Featured Propitiation do you know what it means?

It does not say the sins of the world...While the elect are scattered worldwide and any who make it to heaven have Jesus as the propitiation, it is not all mankind.

 

This does not happen so often but this is your best post . I can remember a few others ,but this is a bullseye.

 

Propitiation is the means of salvation from the wrath of God, and therefore our propitiation is Christ Jesus.

 

2 and he -- he is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world,
Gods sheep are scattered worldwide

 

https://tgc-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/carson/2004_atonement_in_Rom_3.21-26.pdf enjoy

 

https://tgc-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/carson/2004_atonement_in_Rom_3.21-26.pdf

Romans 3:21-26 has for a long time been a focal text for debate about the atonement. With the rise of the “new perspective” on Paul, some of the parameters of these debates have shifted. Within the constraints of this essay, I cannot attempt the full-blown interaction that the subject demands. My aim is more modest. I intend to discuss ten of the turning points in the text that affect the outcome of one’s exegesis and briefly indicate at least some of the reasons why I read the text as I do. The Significance of the Preceding Passage, Romans 1:18—3:20 Disputants are unlikely to agree on the solution to a problem if they cannot agree on the nature of the problem. Today’s disputes focus on whether or not the situation envisaged in Romans 2:5-16 is real or hypothetical; the extent to which Romans 2:17-28 focuses on the failure of the nation of Israel rather than on the individual; the extent to which Paul’s theology, which on the face of it runs from plight to solution, betrays his own experience, which was (it is argued) from solution to plight; the nature and focus of his rhetoric; the extent to which covenant categories control this section; and much more. Each of these topics could call forth a very lengthy chapter.1 1 Apart from the major commentaries, see the admirable treatment by Andrew T. Lincoln, “From Wrath to Justification: Tradition, Gospel, and Audience in the Theology of Romans 1:18—4:25,” in Pauline Theology, vol. 3, Romans, ed. David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 130-59. ATONEMENT IN ROMANS 3:21-26 “God Presented Him as a Propitiation” D. A. Carson 6 GloryofAtonement.book Page 119 Monday, June 18, 2007 10:18 AM 120 T H E GLORY O F THE ATONEMENT However such matters are resolved, the framework must not be forgotten. The section opens with the wrath of God being revealed from heaven “against all the godlessness and wickedness of men” (Rom 1:18), and ends with a catena of texts to prove that no one is righteous, not even one (Rom 3:9-20). Jews and Gentiles are alike condemned. Nor will it do to make the failure exclusively national (though it is not less than national): if it is true to say that Jews and Gentiles collectively are alike under sin, Paul carefully goes farther and specifies that they “alike are all under sin” (Rom 3:9, italics added). Indeed, every mouth is to be silenced on the last day, and there is no one righteous (Rom 3:19, 20). What these observations establish, then, is the nature of the problem that Romans 3:21-26 sets out to resolve. The problem is not first and foremost the failure of Israel (national or otherwise), or inappropriate use of the law, or the urgency of linking Jews and Gentiles (all genuine themes in these chapters), but the wrath of God directed against every human being, Jew and Gentile alike—a wrath elicited by universal human wickedness. This is not saying that human beings are incapable of any good. Clearly, even those without the law may do things about which their consciences rightly defend them (Rom 2:15). But the flow of argument that takes us from Romans 1:18-32 to Romans 3:9-20 leaves us no escape: individually and collectively, Jew and Gentile alike, we stand under the just wrath of God, because of our sin.

 

Precisely because God is holy, it would be no mark of moral greatness in him if he were dispassionate or distant or uncaring when his creatures rebel against him, offend him and cast slurs on his glory. Because he is holy, God does more than give sinners over47 to their own deserts, a kind of pedagogical demonstration that the people he created, silly little things, have taken some unfortunate paths: this abandonment of them is judicial, a function of his wrath (Rom 1:18), an anticipation of the great assize (Rom 2:5-10; 3:19). But because he is love, God provides a “redemption” that simultaneously wipes out the sin of those who offend and keeps his own “justice” intact, as we shall see is the most plausible reading of Romans 3:25-26. God does not act whimsically, sometimes in holy wrath and sometimes in love. He always acts according to the perfection of his own character. As Peterson nicely puts it, “A properly formulated view of penal substitution will speak of retribution being experienced by Christ because that is our due. Moreover, the penalty inflicted by God’s justice and holiness is also a penalty inflicted by God’s love and mercy, for salvation and new life.”48

 

