer than his backwoods. And his back isn't parallel to the ground. It goes off at about a 45 degree angle. And furthermore, he's got more than just a long neck. He's got a long neck. Now the child knows the difference between giraffe and horse. But two days later, he comes up and says, Pastor Martin, I saw a horse. I say, oh, you did? Where? Oh, out in so and so. And I go over and lo and behold, there's a cow's.

7:55 And I say, that's not a horse, that's a cow. He says, well, that can't be. It's got four legs. It's about the size or a little bit bigger than a human being. It's got two ears. I say, yes, but you see, it's got another. And its legs are sort of squat and short. And I point out that now he knows the difference between horse, giraffe, cow. You see the point I'm making? He may think he understands what a horse is until...

8:21 He confuses it with something that's in the same ballpark. And now I will differentiate between horse, giraffe, cow, and other four-legged animals, focusing upon the peculiar characteristics of a giraffe and a cow, not to teach him primarily what a giraffe or a cow is, but my main concern is to teach him what a horse is. Now my main burden is to set before you from the Scriptures, what is propitiation? Propitiation.

8:48 When the Scriptures tell us that God set forth Jesus Christ to be propitiation in His blood, what is propitiation? Well, you say it has to do with the appeasement, the turning away, the pacification of divine anger by the sacrifice of Christ. Ah, but do you have a precise grasp upon that concept? My concern is to look at certain errors in order to set out that truth in even bolder relief

9:17 so that you may appreciate the truth and know the difference between biblical propitiation, the horse, and liberal propitiation, the giraffe, an unthinking, indistinct, undefined evangelical propitiation that is in the minds of many of God's people, which may be the cow. And this is my only purpose, but it is my purpose, so that understanding more clearly what our Lord has done...

Heresy of the Enemies of the Gospel: Paganizing Described

9:46 We may love him with a more intelligent and fervent love, and we may be more true to the truth as it is in Jesus. All right? Primary error number one, and this is all we shall have time to treat this morning. The first great error concerning the propitiation is that which I'm calling paganizing the propitiation. Paganizing the propitiation. Paganizing the propitiation.

10:14 That is, taking the biblical concept of propitiation and allowing it to be shaped and molded by the concepts of pagan religion, which are nothing but the expression of depraved man when he touches religious thought and religious activity. That's what paganism is. Now, there are two strands of paganizing the propitiation. One is a strand of paganizing the

10:41 found in the thinking and writing and speaking of the avowed enemies of the gospel. Now, they don't call themselves that, but that's what they are. And therefore, I shall call it the heresy of the enemies of the gospel who paganize the propitiation. But then there is an error committed unwittingly by the friends of the gospel.

11:04 And I shall call this, then, the error of the friends of the gospel. Notice the two terms? I'm using different terms. The paganizing of the propitiation has two basic strands. The paganizing found in the heresy of the enemies of the gospel, and the error in the thinking of the friends of the gospel. All right, first of all, then, the heresy of the enemies of the gospel. It has long been a tactic of the enemies of truth, to create a caricature of the truth, and then to appeal to men to see how ridiculous that caricature is, and in rejecting the caricature to get them to reject the truth. Now you know what caricature is, don't you kids? Sometimes you go over to Willowbrook Mall and you see that artist sitting there drawing pictures of people, and what he's doing is a caricature. He takes the person and his most outstanding features and he draws them way out of proportion. I'm sure if they were caricaturing me,

12:03 They'd take the ski jump nose and they'd make it look just like something over at St. Moritz where they do the world championship ski jumping. Or they might take some other characteristic that appears a little bit out of the normal. Well, that's what caricature is. You take the thing not in its native setting and in its proper proportion, but you take one aspect of it and stretch it out of proportion until it's grotesque.

