1 John 4:10  “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  

That first phrase, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us,” is only half the equation.  God’s love cannot cancel God’s holy hatred of sin, our sin, yet there is no conflict between love and anger.     

God’s only answer for our sins was in love to put His Son on the cross to turn away His own wrath.  God sent his Son to shield us from what J. I . Packer calls, “the nightmare prospect of retributive justice by becoming our representative substitute, in obedience to His Father’s will, and receiving the wages of sin in our place,” Knowing God, p. 189.  John Piper says Christ was send “to absorb the wrath of God,” Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, pp. 20-21.    

In pagan circles devotees offer their best to appease or placate idol deities that they presume are powerful and potentially angry.  In India, Hindus worship 330 million gods that they must somehow satisfy.  People who practice “voodoo” in Haiti  set out dishes of food to appeals their gods.    

But, the teaching of the Bible is God Himself propitiated His wrath by His own offering!  And God’s anger is not capricious, arbitrary, or petty.  God’s wrath is His righteous reaction toward sinful behavior that contradicts His holiness.  God himself took the initiative in quenching his own wrath against those whom he loved and had chosen to save in Christ.

· 1 John 4:19  “We love Him, because He first loved us.”

· John 3:16  “God so loved the world that He gave…”    

R Propitiation Required Christ’s Blood.  “Propitiation through faith in His blood,” Romans 3:25.  God does not require: penance, performance; or promises.  For anyone to add anything to the blood of Christ is absurd.  It was not Jesus’ life or teaching or example, but His blood that now shields us from God’s punishment.

R Propitiation Restrains God’s Wrath,  Romans 1:18  “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  Propitiation is necessary because sin arouses the wrath of God.  God’s wrath is never unpredictable, but always predictable, because it is provoked by evil.  Liberal theology declares that there is in God no such thing as anger occasioned by human sin.  John Murray said, “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 His wrath.”  Think about it.  God made the children of wrath the children of His pleasure.  You see, man was alienated from God by sin and God was alienated from man by wrath.  And by Jesus Christ, sin is overcome and wrath is averted.  Now, God can look on man without displeasure and man can look on God without fear.

R Propitiation Reveals God’s Righteousness.  “...to declare His righteousness,” Romans 3:25.  That word “declare” means to “put on public display.”   

R Propitiation is Received by Personal Faith.  “Propitiation through faith in His blood,” Romans 3:25.

Every sinner is now invited to humbly receive Christ and His work by faith, just simple, child-like trust.   

Try to imagine a heaven full of people who had earned their right to be there, like a political dinner where the supporters pay $1,000 a plate to attend.  What arrogance and boasting.  What cliques and class distinctions.  What arguments and suspicions.  Heaven would not be heaven long under all those circumstances.  

 Now think about heaven the way the Bible talks about it.  Since salvation  is God’s gift that is freely offered based only on Christ’s sacrifice that was willingly made, there will not be a trace of boasting.  While salvation benefits us for eternity, salvation is to the praise of God’s glory and grace.   

Now consider Romans 3:24 and 26, the verses that surround the doctrine of “propitiation.” 

· v. 24.   The Bible says we are “justified freely.”  The word “freely”  means “without a cause.”  God saves us, in spite of the fact, that there isn’t a single reason to do so.   Salvation is a “free gift” to those who believe.  This is so, so hard for most people.  They want to “do” something to help God save them.  If I said you can be justified for $50, we would scrap it together and pay it.  Right?  If we had to walk 100 miles, we would lace them up, get in a line, and make our way toward the finish line.  But when I say, “Free, free, God’s salvation is free,” something in us rebels against it.  Either you take it freely, or you don’t take it at all!

· v. 26.  By God doing what He did, the way He did it, He remains “just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”  This means, God is just to punish the unbeliever for eternity and God is the justifier of those who turn and believe in Jesus Christ.    

What God demanded He supplied only in His own Son.  The objects of God’s wrath can now be the objects of God’s forgiveness through the offering made by God’s Son.    

There is only one hope of us.  The infinite wisdom of God  made a way for the love of God to satisfy the wrath of God through the Son of God so that we might receive freely the gift of God and become forever the children of God.  

William Cowper lived in England more than 200 years ago.  He had a nervous disposition and often struggled with bouts and severe depression.  At one point he become extremely depressed, fearing he was under the wrath of God. 

“I flung myself into a chair by the window and there saw the Bible on the table by the chair.  I opened it up and my eyes fell on Romans 3:25, which says of Christ, ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.’    Then and there, I realized what Christ’s blood had accomplished and I realized the effects of His atonement for me.  I realized God was willing to justify me, and then and there, I trusted Jesus Christ and a great burden was lifted from my soul.”