The Heart of the Gospel.

If you were asked, what is the heart of the gospel, what would you provide as an answer?  Below is a summary of Chapter 18: The Heart of the Gospel from J.I. Packer’s book, Knowing God.  As Packer will detail, the heart of the gospel is Jesus’ glorious, bloody, and agonizing work of propitiation (satisfying God’s wrath) on the cross, and His subsequent peace offered through His resurrection.  Hang with this through the end, because there are applications for all of us to deeply consider.  

• Pagan Propitiation–a method

• The only course at this point is to humor and mollify the pagan gods by an offering. The rule with offerings is the bigger the better, for the gods are inclined to holdout for something sizable. In this they are cruel and heartless, but they have the advantage, so what can one do?
• Human sacrifice, in particular, is expensive, but effective. Thus, pagan religion appears as a callous commercialism, a matter of managing and manipulating your gods by cunning and bribery.  The gods’ bad tempers must be appeased, so this type of propitiation is a regular part of life.
• Now, the Bible takes us right away from the world of pagan religion.  It condemns paganism out of hand as a monstrous distortion of truth. In place of a cluster of gods who are all too obviously made in the image of man, and who behave like a crowd of Hollywood film stars, the Bible sets the One almighty Creator, the only real God, in whom all goodness and truth find their source, and to whom all moral evil is abhorrent.
• With God, there is no bad temper, no capriciousness, no vanity, no ill will.
• The idea of propitiation is a biblical theme—that is averting God’s anger by an offering—and it runs throughout the entire Bible.

• Propitiation in the Bible

• In the OT, it underlies the prescribed rituals of the sin offering, the guilt offering (“trespass-offering” in the KJV), and the day of atonement (Lev. 4:1—6:7; 16:1-34); also, it finds clear expression in such narratives as that of Numbers 16:41-50, where God threatens to destroy the people for maligning His judgment on Korah, Dathan and Abiram: “Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Take your censer and put incense in it, along with fire from the altar, and hurry to the assembly to make atonement for them. Wrath has come out from the Lord; the plague has started.’ …So Aaron…made atonement for them… And the plague stopped.”
• In the NT, the propitiation word group appears in four passages:
  • Romans 3:21-26…The rationale of God’s justification of sinners.
  • Hebrews 2:17… The rationale of the Incarnation of the Son.
  • 1 John 2:1-2… The heavenly ministry of our Lord.
  • 1 John 4:8-10… The definition of the Love of God.
• Has the word propitiation any place in your Christianity? In the faith of the NT it is central.
  • The love of God, the taking of human form by the Son, the meaning of the cross, Christ’s heavenly intercession, the way of salvation—all are to be explained in terms of it…
• A gospel without propitiation at its heart is another gospel than that which Paul preached. The implications must not be evaded.

