It’s good to be here with you all this morning. I am thankful for another opportunity to be together. I am praying my voice holds up; I have been battling a bit of a frog in my throat since last week, so you just pray for me. I also want to greet all our friends who are listening online, especially our friends in the places we have come from. We are glad that most of them are still listening here on a regular basis. They are hungry, and they know where to listen to be fed. I had a chance to meet and talk with some more last week, so just keep praying for them. They are in a difficult spot. Just pray that God will continue to help them in what they are seeking to do. So God bless you all.
So we are picking up where I left off after my last message. If you want to turn back to Romans chapter 3, we are at verse 20 again, and reading down to verse 31.
Romans 3 King James Version
20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for being so kind to us. Thank you for giving us a day of life. Thank you for showing your love towards us. When we sat in darkness, you showed us light. When our hope and trust was in man, you showed us to put our hope and trust in Jesus Christ. We thank you for that. And as we turn to your word, I pray you open our understanding. Help us to see a little clearer. Help us come a little closer to you. And strengthen our hearts and resolve in the abiding truth that Jesus Christ has saved our souls, and the false ideas of men can never separate us from our Lord. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
In my last two messages, I have dealt with justification and then with grace. Today, there is another important word here I want to deal with. These words all work together to paint the picture Paul is explaining in these verses. I am just kind of taking my time here to look at these important words one at a time. Then we will put it together and look at this section as a whole. My focus verse in this message is verse 25, and the word I am focusing on here is propitiation.
Propitiation—that is a really big word that no one really uses anymore. It’s a very technical term. About the only place you might really see it used anymore is in certain legal documents. But it is a really, really important word to understand because the word propitiation is at the very heart of the gospel message. I want to explore that word a little bit today.
So let me start by just giving a simple dictionary definition of the word. Propitiation—an offering that appeases someone who has been offended. In terms of scripture, it is the effect a sacrifice of atonement has. Our propitiation is the means by which God becomes satisfied and our offense has been mended. Our propitiation is the means by which we are excused from having to endure the wrath of God.
Let me say it another way. When we sin against God, we offend him, and we are then due to suffer wrath. If we want to change that situation and avoid that wrath to come, we need to propitiate God. We need something to turn away wrath. That is what propitiation is. It is the thing that will satisfy the offense and turn away God’s wrath.
God is offended by sin, and those who sin will one day have to endure his wrath unless there is a propitiation to turn away that wrath and heal our relationship with God.
You, I, and everyone else who believes in Jesus—we have a propitiation. We are going to escape the wrath of God because Jesus was our propitiation.
Jesus is what the law was pointing to. He is what all the types were pointing to in the Old Testament.
Every type of sacrifice from the Old Testament pointed to the cost that had to be paid for sin. The cost of sin is death. God told that plainly to Adam and Eve in the very beginning: “The day ye eat thereof ye shall surely die.” Then, when they did eat from it and realized that they were naked, God again showed them that it would take a death to cover their sins. So God took the life of an animal and made them coats of skins. The same thing happened with Abel when he grew up. He took a lamb and sacrificed it on an altar because he understood that it was going to take a death to pay for his sins. Now, that lamb itself did not save him, but his faith in what the lamb symbolized—that is what saved him. And on it goes. Circumcision didn’t save Abraham, but his faith in what it symbolized did. The law didn’t save Moses or the children of Israel, but their faith in what it symbolized did.
Paul is going to explain this in the next chapter, but those sacrifices were symbols pointing to Jesus Christ, who would be our propitiation, who would appease God and turn his wrath away from our lives. God gave the sacrifice of Jesus as a gift to us because he wants to turn away his wrath. In Jesus is how he was going to do it—not with symbols, but with the genuine article.
But this is where the Jewish people went wrong. All those symbols, all those types, all those shadows—they were all pointing to something. They were pointing to a savior. They were pointing to a perfect one who was going to come into the world, who would offer his life to save the life of everyone else. All of it was pointing to a sacrifice that he would make to atone for our sins and to be our propitiation—the thing that appeased God and saved us from wrath.
But when that savior came, instead of embracing him, they rejected him. When they had a choice to choose between the symbols or what the symbols pointed to, they decided to choose the symbols. They would rather have the symbols than what the symbols pointed to. They would rather have symbolic and ritual holiness than true holiness. They would rather have symbols of the atonement than the actual atonement. They would rather have symbols pointing to the Messiah than the Messiah himself. They would rather have a temple of gold than have what that temple of gold symbolized.