Nor is this the only Pauline passage where such themes come together. Space limitations forbid even a survey of 2 Corinthians 5:14— 6:2,49 but it is important to see the place of 2 Corinthians 5:21 in the argument. Strangely, Travis writes, “But God’s wrath is not mentioned in the context, and the focus is in fact on Christ’s death absorbing or neutralizing the effects of sin. And that does not involve notions of retribution.”50 Yet already in Romans 5:10, Paul has established that all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive recompense for what has been done in the body. Certainly in a parallel passage that treats the theme of reconciliation (cf. Rom 5:1-11), wrath is not absent. The fact of the matter is that in Christ’s reconciling work, God was “not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19). Why not? Because he 47This is mentioned five times in 1:18ff. 48Peterson, “Atonement,” 38. 49On which see, in addition to the major commentaries, Peterson, “Atonement,” 36-39. 50Travis, “Christ as Bearer of Divine Judgement,” 27. GloryofAtonement.book Page 133 Monday, June 18, 2007 10:18 AM 134 T H E GLORY O F THE ATONEMENT simply wiped them out, in the sense that he treated them as if they did not matter? No, far from it: “God made [Christ] who had no sin to be sin51 for us” (Rom 5:21). It is the unjust punishment of the Servant in Isaiah 53 that is so remarkable. Forgiveness, restoration, salvation, reconciliation—all are possible,

not because sins have somehow been cancelled as if they never were, but because another bore them unjustly. But by this adverb “unjustly” I mean that the person who bore them was just and did not deserve the punishment, not that some moral “system” that God was administering was thereby distorted. Rather, the God against whom the offenses were done pronounced sentence and sent his Son to bear the sentence (Rom 5:8); he made him who had no sin to be sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). And the purpose of this substitution was that “in him we might become the righteousness of God.”52 In this context, “righteousness” cannot call to mind “covenant faithfulness” or the like, for its obverse is sin.53 “The logic of 2 Corinthians 5 is that God condemns our sin in the death of his sinless Son so that we might be justified and reconciled to him (cf. Rom. 8:1-4, 10). This ‘great exchange’ is a reality for all who are ‘in him,’ that is, united to Christ by faith.”54 51Even if one decides to render this “sin” by the paraphrastic “sin offering,” the ideal of penal substitution remains inescapable. See Richard Gaffin, “’The Scandal of the Cross’: The Atonement in the Pauline Corpus,” chapter 7 in this volume. 52dikaiosu/nh qeou~, 2 Corinthians 5:21b. 53Part of the contemporary (and frequently sterile) debate over whether or not Paul teaches “imputation,” it seems to me, turns on a failure to recognize distinct domains of discourse. Strictly speaking, Paul never uses the verb logi/zomai to say, explicitly, that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the sinner or that the sinner’s righteousness is imputed to Christ. So if one remains in the domain of narrow exegesis, one can say that Paul does not explicitly teach “imputation,” except to say slightly different things (e.g., that Abraham’s faith was “imputed” to him for righteousness). But if one extends the discussion into the domain of constructive theology, and observes that the Pauline texts themselves (despite the critics’ contentions) teach penal substitution, then “imputation” is merely another way of saying much the same thing. To take a related example: as Paul uses “reconciliation” terminology, the movement in reconciliation is always of the sinner to God. God is never said to be reconciled to us; we must be reconciled to him. At the level of exegesis, those are the mere facts. On the other hand, because the same exegesis also demands that we take the wrath of God seriously, and the texts insist that God takes decisive action in Christ to deal with our sin so that his wrath is averted, in that sense we may speak of God being “reconciled to us”:

Wesley was not wrong to teach us to sing “My God is reconciled,” provided it is recognized that his language is drawn from the domain of constructive theology and not from the narrower domain of explicit exegesis (although, we insist equally, the constructive theology is itself grounded in themes that are exegetically mandated). On the theme of penal substitution, it is still worth reflecting at length on J. I. Packer, “What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution,” Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974), 3-45. 54Peterson, “Atonement,” 38. GloryofAtonement.book Page 134 Monday, June 18, 2007 10:18 AM Atonement in Romans 3:21-26 135 In some such frame as this, then, it is entirely coherent to think of God as both the subject and the object of propitiation. Indeed, it is the glory of the gospel of God. But let Paul have the last word: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Rom 5:6-10, emphasis mine)55 Or, in terms of Lincoln’s summary of Romans 3:21-25 thus far: Corresponding to the universal situation of guilt, bondage to sin, and condemnation under the wrath of God is a gospel of the righteousness of God, which is available universally to faith and which through Christ’s death offers a free and undeserved pardon, liberates into a new life where the tyranny of sin is broken and righteous behavior becomes possible, and provides satisfaction of God’s righteous wrath.

