I Need More Gospel (7): Building the Structure of the Gospel January 11, 2009

I Need More Gospel! (Sermon 7)

Building the Structure if the Gospel
The Four Corners: Propitiation (1)
1 Corinthians 15:3

Church in the Boro

Sunday Morning
January 11, 2009
Rob Wilkerson

“Christ died for our sins…”

“Christ died for our sins.” These are the words that have been and will continue to be the
substance of the sermons in this series entitled,” Building the Structure of the Gospel.” This
series is part of our larger series called, “I Need More Gospel!” which is based on an exposition
we’re doing from 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. We’re really into series around here, if you’re visiting.
Or I guess I should say, I’m into series here. I love taking a text, breaking it down into the
smallest bite-sized pieces I can, and feeding it to you all. I guess you can look at our overall
series as the plate, and the smaller series we’re doing as the servings. So right now in this
series on the structure of the gospel, I guess we’re eating the mashed potatoes. Which means
this morning you’re gonna get a boat load of gravy poured on it with this message I’m gonna
throw at you.

We spent two weeks unraveling what Paul meant by the word “Christ.” We had to break this
down because unless we know who Christ is we won’t know anything about the significance of
the work He accomplished. And we found out that Jesus is the anointed one, specially chosen
by God for the most special and spectacular work in history. It was a work only God Himself
could accomplish and so He incarnated among humans and did that work Himself, and this was,
of course, the God-man names Jesus Christ.

This work He accomplished was completed by dying. Paul says “Christ died for our sins…” The
word for “died” here is the Greek word avpe,qanen from apothnesko. The usage of the word
brings the death of Christ into view as a…

 Historical event – there was a real man named Jesus, who was also God in human flesh,
the anointed One, the Christ, and this person died; and a

 Crucial event – this God-man’s death accomplished something spiritual and final.

The history is viewed through His humanity, and the crucial is viewed through His divinity.
These two facets of Christ’s death will be looked at more closely in March, I think, in a sermon

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I’ve already entitled “The Mystery and Beauty of Christ’s Death.” But for now, I want to
emphasize what this death actually was and what it accomplished. And to start with, I need to
ruffle some feathers a bit and wake us all up with some truth. So let me introduce the death of
Jesus Christ by asking some huge questions.

The most important issue you’ll ever have to deal with is your sin and how it affects a holy,
perfect, righteous God who cannot tolerate even the most seemingly tiny sin at all. Most
people do not deal with sin seriously enough. It is the most heinous, wicked, unbelievable act
that exists among mankind. And all sins, no matter how great or small you think they are, must
be and will be punished. But few believe this. And among those who do, many, unfortunately,
think that their sin will somehow be glossed over by God, or that God will somehow,
unexplainably, let them into heaven despite the sin that stares Him in His holy face.

And if this is the most important issue you’ll ever have to deal with, then the most important
question you’ll ever have to find an answer to is this one. Everybody who believes in the
Christian version of God, or not, ultimately wants to go free and not be punished for their sin.
So here’s the ultimate question, the one that will determine your eternity. I’ve got an equally
ultimate question I’m gonna ask you all next week that’s based on this one. But this morning
we’re gonna talk about the first ultimate question.

1. On what basis or for what reason(s) can or does God the holy Judge ever let
sinners walk free out of His courtroom of righteousness?

I wish I could close the sermon right now and go home with that one on your brain and in your
heart. It needs to sit there a whole lot longer than we let it. If I’m right, it’s probably not one
you think very much about from day to day or week to week, is it? If you’re a Christian, the fact
that you’ve actually been allowed to walk free out of God’s courtroom of righteousness doesn’t
hang over you to an overwhelming degree like it should from day to day, does it? And if you’re
not a Christian, you probably don’t ever think about stuff like this at all, do you? Rather, we go
on living our lives, doing what we do, asleep in the light, if we’re Christians, or asleep in the
dark if you’re not a Christian.

