Good morning everyone, good to
see you here. This morning, I want to direct your attention to the
Lord Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins. That's how he set
forth in 1 John chapter 4 verse 10. Propitiation isn't a word
we use commonly in our day, but it's an important word for us
to understand since it's one of the biblical descriptions
of Christ's saving work on the cross of Calvary. describing
what was accomplished there for each and every one for whom he
lived and died. And so we're going to be considering
in some detail this morning the meaning of that word, propitiation,
the glorious significance of this great accomplishment, the
propitiatory work of Christ. And as we start at the onset
and for the sake of simplicity, just know this, Propitiation
simply refers to the satisfaction rendered unto God the Father
whereby the just wrath of God due to the guilt of sin is removed. God's just wrath against sin
being appeased and thereby reconciliation is made between a holy God and
ungodly sinners. And this propitiation was made
by Christ as the sin-bearing sacrifice as He, God the Son
incarnate, God manifest in the flesh, He paid the debt that
was due unto God Himself by His death, His own shed blood on
Calvary's cross. A death, blood that was shed
as a payment for the just penalty that was due unto all the sins
that were imputed are charged to his account. So this morning,
as I use this word propitiation, I think it will be helpful if
we'll keep two key words in mind that I think relate to its proper
meaning. When you hear propitiation, I
want you to think, one, satisfaction, and two, reconciliation. Satisfaction and reconciliation. The English word propitiation
as it's derived from the Latin was and has often been used to
describe many heathen rites and ceremonies that were designed
to avert the anger or to appease those various angry false heathen
gods. But the words in the original
language of the Bible that are translated propitiation They
do have that connotation, but they go beyond just a mere referral
to the appeasement of God's wrath. And of course, here we're talking
about the true and living God. Propitiation in the Bible does
denote the appeasement of God's wrath, but by way of satisfaction
to God's justice. And so thereby, all those for
whom this propitiatory work, see, was rendered They are completely,
fully, eternally reconciled unto God. That just simply means peace
was made between God and them based on Christ's propitiatory,
His justice satisfying death on the cross of Calvary. I became
interested in doing this word study on propitiation and preparing
this message a few weeks back when Susan and I heard this passage
from 1 John chapter 4 read in a wedding ceremony. Many of you
are familiar with the King James translation of 1 John 4 10 that
reads herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. being familiar with that verse
and that translation of the verse, it struck me when I heard a different,
more modern version, so to speak, read at this wedding. And what
struck me was how it suggested a very different understanding
of what God the Son was sent to do for these objects of His
everlasting love. And so, when I got home from
the wedding the next day, I did a little research and I confirmed
my suspicion that the reading I heard was from a translation
of the Bible called Good News for Modern Man. And contrary
to its title, I found over the years that this translation,
it often perverts and stands in opposition to the good news
of God's gospel. That's what the word gospel means,
good news. It's the good news concerning
how God saves sinners. But that translation is consistent
with what we modern men, as well as men and women really in every
age, naturally want to hear in our natural state of spiritual
darkness, which God's Word tells us is the state we all begin
this life's journey. Well, I want you to look at the
contrast in how this verse is set forth. In the Good News for
Modern Man version, 1 John 4.10 reads, this is what love is.
It is not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son, and look at this, to be the means by which our
sins are forgiven. Now, on the surface that may
seem okay. We certainly can see some similarity
in these two translations. Otherwise I wouldn't have recognized
it as being from 1 John 4. So some will think, well then
what's the big deal? Well, the big deal and the genesis
for me beginning this study is in what has been taken out. And
having removed the original scriptural truth that Christ was sent to
be the propitiation for the sins of those he saves, this translation
at least is complementary to and in a sense promotes the popular
but deadly mistaken false gospel doctrine. the doctrine that stands
in direct opposition to God's true gospel of sovereign grace.
The very gospel that God's word said is the one that is believed
upon by all those whom God has reconciled to himself by his
propitiation on the cross. The modern language in that translation
suggests just as sadly will be suggested in pulpits all across
our land this morning, that God the Son was sent by God the Father
to be a mere means to an end, not actually be the end-all finisher
of an accomplishment whereby sins are forgiven. Rather, this
quote-unquote Christ is applauded for merely having made salvation
possible. And so multitudes are taught,
as many of you were and I have been in years past, this heresy. And they fall for this heresy.
