What's in a Word?

Nancy Guthrie has assembled a wonderful collection of essays about “experiencing the passion and power of Easter,” Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.  I was especially encouraged this week when I revisited chapter 20, “The Most Important Word in the Universe,” by Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr.  A title like that grabs the reader’s curiosity.  So, what is the word?

Propitiation.

Of course, some may object—what about, say, “God”?  Fair enough—one can surely make a case.  But take a moment to hear Ray Ortlund out.

To “propitiate” is “to render favorable, to appease, to conciliate.”  “To propitiate God means to appease his anger.  Propitiation is all about God’s wrath.”  God’s wrath, hmm.  Is that to imply “God is a fuming, frustrated person?  Does he have a temper?  Is he subject to mood swings?”

Ortlund acknowledges these emotional reactions to the image of an angry God.  And he affirms, as well, that God is love.  But here’s the key:  “God’s anger shows how serious his love is.”  We must understand “that God’s wrath is perfect, no less perfect than ‘the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience’ (Rom. 2:4).”

“God presented Christ Jesus as a propitiation by his blood (see Rom. 3:24-25).  Do you see the beauty in that?  In human religions, it’s the worshipper who placates the offended deity with rituals and sacrifices and bribes.  But in the gospel, it’s God himself who provides the offering.  At the cross of Christ, God put something forward.”  He said something to the world—two things, actually:

1) He detests our evil with all the intensity of the divine personality.  If you want to know what your sin deserves, look at “that man on the cross—tormented, gasping, bleeding.  Take a long, thoughtful look.”  God displays his perfect wrath toward your sin there at the cross.  And yet…

2) The God you’ve offended “doesn’t demand your blood; he gives his own in Christ Jesus.  He knows what you deserve, but he wants to give you what you don’t deserve.”  We can’t avert the wrath of God; after all, we’re the problem, not the answer.  “At the cross, his love satisfied his own wrath.”

What the sacrificing of all those Old Testament lambs could never accomplish, “God has done through Christ…  The full fury of the wrath of God was unleashed onto a willing substitute at the cross.”  That’s the sobering, serious, glorious truth we’ll highlight on Good Friday:  God’s love for lost sinners was so deep that he went to unfathomably great lengths spare us the just outpouring of his wrath against us.  Thank the Lord for Jesus Christ, on the cross, our Suffering Substitute—our propitiation!

So, how does one obtain this “propitiation”?  Ortlund reminds us of Romans 3:24-25 once more:  God presented Christ Jesus as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Faith looks to Jesus lifted up on the cross, faith admires God’s awesome offering, faith prizes what God has displayed, and faith runs to Jesus for rescue.  Faith—not work, or achievement, or reputation, or performance, or connections, or morality, or any such thing.  Just faith.

Will you give up on every other way of trying to get right with God, and trust in Jesus now—Jesus our propitiation?