Propitiation

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

I am finding in this book a number of definitive explanations for a number of words. They often appear using the word 'this', such as, this is the message, this is His commandment and now here as in, this is love. I find this very helpful for me, as most religious words have become so clouded and their meanings so obscured that there is urgent need to rediscover their true meanings so as to properly understand the real truth of the gospel once again.

But here another word shows up in John's definition for love that is possibly one of the most perverted words in Christianity today. If you ask just about anyone in any church what the word propitiation means, they will likely give you an answer something along the line of appeasement for an angry God. This assumption about God's attitude toward sinners and about the reason that Jesus died on the cross is one of the most successful diabolical heresies that has ever been invented by Satan, and it has managed to insure that millions live in constant fear and dread of God while the real truth about God's forgiveness, compassion and agape love remains largely out of sight.

This version of Christianity is a direct result of false teachings brought in not long after the New Testament church began to move into the dark ages a couple hundred years after Christ. As people lost sight of the purity of God's true agape love, the very essence of the true gospel, notions from paganism, imperial Rome and fallen human nature began to seep into the church and soon theology became contaminated with insinuations about an angry God offended because His demands were not satisfied. Some of the early church fathers created what is now known as the 'penal substitution model; or the 'satisfaction' theory which became so pervasive throughout all of Christian thinking that very few today even realize that it is not the truth embraced by the early disciples that believers received from Jesus.

Because of these very dark views of God that permeated theology and views about God, even the Bible translators based their interpretations of what was written in the Hebrew and Greek texts and infused this false philosophy into the wording their versions of the Bible. In fact, a number of words we find in Scripture do not even come from the Greek and Hebrew but were imported from Latin, the language of Roman law which is still used in the teaching of law today. Thus legalism has become so firmly intertwined into religion that most people just assume that it was the message that Jesus gave to His followers. But nothing could be further from the truth.

This word propitiation is a classic example of this, possibly the epitome of the legal approach. Most people believe that God is angry about rules that have been broken and that somehow Jesus came to pacify His wrath to make a way for us to gain eternal life. Thus the cross is improperly viewed as an appeasement, a satisfaction of God's demand for death, the punishment required for our sin. All of these concepts are wrapped up in what people assume this word propitiation means. But again, nothing could be further from the truth.

The original word from which propitiation is derived actually means mercy seat. Now if a person is not familiar with the sanctuary model of salvation given to Moses by God in the Old Testament, they will be a little fuzzy as to what mercy seat might mean. But for those who have spent time becoming familiar with both the furniture and the symbolic practices of the whole sanctuary system, it becomes quite clear what John is trying to convey in this definition about God's love.

The sanctuary system was a complete cycle of rituals, feasts and activities that concluded in one year's time. Each year the most solemn day of all was called the Day of Atonement. This day was the culmination of the symbolic moving of the sins of all the people through various rites and procedures that involved the blood of lambs, bulls and other animal sacrifices brought to the sanctuary by sinners. It would take too much time to explain all of it here, but those familiar with this know that the blood symbolizing the guilt of sins moved from the outer courts through various means until the final day of atonement when everything else had been cleansed. On that day the High Priest took upon himself all the collective sins for the whole year into the Most Holy place and sprinkled blood on what was called the Mercy Seat. This was the last time the symbolic sins were ever moved.

This Mercy Seat was the open space on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, the only piece of furniture in the Most Holy place which was the most sacred room on earth in the sanctuary where the very presence of God promised to dwell. God's intense presence was focused primarily over the Mercy Seat under which was housed the Ten Commandments on tables of stone inside the ark. On both sides of the Mercy Seat were two large angels representing the covering cherubs hovering over the throne of God in heaven. All of this was meant to provide a sand-box type illustration of the whole plan of salvation worked out by God to salvage sinners and restore them back into harmony with God and the rest of the loyal universe. Thus the name of the Day of Atonement actually means At-one-ment which comes from an obsolete English term meaning full reconciliation between estranged parties.

When John says here that Jesus was sent to be the propitiation for our sins, given this background context of the sanctuary model and services and realizing that the word propitiation actually means Mercy Seat, it can be more readily seen that Jesus did not come to appease an angry, offended Father God but did quite the opposite; Jesus came to reveal that God is not the one holding on to any offense but rather it is our misapprehensions about God that is preventing full reconciliation with Him. To facilitate getting us to understand this truth Jesus came to be the recipient of the full load of guilt, shame, condemnation and all the other natural effects that sin produces so as to remove any excuse for ever believing lies about how God feels about us again. With Jesus, 'the buck stops here'!

Just as the Mercy Seat on the sacred Ark of the Covenant became the final resting place of the blood of guilt collected over the full year from all the ceremonies conducted in the sanctuary system; so too did Jesus become the final repository of all the guilt, shame, condemnation and every other obstacle that has kept us from feeling safe in God's presence. Jesus absorbed all the offense. The reason that Jesus suffered so much internally while hanging on the cross was not primarily due to the external pain inflicted on Him but rather from having the concentrated effects of all the sins of the whole world throughout all of history laid on Him. But He did this because He is the epitome of mercy Himself reflecting the Father's heart. And in His mercy and agape love He was willing to endure the cross.

The real power of the cross has nothing to do with some supposed appeasement of the wrath of God but has everything to do with the effect that a true perception of its meaning will have on our own hearts. When we believe the lies about God promoted by nearly every version purported about what the cross supposedly meant, we perpetuate false ideas about God and prevent ourselves and others from perceiving the truth about agape love. But when the true glory of God's character begins to become evident, we can let go of these false ideas about the cross and embrace the real truth of what took place there. What then happens is that the more we focus on this amazing act of Jesus' revelation of agape love emanating from the Father's heart, love is awakened in our own hearts. And this responding love will have no part in viewing God as a threat to be appeased but rather as the most intense source of life and love and power drawing us to the very center of the universe.

Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now seated at the right side of God's throne. (Hebrews 12:2 GNB)

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:16-18)