Copyright © 2023 Michael A Brown
‘Whom
God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood…’ (Rom. 3:25 AV)
‘And he
is the propitiation for our sins…’
(1 John 2:2 AV)
In these verses, the apostles Paul and
John both make use of the hilasmos family of Greek words to describe
Jesus as the propitiation for our sins.
Put simply, this means that Jesus, through his sacrifice on the cross
took away God’s wrath towards human sin, so that, as we repent and accept
Christ, we are reconciled with God and enter into a covenant relationship with
him which is sealed by the blood of Christ and empowered within us by his own
divine life through the Holy Spirit. As
we saw above, this is a covenant relationship to which God himself, for his
part, is totally and irrevocably committed in the giving of himself to those
who believe.
So the experiential aim of propitiation is
that we enter into an ongoing subjective experience of the love, security,
superintending care and provision of God as our Father in the totality of our
walk with him through life:
‘I
will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away
from them.’ (Hosea
14:4)
Although there will always be occasions
when each of us need to confess sin and failure in thought, attitude, word or
deed, and times when we need God’s correction or even his discipline (Heb. 12:5-11),
yet, in Christ, we can never be the objects of God’s wrath, for the simple
reason that Christ remains our propitiation.
The validity and power of his propitiatory work continues throughout our
Christian life, it is not something that was true merely at the time of our
conversion:
‘My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins…’ (1 John 2:1-2 AV)
The erroneous post-tribulation belief that
Christians will somehow go through the seven-year tribulation period and
experience the giving over of this world to the outpouring of the end-times
wrath of God, highlights a failure to make a necessary connection between two
different areas of Christian belief, in this case between the soteriological
theme of propitiation and the eschatological truth of the rapture. The failure to make connections in such ways
between different areas of biblical truth is not uncommon among Christians, and
it is sometimes the underlying cause of insecurity in their walk with God or of
doctrinal confusion.
To believe that Christ is our
propitiation, and to therefore enter subjectively and experientially into a
consistent daily experience of being secure and resting in the love and care of
God, but to then posit that we will also somehow be allowed to go through God’s
end-times wrath, is to introduce an existential discontinuity into God’s
dealings with us in Christ, and therefore to effectively deny that Christ’s
work is both complete and permanent. It
is to say that his propitiatory work is sufficient in the here and now, but
somehow it becomes invalid during the tribulation period (should we remain,
that is). Post-tribulationists fail to
address this confusion at the heart of their eschatology.
The simple fact is that, because Christ’s
propitiatory work is complete, sufficient, and ongoing in its validity,
Christians can never be the object of God’s wrath. Period.
At any time. Period. Christ cannot one day be our propitiation,
and the next not!
‘Since
we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from
God’s wrath through him!’
(Rom. 5:9)
Furthermore, perhaps post-tribulationists should
be consistent with themselves in this glaring discontinuity by bringing it back
from the tribulation period into our present-day experience of walking with God? In other words, why not start to believe that
we are saved from God’s wrath today, but somehow tomorrow we’re not? But what kind of security do you think we would
then find in our walk with God?! And woe
betide us if we were to sin and mess up?!
No, this would be theological nonsense, of
course. The truth of propitiation, and
indeed that of covenant as well, necessarily implies that a genuine regenerate,
blood-bought Christian who walks with God cannot possibly go through God’s
end-times wrath. Just as we daily
experience God’s covenant commitment towards us and his love and care in the
present time, we will also experience it by being raptured away from God’s
end-times wrath. In Christ, we are not
appointed to suffer God’s wrath, but to experience his salvation! Jesus our propitiation will deliver us from
the coming wrath!
‘…and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.’ (1 Thess. 1:10)
‘For
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our
Lord Jesus Christ.’
(1 Thess. 5:9)
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