12:31 Now, artistic caricature is for the sake of humor or emphasis of a certain facet of a person's personality or his political stance or something else. Everyone caricatured President Carter's 32-tooth grin. That was an easy one to caricature. Well, you see, the enemies of truth, instead of looking at the truth in its beautiful symmetry as found in the Scripture, they take a facet of the truth and they stretch it out of all due proportion until it becomes ugly.

13:00 And they say to people, look at that ugly thing. You don't worship a God like that, do you? Now that's precisely what the enemies of the gospel have done with the doctrine of propitiation. They have presented it as a pagan notion that is utterly repulsive to anyone who has any sympathy for the Christian gospel. Now what is the essential pagan concept of propitiation? I have found no clearer, simple statement of that

13:31 issue than is found in J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God, chapter 18, The Heart of the Gospel, in which he says this, The idea of pagan propitiation is as follows. There are various gods, none enjoying absolute dominion, but each one with some power to make life easier or harder for you. The temper of these gods is uniformly uncertain.

13:57 They take offense at the smallest things. Or they get jealous because they feel you're paying too much attention to the other gods and other people and not enough to them. And then they take it out on you by manipulating circumstances to your harm. Why, the only course at that point is to humor and mollify that god by an offering. The rule with offerings is the bigger the better. For the gods are inclined to hold out for something sizable. In this they are cruel and heartless.

14:26 But they have the advantage, so what can you do? They can make it rough on you, so you don't like the terms, you've got to live with it. It's sort of like every tax increase. Whether you like it or not, somebody else is making it, you've got to live with it. Well, there's the concept, you see. You've got these many gods, very capricious. You can never predict whether they're going to smile in the morning or frown or be angry. And if they get angry, they can begin to make things rough for you. So you've got to placate them by offering a gift. And of course, the bigger the gift, the more power you'll have with the Deities.

14:54 Human sacrifice in particular is expensive but effective. Thus pagan religion appears as a callous commercialism, a matter of managing and manipulating your gods by cunning bribery, and within paganism, propitiation, the appeasing of celestial bad tempers, takes its place as a regular part of life, one of the many irksome necessities that one cannot get on without. Now that is the most clear and Simple layman's definition of the pagan concept of propitiation I found anywhere. In all the hundreds of pages I've read on propitiation, that says it beautifully. You've got the idea now. The pagan with his idea of many gods...

15:35 All of them different, all of them vying for control, capricious. If things go bad with you and there's sickness and calamity, why one of the gods is irked by something you're doing, so you present him sacrifices. And if the circumstances don't change, give him a bigger one. He may be up there on the bargaining table saying, I don't like the terms yet. Give me more, give me more. Until the ultimate sacrifice, human sacrifice, is made to appease the gods. Now, the enemies of the gospel come along and they say, now look.

Liberal Caricature of Propitiation

16:03 These evangelical Christians, these Reformed Christians, these people that tote their Bible and quote their Bible, they tell you that there's an angry God in heaven. And that angry God must look down and see the blood of his own son. And seeing the blood of his own son, wrings his hands with delight and says, Isn't that wonderful? My son is shedding his blood. Oh, that's lovely. Now I'll be merciful. They say, Is that the God you worship? Ridiculous. You see, they present a caricature.

16:32 of this mean, capricious, angry God who somehow has an almost sadistic delight in seeing His Son suffer and beholding Him suffer, then will be merciful to sinners. And they say, that's ridiculous. That is so foreign to the concept of the God of the Bible. And this is their message. God is love. God is all love. God is nothing but love. There is no wrath in God. There is no positive aversion to sin.

