Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14 “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
(Monday-Friday, from my daily study time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day. Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
Taking from … The Search For Significance, by Robert McGee
Continuing… God’s Answer To The Fear of Punishment: Propitiation
(Oh..my friends…please absorb this …please take time to read this..it is nourishment to your soul 😊)
We are about to describe the ‘hard side’ of God. But it is also the reason we can depend on God and His Word. God is holy. To be true to His holiness, God punishes those whose righteousness is not the same as His. (If this statement bothers you, please go back a couple weeks in our series and reread the posts on ‘justification.)
This might not seem fair to you. Many things God says about sin may seem unfair to you. We may even think, God, Your are so big, why can’t You overlook some things? But God and what He does are not up for vote. He never runs for office because He is the office. He believes that He has a right to determine all the rules, and He does. He won’t change to be more popular.
Only if we understand the horror of coming under the wrath of a holy God for our sins will we appreciate what Christ did on the cross. Every day our minds should be overwhelmed by thankfulness for what He did on our behalf.
When Christ died on the cross, He was our substitute. He took upon Himself the righteous wrath of God that we deserved. The depth of God’s love for us is revealed by the extremity of His actions for us: The holy Son of God became a man and died a horrible death in our place. Two passages state this eloquently. The first was written by Isaiah, who anticipated the coming of Christ:
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. (Isaiah 53:4-6)
And from the New Testament:
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world ‘so that’ we might live through Him. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:9-11)
Propitiation means that the wrath of someone who has been unjustly wronged has been satisfied. It is an act that soothes hostility and satisfies the need for vengeance. Providing His only begotten Son as the propitiation for our sin was the greatest possible demonstration of God’s love for man. To understand God’s wondrous provision of propitiation, it is helpful to remember what He has endured from mankind. From Adam and Even’s sin in the Garden of Eden to the obvious depravity we see in our world today, human history is the story of greed, hatred, lust, and pride – evidence of man’s wanton rebellion against the God of love and peace. If not done with a desire to glorify Him, even our good deeds are like filthy garments to God (Isaiah 64:6)
Our sin deserves the righteous wrath of God. He is the Almighty, the rightful judge of the universe. He is absolutely holy and perfect. ‘God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all’ (1 John 1:5).
Because of these attributes, God cannot overlook sin, nor can He compromise by accepting sinful behavior. For God to condone even one sin would defile His holiness like smearing a white satin wedding gown with black tar. Because He is holy, God’s aversion to sin is manifested in righteous anger. However, God is not only righteously indignant about sin, He is also infinitely loving. In His holiness, God condemns sin, but in the most awesome example of love the world has ever seen, He ordained that His Son would die to pay for our sins. God sacrificed the sinless, perfect Savior to turn away, to propitiate, His great wrath. (Con’t next week 😊)
Dear Father… I know how much my sin and sins grieves you. I am aware of the great gap between by best efforts to be good and pleasing…as compared to your perfection and righteousness…I know it is a gap that I cannot get over…a gap that I cannot close-up or fill-in. Ohh…how I thank you that you closed-up the gap through the provision of Your Son, Jesus. Thank you that Jesus was our propitiation and took away that gap that distanced us from You. Thank You for Your generous love…your steadfast kindness…for not just letting us slip away into darkness and oblivion. Thank You. Help us to ‘go out’ into the darkness and share the great news of Your light and love. Amen
Let There Be Light 