He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2)
The word, �Propitiation� means a wrath removing sacrifice. Notice that the concept of propitiation presupposes two other concepts: (1) wrath and (2) sacrifice.
�Wrath� is God�s righteous anger, a personal and holy hatred towards evil. God is not simply angry at sin in general. He is personally angry against individual sinners.
A �sacrifice� is a giving up or offering of something valuable for the purpose of pleasing God.
According to Scripture, Jesus Christ was put forward as a propitiation, wherein He bore the divine chastisement due to sinners. God was pleased to accept this sacrifice; it satisfied His righteous requirement and turned away or appeased His wrath.
This is good news. For on the basis of Christ�s sacrifice, sinners move from being objects of wrath to objects of favor. This is a once for all act whereby God�s disposition toward individual sinners changes from anger to delight.
All praise be to God through Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins.
Good post, I agree 100% in premise but for the sake of discussion ; I don't believe God acts out his anger. In fact I am not even sure God gets angry. I think this 'anger' is a hebrewic way to define Gods discipline and judgement. God has a plan and deals decisively with evil. He even uses it to accomplish His will. God does what needs to be done when it needs to be done; 'Tough Love' I think the hebrew writers described this as "anger" or "righteous anger".
Hmmm... I think this would be a good subject for me to research in depth.
I like the new picture, as well =) It's nice to have a face to go with the name. I noticed that you're a ski instructor. I should really learn how to ski one of these days, being that I live in WA state and all. Skiing is the thing to do here!
And I should be studying right now for a big test I have tomorrow... I should not be on CDFF, but here I am! I could really go on-and-on-and-on regarding this topic, but will just throw some Hebrew and Greek into the mix for now.
The Greek word for propitiation in 1 John 2:2 is hilasmos, which is related to hilasterion (used in other NT verses), which is considered to be equivalent to the Hebrew word kapporeth, which was used to describe the lid of the ark of the covenant. The term "mercy seat" has been translated from both the OT kapporeth and the NT hilasterion.
I am waiting in eager expectation : *sitting on the edge of of my seat, eyes straining, ears perked, a little bit of drool stretching down to the keyboard, finger posed ready to display the rest of your answer* please hurry please hurry please hurry please hurry please hurry please hurry please hurry!
I'd like to point out that God is extremely long-suffering and slow to anger as well. There are many examples of this, but when He decided to cleanse the world with a flood, how long did He take to actually do it? 120 years? You can basically take the biblical definition of love in Corinthians and discover God's character right there. God is love.
We are made in His image! God gave us some of His characteristics when He created us, love, laughter, hate, anger, sad, happy, kindness, etc...YES God is love but He is so much more than JUST love, all of His character are maxed out, one is not greater than the other.
But hey! At least no one is a heretic on if they do not believe God gets angry or hates. And I totally agree with Mark He is LONG suffering and MERCIFUL I am MOST thankful for that!!!
I believe He gets angry, the bible just says that "love is slow to anger". He's definitely long-suffering. I mean...look at Israel and how much proof they had of Him, but yet how much they disregarded Him. That would make me pretty angry pretty fast.
@2sparrows: Hope you didn't ruin your keyboard while you were drooling over there!
Okay, I have some more Greek for you all. And a little bit of Hebrew. But Hebrew really isn't my thing. I know more about Greek! I have to do more looking up with Hebrew stuff, which can be frustrating.
Anyway, I did a *tiny* bit of research on kapporeth. It is believed to have come from the verb kaphor, which is used in Genesis 32:20 when talking about "pacifying" Esau with gifts.
On to the Greek... The root of hilas in hilasmos and hilasterion also has a verb form: hilaskomai. The suffix of komai is actually both a standalone verb and noun in the Greek. At first glance, the verb and noun have completely different meanings, but I think they're actually quite similar, and I'll explain why (aren't you excited?)!!
As a verb, komai means to make something liquid or fluid -- to take something that might otherwise stand still and cause it to flow from one place to another or from one person to another. This would be like taking a glass of water that just sits there and turning it into a river.