This sermon then is a WAKE UP!!! call to everyone here this morning, including myself! WAKE
UP sleepers! There is God. He is holy, righteous, perfect, and in all this He doesn’t
change…ever. He is NEVER going to somehow lessen in any degree of holiness, righteousness,
or perfection. And this mean He’s ALWAYS going to look at sin the same way, every time, for
every person. And this in turn means that He’ll ALWAYS be pushed to punish sin and wipe it
out, by killing the one who commits that sin. But there is a way… a very specific way and only
one specific way at that… that God lets sinners walk free out of His courtroom. And this
declaration of freedom for sinners has been going on as long as His punishment of sinners. And
since God is immutable, never changing, NONE of this will EVER change!

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Do you believe that you are one of these sinners whom God has declared to be “not guilty”?
Do you believe yourself to be one of those sinners whom God has allowed to walk out of His
holy courtroom as a free man? If so, why? On what basis? For what reason or reasons do you
believe this about yourself?

And if you don’t believe this about yourself, why not? Doesn’t it seem that since it’s possible
for God to do this that you would want to experience that, to make sure it can happen to you?
What greater thing could you possibly want anyone to ever say about you than, “Hey, even
though that guy is a sinner, God has declared him not guilt and he’s a free man”? What greater
thing could you possibly want God to ever say about you than, “Hey so-and-so you’re not guilty
of all the sins you commit”? If you can think of something else you’d rather hear, you’re an
idiot! And you’re retarded. And whatever it is you want to hear said about you is so much
more insignificant, you need to feel like an idiot for wanting to hear it!

So what’s the answer to the question then? Assuming you want to hear the greatest thing in
the world said about you, how do you answer the question? Once again here it is. On what
basis or for what reasons does God the holy Judge let sinners walk free out of His courtroom of
righteousness? There’s only one basis, and only one reason. It’s called propitiation. And here’s
how I define it as it answers the question.

When the demands of divine justice have been satisfied in a divine way for you.

Let me say a few more times, slowly repeating it, putting emphasis on each word, because I
worked a long time to craft this sentence in a way that every word teaches you something
about the answer. When the demands of divine justice have been satisfied in a divine way.
Where did I come up with this? This is my paraphrastic synthesis of Romans 3:22-26. Let me
read this to you from the New Living Translation, which in my theological opinion is one of the
most fantastic translations of this text.

“We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins.
And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.
For all have sinned: all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious
kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us
by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to
satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus
shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he
did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this
present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in
Jesus.”

This is simply stunning. Do you hear those phrases? “For all have sinned… Yet now God in his
gracious kindness declares us not guilty.” “For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our
sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us.” “God was being entirely fair and just when he did
NOT punish those who sinned in former times.” “He is entirely fair and just in this present time

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when he declared sinner to be right in His sight…” These words are simply so stunning that
they are beyond the kind of comprehension they deserve. And as such, this means they
demand what little comprehension we are able to give them now, while we’re in this finite,
dying body on this decaying earth. This is huge!

So let me get back to my key phrase this morning: “when the demands of divine justice have
been satisfied in a divine way for you.” Let me break this phrase down for you for a few
minutes so you can understand that this is the ONLY basis on which God the holy Judge lets
sinners walk free out of His courtroom of righteousness.

A. The When

Let’s look first at the “when” of this divine justice and its satisfaction in a divine way. You walk
free from the courtroom of God’s righteousness WHEN the demands of divine justice have
been satisfied in a divine way for you. For those of you who are Christians this morning, you
claim to be among those privileged enough to walk out of the courtroom of God’s
righteousness as free men and women. But do you know when it was that this happened? Was
it when you trust Christ as your savior? Was it when you got saved? Or was it when Jesus died
on the cross for your sins? Or was it at some other point?

The demands of divine justice were met at the cross when Jesus died. Jesus Himself met those
divine demands there. So in terms of actual history, these demands were met on a Friday
afternoon around 3:00 pm in the afternoon precisely at the very moment in which Jesus bowed
his head and died. But you may be surprised to find out that it actually happened a bit earlier.