• Not Merely Expiation

• In the RSV or NEB, the word propitiation does not appear in the verses mentioned in section II. In both the 1 John passages, the NEB has “remedy for the defilement” of our sins; elsewhere, these version replace the thought of propitiation by that of expiation.
• What is the difference? The difference is that expiation means only half of what propitiation means. Expiation is an action that has sin as its object; it denotes the covering, putting away or rubbing out of sin so that it no longer constitutes a barrier to friendly fellowship between man and God.
• Propitiation, however, in the Bible, denotes all that expiation means, and the pacifying of the wrath of God thereby.  In other words, removing the barrier of sin is not the object, but rather satisfying the wrath of God (which entails removing the barrier).
• C.H. Dodd revived a view from the 16th Century Unitarian Socinus, a view which had already been picked up by Albert Ritschl, a founder of German Liberalism, to the effect that there is in God no such thing as anger occasioned by human sin, and consequently no need or possibility of propitiation. Dodd has labored to prove that the propitiation word group in the NT does not carry the sense of appeasing God’s anger, but only denotes the putting away of sin, and that therefore expiation is a better rendering; and RSV and NEB reflect his view.
• Does he make his case? Dodd, it appears, has shown that this word group need not mean more than expiation if the context does not require a wider meaning, but he has not shown that the word group cannot mean propitiation in contexts where the meaning is called for. This is the crucial point: In the epistle to the Romans the context does call for the meaning of propitiation in 3:25.
• For in Romans 1:18 Paul sets the stage for his declaration of the gospel by affirming that “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.” Further, in Romans 1, Paul traces out the present activity of God’s wrath in judicial hardening of apostate hearts, expressed in 3x repeating of the phrase “God gave them up” (vv. 24, 26, 28 KJV).
• Then in Romans 2:1-16 Paul confronts us with the certainty of the “day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God…
• In the first part of Romans 3, Paul carries his argument to prove that every person, Jew and Gentile alike, being “under sin” (v. 9), stand exposed to the wrath of God both in is present and future manifestation. Here we all are in our natural state, without the gospel; the final controlling reality in our lives, is the active anger of God. But now, Paul says, acceptance, pardon, and peace are freely given to those who hitherto were “wicked” (4:5) and God set forth to be a propitiation…by His blood.”
• What has happened? The wrath of God against us, both present and future has been satisfied or quenched. How was this affected? Through the death of Christ (5:10). The “blood”—that is, the sacrificial death—of Jesus Christ abolished God’s anger against us and ensured that His treatment of us forever after would be promising and favorable.
• God now, who previously stood against or opposed to us, stands in our life and experience to be for us. What does this phrase “a propitiation…by His blood” express? In the context of Paul’s argument, that by His sacrificial death for our sins Christ pacified the wrath of God.
• The wrath of God is as personal, and as potent, as His love; and, just as the blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus was a direct manifesting of the Father’s love toward us, so it was the direct averting of His Father’s wrath against us.

• God’s Anger

• What is the manner of the wrath of God that was propitiated at Calvary?  It is not the capricious, arbitrary, bad-tempered and conceited anger which pagans attribute to their gods. It is not the sinful, resentful, malicious, immature anger which we find among humans.
• It is rather a function of holiness which is expressed in the
  • Demands of God’s moral law (“Be holy, because I am holy”—1 Peter 1:16), and that of
  • Righteousness which is expressed in God’s acts of judgment & reward. “We know who it is that has said, ‘Justice is mine: I will repay’” (Heb. 10:30).
• God’s wrath is “the holy revulsion of God’s being against that which is the contradiction to His holiness”; it issues in “a positive outgoing of the divine displeasure”.
• This is righteous anger—the right reaction of moral perfection in the Creator toward moral perversity in the creature. The most doubtful thing for God to do would be to not punish sin since it would be a direct contradiction to what His holiness requires in order to fellowship with Him. It would be like saying that God is not just—that, He does not act in the way that is right, He does not do what is proper to a judge.  Since He is just, He inflicts upon all sin and wrongdoing the penalty it deserves.