And here's the heresy, that there remains something for you, the
sinner, to do so as to be saved and have your sins forgiven.
And look, some will concede that they can only be forgiven their
sins because of some aspect of what Christ accomplished. But
they make his death on the cross by their doctrine subordinate
to and inferior to that which they presume makes the real difference
in their salvation, their decision, their acceptance of Christ, their
act of faith. Whatever it is that they imagine
that they have been able to do or have been enabled to do, to
appropriate for themselves that which their Christ merely made
possible." Many of you have heard this quote before, but it bears
repeating from Augustus Toplady. Augustus Toplady is the author
of that great old hymn, Rock of Ages. And he described that
popular notion this way. He said, according to this scheme,
you make Christ's sinless life, his meritorious death, and his
mediatorial undertakings serve no other purpose than that of
a mere pedestal on which human worth may stand exalted and appear
what it is not." See, who gets the glory according to that,
quote, gospel? It's not the Lord of glory, but
it's you and I, the sinner. As Ephesians 2, 8, 9 teaches
us, for by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should so boast. Well, many like me in
years past, while believing such heresy, we labeled that heresy
salvation by grace. But listen, that is grace in
name only. In reality, it is at best a cleverly
disguised system of works, and sometimes not even cleverly disguised. Because you see, how do we know
that? Ultimately, it has salvation
conditioned on you and me, the sinner. In other words, a work
of our hand, at least in some way, or at least to some degree. And you know, the more Christ
is spoken of, And they say, oh, he did all
of this and he did all of that for you, and now if you will
only just reach out your hand or do some small thing, the more
subtle the deception is, but make no mistake, it is a heresy
of salvation by work if it is not completely solely conditioned
on the Savior's finished work whereby God gets all the glory. So whatever is ascribed to Christ
as having been accomplished by his life and death, if in that
there remains something else to be done in order for a sinner
to be saved and reconciled before God, then his death work, listen,
by definition would not be a propitiatory work. And that would be in stark
contradiction to the clear original intent of 1 John 4.10. that sets
forth Christ as the propitiation for the sins of the Apostle John
and these true believers to whom John writes. You know, for many,
as it was for me in years past, the Lord of Glory's glorious
work is reduced to being a fulfillment of just some sort of prerequisite. Listen, a prerequisite to the
main or crowning event that will have you and me the center presuming
that we can save ourselves. Some refer to such notions of
Christ's work as if it is indeed an accomplishment of sorts. And
like me, they may use the biblical word propitiation. But if they
imagine that Christ's death failed to provide the full, the complete
satisfaction to God's justice, whereby those sinners for whom
he died are fully reconciled unto God, and on that basis alone,
then know this, that would mean their Christ is not the Christ
of this Bible. Because whatever you call it,
if he failed to fully satisfy all that is required for the
salvation of a sinner, then that Christ is not the propitiation
for any sinner's sins. That's what the word means. It
means satisfaction's been made, reconciliation's been made. Well,
let's consider our text by beginning our reading in the prior verse,
verse 9, and as you turn in there, I'll kind of bring you up to
speed on the context and the subject that John is addressing
here. As I've said, it's important
to know that the Apostle John is writing to true believers.
And the chapter begins, chapter 4 begins with him cautioning
these believers against false prophets, false teachers, and
false doctrines. And then as we get down around
verse 6, he starts to exhort them to love for their brethren
in Christ, their fellow believers. And he does so on the basis that
this love is of God, and so a fruit of God's Spirit and grace. He's
speaking of a love, see, that it belongs uniquely to believers. You know, all of us, we naturally
have some love when we're born into this world. We naturally
love our children or we naturally love our spouses or our parents. But here he's speaking of a love
that is unique to believers, that is of God. And so it's an
evidence of being born of God, of having a true knowledge of
Him as He is uniquely revealed to those He saves. And so as
we get to verse 9, he's writing to these fellow believers and
he says, and this was manifested, the love of God toward us, because
that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might
live through him. Here we see the manifestation
of God's love toward these objects of his everlasting love. See,
God's love is revealed in his purpose. his will, his determination
to save a group of guilty, otherwise hell-deserving sinners such as
you and I. And he sent his unique son, the
only begotten. Great is the mystery of godliness
as we heard in the 10 o'clock hour. God manifested in the flesh.