You see, in the mind of God, this whole thing Jesus went through was all preplanned.
Sometimes we use the word predestined to describe it. It was predestined to happen, because
God had already planned it all out. Peter spoke of the death of Jesus this way when he
preached his first sermon. “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus of Nazareth by
doing wonderful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know. But you followed
God’s prearranged plan. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to the cross and
murdered him.” Wow! So this whole act of Jesus meeting God’s demands of divine justice
actually occurred way before Jesus actually died. This whole thing was a setup! And lest you
get yourself all in a wad, please don’t forget that it was all setup in order to satisfy the demands
of divine justice for you so you could walk free out of God’s courtroom of righteousness!

Yes, all of this was actually pre-planned, and this plan was conceived before God ever created
the world! Paul wrote in Ephesians 1,

“How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ. Long ago, even
before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ… His unchanging plan
has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus
Christ…He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his

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Son, and our sins are forgiven…God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a
plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his great pleasure” (vv. 3-5, 7,
9).”

Why did God plan this so long ago, ever before He put anything into motion, before He created
the world and everything in it? Because He already knew there would be a reason for mankind
to need this plan. And it was because of sin.

B. The Demands of Divine Justice

Sin entered the world in the garden of Eden, and this too was part of God’s plan before creating
the world. Sin was the reason God created a plan, and it was a plan to be saved from sin. Why?
Because God is love, that’s why. You may say, “that’s weird! How does that fit together?”

God is love. It is an inseparable part of God’s nature to love. And equally as inseparable is the
object of His love. The object of His love is that which is perfect, completely void of any tainting
with sin or imperfection. This is part of His glory. God loves His glory. He loves His holiness.
He loves His righteousness. He loves His perfection. These are the only types of things that are
worthy of God’s love.

This translates into punishment, though. Because what all this means is that whatever is not
perfect, righteous, or holy cannot be loved by God, which in turns means that these things must
be hated by God. What I’m saying here is that God’s love for His perfection, righteousness, and
holiness drives Him, out of necessity, to destroy and punish and get rid of that which is
imperfect, unrighteous, and unholy.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it or like it, it’s completely logical from God’s
perspective. It makes total and complete sense that if you are a God who is holy, perfect, and
righteous that you cannot tolerate anything that is less than what you are. God is a
perfectionist, but for the right reason. Sin is utterly disgusting, miserable, and destructive. It
mars what God does. It destroys what He makes. It fragments what He created. And because
He loves His glory, He must do away with it. Ultimately, it simply cannot and will not be
allowed to exist before Him. And it is a testimony to another attribute to God, namely His
patience and forbearance, that the sin which does exist today is allowed to occur when God has
every right to destroy it in this very instant.

Exodus 34:7 is a verse I learned in high school as a senior. I was learning an evangelistic outline
when I encountered this verse and weaved it into the presentation. It is essential to the
discussion at hand.

“I show this unfailing love to many thousands by forgiving ever kind of sin and rebellion.
Even so I do not leave sin unpunished, but I punish the children for the sins of their
parents to the third and fourth generations.”

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God never, ever, ever lets any sin go unpunished. And this punishing the children bit is a
Hebrew way of saying that the committing of sin keeps on running throughout all the
generations of families, and therefore the consequences of God’s punishment along with it.
Earlier in Exodus, in the chapter on the Ten Commandments, we read a similar phrase but one
which tells us why God is this way.

“Do not make any idols of any kind…You must never bow down and worship them, for I,
the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other
god” (Exodus 20:4, 5).

How about this one. Try this one on for size, where God’s jealousy is expressed in wrath.

“The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and wrath. He takes revenge on all
who oppose him and furiously destroys his enemies!” (Nahum 1:2).

Likewise, however, we read texts like these where jealousy is expressed with mercy and pity.

“So now the Sovereign Lord says…I will have mercy on Israel, for I am jealous for my
holy reputation!” (Ezekiel 39:25). “Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had
pity on the people” (Joel 2:18, ESV).