So much of religion is that way. They would rather have something symbolic than have the genuine article. That is what the places we have come from have largely turned into—places with a whole lot of symbols, but they are sadly lacking in what those symbols actually point to.
Sadly, the symbols can’t appease God. The symbols cannot be our propitiation.
We have to have more than symbols. We have to have the genuine article, and that is Jesus Christ.
The symbols are useful; they can help us understand. If we went back into the law of Moses, we would see there were many different kinds of symbolic sacrifices that were offered. There was a peace offering, a trespass offering, and a sin offering. There were the sacrifices for the Day of Atonement, when the high priest made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole nation. There was the scapegoat, who died so the other could go free. The sacrifices had to be perfect animals without a blemish, showing us that only someone perfect could be a sacrifice that God would accept. Those are just a few of the symbols, and they are useful—they can help us understand and point the way to the genuine article. But they can never replace the real thing.
We need Jesus, because without him, we have no propitiation. We have nothing that can truly turn away the wrath of God.
Now, this word “propitiation” implies two things.
There are two important details we know to be true when the word “propitiation” is used. Let me name those two important details that are entailed in the word “propitiation”:
- The use of the word “propitiation” means that someone was offended, and we were bound to feel their wrath.
- The use of the word “propitiation” tells us that is not the case anymore; something has been offered to appease the one who was offended, and the one who was offended is not offended anymore.
So those two things are rolled up in that word “propitiation”: someone was offended, someone was guilty, someone made it right, and now the offended person is not offended anymore. “Propitiation” tells us everything is okay now. “Propitiation” tells us that we are no longer subject to the wrath of the one who was offended.
So, I hope you understand what the word “propitiation” means.
Now, maybe we wonder, after reading what Paul wrote here in Romans, just where this knowledge came from. How did Paul and the other apostles know Jesus was our propitiation? How did they know that?
The answer is that the understanding of propitiation was explained to the apostles by Jesus Christ himself, and we can read that if we go to Luke 24. You can turn there with me, to verse 44:
Luke 24:44-48 (King James Version)
44 And he (Jesus) said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.
45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
48 And ye are witnesses of these things.
So in these few verses, we can see that Jesus took time; he sat down with the apostles, and he walked them through the scriptures, as seen in verse 45. He explained to them exactly why he had to die and rise again. He told them plainly what it all meant, and he gave them scripture to go with it. So Jesus Christ himself personally gave this understanding to the apostles of the early church. Now, Paul was not there that day when Jesus appeared, but he was instructed by Jesus too. And if we look, we would find that Paul is not the only one of the apostles who wrote about these things to help us understand them. The other apostles wrote about what Jesus taught them on this subject too, and if we go to 1 John, we will see how the apostle John puts it:
1 John 2:1-2 (King James Version)
2 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus is our propitiation. John and Paul preach this the same way. Jesus, our Savior—what he did on the cross—has appeased God for all our sins, past, present, and future. God is appeased in total, and Jesus is the reason why. And this is good not just for us, but for the whole world if they will believe in Christ. All it takes for God’s wrath to be turned away is for Jesus to be our propitiation. Jump ahead to chapter 4 of 1 John, verse 10:
1 John 4:10 (King James Version)
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God did this to show us his love. Before we were born, God had planned to show us this love. He planned to offer us a way for our offenses to be made right by a propitiation.
And as we think about propitiation, we’re talking about appeasing God, satisfying an offense that divides us. And what is the offense that divides us from God? John has made it pretty clear in what he wrote, and Paul made it pretty clear in what he wrote. What is our offense?
Is our offense that separates us from God a knowledge that we lack? Is our offense that separates us from God a revelation we lack? Is our offense that divides us from God a failure to keep a list of man’s rules? What is our offense that separates us from God? The offense is sin. Sin is what separates us from God. It is the only thing that separates us from God. Our only offense is sin, and the propitiation to appease the offense is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
And if the offense of sin is dealt with, there isn’t something else we need beyond that to be reconciled to God. There is something specific I am getting at here.
Sin is the only offense. It is the only thing that needs to be dealt with to reconcile us to God. Our offense is sin, and what Jesus Christ did for us has appeased God concerning our sin.
The thing that keeps us separated from God is not a lack of knowledge, not a missing special revelation, not our ability to keep a man-made list of rules. The thing that separates us from God is sin, and Jesus is the payment for our sin. He is the appeasement for our sin.
