Dive deep into Romans 3 with us as we unravel what is considered one of the most profound passages of the Bible. This episode shines a spotlight on terms like righteousness, justification, grace, and redemption while delving into the often misunderstood concept of propitiation. We explore how God’s wrath, intertwined with His immeasurable love, reveals the divine plan for humanity’s redemption through Christ.
So I mentioned some days ago that this passage that we’re studying now in Romans 3 is probably the richest passage in the whole Bible. I mean, here we have the word righteousness, and we have the word justification, and grace, and redemption, all those rich words. And now we’re coming to a word that’s even more astonishing, the word which many people don’t even know how to pronounce, let alone the meaning of, the word propitiation. What does it mean? Let’s first of all read the verses. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed to by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there’s no difference for all… have sinned and fall short of the glory of god being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in christ jesus whom god set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Well, that is a load of truth and light and glory. And I just pray that God will have mercy upon me to at least share a little bit of its light to you, because I’m not saying that I have it. I just can’t grasp it at all times. It’s so great. But the word propitiation in the original language is hilasterion, which means in the to appease, to take away wrath. Now, wait a minute, what’s this saying then? God, whom God set forth, referring to Jesus, as the one who takes away his wrath by his blood, and of course the blood here is referring to the death of Jesus. Now, some people find this passage terribly difficult, in fact, reject it altogether. Modern theologians can’t stand this idea. In fact, many translations of the Bible change the word propitiation to expiation, and they give various reasons for doing that, and I won’t go into it now. But the word expiation means to take away sin. But the word propitiation means to take away wrath. The word expiation refers to what God does for us, take away our sins, cover our sins. The word propitiation means what God does for himself. So it’s a very different meaning. Well, what does it mean? Well, it means to appease or to take away wrath or judgment. Now, we have a distorted view of God. There are Christians today and theologians who insist that God is love, and that is absolutely true, of course. The essence of our God is love. But by saying that, they exclude everything that could involve judgment or everything that could involve God’s anger towards sin. But we have to recognize that if God is love, then God is also love. grievously angry at sin, because it has ruined his beautiful creation, this creation that he loves with all his heart, this creation that he made for joy, and now it is ruining itself and creating cruelty all over the world. And so, What does God do with that? Well, you remember when we started Romans, we talked about God’s wrath, because it’s revealed. It says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. That’s Romans 1.18. So this wrath, you see, is God’s holy expression, God’s glory and his purity and his innocence expressing itself against the barbarism and cruelty of sin. There cannot possibly be a God of love who does not find sin and cruelty and death utterly repugnant. And so we mustn’t just talk about God’s love as if there was no concern at all that he had for cruelty and harm and all the evil that is spawning all over the world. And so we made it clear, you remember that, don’t you, when we worked on Romans 1, that God’s wrath is motivated by love. God’s wrath is not the opposite of love. Only a God who truly loves goodness can hate badness, you see. And I gave an illustration which may seem a little strange, but suppose you’re a father, and you look out the window one day, and your seven- or eight-year-old boy, your son, is being beaten up by a big five-foot-ten ten-year-old in the backyard. So what do you do? Do you just say, oh, my son’s being beaten up again? Or do you rise up in holy anger and rush out of the door and get that heavy-loaded kid off the back of your son? Of course you do the latter. Why? Because you love. Love has anger in its core, not in its core, but as an aspect of, I mean, wrath is an aspect of love because wrath is rising up against all that prevents love from spreading throughout the world. So, you see, we have to come to terms with the wrath of God. Well, how do we? Because we’re part of the problem, aren’t we? I mean, you and I and the whole of humanity are sinners. We have ruined things. We have damaged relationships. We have been cruel. We have been heartless. We have been selfish. And we have, above all, ignored our Heavenly Father. We are sinners to the core. So how can we possibly talk about this wrath without having to hide under a brick? and a stone and a rock, like the people