The point in all of this is that God’s love for Himself and His glory is His patience and
forbearance and kindness and mercy. God loves His glory. And part of that glory is holiness
and perfection and righteousness, and part of it is also patience, forbearance, and kindness.
And just as He is jealous for His holiness and perfection so that He will destroy everything that is
not perfect, so also He is jealous for His patience and kindness and mercy, so that He will not
immediately destroy everything that is not perfect. In other words, as much as God loves His
holiness and perfection and righteousness, He also loves His patience, Kindness, forbearance
and mercy so much that He delays His just punishment and wrath on sin.

Now the problem should be readily apparent to you, if you’re listening closely. There’s a
seeming contradiction here. God is desperately jealous for His holiness and perfection and
righteousness, right? And this means that He can NEVER let sin go unpunished, right? But we
also know what God is desperately jealous for His kindness and patience and mercy, right? And
this means He ALLOWS sin to go unpunished, right? So what are we to make of this?

First, the sin He ALLOWS to go unpunished right now, out of a love for His mercy, will NOT go
unpunished forever. It just means that this punishment is delayed. And this delay is again, a
display of His kindness in giving people time to turn away from the sin that is going to result in
their eventual punishment.

Do you see what’s going on here? He loves people. They are His creation. They are the crown
of His creation. They are created in His image. He made each and every one of them. They are
His handiwork, the choicest and best of everything He created. And out of love for them, He

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chooses to display a love for His mercy before He chooses to display of love for His perfection.
Notice I didn’t say instead of, but before. He doesn’t gloss over their sin and choose to not look
at it. It rises up to His nostrils as a stench each and every day. But in the meantime, He chooses
to display to them His love for His mercy before He displays to them His love for His holiness
and perfection, so that they will see that kindness and want more of it and come running to
Him away from their sin.

Now, understand this very important thing I’m about to say. Because what I’m about to say
applies to some of you here this morning. Listen closely. Every moment that you, or any other
sinner, does not come running to Him and away from their sin, is another moment of God’s
wrath and vengeance stored up for you. It’s not like God is looking the other way. He’s
choosing to give you more time to repent and turn away. But if you don’t, then after you die,
all the wrath and vengeance you’ve stored up from God will be poured out on you in all eternity
as God jealously displays His love for His glory and perfection and holiness.

This is what hell is. It is a place where God, for all eternity, displays His jealous love for His glory
and perfection by punishing forever that which is imperfect and unholy. Yet how ironic and
idiotic is it that during your entire life, these souls who are suffering this right now had their
entire lives to enjoy God’s kindness and yet they did nothing with it. They totally didn’t see it as
a means to run away from their sin and to God. Hell is what happened to a soul when a sinner
doesn’t do anything with the lifelong displays God made to them of His love for His kindness
and mercy.

Let’s put it this way. God’s wrath is a reflection of God’s grace, as weird as it sounds. But hear
me out here. God’s wrath occurs when His grace is smitten with dreadful sorrow, as one
theologian put it. God’s wrath is His love in agony. Do you know why you have the ability to
agonize? Because God does. What you feel is a teeny-tiny reflection of what God feels. And
what do you want to do when you’re in agony? You want to get out of agony, don’t you? And
that too is a teeny-tiny reflection of the image of God, because God too means to get out of His
agony. And the way He does it is through punishing sin and expending His anger against it. Let
me see if I can break down for you an example of how this works with God.

Take the instance of God’s grief in Genesis 6:5-6, for example. There we see that the
wickedness of man was great on the earth, and the thoughts and inclinations of man’s heart
were evil all the time. Because of this, God was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and
He was grieved in His heart.

What did God do about His sorrow and grief? He vowed in verse 7 that He would wipe out all
of mankind’s existence on the earth. Therefore, we see at least from this passage that when
God is grieved because of sin, He somehow consoles that grief by pouring out His judgment and
wrath on the world’s entire population, saving only eight persons in all. And that judgment and
wrath was poured out for forty days and forty nights, also killing all animal life, except for those
that were taken on board the ark. He consoled Himself in His agony over His offended
perfection and holiness by destroying every living thing on the earth. Yet He also consoled

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Himself simultaneously by saving eight people, two of every kind of unclean animal, and seven
of every kind of clean animal.