17:00 There is no displeasure at the sinner, and there is no will to avenge the sin in the person of the sinner. There is nothing but disappointed and frustrated love in God. Now follow me closely. Oh yes, God sees sin and moral evil, and it breaks His loving heart. He is disappointed that men destroy themselves by their sin. He is frustrated that His love does not conquer. So you know what He did? He allowed His Son to die. The supreme example of good suffering at the hands of evil with the hope that as men behold this example of the triumph of selfless love. It will break their hearts, show them their selfishness, and they will no longer seek to be tight-fisted rebels, but will seek to be loving servants of God. And that's their doctrine of the cross. And they say it's abominable to think

18:00 that God would be like the pagan gods who are angry and capricious. Well, what is our answer to that heresy of the enemies of the gospel? And it is nothing but blatant, damnable heresy. Well, our answer is that such a God is nothing but an idol. He is the figment of men's imagination. And I want you to turn now to the book of 1 John.

Answer: God Is Both Light and Love

18:28 in which we find that the God of love is also the God of light. And the God of light is the God of love, teaching us that God is eternally, essentially, immutably light and love, so that all of His love is love in the context of light, and all of His light is light in the context of love. 1 John chapter 1, having asserted that all that he knows has come by this intimate, personal, face-to-face contact with Jesus Christ. John says in verse 5, and this is the message we have heard from Him, that is from Christ, and announce unto you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

19:25 And in John's usage in this very chapter, light signifies everything that is the opposite of moral evil and sin. Light is a synonym for holiness and justice and purity, all bound up in one in the person of our God. Now John says the message Christ revealed to us concerning the nature and character of God is this. God is light. Not that He has light.

19:54 that he expresses light, he is in his essential nature pure, unsullied, burning light, spotless moral purity, holiness, justice, and truth. Now John goes on to say in chapter 4 and verse 8, He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

20:24 And again, we have the same kind of statement. He not only expresses love, manifests love, possesses love, He is love. It is His nature. So this God whom John presents is eternally, essentially, immutably light and love. Never love at the expense of light. Never light at the expense of love.

20:51 Now you see, the heresy of the enemies of the gospel who paganize the propitiation is a doctrine that denies that God is light. And it says simply that God is love. There is no such thing as wrath, as an active disposition moving from the nature of God in the presence of sin. No, no, you'll have to rewrite your Bible as we saw last week. The God of Gethsemane and Golgotha.

21:19 Is the God who placed the burning sword at the entrance to Eden. Is the God who sent the flood upon the world of the ungodly. The God of Golgotha and Gethsemane. Is the God who turned the cities of the plain into burning ashes. The God who opened up the earth so that it swallowed up Nadab in a bayou. And they went down alive into hell. He is the God...

21:47 of infinite and eternal and burning light, and therefore the God of infinite and holy wrath. Romans 1.18 has never been scrubbed from the record of God's will and mind. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. There is wrath as an active, positive expression of God's antipathy to sin.

22:17 So you see, the great problem of salvation is simply this. How can God be what He is? Essentially, immutably, eternally light. And as a God of light, disposed to turn from sin, to punish the sinner. And yet at the same time be the God of love, who moved by His sovereign disposition to love, would accept and receive the sinner. How can God be just?

22:47 And still forgive. And I'm going to make a statement that I hope will rivet itself upon your conscience. Far better that every son of Adam should be damned. Than the character of God be tarnished. Do you hear me? Far better that every fallen son of Adam be damned.

Romans 3:21-26 — Propitiation Solves the Dilemma

23:16 And that the character of God be tarnished. How can God be light and take that which is sin itself into his presence? How can he be love and not have his love in conflict with light? And light not in conflict with love? Well, this moves us to the critical propitiation passage in Romans. And I promised you we would consider it. Turn, please, to Romans chapter 3.

23:44 And here is the divine answer to that great dilemma. Romans chapter 3. The entire passage, verses 21 to 26. Time will not permit a careful analysis of it, but notice the main emphasis. Having concluded the entire human race under sin. And then stated in verse 21 that now, apart from the law, God has revealed a way of acceptance.

24:14 that involves a righteousness that God provides in Christ and is received by faith, he now expounds that righteousness. Notice verse 23. 24, I'm sorry, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation. The to be are in italics in the 1901 edition. There is no to be verb.