will do at the coming of Jesus. They call upon the rocks to hide them from the face of the Lamb. What do we do? We have it right here. Propitiation. For the word propitiation is to appease God’s wrath, to take it away. You see, we know that the word propitiation is the right word here. Because verse 25, the propitiation, is the answer to God’s wrath revealed in Romans 1 verse 18. When theologians resist this word and will not allow it to be used in their teaching or translators change it, they can’t stand the idea. They are actually doing a disservice to the interpretation of Romans chapter 1. If the wrath of God is revealed against all the wickedness of men, and there’s no propitiation, no appeasing of God’s wrath, then we’re in real trouble. Because God is our enemy. He’s against us, he’s wrathful, and he’s going to wipe us out. But if we will believe what it says here in Romans 3.25, God set forth Christ as a propitiation by his death, as an appeasement of God’s wrath by Christ’s death, then we know God is for us. But intellectuals, you see, cannot accept this teaching, because they say, are you kidding me? You want God to be a holy judge, and he’s so mad with the world, that instead of crushing the world, he crushes his own son? Where’s the love and justice in that? Well, first of all, we need to understand that Jesus is one with God, the second person of the Trinity. He that hath seen me has seen the Father. Hebrews 1 says, verse 4, that Jesus is the express image of God. We have multitudes of verses that show us that Jesus is doing all the work of God on earth, raising the dead, calming the seas, healing the sick, healing the blind, all kinds of healings that only God could do. And so when we say that God placed His wrath upon His Son, we are telling ourselves, we are explaining to ourselves that God placed His wrath upon Himself in the person of His Son. So what we have here is the most wonderful news you could possibly imagine. that even though God has revealed his righteous wrath against all the wickedness in the world, nevertheless, in mercy, God takes that judgment, that wrath upon himself in the person of his Son. which enables us to be set free from our guilt and shame and fear, and it enables us through Jesus to come before the Father without condemnation. It’s the most wonderful truth you could imagine. Now, the word propitiation was well known to every Roman citizen that Paul would be writing to. It was used on a daily basis. There were little altars around Rome, the city of Rome, where you could sprinkle a certain element which was meant to appease or propitiate the Caesar if he happened to be angry with the people of Rome. And it’s a principle of biblical interpretation that the meaning of a word is determined by how the people who listened to the reading of that word understood it. You can’t give a word a different meaning than the one that it was meant to be received by, than the word that it was given to. So, we understand that the word propitiation, appease, was understood by the Romans. And Paul took the great risk of being misunderstood by teaching this word. You see, there are many people who say that God is angry, but Jesus is nice. and God has to be convinced. So Jesus dies and pleads his blood before the Father to convince God to love us. That is a caricature, and it is a crime to speak it. Because God is love, and God so loved the world that he gave his Son. And so it was agreed in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit that the Son would take the wrath of the Trinity upon himself for all the judgment of the world, so that the world did not have to suffer it. And so you and I need to embrace this truth. Don’t fall for the modern thinking that, oh dear, that ancient Paul, he had some crazy ideas and talked about wrath. Why couldn’t he just stay with love? No, it is we that are off-center, not Paul. We have got off-center by talking about love without any coloring to it that indicates by that love that God is revolted by sin. We know God’s revolted by sin. But by the mercy that he has shown us in Christ, we know that he is willing and more than willing to receive us because he loves us and will take that revolt against sin upon himself instead of placing it upon us. Come before God then and receive his mercy. Well, you know, I’m going to have to go through that again next time because every time I teach it, I just don’t feel I’ve fully grasped it. I mean, it’s so big. How can I put it into words? I can’t. I’m a mere sinner and a human and a little fly on the wall trying to see what God’s doing. So keep listening in, will you? Colin Cook here. This is a program that you can hear Monday through Friday on the radio, and you can also hear it any time of the day or night on your smartphone. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com, and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Consider a donation, would you? Thank you so much. You can make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. I’ll see you next time. God bless you. Cheerio.