He sent him to come into this world that those believers to
whom John is writing might live through him. And that's speaking
of spiritual life. So in verse 9 we see that the
unique love of God that's being spoken of here is manifested
first in the glorious person of Christ. This one who is both
God and man in one person. Then as we move into verse 10
we're going to see that this love that was manifested in the
person of Christ is likewise manifested in the vicarious or
definite, redeeming, propitiatory work that he was sent to accomplish. The person and the work of Christ
are not to be separated. You know, we only know God is
spirit. Now Christ did come in the flesh,
but we only know God by the things that he does. So we can't separate
their person the attributes of God from the things that God
has accomplished. So to misunderstand Christ's
finished work is to not know Him as He is. And it's not to
know God the Father as He's revealed, the scripture says, in the person
and work of His dear Son, in the face of Jesus Christ. We
see that in verse 10 as we read, herein is love, not that we love
God, but that He loved us. and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. And Christ being the propitiation,
the satisfaction to God's justice again that's due unto the merit
of all the sins of all those in each generation for whom He
lived and died, in that we see that His love has provided in
the person and work of Christ that which is holy law and justice
demanded. And listen, that's good news
because that means His law and justice now then demands the
eternal salvation and the final glory in heaven of all these
objects of His love. You see, because God's wrath
has already been poured out for their sins and their substitute. He cannot justly charge them
with their sins and God must do right because He's already
charged them to Christ, their surety, their substitute. And
He is their propitiation. He's their sin-bearing sacrifice
that reconciles them unto a holy God. Think on that. How can that be? A sinner reconciled
to a holy God who cannot commune with sin. Well, Ephesians 1 tells
us how that can be. It says, because they're accepted
in the Beloved, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, their substitute. We see that same truth in this
chapter, 1 John 4, down in verse 17, where we read this. It says,
Herein is our love made perfect. And that word perfect there is
not the word that means flawless, but it's a word that means made
complete or reaches its goal. And here's the goal. That we
may have boldness in the day of judgment, assurance, a guarantee,
Based on what? Because as he is, so are we in
this world. I'm reconciled to God because
I'm accepting in Christ. I'm having no merit of my own
production, but instead I'm possessing the very merit of what my substitute
produced for me, the perfect righteousness that he rendered
on my behalf. I have his propitiatory work,
his righteousness, made to be mine. As He is, so are believers
in this world before the eyes of God's justice. Just as the
demerit of all their sins were imputed or reckoned to Him so
that He could suffer for them in their place, likewise the
merit of His perfect obedience unto death, His perfect righteousness
is imputed or accounted to them. You can read of that great exchange
in 2 Corinthians 5.21. And his righteousness that is
made to be theirs is none other than this very perfect satisfaction
that he rendered to God's holy law and justice. And he did so
both in precept and penalty. That is, he stood in their place
and did for them what they could not do for themselves. He obeyed
perfectly. All of God's revealed will But
he still was doing that, not for himself, but as a substitute
and a surety for ungodly, disobedient, law-breaking sinners. So Christ,
their propitiation, also satisfied God's just penalty due unto their
sins. He satisfied the penal demands
of God's law by his propitiatory work. And so thereby they're
reconciled. Think of the love of God. God's
wrath never abided upon them because the just wrath of God
was poured out on their sinless substitute. The one who in himself
inherently and experientially he knew no sin, but he had sin
laid upon him, reckoned to his account. So God the Father From
eternity past, he viewed those he loved always in Christ, their
representative, their substitute, their surety, who would, without
fail, come in time as he did some 2,000 years ago and be their
propitiation. And on that basis, the basis
of his finished cross work and nothing else, God has always
seen them as righteous, not guilty. What a glorious thing for these
objects of God's everlasting love. Here's Christ coming and
dying for sins. He had no part in producing and
providing for them a perfect righteousness. They had no part
in producing. Now that speaks of a wondrous
everlasting love and mercy and grace. I want you to notice now
in verse 10 that not only are we told what the essence of the
love of God is, but to ensure we do not misunderstand it, we're
told what it is not. He makes that clear when he says,
herein is love, not that we loved God. Further down in chapter
4, that's further emphasized in verse 19 when John writes,
we love Him because He first loved us. Now, don't skim over
this. This is such a simple thing,
Multitudes have this order all wrong. I want you to keep in
mind from the broader context, John is distinguishing here believers
from unbelievers, the true from the false. And he's relating
to these believers how they might know that this love of God that
belongs exclusively to believers has in fact been shed abroad
in their own hearts. Believers have this simple but
vital truth revealed to them. See, God's love was directed
toward those he saves when their love for him was non-existent. Listen, even before many of us
were born. And even after we're born, our
thoughts concerning who God is and how he saves sinners, our
gospel, prior to our new birth, that is, being given spiritual
life, regeneration and conversion in belief of this gospel of God's
grace, our thoughts then expose us as enemies in our minds and
at enmity with God according to Scripture. Now, in that natural
state, none of us, especially those of us who grew up in church,
we didn't think of ourselves as enemies. and worshiping a
false god, but that's the testimony of God's scripture toward us
all because he says, you hath he quickened who were what, dead
in trespasses and sins. There's none righteous, no not
one. We've all gone out of the way. There's a way that seemeth
right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. So their decision, and I'm speaking
of the act of faith of true believers, any turning in love to the true
and living God is not what brought on their God's love and favor.