24:44 In the original.

25:12 Put on your thinking cap and get the leading ideas. Keep your eyes right on your Bible. You have permission not to look up here, but to look at your Bible. Now notice what he brings together. Christ is the propitiation in order to show the righteousness of God in his past actions. You say, well, what in the world does that have to do with what he's talking about? Notice the emphasis now. Whom God serves.

25:40 Set forth a propitiation in His blood to do what? To show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime. You see what Paul is saying? God made a promise at the flood. Remember what the promise was? As long as the earth remaineth, even though the imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is evil from his youth, and man will be as sinful after the flood is before...

26:10 God says, I'll never destroy the earth again with a flood. As long as the earth remaineth, there shall be seed time and harvest. And you look at the generations of the nations that lived in sins as bad as the sins of what we call the antediluvians. That's the before flood people. We see wickedness is great after the flood. Why no flood? We see wickedness right here. We are

26:37 Main Street Sodom in the New York metropolitan area, when men flaunt their homosexuality and their perversion and their deviant behavior. Why no fire and brimstone? Is God less righteous now? Is God less angry with sin and sinners? What about the generations whose sins cried up to heaven for a flood, for fire and brimstone, It appeared as though God was not righteous. What was He doing? He was passing over sin in His forbearance. Why? Because He was waiting for the fullness of the times when He would send His Son. Now get the text. When He set Him forth, He set Him forth to be what? Copaciation! To declare His righteousness. What is God saying? God is saying, I have not ceased to be a God of light.

27:33 simply because I have not dealt with men's sins as severely after the flood as I did before the flood? And do you want to know how I still feel about sin? Behold my Son upon the cross. Behold Him turning away my wrath by becoming the object of my wrath. Do you want to know how I feel about sin? Behold my Son, the sinless one. Behold Him in all of His spotless innocence. Behold

28:02 him in the purity of his character, so that his worst enemies cannot find a just accusation against him. Behold him in his perfect innocence. Behold him in his spotless moral purity. And now behold him, falling upon the ground, sweating as it were great drops of blood, somehow confronted with what he calls a cup, and turning away

28:29 from it, and yet in holy obedience embracing it. Behold Him under the shrouded heavens. Behold His writhing form. Behold His cry. Behold His agony. Do you want to know if I am still the God of light? Behold my Son. I sent Him forth a propitiation. Am I righteous? Look at my Son. Behold the rod of righteousness coming down upon Him, demanding death of the sinner, and who as he substitutes for those whom the Father has given him, he has constituted the sinner as much as though he himself had sinned. God has set him forth a propitiation to show what? To show that in passing over the sins of generations, he was not leaning towards sin. He had not evolved from the God of life.

29:28 light and love into a God of pure love? No, no. He is immutably, eternally, unchangeably light and love. Now, verse 26, for the showing I say of His righteousness at this present season, that He Himself might be just, and yet the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Do you see the argument of the Apostle Paul?

29:58 Propitiation is the answer to the great dilemma within the nature of God. How can He in love forgive and in light punish sin? Christ has set forth a propitiation, and the anger of God falls upon the appointed substitute, so that all that is demanded of God's character as a God of light will All of His justice and holiness find full expression. And all of His love finds full expression in the providing of such a Savior and in the giving of Him on behalf of needy sinners. So when the enemies of the Gospel make a caricature of propitiation, may we understand that that is precisely what it is. Nothing!

Packer Quoted: Propitiation Establishes God's Morality

30:53 What a caricature. And I quote further from Mr. Packer who says, So far from calling in question the morality of God's way of dealing with sin, Paul says, based on this passage we've just expounded, Paul says the truth of propitiation establishes the morality of God and was explicitly intended to establish it. Paul's point is that the public spectacle of propitiation at the cross was a public manifestation, not merely of justifying mercy on God's part, but of righteousness and justice as the basis of justifying mercy. So the paganizing of the propitiation by the enemies of the gospel is laid to rest.

