Propitiation Luke 22:44 "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." There are so many people today that want to set aside the greatest and richest doctrines of the atonement. People don't want to talk about propitiation, and the fact that God is righteously angered at sin. They're taking lines out of old hymns, like "On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied." People don't want to sing about that. They don't want to hear about it. People are preaching a gospel and believing some form of the gospel that is stripped of some of its most essential features. And these are the features that we are ultimately confronted with when we read through a book like Leviticus. When we read of the blood shed, the mangled throat of these offerings and, the burning flesh on the altar, we think how terrible. Yet, we learn and are made wise unto salvation by reading how terrible the offering of Christ on the cross was when God turned His back and poured out His wrath, and, yet, at the same time how sweet to know of the depths that Christ endured for us. I get so frustrated when I hear people explain to me that the gospel is the fact that Jesus came as some kind of pitiful martyr trying to tell everyone a message of love but no one wanted to listen, so they just pinned him up on a cross to shut Him up and somehow He rose from the dead a little more powerful than everybody else. It was a great demonstration of love, but it's so much more than that. Jesus was not a pitiful martyr that was pinned up for a message that many wanted to reject. He was the Son of God who came to do the work and the will of God. That is why He sweat drops of blood in the garden. He wasn't sweating drops of blood because He was really burden by his message of love. He was sweating drops of blood because He knew that He was about to drink from the cup of God's wrath for you and for me. Oh how sweet is it to see that He did it willingly. Salvation becomes so much sweeter when the scriptures make us wise, and sin becomes so much more detestable when we understand why He died. Jesus did not die to make sick people a little better. He died to make dead people live. And we preach to let ignorant people hear and know what God has done for them. He is not like the other martyrs of history who had a message that no one wanted to hear. He came knowing, with purpose in His heart, as He said "I have come to do thy will, O God, and the zeal of your house is consuming me to the point that I will give my soul, an offering". Jesus is the propitiation and satisfaction and atonement for us. |