This is a great picture for you this morning. Some of God’s attributes suffer at the hands of sin,
which in turn provokes action on other attributes. When God’s love is in agony, His justice picks
up the sword. And in the case of Noah and the ark, God picked up the sword, and He displayed
continued mercy. Mercy was for the eight, and the sword for the rest.

This is an illustration for us of the fact that God will console Himself when His love is in agony.
And that agony produces anger and wrath against the thing that causes the hurt and pain. That
wrath must be satisfied and appeased. The agony must cease. For those who walk free out of
the courtroom of God’s righteousness, they have already experienced the satisfaction of God’s
holy wrath and anger. For those who have not walked out free, there is nothing else to console
God in His agony, so they must suffer it themselves for all eternity.

C. The Divine Way of Satisfaction

This brings me to the third explication of the phrase I put before you a few minutes ago.
Sinners can walk free out of the courtroom of God’s righteousness when the demands of divine
justice have been satisfied in a divine way. There is a satisfaction for God’s wrath and
vengeance that can be possessed and enjoyed by people. And these are the people who walk
out of the courtroom of God’s righteousness as free men and women. The eight persons on the
ark were a picture of that. They walked out of the world courtroom of God’s righteousness as
rescued, delivered, and freed individuals. What we see through this, then is that it is possible
for a human being to experience freedom from the demands of divine justice against them.
God can pour out His wrath in such a way that they don’t experience divine justice. He can
console and comfort His agonizing love by aiming His judgment and condemnation and wrath
and vengeance somewhere else other than on them. This is what I’m talking about when you
hear me mention the word “propitiation.” Ezekiel prophesied about this a long, long time ago.

“Then at last my anger will be spent, and I will be satisfied. And when my fury against
them has subsided, all Israel will know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my
jealous anger” (Ezekiel 5:13). “Then at last my fury against you will be spent, and my
jealous anger will subside. I will be calm and will not be angry with you anymore”
(Ezekiel 16:42). (End of page 8)

Do you want to experience this side of God? Do you want to be on the receiving end of His
calmness and peace? Of course you do, who doesn’t? Do you want to be on the receiving end
of a God whose fury against you has already subsided and has been spent, poured out
somewhere else? That’s what propitiation is all about. This brings us back to our text in
Romans 3, and I’ll read is again, what Paul has to say about this matter.

“For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger
against us: (Romans 3:25).”

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Now, although I like everything else the NLT has to offer me in this text about this subject, I
don’t like this verse. Jesus Christ didn’t simply take God’s punishment here. It’s not as if He laid
down and took a spanking or a beating. That’s not the way the Greek reads. The ESV definitely
gets this part better. Christ Jesus is the one

“whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood…”

Paul is attempting to say here what John also said in 1 John 2:2.

“HE is the sacrifice for our sins.”

Jesus Christ as the Personal, Human, Sacrificial Offering of God’s Punishment

Jesus Christ HIMSELF became God’s punishment. Man, I’m tellin’ you here that is a hard
concept to grasp. Most people take punishment. But somehow, Jesus Christ became God’s
punishment. We’ve somehow got to get our minds and hearts around this, people, because
this is where we see the love of God for us. God didn’t simply punish Jesus. Paul said it this
way.

“For God made Christ, who never sinned, to BE the offering for our sin, so that we could
be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21).”

Jesus Christ Himself was actually a human sacrificial offering to God. Jesus Christ was born to
be punished by God. His existence, His life and breath, everything about Him was designed to
actually be God’s punishment. Again, this is HUGE!

I tried and tried to think of a way to explain this to you. And as smart as I am I spent quite a bit
of time before I actually thought of the BEST way to describe it. And it’s found in the Bible!
Duh! Let’s turn to Isaiah to see what Paul and John were talking about here. Isaiah gives us this
picture of Jesus Christ Himself as a human sacrificial offering of God’s punishment.