31:45 And the tragedy is they shall find to their everlasting shame that God has not evolved into a God of pure and unsullied and unmixed love. For there are few portions of the Word of God that speak with greater vigor to the intensity of the damnation of men than the passages directed to the prophecy of the damnation of heretics who deny the central doctrine of the propitiatory work of Christ. You read the book of Jude, and you read about these false teachers who creep in unawares, denying the Master that got them. Then you read what their plight is. Jude uses language that almost borders on what we would call sadism, but it is not. It is the poultry stuff of human words to express the awesomeness of divine wrath.

32:45 It's Jude who says wandering stars. To whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. You want language to strike dread to your heart. You meditate upon that.

33:18 reminds you that sin makes you liable to judgment, unless that conscience is prepared by the work of the Spirit to deal honestly with sin, your mind is disposed to find a lie that will pacify your troubled conscience. And it's the lie of liberal theology that pacifies our nuns, the consciences of multitudes. God is nothing but unsullied love.

33:48 No, he isn't, my friend. And that torment of conscience within your own breast is a preview of the great reality of the torments of hell that will come unless you repent and flee to Christ and are enveloped in Him who was enveloped in divine wrath on behalf of all of His people. So much for the heresy

Error of the Friends of the Gospel: Not Heresy but Deviation

34:15 of the enemies of the gospel who paganize the propitiation. Now, very briefly, the error of paganizing the propitiation manifested in the friends of the gospel. And again, I emphasize, I choose a different word. Some of you need a little more grace in the way you handle the truth and in the way you expose error. You're ready to call every deflection heresy. No, you shouldn't do that.

34:43 Heresy is a tenet which, if held, is inconsistent with a state of grace, at least the way I use it and the way it's generally used in Christian literature. An error is a deviation which, though serious, particularly in its fruits and contrary to the word, may not be inconsistent with being in a state of grace. So I'm speaking not about the heresy of paganizing the propitiation of by the friends of the gospel, but the error. Now, what is the error? Well, it's this idea. Well, yes, God is a God of light. And He ought to be angry with sin and sinners, and He must and will punish sin. Christ is the embodiment of love, who intervenes between the wrath-deserving sinner and the angry holy God. The result is that Christ has turned the wrathful God

35:40 into a loving God by His sacrifice. Now you see the error? The error is not in denying that God is a God of wrath. The error is found in denying that He is at the same time both wrathful and loving. And you have then the loving Jesus placating the angry Father so that

Answer One: Anti-Trinitarian Implications

36:06 be accepted. Now, the answer to this error falls into two fundamental categories. Number one, it is anti-Trinitarian, and secondly, it fails to do justice to the love of God as the starting point in providing the propitiation. You see, God is one in essence, will and purpose. There is a unity of desire and attribute and will within the Godhead. What the Father wills, the Son and the Spirit wills. What the Father, may I say it reverently for you,

36:36 In the motions of infinite and sovereign love, the Son and the Spirit feel in the motions of infinite, sovereign and eternal love. So then, all of the holiness and justice of God are present and active in all three persons of the Godhead. Is the Father angry with sin? The Son is angry with sin. You read it in the Gospels. Jesus looking round about him, being angered for their hardness of heart.

37:06 When you see him going through the temple, turning over the tables of the money changers and driving out the oxen with a scourge, what is that? That's divine anger in human manifestation. The spirit is angry. You see what happened when people lied to him in Acts chapter 5. He killed them. Why hast thou lied to the Holy Ghost? So you see, we must never conceive of the propitiation as though the father...

37:35 in the posture of wrath alone, and the Son is in the posture of love to His people, and by the work of the Son, the Father's wrath is satisfied so that He is now free to love us. That would be anti-Trinitarian. As one man has said, the idea that the Son changed the mind of His unkind Father by offering Himself in the place of sinful men is no part of the Gospel message. It is sub-Christian. Indeed, it is anti-Christian.