A believer's love to the true and living God is caused by His
eternal love to them. And look, that's wonderful news
if you think about it. You know, it's unsettling for
a sinner to find out I'm really at God's mercy. I can't do a
thing to save myself. But oh, if God starts revealing
that to you, it ends up being the greatest news you'll ever
hear. You see, in seeing that, we see
how truly unconditional the love of God is, how everlasting it
is, and that its continuance, it doesn't depend at all on the
quality of our love for Him. His perfect love, you see, never
varies toward those he saves, although their imperfect love
for him most certainly does. Do you see in that the sovereignty
and the freeness of the unmatched, unconditional, glorious love
of God? Well, most do kind of skim over
this truth, and that's evidenced by the multitudes who continue
to cling to that mistaken notion that God saves them because of
how they respond to him. Multitudes believe, as many of
us once did, that God loves everybody, that Christ died for everybody,
but yet this God would not exercise his infinite power and wisdom
to ensure the eternal well-being of all those he presumably loved. Think of that. Now what kind
of love is that? They'll say God wants to save you, but he's
not going to dare step on or override your presumed free will
choice. Would any of you young mothers
allow your toddlers, you've heard me use this illustration before,
but it bears repeating. Would you let your toddlers run
out into the street in front of traffic to be run over and
killed if it was within your power to prevent such a tragedy?
Of course not. Not if you love them as I know
you do. But as much as a mother loves her child, it does not
compare to God's matchless love for his dear children. Can you
imagine such a neglectful mother being brought before the authorities
for her neglect arguing before them, well, I could have stopped
little Johnny from running out in the street, but I didn't want
to override his free will decision. He wanted to go out there and
play. That's not love. And yet, the doctrine of many
suggests just the same thing as it pertains to God's love.
Some will argue, well, yeah, but you're talking about a little
child that doesn't know any better. We'd intervene there. What is
a lost sinner but a but an ignorant, dumb, spiritually dead, we have
less faculties than that little toddler. So it's an out comparison. Many believe that God's favor
toward them, see, is conditioned on their first choosing Him.
And that's contrary to this passage, and it's contrary to the whole
of Scripture. And before we leave this verse, I want you to look
at that important conjunction there too, the word and. It reads,
herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and
sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. As I said, God's
person and work is there not to be separated. We see here
God's love cannot be separated from that which he sent his dear
son to accomplish. So to be an eternal object of
God's love, if God loves you, it is to have Christ as the propitiation
for your sins. Satisfaction made to justice
whereby you, a sinner, are found not guilty, but rather accepted
in Christ, your substitute and surety. We see here how John sets forth
what love is and what it is not. We see in the scriptures, in
particular the epistles, as the gospel set forth in its clarity. And I believe as it's preached
in its clarity, we set forth how God does save sinners and
we distinguish it from the imaginations of men about what it is not.