The death of Christ is described in the following terms that Isaiah uses in 53:4-5: stricken,
smitten, afflicted, pierced, crushed, punishment, and wounds. These are the words the NIV
uses. The NLT uses the following words in verse 5: wounded, crushed, beaten, and whipped.
The ESV uses the words stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded, and crushed. When you combine
all the translations together, the treatment Christ received was so brutal and torturous that
Isaiah describes him in 52:14:

“Many were amazed when they saw him – beaten and bloodied, so disfigured one
would scarcely know he was a person.”

What do these words and descriptions describe for us? In one word: punishment. Jesus Christ
Himself was a human reflection of punishment. And it was divine punishment.

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Turning back to Isaiah 53:4, most translations do not capture the essence of what Isaiah is
saying. Strangely, it seems that only the paraphrased versions do this. The thought in this
verse is from both a human and divine standpoint.

 From a human standpoint, Isaiah, in describing the suffering of the Christ, is saying that the
Jews looked upon him and his sufferings as a rejection and punishment by God. The New
Jerusalem Bible (NJB) captures the meaning the best:

“we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God.”

But while the Jews were thinking of Christ as a blasphemous sinner, deserving of such torturous
death, Isaiah says at the beginning of this verse,

“Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying…”

The point is that while Jesus was carrying the weaknesses, sorrows, sins, and grief of the Jews,
they were looking on hum as if he deserved what he was getting.

 But from a divine standpoint, Isaiah is telling the nation that God is the one who killed the
Messiah for a purpose. All of the other translations and versions have the phrase, “smitten
by God” or else “smitten of God.” Again, the sense is that Christ was being punished by
God. And this is absolutely true. Make no mistake about this, guys. Jesus was absolutely
being punished by God.

But He was not being punished for something HE had done, because He had never done
anything sinful or deserving of death. He was innocent on all counts of sin. He had lived a life
in perfect conformity to the Law of God in every way, throughout His entire life…something no
other human being could ever claim. This is what Isaiah meant by his statement in verse 9:

“He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone.”

Jesus was being punished by God, not for His own sins, but for the sins of others, the sins of the
Jews (which is in keeping with the context of Isaiah), and the sins of the world (which is in
keeping with the rest of Scripture). This is why Isaiah said in verse 6 that

“the LORD laid on Him the guilt and sins of us all.”

The Lord was most definitely the One punishing Jesus, and He was doing it for guilt and sins.

And then in verse 10, Isaiah continues:

“It was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.”

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These few verses is Isaiah describe punishment, as already stated. But these words and phrases
also describe the source of that punishment – God. He was the source and cause of all that
Christ went through. Again, He was

“being punished and stuck with affliction by God.”

It was

“the Lord” who “laid on Him the guilt and sin of us all.”

All of this was

“The LORD’S good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.”

This was something God the Father had given to His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to
experience. This was the “cup” that God had given Jesus to drink, and God intended that Jesus
should drink it down to the last drop.

The Cup of God’s Wrath

I want to try to close the message this morning on a special concept in the Scripture, and I just
mentioned it. It’s called the “cup.” Jesus Christ Himself became a human sacrificial offering of
God’s punishment for us, and He did so by drinking the cup of God’s wrath to the last drop.

The Cup Explained

This “cup” of suffering comes from the Garden scene where Jesus prayed after the Last Supper.
Just moments before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is
possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” A short time later,
after Peter had tried to defend Jesus from the cohort of soldiers there to arrest Him, Jesus
rebuked Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink from the cup the Father has given me?”
(Matt. 26:39; John 18:11).

Twice, Jesus mentioned the “cup” in one night. It was something that weighed heavily on His
mind. This cup was the cup of suffering I just described for you from Isaiah 52 and 53. It was a
cup filled with torment, torture, brutality, and severity. It was a cup filled with shame,
mockery, and cruelty. It was a cup filled with whipping, beating, and flogging. It was filled with
beard-pulling, face-punching, flesh-ripping, thorn-piercing and nail-crushing. It was a cup that
supernaturally transformed Him into a living, human sacrifice of God’s punishment.

What you need t know about this unique theological phrase is that in both Old and New
Testaments, the “cup” of God is a reference to His judgment and wrath.

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 Psalm 75:8 we read, “In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine and mixed
with spices; he pours it our, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very
dregs.”