And the only thing that needs to be taken care of for me to make it to heaven is my sin. My sin is the only thing that stands between me and my God. My sin is the only thing that stands between me and eternity in heaven.
And Jesus is my propitiation. He is the payment for my sin. He has reconciled me to God by being my propitiation. He is my peace offering to God. And that is the correct biblical way to look at being made right with God. Jesus paid it all. Everything that needed to be paid for, he paid it. So when people talk about needing special knowledge, or special revelation, or special rules, or special this or that to make it to heaven, these are people who fundamentally misunderstand the gospel. Knowledge, revelation, special rules—none of those things are the problem. And none of those things really have anything to do with solving the problem. The problem is sin. And Jesus is the solution.
Free From Wrath
Now there is one aspect of propitiation I want to especially draw your attention to. And I think, in light of where we come from, this is probably the most important part of this sermon to catch. What does a propitiation do? It turns away wrath.
Let me say that again: What does a propitiation do? It turns away wrath. That is the very definition of the word.
And when we get into these lines of thought, we find a great conflict with the places we came from, because they did not believe that what Jesus did on the cross is enough to turn away the wrath of God. They do not believe that what Jesus did is enough to turn away God’s wrath from us. Where we come from specifically, it was good and fine for Jesus to die and pay for your sins, but that was not enough to avoid the wrath of God. We believed God’s wrath was going to come on this world, and the way to escape the wrath to come was through special revelations. It was through hearing the message of a special man, and it was through hearing seven thunders. And if you didn’t have those things, and a few more things besides that, then you were going to experience the wrath of God. You could not go in the rapture and avoid that wrath to come unless you had these extra things. We did not believe that Jesus dying on the cross was enough for us to escape the wrath of God. Being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost and accepting Jesus was not enough to make it in the rapture where we came from. None of them believed that. Not one. They don’t actually believe that Jesus was our propitiation. They do not believe that God is fully appeased or fully satisfied with us by what Jesus did on the cross. And I know I keep coming back to this a lot in my messages because this is the root of so much that is wrong in the things where we came from. This is the root error where we came from. I have been very interested in trying to figure out where our fathers made a wrong turn. Where did they go wrong and start walking down a path that turned into a cult? And if you want to know where they made the wrong turn, you’ve got to go back to the point in time where they stopped believing in grace, stopped believing in justification, and stopped believing in Jesus as our propitiation. It is where they stopped believing in that—that is where they went wrong.
And I am drawing these distinctions and trying to be as clear on these points as I can, for our sake here, but also especially for the sake of our friends online, and also for the sake of the men who have despitefully used us, abused us, and mistreated us for no reason except to just… We say it for their sakes too. Maybe it will wake them up. I want it to be perfectly clear where we differ. A ministering brother asked me about what it means if the message is wrong. If this be true, we’re a long way down a wrong road. And I have been doing my best to retr
ace our steps, to figure out where we made the wrong turn. And what I’m focusing on right here, this is where we made the wrong turn. This is the point we need to come back to and start afresh. Because unless you come back to this point where the wrong turn was made, nothing profitable and nothing good is going to come out of what we do. We’re just going to end up with another mess. And I wanted to be perfectly clear: where we came from deviated from the fundamental truths of the gospel. They do not believe in grace in a scriptural way. They do not believe in justification in a scriptural way. They do not believe in propitiation in a scriptural way. They have departed from the true understanding of the most fundamental elements of our faith. And they have inserted special revelation, and a special man, and special rules into the equation for salvation, and into the equation to make it into the rapture, and into the equation for avoiding the wrath of God. And those things are gross and evil errors that lead people to destruction. And it ends up producing Pharisees rather than true born-again Christians. That’s why the churches have more Pharisees than Christians.
Now let me finish making this point, because I want to make it really clear. Where we came from, we divided Christians into multiple groups. There were people who we believed were saved by grace, saved because they believed in Jesus and had the Holy Ghost, but because they didn’t have the message, we believed they would have to pass through the tribulation and through the wrath of God. We believed the difference between them and us was that we were going to escape the tribulation and the wrath of God. We were going to get to go in the rapture, but they were going to have to stay behind. And we believed the thing that was going to allow us to escape the wrath of God and avoid the horrors that were going to come on the world was the fact that we had special revelation. But that actually flies in the face of the gospel. Jesus is our propitiation. Jesus Christ is what turns away the wrath of God, not a special message that we received.