And I'm always struck by this simple observation, and that
is how when we're talking about religion, the true versus the
false, it always just reduces down to this dichotomy of grace
versus works. All religions and denominations
and sects, as varied as they are, they can all be said to
fall under one of these two categories, as subsets of them. A group that believes that salvation
is rightly, they rightly understand it to be totally by grace. And that means totally conditioned
on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ having
fulfilled by his obedience unto death every condition necessary
for their salvation. Or alternatively, it'll fit in
the category in which salvation is tragically misunderstood to
be of works. It may not be called that, but
if it's conditioned, at least in some way, to some degree,
on something done by or in or through you, the sinner, that's
something that would make the real difference in your salvation
as to whether you're saved or lost, then that's the religion
of works. And God will not have it. All
believers at some point in their lives They are brought to believe. And when they're brought to believe,
they see, just like these believers to whom John is writing, that
our salvation is because God loved us and sent His Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ, to bear our sins away fully by His propitiatory
sacrifice in satisfaction to God's justice. That's grace.
And in seeing this, true believers are brought to repent. To repent,
as God, the scripture says, God calls on all men everywhere to
repent. To repent of the natural but
popular and deadly false religion of works, whereby we sinfully
presume that God would favor us because of our response to
Him. That's what I believed. I believed
Christ died for everyone. Well, He didn't make the difference
what did. Oh, I had to believe. I was that crowning event, my
faith. It was something I did, some
decision I made. In other words, it was because
of our love for Him as the first and effectual cause of our salvation. And if that still describes you,
I pray God will likewise grant you repentance. And He will if
you ever see the evil of that. If you see how we dare to approach
God on that basis, in essence, placing our faith, or whatever
we thought made the difference in our being saved, in rivalry
with the propitiation that Christ, the God-man, alone could and
did render. So there's a sense, you could
say, that we were looking to our sinful selves as the propitiation
for our own sins. Now, we wouldn't have put it
that way. I've never heard anyone put it that way. But isn't that,
in essence, what we were doing? For propitiation is what satisfies
God, which is that which gains His favor. So we were looking
at our own self-righteousness in our prideful, spiritually
blind ignorance of the one righteousness we must have, the righteousness
of God which Christ, the God-man, alone could and did establish
by His obedience unto death. So don't dare continue to entertain
the idea that something done by or through you, a sinner,
could measure up to what it took, could replace and accomplish
what took the doing and the dying of the Lord of Glory. See, God's
glory is at stake and this thing's really all about Him. That's
His chief design in all things and He will not share His glory.
A sinner cannot propitiate or provide satisfaction to a holy
God's justice for his or her own sins. That's why we need
a Savior. We know that's true because one
who dies in a state of lostness, who subsequently suffers under
God's wrath in hell, we know that they never are able to pay
down that debt owed. No amount of suffering they do
measures up to what is required before God's holy bar of justice. It took the infinitely valuable,
sinless, substitutionary, sacrificial death of the unblemished Lamb
of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to satisfy that debt. See, sin
is a travesty against an infinitely holy God, and only God could
provide Himself a suitable propitiatory sacrifice. The death, the blood
offering of His own dear Son, the God-Man. In 1 John 4.10, John says of
himself and the believers to whom he writes, he says, Christ
is the propitiation for our sins. Can you say that? Is Christ the
propitiation for your sins? That English word, propitiation,
is found three times in the New Testament. And don't worry, we're
not going to turn to all those places. But two of these are
translated from the exact same Greek word. And they're found
in this epistle, 1 John 2.2, and then in our text today, chapter
4, verse 10. But a variation of this original
word, is also properly translated as propitiation, and it's found
in Romans 3.25. And what's interesting is that
same Greek word is found in Hebrews chapter 9
verse 5, but there the translators translated it as the mercy seat. That's in reference to the lid
or the covering that sat upon the Ark of the Covenant. In fact,
the Greek version of the Old Testament uses that same word
in Exodus 25-21 to talk about the mercy seat, just as the Hebrew
is translated mercy seat there. And time's not going to permit
us to turn to all those passages, but I think it will add to your
understanding of propitiation to just see its relations to
the mercy seat. Most of you know the mercy seat
was that lid that covered the Ark of the Covenant. which inside
contain the law etched on tablets of stone that God had given Moses. And of course, if you read the
Old Testament, the testimony there is of our inability to
keep any of God's revealed will, for they immediately, the children
of Israel immediately under that old covenant broke that law,
just as all of sinful humanity in every generation falls short.
