Propitiation: an Aspect and Action of the Love of God

PROPITIATION: AN ASPECT AND ACTION OF THE LOVE OF GOD

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It is in the General Epistles and Revelation that we find the most essential material to

support the Christian doctrine of “Propitiation” in the New Testament. Furthermore, the apostle

John provides a framework within which the doctrine of the Propitiation must be understood.

John reveals this architecture when he declares in his letter:

“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, emphasis mine)

Understood within the framework of the Love of God, this thread of thought, then,

understandably becomes the theological basis of the authors for the application to and censure of

their readers’ ethics in the General Epistles and Revelation.

The purpose of this paper is to trace, in broad strokes, the essential expressions of this

framework as revealed in the General Epistles and Revelation.

The Wrath of God

In these modern times, many Christians are likely to accept the assertion that God is

Love, but may have difficulties reconciling this with the concept of the wrath of God. As a

result, the wrath of God has been muted or suppressed in today’s preaching and teaching of the

Bible. The teaching of Divine wrath has been and is being openly denied, attributed only to the

God of the Old Testament, criticized of being too anthropomorphic, and/or being largely ignored

in practice (Lane, 2001). I will stand, though, with Brunner when he states that “a theology

which uses the language of Christianity can be tested by its attitude towards the Biblical doctrine

of the wrath of God, whether it means what the words of Scripture say. Where the idea of the

wrath of God is ignored there also will be no understanding of the central conception of the

Gospel: the uniqueness of the revelation in the Mediator” (Brunner, 1947).

PROPITIATION: AN ASPECT AND ACTION OF THE LOVE OF GOD

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It can be argued, though, that...