As a noun, komai refers to an outlying village -- something roughly equivalent to a suburb. What I think is really neat about this is the idea that a suburb is very much influenced by the big city that it's near. In that sense, there is a flowing of influence from the big city to the suburb. A komai is the result of both people and culture flowing out of a larger city. Quite some time ago, I was doing some reading on this... and I wish could remember exactly what was said... But, this article was saying that there was this phrase in Greek that used a variant of the word komai that actually meant a person who goes from town-to-town -- not like a nomad, but someone such as Paul or Jesus -- someone who flowed like a river through a land, exerting influence and pouring out himself into people.
So, the verb propitiate (hilaskomai) takes on that meaning of fluidity. There is a transference of something from one to another.
Flipping back to the Hebrew for a bit here, kapporeth, as I said earlier, was the word for the gold cover of the ark of the covenant (see Exodus 25:17-22 for a description). As you all know (hopefully?), this was where the High Priest would sprinkle blood to atone for the sins of the Israelites on the Day of Atonement, otherwise known as Yom Kippur (see Leviticus 16).
Moving into the Greek again, if you flip over to Hebrews 9:5 where it's talking about the ark of the covenant -- to give context to the subsequent discussion of Christ's sacrifice and the new covenant -- it uses the word hilasterion when referring to the gold cover of the ark. That is where the connection between the Hebrew word kapporeth and the Greek word hilasterion comes from. The word hilasterion is interesting because the suffix -terion is one that is added to word roots to form a noun that signifies a place where the noun is made "active," so to speak. It's similar to the English suffix -arium, as seen in words like sanitarium and planetarium. A sanitarium is a place where the regaining of sanity/health occurs (hopefully!). The cover of the ark was the place where atonement occurred.
Moving forward to 1 John 2:2, the word that is used when it says "He is the ______" is hilasmos. The suffix of -mos is used in the Greek to turn the root of a verb (such as hilaskomai) into a noun that refers to the result of the process of the verb. So, hilasmos is the result of hilaskomai. This is REALLY interesting to me for three reasons:
1. It illustrates that redemption is what God's plan was all along. Hilasmos isn't just something that popped up out of nowhere; it's the result of a process that began long before Christ even walked the earth.
2. Going back to the idea of hilaskomai signifying the flow of or transference of something, we can see that hilasmos (Christ as the sacrifice/atonement) is the result of our sin essentially being transferred to Christ. The sin of the world was in the wounds on His flesh and in the flowing out of blood from His body.
3. Talking again about the idea of something flowing from one to the other, Christ's work on the cross flows through us as believers, in the sense that we are given His righteousness, that we we are given eternal life, and that His power works in/through us (see Ephesians 1:19-20).
I know that is really long, but I think it's something worth understanding because when I hear people (even pastors) talk about propitiation they only seem to really grasp one aspect of it. But, propitiation isn't just one thing. It's not just "removal of sins" or "mercy." It can't really be all watered down to one word or a short phrase.
Back in the Genesis reference above, we start with the idea of bringing a gift to appease or pacify someone who wouldn't otherwise want to be in your presence. With us and God, we cannot be in His presence as we were in our "natural" state. Then, we move into the imagery of the atonement made on the cover of the ark -- blood sprinkled by the High Priest on behalf of the people, as a lasting ordinance that brought cleansing. The cover of the ark was both a place of shed blood and this holy, sacred place where God met with the High Priest to give him commands. This, too, illustrates a little bit of that movement or fluidity of "propitiate." There is the very literal fluidity of the blood and there is the fluidity of cleansing being brought to the people and the fluidity of God's commands being given to the High Priest. It's not something one-sided, where God randomly does stuff that has no affect on people or where people try to connect with God but He doesn't care or isn't listening. I think understanding all of what the Old Testament brings out about propitiation is necessary to understanding the richness of what it really means for Christ to be our propitiation.
Anyway, I'm done. I could say more, but I've already gone on way too much probably and I have so much more studying to do tonight!!!