of fulfilling God's revealed will. Romans 3.23 declares that
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Well, in
accordance under that old covenant economy, with God's precise instructions
to Moses, on the great day of atonement, the high priest would
carry the blood of a sacrifice which he offered for all the
people of Israel. He would take it within what
was called the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, within the
veil, and he would sprinkle it upon the mercy You see, a covering
was needed, a propitiation. And to that mercy seat, in that
day, men and women were directed by our God to look to that. And
Christ came along in the New Testament and he said, Moses
and the prophets, they all spoke of me. All of this see pictured
the Lord Jesus Christ, our mercy seat, to whom we're commanded
to look, our propitiation. whereby God's just wrath against
our law-breaking, our sin, is covered or satisfied by His shed
blood. And that covering, that propitiation,
is not some mere means by which sins might be forgiven. No, if
Christ is your propitiation, He totally put away your sins
by the perfect, justice-satisfying work of reconciliation He rendered
at the cross. We see this in Hebrews 8.12.
There, there's a Greek word that's translated merciful. And it's
a word, though, that also means propitious. And there, God is
quoted saying this, for I will be merciful, I'll be propitious
to their unrighteousness. And their sins and their iniquities
will I remember no more. So God loves you. If Christ is
your propitiation, it can be said of you, your sins and your
iniquities, He will remember them no more. You can know if
Christ is your propitiation. If His blood offering has been
sprinkled, so to speak, or what that means in the scripture is
basically applied to your heart, to borrow the language of Hebrews
9.14, It says, so as to purge your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God. And just very briefly, all that,
the gist of that poses this question. Has God granted you the gift
of repentance from dead works? And that simply means from the
evil of having presumed that some work of your hand, some
responsive action taken by you, something done by you, something
you've been enabled to do, would serve in the place of what Christ
actually accomplished? Would it be the propitiation
for your sins in the sense that it's what got you into God's
favor, satisfied you, reconciled you unto God, and found you acceptable
in His sight? Well, if you've repented of such,
you know when you repent, faith and repentance are inseparable.
When you repent, you turn from something to something. And so
it's reflected in what you turn to, where your hope lies. In other words, the basis upon
which you now approach God for acceptance. And we have a beautiful
example I want to close with in the parable of the Pharisee
and the publican in Luke chapter 18. And the reason I chose this,
that same word that I just mentioned from the book of Hebrews that's
translated merciful, The word that also means propitious or
reconciled is used here in this parable. Look in verse 9 of Luke
18 where we read, and he, that is Christ, spoke this parable
unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous
and despised others. That's what we all do by nature.
We all immediately, when we get interested in religion, say,
what do I have to do to be saved? That's trusting in myself that
I can meet the standard of righteousness. And you know, when we do that,
we didn't think of it as despising others, but that's what we're
doing. We thought highly, we made a decision that somebody
else wouldn't make. We made ourselves to differ.
I decided to get serious and join the church, except Jesus,
they didn't. Well, I'm getting off track here.
Here's the parable that Christ read to them. Two men, or spoke
to them, two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a
Pharisee and the other a Republican. The Pharisee stood and prayed
thus with himself, God, I thank thee," he gave God the credit,
presumes to anyway, that I'm not as other men are, extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, that low-life
tax collector as they were viewed in that day. He said, I fast
twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar
off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven But he
smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. God, be propitious. Make reconciliation
for me, a sinner. And here's Christ's testimony
of him. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified,
declared not guilty, righteous, rather than the other. For everyone
that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted. Does that humble plea fit your
need? A cry for mercy is one that recognizes
our desperate need for a favor from God that we cannot merit.
We really need mercy. We need grace. And this specific
mercy, this propitiation, is that which appeases God by way
of a perfect satisfaction to His holy law and justice that
guarantees the salvation for everyone for whom it was rendered.
That's propitiation. If God has stripped you of reliance
on your own self-righteousness and has granted you such a God-given
faith and repentance so as to leave you trusting solely in
the Lord Jesus Christ and in His finished work alone for all
of your salvation, then you can rejoice. You should rejoice with
me and with this publican and listen ultimately with every
other justified sinner. in seeing Christ as the propitiation
for our sins.