Propitiation

[JayR]

Propitiation is this. Christ wasn't in agony at Gethsemane because He was afraid of the physical suffering and human death that He was about to die. There have been Christians who were on their way to the cross singing with joy knowing that they were about to be crucified, do you really think that these members of the body of Christ had more courage than their captain? I don't think so. Christ was trembling and in such agony because He knew that He was about to have the wrath of His omnipotent Father poured out onto HIm in the full measure of justice due to each and every single one of His people's sins that He was about to bear. He knew that He was about to be crushed by His Father's wrath. "It pleased the LORD to crush Him." (Isaiah 53) "He was crushed for our iniquity." The justice of God's wrath that should have been poured out onto His people was poured out onto His Son as their substitute. The Father crushed Him, and the very thought of that made the Son of God tremble in a state of agony to the point of sweating blood. The wrath of God was in that cup that He wanted to pass from Him. The same cup of wrath that every single one of His people deserve to drink as described in Revelation 14:

"The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascended up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night..."

This is the cup that each individual child of God deserves to drink. Now multiply this cup times the number of individuals who Christ died for, pour them into one cup, and that is what Christ drank. Romans 3 says that Christ was set forth as a propitiation so that God would be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus. In other words, Christ died because if Christ didn't die, God would not be just in justifying the ungodly, because the sins that they committed would have gone unpunished. But God punished every single one of those sins to the full measure of justice due them all, and poured every single drop of wrath into that cup, and Christ drank it all. Christ suffered the equivalent of the wrath of God that would be poured out in the suffering of billions of mens' deaths and billions of mens suffering in hell, because the justice of God's wrath was satisfied in His suffering. Christ suffered a hell multiplied in horror and suffering by the amount of people He died for, which is billions. He was forsaken by His Father. Why? He became a curse for us. We are under the curse of the Law until we are redeemed by Christ and converted into His body, and Christ set us free from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us, and His Father couldn't look upon Him because He became something vile when He was on the cross. Imagine the most defiled man on the face of the earth, then imagine the sin of that one man being imputed to the pure Son of God, and what does the Son then become? A defiled man. Now take the sin of every single man that Jesus Christ died for, and impute it to His account, and what does He become? The most defiled man that ever lived. While Christ was on that cross He bore the guilt and the sin of His people, and He became a cursed thing, and the Father crushed Him like a planet falling onto a worm, and ground Him to powder in perfect justice.

Christ did that willingly. That is the love of God and the glory of Christ. That is why God can now justify wicked men, because their sin that needs to be punished has been punished when the Father crushed the Son in their place, and now there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because there is no more wrath for them, Christ drank it all.

Consider this. When Christ was on the cross He bore the sins of other men and His own Father crushed Him. If you die in your own sin what do you think He'll do to you?

 

[Catholic Crusader]

A quote from: "IS THE MASS PROPITIATORY?"
at: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1993/9307fea1sb2.asp

IN personal correspondence with me, James White made a special request that I respond to his book's charge that Catholics add to the sacrifice of the cross by claiming that the Mass is propitiatory. How can the Mass be propitiatory, White asks, if the sacrifice of the cross was propitiatory?

The answer is simple. To propitiate means to turn away wrath. While the sacrifice of the cross was propitiatory in that it paid the price for God's wrath to be turned away from us, there still remains the question of how this propitiation is applied to us. Either it was applied to us when Christ initially offered himself, or there is a sense in which it remains to be applied today. (These alternatives are not mutually exclusive.)

The first option is held by radicals known as hyper-Calvinists. Even White repudiates these people. The idea that God's anger was forever turned away in A.D. 33 would lead to theological absurdities.

It would force us to say God is never angry with anyone who will end up saved, even when that person is still an unrepentant sinner spitting in the face of his Creator.

