“The
Search For Significance –
Seeing
your true worth through God's eyes”
Robert
S. McGee
Chapter 8 – God's Answer to the
Blame Game - Propitiation
- How does God determine truth?
- Does your opinion affect the truth?
- Does truth matter any more?
- Does God ever change truth?
- Does God accommodate man, or is man meant to accommodate God?
- Some would argue that information about God and what he tells us, while it is true, is still only relative
- This is man trying to make God subservient to him, because man does not want to be subject to God
- There is also a “hard” side to God
- This is also the reason we can depend on God and his Word
- God is holy
- To be consistent to his holiness, sin needs to be punished
- We covered that in chapter 4 about Justification
- This may not seem fair, many things God says about sin may not seem fair
- We may think, God why cant you overlook some things?
- It is only when we understand the horror of coming under the wrath of a holy God, that we will appreciate what Jesus did for us on the cross
- He was our substitute. He took on himself the righteous wrath of God that we deserved
- The depth of God's love for us is revealed by the extreme actions he took for us: Jesus becoming a man and dying a horrible death in our place
- Isa 53:4-6
- 1 John 4:9-11
- Propitiation means that the wrath of someone who has been unjustly nwronged, has been satisfied
- It is an act that soothes hostility and satisfies the need for vengeance
- Providing his own sonas the propitiation for our sins was the greatest possible demonstration of God's love for man
- To understand the need for ptropitiation, we need to think about what God has endured from man
- From the Garden of Eden, man's story is of greed, hate, lust, pride, rebellion against the God of love and peace
- Compared to God's holiness even our good deeds are like filthy garments to God
- Isa 64:6
- So our sin deserves the righteous wrath of God
- God is absolutely holy and perfect – 1 Jn 1:5
- God cannot overlook sin, or compromise by accepting sinful behavior
- For God to allow even one sin would defile his holiness, lik smearing him with black tar
- Because God is holy, his aversion to sin is manifested in righteous anger
- But he is also infinitely loving, hence Jesus' extreme sacrifice in our place, to propitiate his great wrath
- Rom 5:7-11
- God saw what happened to Jesus
- He could have stopped it and delivered Jesus from the whole ordeal
- God looked down through time and saw you and me
- Yet though we were his enemies, he loved us and longed to rescue us from our sins, so he designated Jesus to becopme our substitute
- Jesus became sin for us - 2 Cor 5:21
- Nothing can separate us from God's love - Rom 8:38-39
- We now have a tender, intimate, powerful relationship with him – Rom 8:15
- Therefore, performance opn our part is no longer the basis of our worth
- We are deeply and unconditionally loved by God
- We were spiritually dead, but we are now alive, and have been made his children
- Eph 2:4-9
- Propitiation thus means that Christ has satisfied the holy wrath of God through his payment for our sin
- The only reason he would do this, is that he loves us
- Infinitely, eternally, unconditionally, irrevocably, he loves us
- There is nothing we can do that can pay fopr our sins
- Christ paid for them conclusively, so we can escape eternal condemnation and experience his love now and forever
- Poor patterns of motivation
- All our lives people have made us feel bad about ourselves in order to motivate us
- we us e this on others as well
- Holding on to unforgiveness
- Here are some reasons why we don't forgive:
- the offense was too great
- they won't accept responsibility
- they are not truly sorry
- they didn't ask to be forgiven
- they did it deliberately
- I'll forgive but won't forget
- I'll forgive because I found an excuse for the offense
- Satan's lie is “Those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished
- So he brings accusation to God
- Rev 12:10-11
- How do we overcome the accuser?
- There is only one way , by accepting Jesus' sacrifice in our place
- This requires that we stop trying to punish ourselves by doing penance in some form
- Sometimes we feel we can't experience forgiveness until we have experienced remorese for an extended time
- But this will ultimately make us more and more depressed
- No matter how much we do to make up for our sin, we will continue to feel guilty and believe we need to do more, unlress we resist Satan's accusations
- This is only possible only through Jesus
- Our own minds are not the source of truth
- Truth comes from the Bible
- On a card or piece of paper, write the following: “Because of Christ and His redemption, I am completely forgiven and fully pleasing to God. I am totally accepted by God.”
- On the other side of the card or paper, write out the words of Romans 5:1 and Colossians 1:21-22
- Carry this card with you the next month
- Look at it frequently to remind yourself of what Jesus has done for you
- This will slowly transform your thinking and bring it in line with God's word
Discussion Questions
- Are there any sins God can overlook?
- Read Ezek 7:8-9, Rom 2:4-5, Eph 2:1-3 – what is the object of God's wrath?
- Read 1 John 4:9-10
- Are you loved by the Father?
- How do you know you are loved?
- Do you feel loved?
- Are there sins you have difficulty forgiving? List them and confess them to God
