All right, would you open your
Bibles to 1 John chapter 2. I plan to preach through the
first six verses of this chapter, but I'm going to split it up. I want to deal with the first
two verses today, basically, on the subject of the propitiation
for our sins. And of course we know that that
is the Lord Jesus Christ and his appointed work, successful
work in his obedience unto death. As I always say, as our surety,
our substitute, our representative, and our keeper, our preserver,
that's what it's talking about. The reason I want to split it
up is because You can see in verse three, for example, hereby
we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. I think
that those verses leading down from that, they deserve a sermon
on their own. You know, what are we talking about, keeping
his commandments? And I'll tell you this much right now, we're
not talking about works-based assurance or works-based earning
of rewards, plural. It's not talking about that,
but I'll just whet your appetite on that for next week, because
I'll go into that in detail. But the basis, the ground of
salvation, the heart of the gospel, is that Christ Jesus, the Lord
of glory, God manifest in the flesh, is the propitiation for
our sins. And a lot of people don't understand
what propitiation means. It's one of those words that
when it concerns The obedience unto death of Christ, as all
of those things that I mentioned, substitute, it's one of those
words that if you understand the meaning of it, it says it
all. It really does. This word, the Greek word for
it, as it is translated this way, it says in verse two, he
is the propitiation for our sins. is found in the New Testament
three times as translated propitiation. Romans 3.25 and 1 John 4 and
verse 10 that I read at the opening. The concept of propitiation begins
all the way back in Genesis and runs through the Bible under
Revelation because it concerns the person and work of Christ.
But let's look at how John starts this out. in verse one of 1 John
chapter two. He says, my little children.
Now obviously who John is writing to are believers. Those who give
evidence of being born again by the Spirit and therefore rightly,
justly, scripturally can be identified as the children of God. And John
was an apostle. The apostles looked upon the
people of God in these various churches as being their children,
not in the sense that we're children of God. Only God is our father. In fact, the Bible says it plainly,
called no man father but God. So I hear these people, they
see a priest, they say, father so and so. Well, he's not my
father. Now, I had an earthly father, and I call him father,
but only in an earthly sense. Well, what John is talking about,
calling the children of God father, he was their teacher. He was
their leader in the sense of pointing them to Christ by whom
we go to God, our father, our only father, our exclusive father. So children here refers to the
people of God. Now, the people of God are identified
throughout scripture in different ways. For example, they are called
the elect of God. You know, somebody asked me one
time, said, well, you believe in election? Well, sure I do,
it's in the Bible. Why would I not? The only reason this person
wouldn't believe in election is this, you know, I heard a
preacher say, a false preacher say on TV one time, he said,
here's what election is, God votes for you, Satan votes against
you, and you cast the deciding vote. That's not right. We are
born into this world, now this is what the Bible teaches, A
person can walk away and say I don't believe that, but this
is what the Bible teaches. We are born naturally into this
world in our physical birth as fallen sons and daughters of
Adam. Into a state of spiritual death. Now that doesn't mean you don't
have a mind, you don't have thoughts. You don't have desires, you don't
have a will. You've got a mind, you've got
thoughts, you've got desires, you've got a will, but they're
all spiritually dead to the point that we can say we're born this
way, we're born spiritually dead and totally depraved. Now totally
depraved doesn't mean we can't be religious, that we cannot
be pillars of society. It's just like I was talking
to you about this fellow who got assassinated, Charlie Kirk.
He was a pillar of society, and I agree with him politically.
And I hate that he was assassinated. But now his spiritual state,
I don't know. I don't know if I could find
out if I looked into it. I'm not going to, because I don't
have time. But the thing about it is, even a person like that
can be lost Who even claims to be a Christian? Because we're
born into this world into a state of spiritual deadness, depravity,
and blindness, and ignorance, and listen to this part, with
no desire, no will, towards the glory of God in Christ. Now we
have, you know, we have desires. Even a lost person can have religious
desires. Okay? They can strive to be moral
pillars of society, like I said. Look at the Pharisees. The Pharisees,
I used to think growing up when they talk about the Pharisees,
that they almost had horns and fangs and a pointed tail. But
you know what Christ said about them? He said, you do indeed
appear righteous to men, but inwardly, you're full of dead
men's bones. And they were men who sought
righteousness, goodness, holiness, salvation, right relationships
with God. They were men who sought those
things on the basis of their law keeping. They weren't trying
to be saved on the basis of getting drunk every night, or robbing
banks, or being womanizers. It was on
the basis of their religion, trying to be good. And they thought
they were. And think about it, when Christ
came along in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 and verse
20, he said to the people, except your righteousness exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall
in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Wow. Somebody said, that's a wow moment.