Let me be perfectly clear: my revelation is not my propitiation. No special preacher has ever been my propitiation. No list of rules I ever kept has been my propitiation. Jesus Christ alone has been my propitiation, and that alone is good enough. That alone takes care of my sin. That alone appeases God in total. That alone turns away the wrath of God from my life.
I am not going to escape the wrath of God because of my revelation. I am going to escape the wrath of God because I heard a special preacher. I am not going to escape the wrath of God because of a list of rules I kept. I am not going to escape the wrath of God for any of those things. I am going to escape the wrath of God because Jesus Christ is my propitiation.
That is what the Bible tells me. Turn with me to Romans chapter 5; Paul is going to explain this in more detail later in the book of Romans.
Romans 5:8-9 (King James Version)
8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
What is going to save us from wrath? How am I going to be saved from wrath? Because I believed a special end-time message, or because I’m justified by the blood of Jesus? What is going to save me from wrath? What does the Bible say?
It’s funny how some people can take certain parables or symbols and interpret them in such a way that contradicts the plain truth of scripture. When you interpret parables, symbols, or obscure things in such a way that directly contradicts the plain word of scripture, then you have interpreted the parables and symbols incorrectly. You cannot interpret the obscure things in such a way that you contradict the plain things. It’s the other way around: you use the things that are written plainly to inform your understanding of the things that are obscure. You don’t use the things that are obscure to pollute and corrupt the understanding of the things that are plain.
Let me read verse 9 again: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”
So what saves us from wrath? What saves us from the wrath God is going to pour out on the world? Just read these verses, and ask yourself, what is Paul telling me is going to save me from the wrath of God? Is there any way to read into that verse a need for all the extra things we were told we needed in the places that we came from? Of course not.
The fact that Jesus is my propitiation, the fact that he died and I am justified through his blood—that is going to save me from wrath. Hearing seven thunders is not going to save you from wrath. Hearing the message of the seventh church age messenger is not going to save you from wrath. That is nowhere in the Bible. Those ideas are nowhere in the Bible. But what is plainly said in the Bible is that what Jesus did on the cross—that will save us from wrath.
So again, I make my point clear. The places we come from do not believe Jesus is our propitiation. They do not believe it is enough to save us from wrath. And I am so glad that so many of them are listening in here. Someone told me they are all preaching about Jesus now, and I say praise the Lord! I am so glad to hear they finally decided to start preaching the gospel. Hopefully, they are telling people that what Jesus did on the cross is enough to save you and enough to deliver you from wrath. I hope they’re actually preaching the whole gospel. But again, if they are not telling the people that, make no mistake about it—what they are preaching is not the gospel. If they’re not telling people Jesus is enough, if they’re not telling us his propitiation is enough to save from wrath, then it is a perverted gospel. It is another gospel. And Paul told us that anyone who preaches another gospel should be accursed.
1 Thessalonians 5:9-10 (King James Version)
9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
10 Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
So let me make a very plain statement: the only thing that is capable of turning away the wrath of God, the only thing capable of allowing you to escape the wrath of God which is to come, is Jesus Christ as your propitiation. There is nothing else that can turn away God’s wrath from our lives. All the teachings that have told us otherwise have been in error. They have been in direct contradiction of the most fundamental elements of the Christian faith.
Somewhere along the way, people decided that what Jesus did was not enough for them to avoid the wrath of God. Somewhere it became fundamentally baked into our beliefs that Jesus Christ was an insufficient propitiation, that we needed the special revelations of an end-time prophet to avoid the wrath of God. Somewhere, somebody let slip the understanding of the most basic elements of our Christian faith. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And that lack of understanding begat the entire system which we recently left.
Some people seem interested in trying to dive headfirst into other things. But we need to get the basics right before we move on to other things. I worry that some are not doing that.
You see, the gospel message is not just that Jesus died for our sins and reconciled us to God, but that he’s also our propitiation and has turned away the wrath of God from us. Jesus is our propitiation—that is what appeases God. We are going to make it because of him. And that is the gospel.
I’m so thankful that I know that what Jesus did is enough to save me and that it is enough for me to escape the wrath of God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life—no one goes to the Father except by him. He is the one and only way. What he did for us is the one and only way.
Jesus is your propitiation, and he is what makes you acceptable to God. What he did on the cross makes you acceptable to God through his death, burial, and resurrection.
Amen.