Answer Two: Love of God as the Source of Propitiation

38:03 for it denies the unity of will in the Father and the Son, and in reality falls back into polytheism, asking us to believe in two different gods. So that error must be forever purged from our thinking. All of our thinking of God the Father, Son, and Spirit must be Trinitarian. But then secondly, it fails to do justice to the love of God as the starting point in conceiving and in providing the propitiation. Turn to 1 John 4, if you will, please. 1 John chapter 4. Having announced that God is love in verse 8, now we read in 1 John 4, 9 and 10, Herein was the love of God manifested,

38:59 love, you see, is not a dormant principle laying in his heart, idle, unmoved. No, no. Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.

39:28 John is saying? He's saying the supreme manifestation of the love of God, and in the context it is God the Father, for it is the God who sends His Son, who is none other than God the Father. The supreme manifestation of the love of God is in the sending of His Son to be propitiation. So the whole concept of propitiation, the whole enactment of everything living

39:59 The incarnation, the supporting of our Lord in all of His trials and temptations so that He would be the sinless, divine, human Savior. And then all of these strange and mysterious interactions of the triune Godhead upon the cross in propitiation. These, John says, are the supreme manifestation of the law

40:26 Ephesians 5, Christ loved the church, gave Himself, but it's the supreme manifestation of the love of God the Father. He hath sent Him to be propitiation. So we do not say that the wrathful God is made loving by the propitiation. Rather, we say the wrathful God is loving in the provision of propitiation. See the difference? He is born

41:00 And therefore, the God of wrath, who does have a positive aversion to sin, even the sin in his elect, who does have this positive attitude of anger to the sinner, even the elect sinner in his sin, and who wills to punish sin in the person of the sinner, the wrathful God, is wonder of wonders the loving God. Who in eternity conceives a way in which there can be the fullest expression of all that He is as the God of light and all that He is as the God of love. And the only way that could be expressed was in the Incarnation and then the agony and sufferings of the incarnate God Himself until we stand back amazed and say that only the mind of God

41:58 could conceive such a plan that causes God to be manifestly just and yet the justifier of sinners. Only love as deep and powerful as divine love could submit to all of the self-sacrifice within the triune Godhead so that a propitiation might be made for sinners. I quote now from Professor Murray. who says the doctrine of the propitiation is precisely this, that God loved the objects of His wrath so much that He gave His own Son to the end that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of this wrath. It was Christ so to deal with the wrath that the loved ones would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of the

42:58 people, that is the propitiation. And we must be done with the error found even among the friends of the Gospel, with any thought that Christ is the great loving object of the Trinity in securing our salvation. The Father is the great anger object in the accomplishment of our salvation. No, it is the

43:31 of His love might be accepted on a just and a righteous grounds. The propitiation is the ground upon which divine love operates and the channel in which it flows in attaining its end. Oh, may I state it as bluntly as I know how, the love of God expressed in any other way than providing propitiation could not secure your salvation. But it was the love of God that planned it and secured it. Therefore, we do not worship God only in the purity of His infinite wrath and holiness manifested in the actual circumstances of the sacrifice.

Application: Have You Taken Divine Wrath Seriously?

44:24 we worship Him as the God of infinite love, whose love would ever design so mysterious a scheme as to secure the righteous release of guilty sinners. Now, having described and expounded the error of paganizing the propitiation, let me attempt to bring all of this home, as the old writers would say, to your bosom, to your conscience, to bring it all home to the point where you live,

44:54 Have dealings with God. Let me ask you a couple of very simple questions. Every boy, every girl, man, woman. I'm asking you this question. Sitting in this place this morning. Have you ever taken seriously the reality of divine wrath against human sin? Have you ever given five minutes serious thought to what it means. That God is angry with the wicked every day.

