Propitiation

Chris Houghton

According to the NHS's live-well website, 28% of adults worry about how angry they sometimes feel, and 1 in 3 people have a friend or relative who has problems dealing with their anger. Anger is an emotion that we're familiar with, whether personally or in others. So, it's hardly surprising that when doing a Google search for "anger" brings up more than 51,500,000 results! And most of them offer techniques on how to deal with anger.

And that's what propitiation is - it's God's way of dealing with his anger against us! Romans 1:18 tells us that:

...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

This isn't God wildly flipping his lid! It's not the kind of reaction we'd have if one of our housemates had dared to eat one of our chocolate biscuits. No – God is rightly angry with the way we've rejected his rule of our lives and tried to live our own way, instead of his! It's much more like the kind of deep seated anger that a wife would rightly feel towards her husband if he'd been having an affair!

It's not something that can just be overlooked or ignored...it's something that needs dealing with...along with all the consequences. And the Bible tells us that the consequence of rejecting God's rule of our lives is death. God's wrath is no small problem - it's a matter of life and death.

But, the great news of the Bible is that out of his incredible love, God has made it possible for his wrath against our rebellion to be appeased – to be satisfied! And more amazingly still, the way he does this is by propitiation, which means that he takes the wrath that should rightly be directed at us onto himself, along with all of its consequences! That's why Romans 3:23-25 says:

...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

God became a man – Jesus Christ – and died on a cross to take the wrath of God onto himself – so that everyone who puts their trust in him are no longer under God's wrath – because it's been satisfied – but are free to enjoy a restored relationship with him. But this leaves each of us with a choice – will we put our faith in Jesus to satisfy God's wrath on our behalf, or will remain under God's wrath and one day face the consequences ourselves?