Letters to the Cross: Week 4 Propiation and Expiation

This Sunday at Christ Memorial Temple we will be continuing our Easter Sermon series called Letters to the Cross. Over the five Sundays in March, we will be examining the doctrines of the Cross and how it applies to us today.

Week One: Substitutionary Atonement
Week Two: Justification
Week Three: Redemption and Reconciliation
Week Four: Propitiation and Expiation
Week Five: Victory

Week Four Introduction: It was 2000 years ago… what does the Cross do today?

God is angry.

He is not just angry at sin. He is angry at us.

We humans are guilty of reversing God's creative order… instead of being made in the image and likeness of God… we are continually remaking God in our own image and likeness. In Biblical times, this manifested in stone carved idols and wooden images. Today our idolatry manifests itself into the abstract images of time management. Our gods fit our time schedule. What we have time for, that we worship. Therefore we need a much more understanding and merciful God… than they did in the Old Testament. We need a new Jesus.

Christians today draw a large line between the Old and New Testaments. It's as if the God of the Old Testament and Jesus were two separate people entirely. (You would think Oneness theology would help avoid this pitfall but not so .) We seem think that O.T. God was going through a hormonal imbalance High School phase; one minute He is welding lightning bolts and fire balls, the next minute He is pouring out manna from the sky. Jesus, in contrast, is God in His fourth semester of college who has discovered His identity as a philosopher and walks around loving everyone and forgiving all our misdeeds. O.T. God was into smiting, N.T. God was into suffering. In between these crazy definitions is the true God, who claims to be 'unchanging and eternal' of whom the writer of Hebrews boldly declared as "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever! (Hebrews 13:8)

If we believe Jesus is truly the One God we claim Him to be, we must not label His nature so differently from the Hebraic revelation of God. The New Testament reveals more in depth the attribute of God's love but it does nothing to discourage the attribute of God's wrath and judgment. Jesus, too got angry. He hit men with whips and cords, He overthrew tables. He told the Pharisees they 'were going to hell and making converts twice the hell spawns.' He told them they were children of the Devil. Jesus, consistent with O.T. Jesus has always hated false holiness. The Bible constantly reveals the attribute of God's Holiness. It records His holiness more than it speaks of His love or mercy. In short God is Holy. We are not. And that keeps God very angry.

The saying, God loves the sinner but hates the sin, sounds nice and non confrontational, but it is not Biblical (Psalms 5:5, Romans 9:13). God loves everyone at creation, but He equally hates us in our evil deeds. A man can love someone and still be vengefully angry at the same time. Often we punish those whom we love. The mercy of God is in the fact that Bible says God is slow to anger… not without it. He hates our sin because it defiles us completely in the same way that a wife would hate her adulterous husband (she has anger because she loves him, if there was not love there would be no emotion). In a very real way, God's hatred of our sin shows how much He actually loves us. We share this disgust toward sin with God, however we tend to only be disgusted at the sin of others and not at our own.

All sin is ultimately against God as it fractures His relationship with His children, and that is just cause for anger. In Genesis , God is grieved with the sight of man, and Jesus would later say in Matthew, "As it was in the days of Noah…" Like a father who returns home to be informed that his children have chosen a new dad, or a husband that finds out his wife has chosen a new man… God is righteously angry! Our idolatry and worship of the creature more than the Creator invokes the wrath of God.

It is going to get bloody.

Welcome to savage church. Imagine church as a place where we drive up our cars and the ministry staff uses baseball bats to destroy it before setting the engine on fire. Then the next week, you are forced to bring your family pet (dog or cat), and stand on the platform, in front of the entire congregation and place your hands on the animals head to confess all your deepest and darkest secrets. Afterward, the preacher would take the pet from your arms and cut its throat as the animal would squirm and yelp. Does this sound very seeker sensitive? Does it seem too graphic, watching your loved possessions suffering and being destroyed even though they were not to blame? We are to blame. We are guilty. We are the real Goats.

This is how church is conducted without Jesus. Where a sinner comes face to face with the consequences of their sin.

Like savages that try to appease God by throwing a girl into a volcano or offering a blonde to King Kong, there is instinctual understanding that God is angry, His judgment is nigh, and we have a bull's-eye painted on our heads. Our sins put Christ on the cross, our status as sinners made us enemies of God, and our willingness to live in sin makes us slaves. Put all of this together and the Jonathan Edwards sermon, "Sinners in the hands of an angry God comes to mind. The streets are ready to run red with blood, Armageddon style. Cue the fire balls. It's the end of the world as we know it…

In this is Love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the Propitiation for our sins.(1 John 4:10)

That is what the cross is today… our propitiation. When the blood of goats and bulls could not take away our sins or appease the wrath of God, Jesus satisfied all on Calvary.