Yeah, for them. It is, and for the people. So
when he speaks of children, he's talking about God's elect, chosen
by the Father before the foundation of the world, given to the Son,
having their sin debt, which had not yet been committed in
time, but it was going to be. You know, I mean, I hate to tell
you now, Satan didn't sneak up on God and take Him by surprise.
It was all ordained according to God's will. And you can argue
philosophy if you want, You know, that makes God this, that, and
that. I just know He's, God is God, and I ain't Him, and you're
not Him. So, this is the way it is. And so, they're called the elect.
They're called the redeemed of the Lord. These are the ones
for whom Christ died. Not everybody without exception.
Now, I know I'm gonna hit this in just a moment here. Appreciation
for our sins, not only, but the whole world. He didn't die for
everybody without exception. He said that. He said, the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. And he told them,
he said, the sheep hear my voice. He told the Pharisees, the reason
you don't hear my voice, because you're not of my sheep. There's the condemned and the
justified, the goats and the sheep. The church, that's what
they're called. The redeemed, the regenerated,
the born again. See, we're born in that state
of depravity and death. You hath he quickened who were
dead in trespasses? That's why we have to be born
again. We have eyes to see naturally, but we don't see the things of
God's glory in the face, in the person, in the work of Jesus
Christ. We have to be given spiritual eyes by the Holy Spirit in the
new birth to see that with the eye of understanding, the eye
of faith, the eye of love. That has to be given. That's
why we must be born again or we cannot see the kingdom of
heaven, kingdom of God, can't enter it. So when he speaks of
children, that's who he's talking about, his brethren. They're
called his children because they were given him and the responsibility
of their salvation was placed upon him. Just like when you
first got married and then later on you had children, they were
your responsibility to take care of and bring them up healthily
and teach them what they needed to know. They were in your hands.
Their well-being was conditioned on you. If you'd have turned
them out into the street, they'd be dead. And that's the way it is with
God's children. The responsibility of our salvation and well-being
was placed on Christ. And he didn't turn us out into
the street or we'd be dead. He kept us. He nurtured, even
when we didn't know Him, even when we spit in His face, even
when we were enemies, Christ died for the ungodly. That's
what the scripture says. Salvation is not a matter of
God looking down through a telescope of time and foreseeing who would
believe Him and who wouldn't. Faith is the gift of God and
He gives it to His children. So he says, my little children,
these things write unto you that you sin not. John was well aware
of what we are by nature, even as saved sinners, we're sinners. And we have within us, within
our mind and our hearts, a battle, don't we? There's a battle, there's
a war waging within me. It's called the warfare of the
Holy Spirit and the flesh. The spirit witnesses with my
spirit. That's the new life that God
gave me in the new birth. And inspires me to fight my sinful
fleshly appetites and desires. It's a battle. It's a struggle. You've heard that outline that
I give. Three things that characterize the Christian life. Number one,
our standing before God in Christ, legally, judicially. I'm washed
in His blood, I'm clothed in His righteousness. It's all about
Him and as I stand in Him. Justified. Sanctified. Second
one. Struggle. Our standing and then
is our state on this earth. We start out lost. But in time
God brings us under the gospel and He gives us life and saves
us. And then we become regenerated converted children of God. That's
our state now and that won't change once we are brought into
the kingdom as the lost sheep and we're found sheep. And the
third word is struggle because from then on it's a real struggle
and it's not just a struggle with our conscience. It is there
because our consciences are cleansed by the blood of Christ but it's
a struggle against the leanings and the inspirations and the
motivations of the Spirit who shows us in the Word. We're going
to be talking about this next week, Lord willing, keeping His
commandments. You know what His commandments
are? Well, we're going to find out. Somebody said, well, I've
got to keep the Ten Commandments. Well, you've already failed.
Do you realize that? Well, I've got to try to. Well,
it doesn't say. And hereby we do know that we
know him if we try to keep his commandments, we keep them. Now
should we try to keep the command? Whatever God says, we should
put an effort to try to obey him. There's no argument there. But what does he say? And you
can look at, you know, we always jump on King David, you know. Here he was writing the 23rd
Psalm one day. And here's the next day, he's
with Bathsheba in bed. Did David lose his salvation?