45:25 Have you ever given five minutes serious thought to the truth? I quote now from John 3. The wrath of God abideth, present tense, upon him that believeth not. Every moment of every day, of every week, of every year that I live in an unbelieving state, the wrath of God, infinite wrath, holy wrath in his

45:56 wrath hangs above my head. I ask you this morning, have you ever taken seriously the reality of divine wrath against not human sin in general, but your sin in particular? Now, I'm not asking you to do glibly say, oh, I believe in divine wrath. Oh, yeah, but I'm asking you, have you ever spent five minutes

46:23 complaining what it would mean in the language of Hebrews to fall into the hands of the living God. The writer to Hebrews says it is a fearful thing to fall into his hands. The context means to fall into his hands for judgment. Have you ever taken that seriously? If you've spent but five minutes taking that seriously...

46:52 You know what's happened to you? You've come to the conviction that the most burning issue in all of life is to find out how, how that wrath can be turned away. And once you've begun to take that issue seriously, you know what else has happened? You've come to the conviction it can't be turned away by God simply forgetting the sins. Because you say, if God just capriciously forgets the sins, what proof do I have that somewhere out in eternity He won't remember them and deal with me in anger

47:26 If you've taken seriously the fact of divine wrath and asked yourself, how can it be averted in my person? You're not content with willy-nilly ephemeral and undefined and indistinct motions that somehow it'll just go away like a bad cold. No, no. You know what's happened? If under the guidance of the Spirit of God and under His blessed conduct, you've begun to contemplate the gospel, you've come to the posture of that publican in Luke 18, You remember what he said? Not so much as lifting up his eyes to heaven. He beats upon his breast. And I'm personally convinced what he was doing standing there in the temple. He did not look up to heaven. He had his eyes upon the altar of offering. And there he saw the innocent victim. Its blood shed. Its body now being consumed in fire. And he says, O God.

48:23 Be propitious. That's the other propitiation passage in the New Testament. Before I'm done, I will have touched on every one of the key six texts in the New Testament. Be propitious to me, the sinner. Oh God, I do not look up as that Pharisee to have direct dealings with you, thinking I can make it on my own, under some delusive notions that you're all loved, nothing but loved, and you're indulgent and you'll overlook my faults. No, no, that poor

48:51 Stupid Pharisee thought he could have direct dealings with God without a mediator. Not so the publican. He does not so much as look up to heaven. His eyes, as it were, form a triangle. He says, I shall have dealings with heaven only in terms of what's happening on that altar. Oh, God be propitious to me, the sinner. He goes completely out of himself in seeking forgiveness and acceptance and a turning away of divine wrath.

49:19 And all his confidence is in the appointed provision of God in sacrifice. And my friend, if you've ever taken your sin seriously, taken the nature and character of God seriously, you too have stood. Yea, you stand this morning with the publican. And you gladly confess, I do not have direct dealings with God. All my dealings are through the appointed substance.

49:47 My only plea is, God, be propitious to me, the sinner, the sinner. God, be propitious to me on the grounds of that which your own beloved Son has done for sinners. And as you contemplate all that God has said concerning His beloved Son, all that He has declared about His pleasure in the death of His Son, you'll be able to reason in faith as the hymn writer who said these beautiful words. If thou hast my discharge procured, and freely in my room endured the whole of wrath divine, payment God cannot twice demand, first at my bleeding surety's hand, and then again at mine, turn then my soul unto thy rest,

50:41 The merits of thy great high priest have bought thy liberty. Trust in his efficacious blood, nor fear thy banishment from God, since Jesus died for thee. Oh, dear people, that's the language of faith that has grown to confidence.

51:10 And then again it's mine. What a wonderful thing to have faith arguing at the bar of eternal justice, pleading its own release from guilt. That's what faith does. It says, O God, you cannot make a double demand of payment. I flee to Christ. My only plea is, Lord, be propitious to me in Christ. And you made full exaction at the hand of my servant.

