Bible Text: 1 John 2 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
In a recent translation of the Bible, the translators decided to translate the word grace as “kindness,” with the reasoning that we don’t use the word grace anymore in daily conversation and so people don’t really know what it means. So Ephesians 2:8, those familiar words that we should all have memorized, “By grace you have been saved through faith,” they get translated, “God saved you through faith as an act of kindness.” Now, I understand the reasoning. You don’t want to use unnecessarily big words or obscure words that confuse people. I’ve put down and refused to read more than one book because the author decided to show off how many rare words he knew in the first few pages. It’s annoying.
But there are some words we should learn if we don’t know. Because God uses them in the Bible and when you know what they mean you know the depth of God’s love. Grace is definitely one of those words. It is God’s undeserved love. Not simply an act of kindness, but an act of totally undeserved kindness, and a kindness like none other, the grace of God is His love for sinners who deserved His punishment but get instead His tender love and care.
Now there’s another word that’s big, and that we don’t use in our everyday vocabulary, but that the Bible uses and that we should learn. Because it is possibly the most comforting word in all the Bible, in all the world. John uses it in our reading for tonight – He Himself, Jesus Himself, is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.
That word propitiation means a sacrifice that turns away someone’s anger and instead makes him favorable, kind, at peace with the one who offended him. That’s exactly what Jesus is for us and for all the world. Jesus is that sacrifice that turns away God’s anger and instead makes Him favorable, kind, and at peace with us. He is our propitiation. It’s amazing how much can be in one word. We call a word “pregnant” when it is so full of meaning that it takes a sermon to describe it. And this is a pregnant word, propitiation. Let me just read you what the Living Bible translates this word as, same verse, 1 John 2:2, “He is the one who took God’s wrath against our sins upon himself and brought us into fellowship with God.” That one word, propitiation, gets translated as “the one who took God’s wrath against our sins upon himself and brought us into fellowship with God.” One word gets translated into 17 English words!
It should make you happy that we have a word that means all that. My brother is a missionary in Europe and the other week he was teaching some European Lutheran seminary students, men studying to be pastors, and he explained to them what this one word meant, propitiation, the sacrifice to take away God’s anger against our sin and bring us into fellowship with God. And he asked them, do you have a word in your language that means that. And none of the Norwegians or Latvians or any others could think of one. You know why we have that word in our language? Propitiation. Because it is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the world and our English speaking fathers and mothers talked about it so much that they needed a word to describe it, just like the Latin-speakers before them, the Greek-speakers before them, the Hebrew speakers before them. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. He is the sacrifice that turns God’s anger away from us, because Jesus bears it Himself, and brings us into fellowship with God. How could we not have a word to describe this? It’s our everything.
We talked last week about confession. Or John did in chapter 1. He said that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. When we confess our sins, we aren’t simply saying we are sorry, that we feel bad, we’re confessing a truth, a reality, about our sins – they anger God. They offend Him. This is what we confess in our regular confession on Sunday, that we have deserved His temporal and eternal punishment, that’s His anger. It’s real. Whether we feel it or not. God can’t stand sin.
Why is it that God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins then? Think about those words. “Faithful” means He’s keeping a promise. “Just” means He’s doing the right thing. Why would God be doing the right thing, why would He be keeping a promise, by forgiving our sins when we confess them? It’s not because our confession or our sorrow is somehow deep enough, strong enough, that it earns God’s forgiveness. That’s actually what the Roman Catholics teach, that our sorrow over sin earns God’s grace, so that God has agreed to forgive your sin if you’re sorry enough. But then how would you ever know that your sorry enough? How much sorrow is enough to earn God’s forgiveness? This is the kind of thing that made poor Luther whip himself, self-flagellation it’s called, he whipped himself to try to convince himself and God that he was sorry enough for his sins to be forgiven. But he never felt sorry enough. You know why? Because being sorry, no matter how sorry you are, has never taken away anyone’s sins ever. Look at Judas. He was sorry. He betrayed the Son of God. He was very sorry. So sorry he despaired and hanged himself. That doesn’t earn forgiveness.
Why is God faithful and just to forgive us our sins? Because Jesus is our propitiation. We hit on this on Sunday, that God is faithful and so He must do what He promised. And He has promised to forgive us. On what basis? Not because of anything we do. And not because forgiveness is cheap. The basis, the reason God can be faithful and just to tell you that your sins won’t be punished, is because they’ve already been punished. That’s what John tells you when He says Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. It would be unjust of God, and God can’t be unjust, it would be unjust of Him NOT to forgive your sins. Because Jesus took them away. What a beautiful thing.
Jesus turned away God’s anger forever. And He turned it away by enduring it Himself. That is what propitiation is. He bore the wrath of God against your sin. And He is the Word, the Light, the very God of very God: that’s how much He loves you. If you think about how angry you get at others who sin against you, because of all the pain they cause, what do you want? You want them to stop what they’re doing, right, you want them to leave you alone? Well look at God. God is offended, angered at our sins, and instead of casting us away, so that we don’t trouble Him anymore, which He could do, He suffers, He takes our frail human nature on Himself, and He bears in His body and soul all the anger that our sin deserved. And since He’s suffered it, there is nothing left but love for us.
That’s why the rest of this chapter, and the rest of 1 John, is dominated by that word love. This is very important for us to realize. We talked about John being the apostle of love last week, because he uses the word so much. But read through chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2, and what word will you NOT find? Love. It’s not there. It comes only after John tells us what Jesus is, the propitiation for our sins. And then it occurs 46 times. Why? Because that’s love. What Jesus does on that cross, propitiation, that’s where you see love. That’s where love is defined for you. Any definition of love fails if it doesn’t proceed from that cross. Love is love, they say, to justify every evil pleasure of this world. Love means toleration of everything and everyone, they say. But we know what true love is, when all our selfishness and all the wickedness of all the world is placed on the Son of God and He takes the punishment of it all for us. There’s a poem my my dad had me memorize when I was a child that expresses this so well.
Of what this paltering world calls love
I will not know I cannot speak
I know but His who reigns above
And His is neither mild nor weak
Hard even unto death is this
And smiting with its awful kiss
What was the answer of God’s love
Of old when in the Olive grove
In anguished sweat His own Son lay
And prayed, “O take this cup away?”
Did God take from Him then the cup?
No, child, His Son must drink it up.
That cup is the cup of God’s wrath. And Jesus drank it. That’s propitiation. When we know the love of a Savior God who took our punishment on Himself, then we know true love. The great commandment of the New Testament is not that we do anything, no great heroic work of ours, it is simply this: that we believe in this love, in Jesus who gave Himself as the propitiation for our sins. And when we trust in Him, we love one another. And that will be the topic of the next sermon, or two. In the name of Jesus. Amen.