 In Habakkuk 2:15, the prophet exclaims: “Come, drink and be exposed! Drink from the
cup of the LORD’s judgment, and all your glory will be turned to shame” (NLT).

 God proclaims to Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, “Then the LORD, the God of
Israel, said to me, ‘Take from my hand this cup filled to the brim with my anger, and
make all the nations to whim I send you drink from it” (Jer. 25:15 NLT).

 Isaiah calls out to Israel in 51:17, “Wake up, wake up, O Jerusalem! You have drunk
enough from the cup of the LORD’s fury. You have drunk from the cup of terror, tipping
out its last drops…” But he later proclaims in this same chapter, “This is what the
Sovereign LORD, your God and Defender, says: “See, I am taking the terrible cup from
your hands. You will drink no more of my fury. It is gone at last” (v. 22, NLT)!

 Looking into the future, we see a terrifying revelation of God’s wrath: “Then a third
angel followed them, shouting, “Anyone who worships the beast and his statue or who
accepts his mark on the forehead or the hand must drink the wine of God’s wrath. It is
poured out undiluted into God’s cup of wrath. And they will be tormented with fire and
burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb” (Rev. 14:9019, NLT).

The cup, then, is many times used figuratively to describe the judgment of God, and this
judgment, as with a cup, is poured out on both sinful nations and wicked people.

The Cup Emptied

It seems then that when God does pour out His cup of wrath and judgment, that He does so
until the cup is empty. That is to say, He pours out His anger and wrath on people until His
wrath is satisfied. But, lest we begin the dangerous mental journey of somehow identifying
this concept in God with us as humans, we mist stop ourselves with the truth that man’s anger
Is not at all like God’s anger, because the cause of God’s anger is sin, while the cause of most, if
not all of man’s anger is pride and selfishness. God is angry because His holiness has been
offended and His righteousness affronted. All sin deserves the punishment of death, for that is
the only thing that will satisfy the demands of God’s holiness and righteousness.

We see this with Achan and his family, all of whom were executed because they had disobeyed
God’s command with regard to the loot of Jericho. It was not until God’s demands of
obedience were satisfied that the nation of Israel experiences victory against the next city they
battled. When the cup of God’s anger is poured out until it is empty, He then can pour out His
cup of blessing until it is empty.

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The Cup and the Cross

This is just what happened at the cross, beloved. The cup of God’s anger was poured out to
the very last little drop on the person of Jesus Christ. That anger and wrath took the form of
the suffering described in Isaiah 52 and 53, as well as in the gospel accounts. And that anger
and wrath was poured out on Him instead of us.

Like a sponge, Jesus somehow absorbed every drop of the wrath of God which was in His cup of
judgment. During the three hours Jesus hung on that cross, He drank God’s cup of wrath in our
place. It was toward the end of that time that he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). That was a climax of His suffering. It is the kind that sinners will
experience in hell, because hell is a place of eternal separation from God. Jesus was somehow
separated from God, while hanging on that cross. And that separation produced the anxiety
and crying out that we see in Jesus’ words.

“Jesus was forsaken by the Father because of our sin. He drank to cup of God’s wrath to
endure the judgment and punishment that was due us…God the Father laid our sins –
every one of them – on Christ, and HE willingly for our sake bore them on the cross”
(Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life, p. 54).

And when that cup was empty, Jesus died. And when Jesus died, the cup of blessing was ready
to be poured out. This process of God pouring out His cup of wrath until it was empty, and of
Jesus absorbing all of that wrath until God was satisfied is called propitiation.

“I believe a word that forcefully captures the essence of Jesus’ word of propitiation is
the word exhausted. Jesus exhausted the wrath of God. It was not merely deflected
and prevented from reaching us; it was exhausted. Jesus bore the full, unmitigated
brunt of it. God’s wrath against sin was unleashed in all its fury on His beloved Son. He
held nothing back” (Bridges, p. 56).

WHY DID GOD DO THIS?!!!