It would require us to say a person is forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God not just before he has repented, and turned to God, which is odd enough, but even before he exists. Yet this is impossible, since the Bible indicates that we are only put right with God when we have repented and believed (Rom. 5:10-11, 2 Cor. 5:20, Gal. 2:17, Col. 1:21, Titus 3:7).

Furthermore, Paul indicates Christians have to face the prospect of some judgment and wrath even though they have already been justified (Rom. 14:10, 12, 1 Cor. 11:32, 2 Cor. 5:9-10, Eph. 5:6-7). Even after our justification, God can become angry when we commit sins, and this anger also needs to be turned away, as it is when Christ's work on the cross is applied to us throughout our lives as believers.

The same was true in the Old Testament. God was angry with Old Testament saints, even though they had already been put right with him (Deut. 3:26, 4:21, 1 Kgs. 11:9, 1 Chr. 19:2-3). Someone might object that this was before God's wrath was turned away on Calvary, but such an objection doesn't do justice to Scripture's teaching that Christ was slain "from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8).

Since the Mass is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross (not merely its symbolic retelling), the Mass itself turns away wrath; it is a means by which the forgiveness Christ earned is applied to us.

Protestants often are encouraged to use the prayer of the tax-collector, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). What they fail to realize is that in Greek this is "Lord, be propitious to me, a sinner." If Christians can pray this prayer, then in some way even they need propitiation.

 

[DM]

Hi JayR,

Your explanation of what "propitiation" is, reflects well in so many words, the orthodox theory of the atonement which is based on a legal paradigm of God's "justice". This Latin / legal theory of the atonement was most notably promulgated by the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury. It has become so ingrained into Christian thought as to be beyond question.

However, the dark side of this belief in the legal theory of the atonement is that it ultimately posits a God who is unable to actually "forgive" anyone. Rather, God, in this legal scenario, has to be bought off with Jesus' blood in order to be able to extend His "forgiveness" to human beings.

In economic terms, to "forgive" a debt, is to simply cancel the debt which is owed. No payment is ever received from anyone. Put another way, any debt that was owed by the now forgiven debtor never gets "paid for" by anyone. The debt is simply cancelled (i.e. "forgiven"). If the debt owed is satisfied (i.e. paid for) by another person or institution, then the debt has been paid after all - regardless of who made the payment. True "forgiveness", on the other hand, is the cancellation of an unpaid debt. The legal theory of the atonement is at odds with this explanation of forgiveness because the legal theory insists that God must be "just" in order to "forgive". To simply "forgive" (based on the plain meaning of cancelling an unpaid debt), seems to leave out any of God's "wrath".

One of the things you offered in your view of propitiation was the following:

We are under the curse of the Law until we are redeemed by Christ and converted into His body, and Christ set us free from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us

Your reference (part of it) is attributed to Galatians 3:13.

What is confusing for many Christians is that they will hear from the pulpits that Jesus "perfectly followed the Law of Moses" (i.e. he never "sinned"), and therefore Jesus is consequently regarded as "righteoues". So much so, that his "righteousness" (by having followed the law of Moses perfectly) is sufficient to extend to those who believe in him, and can thus justifiably forgive them of their sins.

One huge hurdle to this idea, is that the Law of Moses does not apply, nor has it ever applied to the gentiles. This is not to say that some of the moral principals are thus void, but rather it is to say that ultimately, gentiles have never been under the umbrella of the authority of the Mosaic Law itself. Paul affirms this when he says, "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God." (Romans 3:19) Prior to that verse, Paul had quoted a litany of Old Testament Scriptures to support his indictment of the Jews he was addressing in that passage. Never-the-less, the gentiles are exempt from that litany, since "whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law", which is to say, the Jewish nation of Israel at that time specifically - not to the gentiles.