Oh boy, you talk about preachers hate to hear this. Did David
lose his salvation when he was committing adultery? The answer's
no. Does that mean we condone that
kind of behavior? Well, absolutely not. No, we
don't condone it. We need to repent of it. It's
what we need to do. But here's the point. John says,
I'm writing this to you that you sin not. We ought to be striving
to be like Christ in our attitude, in our doings, and all things.
He says, and if any man sin, now he doesn't say that as if
he's saying, well, when you sin, do this, and when you don't sin,
do this. No. One translator says it'd
be better translated, because you sin, But we know what we
are. So, and if any man sin, here's
the way we're to look at it as believers. We have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Now he doesn't
say if any man sin, you better get right with God. You better
do penance. You better get to church and
rededicate. He doesn't say any of that. Now, We do penance,
we do in the sense of godly sorrow over sin, not penance like putting
money in the plate and all that junk, or going to confession
and all that. No, we do penance because we
have godly sorrow over sin. And God'll bring us there. At
some point in time, he'll do it. If you're one of his own,
he's got you on a leash, and he's not gonna let you go. Not
to apostasy, he's gonna keep you. And what's this all based
on? Where's the power of it? Let's
ask it that way. Where is the power? Here it is,
we have an advocate. We have a defense attorney, you
might say it that way. And he defends us, not by saying,
well, let's just forget it and go on and not even deal with
it. No, no. He's Jesus Christ the just, the
righteous. He's my righteousness. You know, if you look back in
the Old Testament, about every Old Testament saint, including
the prophets except one, we see not only their times of obedience,
but their times of rebellion. Does anybody know who the one
prophet you don't read about any of their times of rebellion?
Anybody know that? Give you a test. Daniel. But you know what Daniel himself
said? He prayed unto God and he said,
in his vision that he was seeing, he said, in that light, my beauty
melts into ugliness. Daniel knew he was a sinner.
He knew that. He knew his only hope of salvation
was the sovereign grace of God through the righteousness of
the one whom he looked to as the promised Messiah. And listen,
he's my advocate, he's my intercessor. There's one God and one mediator
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. So I can say it this way now,
and this is not a license to sin. I can say no matter what
happens to me, what I do here on earth, as a child of God,
sinner saved by grace, I have Christ as my righteousness. He
is my right and my title. He is my worthiness and I have
no other. And if I be like Daniel, I don't
think Daniel went through his life not doing anything bad,
don't get me wrong. It's just not recorded in Daniel. If I go through this life without
any glitch of what would be called open sin or anything like that,
I still, when I come to the end of my life, I still have no righteousness
before God but Christ. He's my advocate. He's my intercessor. He prays for us, that's what
that means. And here's the basis of his righteousness that he's
talking about. Now Christ himself is inwardly
righteous. Righteousness is his nature.
He's God and perfect man without sin. But what John is talking
about here is in light of his advocacy on my behalf. And I'm a sinner. And so this
righteousness is wrapped up here, verse two, and he is the propitiation
for our sins. Now what is propitiation? The
easiest way to put it is this, satisfaction. And who's satisfied
with it? God is, the Father. He's satisfied
with the work of his Son. And he's satisfied not just of
Christ as a private person. He's always been satisfied with
his son that way. He's satisfied with his son as
he is the advocate of the children. And what does that mean? That
means that as I stand before God in Christ, washed in his
blood, clothed in his righteousness, God is satisfied with me. Legally. Objectively. Forensically. Do I always do
the things that satisfy God? No. Sometimes I get wrapped up
in myself. Sometimes I treat my brethren
wrongly. Sometimes when they treat me
wrongly I have thoughts of vengeance. God's not satisfied with that.