Remember the ultimate question you’ve got to be able to answer? “On what basis or for what
reason(s) does God the holy Judge let sinners walk free out of His courtroom of righteousness?”
That basis is on propitiation. God gave Jesus Christ the sentence you deserved. God gave His
only Son the punishment YOU deserved, the condemnation I personally deserved. And Jesus
Christ didn’t just take that punishment but He became that punishment. And in so doing He
was able to completely and totally satisfy God’s vengeance and wrath against the sin of all
those who trust in Him.

Most people are trusting in something totally different. Most human beings are offering to God
something they think is going to stop God’s anger and wrath against their sin. But I can tell you
on the authority of God’s word, if what they offer God isn’t the propitiation of His Son Jesus
Christ, then it means nothing to God, and they will have to then become that propitiation

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themselves. Either Jesus Christ was the propitiation you put forward to God, or you will
automatically put yourself forward as your own propitiation for eternity in hell.

I think we can answer my ultimate question in one word, however. I believe that the basis on
which God the holy Judge lets sinners walk free out of His courtroom of righteousness is on the
basis of LOVE. God made His Son become the punishment for our sin because He was
motivated by love. He was motivated by a dual love, however. It was and is a love made up of
three threads of truth, and they are so inseparably interwoven that you’ll never be able to tell
where one ends and the other begins.

There is the first thread made up of the love of God for His holiness, perfection, and
righteousness. And then there’s the second thread made up of the love of God for His mercy
and kindness and forbearance. And then there’s the third thread, inseparably woven into the
other two threads. Do you know what that third thread is? Can you guess?

It’s YOU!

Propitiation occurs when God’s love for His mercy meets His love for His holiness. But
propitiation must have an object on which to be poured out. If punishment was poured out on
a person, whose name was Jesus, then propitiation and its blessings are also poured out on
persons.

When the judge makes his final decision in the courtroom he picks up his gavel and hammers it
down onto its base, doesn’t he? It’s as if the noise is saying that his words are saying, “This
Court is Adjourned.”

Well, in like manner, the holy Judge of the universe has a gavel. And every square centimeter of
that gavel is engraved with the word “love.” And that gavel is made of wood like every other
gavel. Except this gavel was in the shape of a cross instead of a hammer. And this cross-
shaped, wooden gavel was dropped on its base called planet earth, with the Judge of the
universe declaring the sentence for sin “paid in full.” And it too made a sound. And that sound
is continuing to make a sound throughout all history, and it will continue to be heard
throughout all eternity. Do you know what that sound is? It sounds like this: Tetelestai.

It’s the Greek word found in John 19:30.

“When Jesus had tasted it, he said, ‘It is finished!’ Then he bowed his head and gave up
his spirit.”

God’s punishment for sin has finally been exhausted. God’s wrath and anger and vengeance
against sin has been spent. He has consoled and comforted the love that had been in agony for
so long. It is finished.

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My friends, that is the sound you must desire to hear pounding in your head and heart more
than any other sound. And when you can’t hear it, you are hearing something else, and it’s
called the sound of sin pounding away in your lives. Not hearing that sound robs you of joy,
because you have forgotten that Jesus Christ has already absorbed God’s punishment for you
and exhausted His anger against you.

Have you fallen away from the Lord? There is no other way back except propitiation. The
sound of “It is finished” means you get back into the same line you got into to begin with. It’s
the line in front of the cross of Christ. It’s propitiation. It’s satisfaction. Line up anywhere else,
my friends, and that line is headed for eternal destruction where you yourself will become the
propitiation for God’s anger and wrath against sin.

Line up again in front of the cross and return to that only source of propitiation which has both
set you free and will give you the joy and happiness and fulfillment you and every other human
being in the planet throughout history has sought, is seeking, and will always look for. It’s Jesus
Christ, the propitiation whom GOD put forward for you.

“Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through
Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the
punishment for our sins and satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God
when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us…He is entirely fair
and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because
they believe in Jesus.”

There it is one final time. “It is finished” is the sound ringing in your head and heart if you
“believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for” you. Will you believe? Will you trust
this and nothing else to satisfy God’s anger against your sin?

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