The Way Home

When theologians talk about what was accomplished through the death of Jesus, they are liable to use the word “propitiation.” Propitiation a term that is situated right at the intersection of God’s justice and his love. It is a dangerous intersection that many pastors and churches would rather avoid.

“To propitiate” means to appease someone who is or may become angry, to deflect his or her anger. We see this happen in the political sphere all the time. A Russian governor holds pro-Kremlin rallies, overstates the oblast’s support for government policies, and repeatedly praises the president, hoping (preemptively or otherwise) to placate the president’s wrath. The same kind of thing happens with increasing frequency in our own country. These examples of propitiation presuppose a leader who uses punishment to control the people around him.

So, is that a reasonable picture of God? Does he use punishment as an instrument of control? Do we need to hold pro-God rallies (Sunday mornings at 11:00) and offer the Almighty extravagant praise, lest his wrath burst out at us? Is God some kind of cosmic tyrant who requires constant appeasement?

That is precisely what the ancient gods of the pagans were like. If the god was angry and refused to send rain, then worshipers would attempt to improve his mood by bringing fruits to his altar, or sacrificing animals to him. Is the God of Jesus like the recalcitrant gods of the ancient pagans? Is that what the biblical God is like?

Not at all. Yet, his anger does need to be propitiated. This is a difficult subject, and it is necessary to proceed carefully.

The biblical framework for the doctrine of propitiation is built on the planks of divine love and divine justice. God is the most loving being in the universe. There are hundreds of biblical passages that testify to divine love, and they must be given their full weight. But there are also nearly 200 verses that include the word “wrath,” and in most of them, God is the one who is angry. These verses must also be given their full weight.

But why would God be angry? Is anger not unbecoming to the Divine Being? Not at all. In fact, if God were never angry it would be hard to maintain that he is a moral being. There are some things that ought to elicit anger from any morally upright person, including God. But we must not think of God as an angry person. He is not.

God’s anger is narrowly focused, while his love is unimaginably wide. God is angry at sin, but he loves loves his creation, including humans. God is angry at sin because he loves his creation. God created us with great plans in mind. He created us and the entire universe to be a glorious, beautiful, and awesome delight. He intends for humans to reign with him over the world. He wants us to “shine like the sun in the kingdom of [our] Father.”  

Peter says that God has called us to eternal glory and Paul says that we were called to share the glory of Jesus Christ.  Paul also says that we will judge the world, and the Revelation reveals that God’s saints are destined to reign upon the earth. I do not know what all is entailed in the term “reign.” But it is big. We are meant to have responsibilities, perhaps cosmic ones.

The biblical term for all this is “glorification.” We will reign with Christ. George MacDonald put it this way: “When God can do what He will with a man, the man may do what he will with the world.” He goes on to imagine what that might look like. The children of God, he says, “shall be … the lords of the lower creation, the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it: then shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help.”  MacDonald may, of course, be wrong, but if he is, we can be confident that the reality will be greater than what he envisions, not less.

God intends for us to share his joy in a perfect universe, where there is no injustice or hatred, no sorrow or death. A universe characterized by “joy unspeakable” and jam-packed with glory. A place of perfect security, yet with unlimited adventure. The desire bred in our bones will at last be satisfied, and not because desire ebbs; if anything it will increase! We will be in the land where men and women drink down joy like we drink water, where the pleasures of the new age are not just contemplated but touched and smelled and tasted. And we will gaze upon the Face that is the joy of all desire.

There is only one problem. Sin. Nothing can stop the realization of this vision except sin, which is entirely incompatible with the glory that awaits us.

We think of sin as embarrassing and unpleasant. God thinks of it as disgusting and poisonous. We think of it as a little messy; he thinks of it as a bio-hazard. We only take sin seriously when it is monstrous, as in the Epstein files, or when it affects us, as when a drunk driver kills our loved one, or a trusted spouse is unfaithful. But God knows that sin is always monstrous. The only reason we do not recoil at the stench of sin is that our spiritual senses have been blunted.

It may help to think of sin as a disease. It insinuates itself into a person and then proceeds to take over, like a cancer. It becomes entangled with a person’s soul, the way an aggressive cancer become enmeshed in some vital organ. It can and will metastasize to the mind, the will, the emotions, even the body. Sin eats a man or woman up even as it propagates itself to others. And God hates it. He hates it with a passion.

The essential symptom of sin is this: It causes a man or woman to recoil from God. If you want to know whether this is true or not, the next time you choose to sin, see what happens to God: he will disappear from your mind and your consciousness. You cannot sin without getting rid of him, and at some deep level we know this is true. And yet, sin’s power is so great that we choose – we mustn’t mince words – we choose to banish God so that we can have our way, even if it is only for a moment! This is why sin is hateful to God. This is why he is angry with sin.

God will dethrone sin, once and for all. It will not, as St. Paul says, reign over us, nor over God’s creation. The anger of God at sin and at those who would spew it across creation has intersected the immeasurable love of God for sinners. And at that intersection of anger and love – of his anger and love – stands a cross, and on it hangs a man.

In his death, Jesus has made it possible for our sins to be separated from ourselves (see 1 Peter 2:24). I don’t claim to understand this. There is mystery here, awful and profound. Christ took our sins and experienced the divine anger against sin in himself. He took the sins of the world and subjected himself to the blast of divine wrath that would destroy them, as a well-placed blast of radiation kills cancer cells.

This is a little of what Scripture means when it says that “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2).

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