But you know what? Because Christ is my advocate
and my propitiation, God does not impute, charge, sin to me. Because as my propitiation, God
imputed my sins to Christ and He died on the cross to satisfy
justice completely. And He says, verse 2, and not
for ours only but also for the whole world, the sins of the
whole world. Now does that mean that He is the advocate and the
propitiation for every individual that has ever lived, is living
now, and or ever will live. Well, if that's true, according
to the definition of advocacy and propitiation, everybody is
gonna be saved. But we know that's not true because
the Bible teaches differently. He's not talking about everybody
individually that's ever lived, ever will live. He's talking
about the children. Talking about his elect. Talking
about his church. Because propitiation, now listen
to this, propitiation is the guarantee of salvation. For whoever it applies, they're gonna be saved. That's why, you remember the
parable of the publican and the Pharisee in Luke 18? The Pharisee
stood before God and said, I thank God I'm not like other men. I
do this, I do that. Don't do this, don't do that.
And remember what the public had said? I think it's in verse
12 or 13. He said, he beat on his breast and prayed, God, be
merciful to me, a sinner. The word merciful there is a
form of the word propitious. The old publican recognized that
he wanted mercy, But he recognized that God had to be just to show
him mercy. And that word merciful there,
which is related to this word originally, propitiation, is
a derivative that refers way back to a beautiful type of the
work of Christ, and that's the old mercy seat, which was in
the tabernacle, the temple. You remember the box, the Ark
of the Covenant? Wood overlaid with gold. That was a picture
of the humanity and the deity of Christ. And in that box was
the broken law, which we've all broken. We've all sinned and
come short of the glory of God. Therefore, by deeds of law shall
no flesh be justified, because all the law can do is condemn
us guilty. No works will do it. And then
you had that lid of pure gold laid over top with the cherubims
facing each other. And the high priest, every year,
one day a year, he would come in there with the blood that
was taken off of the brazen altar, and he'd take that blood into
the holiest of all, the holy of holies, and sprinkle it on
the mercy seat. And that was speaking of propitiation. satisfaction to God's law and
justice based upon the work of Christ, his obedience unto death
as our surety, our substitute, our redeemer, and our preserver.
Just like back in the Old Testament when you had the sacrificial
lamb in Egypt, the Passover lamb, remember what God said? When
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. He didn't say, now listen to
me. I know people say, well, you've got to receive the gift.
Well, the biblical way to put that is this. If he's your propitiation
for your sins, you will receive the gift some point in time.
Read John 1, 12 and 13. As many as received him, to them
gave he the right, the authority to be called children of God,
to those who received him and believed on him, not of blood,
not of physical birth, not of the will of the flesh or the
works of the flesh, and not of the will of man. See, propitiation
kills the idea that Christ died for everybody without exception
conditionally and you've got to put it in force by adding
your faith or your repentance or your obedience. Propitiation
kills that idea. Propitiation means God is satisfied
with His Son. This is my beloved Son in whom
I'm well pleased. And so when he says, not for
ours only, but for the sins of the whole world, what he's taking
is the biblical truth that God has a people, a chosen people,
all over the world, not just in the Jewish world. And this
is dealt with beautifully in the book of Romans, especially
chapters 9, 10, and 11. God has a people that he chose
and gave to Christ before the world began. out of every tribe,
kindred, tongue, and nation all over this world, the Jews had
perverted what they thought was the gospel to try to pertain
only to them. In other words, not only must
you believe in Christ, but in some way you must become a Jew
by circumcision or by keeping the law or keeping certain dates.
No, no, no, no. Salvation is the same for Jew
and Gentile. Paul wrote in Romans 116, for
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it's the power of
God unto salvation, to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first,
to the Greek, that's the Gentile also, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the
justified shall live by faith. So to say that he is the propitiation,
if he truly is, for his people, Propitiation means that's the
guarantee that every sinner for whom Christ died on that cross,
they shall be saved. You say, well, how can I know
if he died for me? Well, he's gonna talk a little bit about
that, John is, in these next verses. But the Bible teaches
us plainly that those who are born again, evidenced by having
been brought to faith in Christ, and repentance of dead works,
do you believe? That's who he died for. That's
for whom he is a propitiation. That's the elect of God. Paul
told the Thessalonians, he said in chapter one of first Thessalonians,
he said, I know your election of God because the word, the
gospel, came to you in power and not just in word only. How
do you know it came to you in power? Do you believe it? Is
that your hope? Is Christ your hope? Can you
sing my favorite song? My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock
I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.
That's our hope. We're not going to sing that,
though, today. I mentioned the Passover. We're
gonna sing, when I see the blood, I will pass over you. Let's turn
in our hymnals. This is hymn number 232. We'll just sing a couple of verses
of this great hymn. Let's stand, hymn number 232,
when I see the blood.