The biggest hurdle though is that the Latin / legal theory of the atonement is nowhere spelled out as such in Scripture. Further, no one, not even Jesus, can be, or ever was justified by observing the law of Moses, per se. "Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, "The righteous man shall live by faith". (Galatians 3:11). Paul makes the statement that "no one is justified", which includes Jesus as well, by observation of the Mosaic Law. As his "evidence" for this view, Paul points out that this very fact is "evident; for, 'The righteous man shall live by faith.'" That would include Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was "justified" (i.e. declared righteous) by his own faith in God, just as was Abraham, the father of faith. The fact that Jesus did obey the law of Moses (despite his opponents' assertion to the contrary on several occoassions), was not the factor which enabled God to offer forgiveness of sins. God had already been shown to extend forgiveness of sins prior to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. 2 Samuel 12:13).

How can this be? The legal theory assumes a God whose anger toward sinners must be meted out in a violent fashion by "pouring out His wrath" on . . . well, at least on somebody. In the case of the legal theory of the atonement, that somebody is Jesus, who is presumably the very God Himself who is insisting that this punishment of physical agony must occur prior to forgiving anyone's sins. This view, in my opinion, is seriously flawed. Here's why:

We are told in 1 John 4:8 that "... God is love". We understand this is not meant to be taken as a metaphysical statement, (as though somehow feelings of "love" are synonymous with the Being of God), but rather, that "God is love" in the sense that God's character is defined by His love for one and all. We know of love that "it keeps no record of wrongs"; literally, "love does not reckon the evil". (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:5). Likewise, God does not feel enmity toward people, keeping track of all their sins to the extent that He is unable to forgive them unless blood is shed. Instead, God is comfortable to extend forgiveness to anyone who is contrite in heart, and can acknowledge their faults before God in humility, and with a genuine desire to change their behavior and live godly.

I realize this is getting very long winded, and it certainly could use further explaining, but for now I'd just like to offer you this alternative to understanding God's forgiveness.

Grace and peace.
David

 

[BobRyan]

Propitiation is the wrong term entirely. The NIV has it right when it says in 1John 2:2 "He is the Atoning Sacrifice" for our sins and not for our sins only but for the sins of the Whole World".

The Gospel is based on "Atonement" which is God's solution for balance between Law and Grace as He shows us in Lev 16 the chapter "on Atonement".

Under "Atonment" -- "God so loved the HE GAVE HIS only begotten Son". The OP is correct that Christ's substitutionary atoning sacrifice is in fact the exact suffering and torment death paid on the cross that mankind owed for each and every sin in all of time. But in the Atonement model "God is IN Christ reconciling the WORLD to Himself". Very different from "Christ stands up and dies for man -- so God can exhaust His wrath on His Son instead of mankind". Nothing of the kind is taught in scripture -- but it is found very often in paganism's "propitiation" concept.

Under the pagan greek model of "Propitiation" we have "Christ so sufferred that the angry diety was finally appeased and turn his wrath away from the would-be victims".

Put quite simply "God does not torture His only Son until He feels BETTER about humans". Neither does Christ (as God the Son ) "allow HIMSELF to be tortured until He finally feels better".

Another misconception is that "Romans are the payment for sin" that is that Roman soldiers "hurting you" is what God designed as the "debt owed for sin". Under that false model -- the idea is that the Gospel payment is made via the "work of Romans soldiers". That also is a flawed concept because in fact the ONLY thing the Roman soldiers contribute to the Gospel is "MORE DEBT owed by sinful man".

It is time we sweep away the man-made traditions that have clutterred this subject and get back to a "sola scriptura argument" that stands up to the test of scripture.
in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Another point of of the Gospel that often get's clouded is the false assumption that without the Law of God - man is still a sinner. Paul is quite clear "where there is no law neither is therer violation of law" in Romans 4. And as John points out 1 John 3 "Sin IS violation of God's Law".

Therefore when Paul argues in Romans 3 "ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God" he means nothing less than this "

Rom 3

The Sinful nature of all mankind –

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;
10 as it is written, "" THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
11 THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;

...

The WORLD condemned under the Authority of the Law that continues to define sin

19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;
20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

in Christ,

Bob