[Music] So we touched on a fascinating word that Paul used last time, but we didn’t go into it in much depth, so because we didn’t have time. So let’s do it today. It’s the word propitiation. I know that that sounds terribly learned or abstract and what in the world does it mean, but it has an enormously powerful impact when we understand it. Really, it implies that God isn’t mad at me anymore. You may have experienced a life of addictions and felt that God is constantly angry with you because you can’t straighten your life out. But when we look at this word, we have enormous encouragement. So let’s take a look at it. It’s Romans 3. We’re talking about this passage that is so rich, it has the word righteousness in it. It has the word faith in it. It has the word justified and grace and redemption. It’s marvelous and it has this word propitiation. So let’s take a look. You see God’s righteousness is brought to the world because humanity doesn’t have any of it. That righteousness is not only justice in some contexts, but also great mercy towards us, rescuing the oppressed, delivering those who are downtrodden and lifting them up. This is all about God’s righteousness. Now God’s righteousness is revealed through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Everything that Jesus did was the voice of God, the word from the Father. Jesus was coming to tell the world what the Father was wanting us to know. That He loves us, that He wants to redeem us, that He has sent His Son to reveal His Father’s character, and that He has sent His Son to be the sacrifice for the sins of the world. It’s just marvelous. So Jesus is the righteousness of God and it’s received His righteousness is received by us because it says that that righteousness is for all and on all. That is too all and on all. How does Christ’s righteousness get to be on us like this? Well, it’s all an act of faith. We are trusting that God sort of robes us, dresses us, puts a cloak around us because we’re cold and fallorn and lost, and He puts that robe of righteousness upon us and we believe it and receive it by faith. So that we’re treated as if we are righteous people even when we’re not, and that’s the meaning of the word justified because the word justified is to declare innocent. But we’re not innocent, are we? But it is accounted to us. Paul’s going to use that word a bit later in chapter 4, accounted to us. We are accounted as if we were righteous when we’re not amazing. Now how does God do all this? Well, let’s go a little bit more being justified freely by His grace. By the way, this is all by review. By His grace is wonderful favor towards us through the rescuing the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The word redemption is important, by the way, not because it’s literally to be literally understood as buying us back as if we were sold to the devil, which we are in a certain way, but these are all figurative, figurative language. We’re bought back in the sense that we are sold and helpless and have no longer any control over our lives, but God in His love and His grace has bought us back. He’s rescued us. That’s as close we can get to this word redemption, I think, rescuing. You know, the Psalm 40 talks about David being an unhorrible pit in the Myri Clay, and he couldn’t climb up the walls because they were so slippery. And he called to the Lord and God lifted him out and set him upon a rock. And David was so delighted and pleased that he because God put a song of praise in his mouth, even praise to our God. And that’s what we need to see that even though we have we have struggled still and many are still oppressed by their addiction, nevertheless God has taken away all judgment and all condemnation. And you are counted as if you were righteous and he’s working on you while you’re working on your addiction. That is his love towards us. Now then comes this word, Propheiation. Whom referring to Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood. Now this is a really strange word for Paul to use because everybody knew what it meant in Paul’s day because they were Romans and he was writing to the Romans. It meant to appease God’s wrath. Well now, wait a minute, that’s a little bit pagan sounding, isn’t it? You see, the Romans used this word, Propheiation, to appease the wrath or anger of Caesar. They had these little altars where you could sprinkle incense on them to appease the judgment and wrath of Caesar. Now that Paul would use this word about God’s plan in Jesus is astonishing. Some people have greatly misunderstood this and thought that, well, God is the angry judge. And Jesus is the one who’s kind and gentle and he dies for our sins because God isn’t kind enough. And then when he’s died for our sins, he pleads his blood before the Father as if Jesus has to convince God to love us. Well, that is a parody if ever there was one of the truth and it is utterly upside down back to front and inside out. Because John chapter 3 verse 16 says, God so loved the world that he gave his Son. The fact that Jesus came to the world and died for our sins is not to be interpreted as Jesus trying to convince God to love us because God so loved the world that he gave his Son. So, God Jesus presence in the world and Jesus’ death for our sins is an expression of God the Father’s love. And remember, we will come to Romans 8 later on where Paul says in the light of all that he’s taught so far, what shall we say then? And Paul answers, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” So all this teaching that Paul gives about Jesus’ death and the atoning sacrifice that it gives for us is an indication that God is for us, not simply and only Jesus. I’ve told you about a lady whom I knew years ago, I don’t think she’s alive anymore, but she told me that before she listened to my program, she would also always pray to Jesus because she felt she couldn’t really pray to God because he was too mad at her. But then when she learned about the Book of Romans and learned the teaching here in this book, she started to pray to God the Father because she learned that the death and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus was a gift of love from his Father. Well, now that’s part of the story, but it’s still odd, isn’t it, that God the Father gives His Son? Why doesn’t He give Himself? But He does give Himself. Remember, do not diminish who Jesus is. Jesus is not a man, although He came as a man representing man. He is the second person of the Trinity. He’s a member of the Godhead. All that God the Father experiences, God the Son experiences, all that God the Son experiences, God the Father experiences. Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” And so when Jesus came to the world and suffered for our sins, God the Father suffered all of it. He experienced everything that the Son went through. And therefore when we say Jesus died for our sins, we really need to understand that God died for our sins in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. It was God on the cross. Okay, then. So what about this word propitiation? To appease God’s wrath? Was Jesus more loving than the Father and was appeasing God’s wrath? No, in the light of what I’ve just explained, God in the person of His Son was appeasing His own wrath. God took His own wrath upon Himself for our sake. But what about all this wrath, you say? Why is God so mad all the time? Well, He isn’t mad all the time. But I want you to think of this. God is love, first John 4/8, right? And that is the essence of His character. It doesn’t say God is loving as if that were a single attribute of His character and there are other attributes which make Him different from love. No, God is not loving, though He is, but God is love. And that means that at the core of His being is love flowing endlessly towards us. Well, if God is love, then when God is wrathful, His love is, His wrath is motivated by love. Well, so then we get the first understanding that God’s wrath is not God’s suspending is love and just shooting fireworks at us and missiles in sheer anger. No, His wrath is motivated by love. Then what is it? Well, you see, we saw, didn’t we, at the beginning of chapter 1 of Romans, that the wrath of God is revealed against all the ungodliness of men who suppress Him. What is has mankind done? Mankind is in a state of suppression of God. And what that is is the certainty of man’s death because God is the source of life, the source of joy, the source of everything that is good. And says in Job chapter 34 verse 14, “If God should set His heart on it, if He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to the dust.” That’s Job 34, 14 and 15. So you see, God is continually sustaining His universe. But man is at work destroying Himself because when we suppress God, we are suppressing His life in us and upon us. And so God is grieved and rising up in anger against our tendency to destroy ourselves. But His anger doesn’t want to destroy us. It wants to destroy what is destroying us. God is actually our Savior. We are our own killers. And so when God lets His wrath out, He would let it discipline us and bring us to judgment, but only to the judgments that would bring us back to Him. The final judgment for all sin and death, God took upon Himself and that is why Jesus died. And so when we love no God, when we know Him by faith, we know that He’s not mad at us anymore because He took the judgment that belongs to us upon Himself and sacrificed Himself for it. Thanks so much for listening today, Colin Cook. And this is how it happens. You can listen to this broadcast anytime of the day or night on your smartphone. Simply download the free app, soundcloud.com or the app podbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. If you’d like to make a donation, you can send it to FaithQuest, PO Box 366. Littleton Colorado 80160. Thanks so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God Bless.