 

eiv) en1 deicin ktl. (“to demonstrate etc.”), Romans 3:25b-26 All sides recognize that this phrase introduces the purpose for which Christ set forth Christ as a propitiation. But the precise meaning turns in no small measure on how one understands dikaiosu/nh (“justice”). At the risk of oversimplification, there are two principal views, with many refinements that need not be explored here.

1. If God’s “justice” or “righteousness” refers to his character, in particular to his covenant faithfulness, then the meaning is something like this: “in order to demonstrate God’s saving, covenant faithfulness through his forgiving of sins committed before, in the time of his forbearance.” But as popular as this view is today, it falters on three exegetical obstacles. First, it finds a meaning in dikaiosu/nh, “covenant 57Romans 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13; Colossians 1:20. 58Moo, Romans, 237. GloryofAtonement.book Page 136
Atonement in Romans 3:21-26 137 faithfulness,” that we have already found to be insufficiently warranted.

Second, it understands the phrase dia_th\n pa&resin tw~n progegono/twn a(marthma&twn to mean “through his forgiving of sins committed before,” and this is an unlikely rendering. The word pa&resiv means “overlooking” or “suspension” or “remission [of punishment]” or “postponement [of punishment],” especially in reference to sins or to legal charges; it does not mean “forgiveness.”

Third, it is difficult to justify rendering the preposition dia& plus the accusative as “through.”59 In short, the rendering “through his forgiving of sins committed before” depends on too many philological or syntactical improbabilities. But if that rendering is rejected, there is little left to support “covenant faithfulness” as the appropriate translation of dikaiosu/nh in this context.

2. If dikaiosu/nh designates God’s righteousness or justice, whether his impartiality, or his fairness, or all that is in accordance with his own character, then the entire phrase might be paraphrased as follows: “in order to demonstrate that God is just, [which demonstration was necessary] because he had passed over sins committed before.” Here the previous disabilities are turned into strengths: dikaiosu/nh is read more naturally, pa&resiv is now rendered “passed over,” and dia& plus the accusative is translated “because.” The expression “sins committed before” is explained in Romans 3:26. The phrase “in his forbearance”60 must be connected with the “passed over”: it refers to the period before the cross.61 In other words, the sins committed beforehand are not those committed by an individual before his or her conversion, but those committed by the human race before the cross. This brings us back to the profoundly salvation-historical categories already manifest in Romans 3:21. As Moo nicely says, This does not mean that God failed to punish or “overlooked” sins committed before Christ; nor does it mean that God did not really “forgive” sins under the Old Covenant. Paul’s meaning is rather that God “postponed” the full penalty due sins in the Old Covenant, allowing sinners 59In fairness, this usage is not unknown in Hellenistic Greek. But it is very rare, and therefore convincing reasons must be adduced for adopting this reading if a more common one is available. 60Lit. “in the forbearance of God,” which in the Greek text occurs in 3:26, not Romans 3:25 as in NIV. 61Note Paul’s other use of “forbearance” in Romans 2:4; cf. Acts 14:16; 17:30. GloryofAtonement.book Page 137

138 T H E GLORY O F THE ATONEMENT to stand before him without their having provided an adequate “satisfaction” of the demands of his holy justice (cf. Heb 10:4).62 And this, in turn, means that God’s “righteousness” or “justice” must refer to some aspect of his character that, apart from the sacrifice of Christ, might have been viewed with suspicion had sinners in the past been permitted to slip by without facing the full severity of condemnation for sin. God’s “righteousness” has been upheld by his provision of Christ as the propitiation in his blood. This means, of course, that God’s “righteousness” in Romans 3:25- 26 does not mean exactly what it means in Romans 3:21. There, it refers to God’s “justifying” of his sinful people; here, it refers to something intrinsic to God’s character, whether his consistency or his determination to act in accordance with his glory or his punitive justice: these and other suggestions have been made. And this is in line with the broader observation that for Paul, justification is bound up not only with the vindication of sinners, but even more profoundly with the vindication of God.

 

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Excerpt:
"He bought the whole field, but He particularly bought the treasure that was hidden in that field [Matthew 13:44]. "The Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe." [1 Timothy 4:10]

 

Everywhere Jon posts, he exalts men and abases God.

 

Well said.

 

Was God really angry with the first born?
I don't really see "wrath" as the operating motivation.

Like the Tree in the Garden ... it was the OPPORTUNITY for obedience that shone through the brightest.
Everyone dies sooner or later.

Sin MUST be destroyed, that is just part of GOD being Holy.
Christ seems more like the Ark that carried 8 people safely through the purging of Sin ... the blood on the doorpost that protected against the angel of death in Egypt.

 

These articles could be useful to some

What is Propitiation? Bible Meaning and Definition