1 John 4:10
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.
HILASKOMAI — this word was used amongst the Greeks with the significance to make the gods propitious, to appease, propitiate, inasmuch as their good will was not conceived as their natural attitude, but something to be earned first. This use of the word is foreign to the Greek Bible, with respect to God whether in the Sept. or in the N.T. It is never used of any act whereby man brings God into a favourable attitude or gracious disposition. It is God who is propitiated by the vindication of His holy and righteous character, whereby through the provision He has made in the vicarious and expiatory sacrifice of Christ, He has so dealt with sin that He can show mercy to the believing sinner in the removal of his guilt and the remission of his sins.Through the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, he who believes upon Him is by God’s own act delivered from justly deserved wrath, and comes under the covenant of grace.
It never fails.
I am looking up some technical term in one of my theological dictionaries and then my heart is broken, my spirit soars and tears come to my eyes.
It just happened again.
As I read that little paragraph cited above I am overwhelmed by grace.
The contemporary religious myths at the time John was writing said that men and women did certain things, gave certain offerings, in order to make their gods propitious.
John turns the whole thing around. The gospel always does. Not that we loved God. Not that we did anything – ANYTHING – to make Him propitious toward us. But He loved us and sent His own Son to make propitiation for us.
What a Savior. What a gospel.