51:41 your Son, that mercy unmixed with wrath might fall upon me. And when by faith we've embraced Christ as our great High Priest, we come into all of the wonderful benefits of the sacrifice that was a propitiation for the sins of His people. A sacrifice that has pacified divine wrath. and forever turned it away, that I may come in the confidence that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. You see, one of the amazing things about the work of grace in a human soul is this. It bypasses no great issue that every man will be forced to reckon with before his state is fixed for eternity. You see, every man ever born of woman

52:39 will have to reckon with his sin, with God's anger against sin, with the only way of deliverance from that anger. You either reckon with it now in the way of faith or in the day of judgment in a way of your eternal shame and loss. But every man will have to reckon with his sin. Every man will have to reckon with the anger of God against sin. Every man will have to reckon that there was but one way of provision, provision,

53:09 by God, my friend, reckon now in faith, or God will force you to reckon in judgment, and my hands will be clean of your blood. And whatever ill will you may hold against me now, for speaking plainly and boldly and earnestly, whatever excess you may attribute to that fool who shouts and hollers and pleads, you will in that day, my friend, have to vindicate

53:39 of the motive that pleads with you. The earnestness that proclaims truth simply and clearly and seeks to have it riveted to your conscience. It is a blessed thing to say with the Apostle, I take you to record I am pure from the blood of all men. Any person in this place, boy, girl, man or woman, visitor, frequenter of this place,

54:08 If you perish with no propitiation, you'll perish not in ignorance, but in willful, resolute, inexcusable impenitence and unbelief. But I don't want to see you perish. And if I could, by any force of physical power, any force of human words or entreaty, coerce you to embrace the Savior, God knows, I would expend everything in my human faculties so to do. But I can only plead with you, and in pleading with you, plead with my gracious Father, that He would cause you to embrace Him who is the propitiation. God has set Him forth, dear people. He's set Him forth. He's publicly displayed it. God has shown us now. Sin is serious in His eyes. He will not bypass it. He must judge it. Flee to Christ.

55:08 And the judgment of your sin is past. Keep it a distance from Christ. And the wrath of God still abides upon you. May God clear our minds of every paganizing perversion. Of the blessed doctrine of Christ. Propitiation. Made for his people. As our great high priest. Let us pray.

Closing Prayer

55:45 O Lord, many of us are ashamed that for so many years we regarded our sins so lightly. We dared you, as it were, to cut us off in our impenitence. And how can we ever thank you enough that you bore so long with us, so patiently,

56:13 until our hearts were subdued by Your grace. Father, You know that in this place today there are men and women and boys and girls who trifle with their eternal destinies. And, O our God, with everything within us, we long to see them cease this fatal trifling. But, O God, You must open their blinded eyes and subdue their rebel wills and we cry to You mightily to work

56:43 That in this place today there may be some who will embrace the offered Savior. And we who are your people, what can we say as we contemplate the glory, the majesty, the wonder of your love in sending your Son to be propitiation for our sins? Lord, we thank you that love conceived a way to neutralize the deserved wrath.

57:08 By swallowing up that wrath in the person of our substitute. Oh we thank you Father for your infinite and eternal love. We thank you Lord Jesus that you were willing in love to bear all that was necessary. To make the propitiation. And we thank you Holy Spirit for your love. In sustaining the Son through all of his agony. And then in coming with power to our hearts. To bring us into the blessed and conscious possession.

57:35 Of all that he purchased for us. Oh Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We worship you for your love. We worship you for that love. That has found us and won us. Oh may our lives prove something of the measure of our love. Hear our prayer. And seal to our hearts the word preached and studied this morning. To the end that your name may be praised. That we may have a more intelligent grasp upon him.

58:04 the revelation you have made of yourself in the cross. Oh, more and more may we be able to say, God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hear our prayer. May your benediction rest upon us as we part from one another and from this place. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.