• Propitiation Described

• Propitiation is the work of God Himself. In paganism, man propitiates his gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and bribery. However, in Christianity, God propitiates His wrath by His own action. He set forth Jesus Christ, says Paul, to be a propitiation; He sent His Son, says John, to be the propitiation for our sins.
  • Man did not make God friendly, nor did Jesus change the mind of His unkind Father by offering Himself in our place. No, this would be another gospel, because it implies that man would have power and that the Trinity is not unified in their purposes.
    • The Bible itself declares that God Himself took the initiative in quenching His own wrath against those whom, despite their ill-wills, He loved and Had chosen to save.
    • “The doctrine of the propitiation is precisely this: that God loved the objects of His wrath so much that He gave His own Son to the end that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of His wrath. It was Christ’s so to deal with the wrath that the loved would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of God’s good pleasure.” (John Murray, The Atonement, p. 15)
  • God reveals His righteousness, says Paul, not only in retribution and judgment according to His law, but also “apart from the law,” in bestowing righteousness on those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. They have all sinned, yet they are all justified (acquitted, accepted, reinstated, set right with God) freely and for nothing of their own merit (Rom. 3:21-24).
  • How does this take place? “By grace” (that is, mercy contrary to merit; love for the unlovely and unlovable).
  • By what means does grace operate? “Through the redemption [rescue by ransom] that is in Christ Jesus.”
  • How is it that (to those who put faith in Him), Christ Jesus is the source, means and substance of redemption? Because, Paul says, God set Him forth to be a propitiation. From this divine initiative the reality and availability of redemption flow.
  • Love to one another, says John, is the family likeness of God’s children; he who does not love Christians is evidently not in the family, for “God is love” and imparts a loving nature to all who know Him (1 John 4:7-8).
    • But “God is love” is a vague formula; how can we form a clear idea of the love that God would reproduce in us? “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him” 1 John 4:9.
      • This expression of love was not done as a result of our real devotion, not at all. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that”—in a situation where we did not love Him, and there was nothing about us to move Him to do anything other than blast and blight us for our ingrained hostility toward Him—“He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
• Propitiation was made by the death of Jesus Christ. Blood is pointing to the violent death inflicted in the animal sacrifices in the OT. God Himself instituted these sacrifices by His own command, and in Lev. 17:11 He says why: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement.”
  • It was not Jesus’ moral perfection, life, teaching, nor His fidelity to His Father that quenched the wrath of God, but rather the shedding of His blood that so redeemed us from death. It was “by His blood” as Paul says that was the propitiation for the wrath of God. Paul always points to the atoning event of Christ’s death that explains the representative substitution—the innocent taking the place of the guilty, in the name and for the sake of the guilty, under that axe of God’s judicial retribution.
    • Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law”—how?—“by becoming a curse for us”. Representative substitution means that Christ bore the curse of the law which was directed against us, so that we might no have to bear it.
    • “One died for all,” and through Jesus’ death God was “reconciling the world to Himself.”
      • What does this reconciliation involve? “Not counting men’s sins against them” but causing them in Christ to become “the righteousness of God”—that is, accepted as righteous by God.
      • How is this non-imputation (not ascribing) brought about? Through the imputation (ascribing) of our trespasses to another, who bore what they deserved (death). “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us.” (2 Cor 5:14; 18-21)
  • Representative substitution, as the way and means of atonement, was taught in typical form by the God-given OT sacrificial system.
    • There, the perfect animal that was to be offered for sin was first symbolically constituted a representative by the sinner’s laying his hand on its head and so identifying it with him and him with it (Lev. 4:4, 24, 29, 33), and then is was killed as a substitute for the offerer, the blood being sprinkled “before the Lord” and applied to one or both of the altars in the sanctuary (Lev. 4:6-7, 17-18, 25, 30) as a sign that expiation had been made, averting wrath and restoring fellowship.
• Propitiation manifests God’s righteousness. Paul says that the truth of propitiation establishes God’s righteousness. God set forth His Son to propitiate His own wrath “to declare His righteousness [justice]…that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-26 KJV).
  • The word declare implies a public display, meaning, the public death on the cross was not merely justifying mercy on God’s part, but of righteousness and justice as the basis of justifying mercy.
  • Such a manifestation was needed, says Paul, “because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God.”
    • The point is that since the time of the flood, God had not dealt with the sin of the human race as it deserved. Though men after the flood had been no different than those before the flood, God had not reacted to their lawlessness by public acts of adverse providence. Instead, He has allowed common graces to fall on men (Acts 14:17).
  • The “passing over” of sins in “forbearance” was not forgiveness, but rather postponement of judgment only. This judgment was public and poured out upon Christ on the cross.
  • Our sins have been punished; the wheel of retribution has turned; judgment has been inflicted for our ungodliness—but on Jesus, the lamb of God, standing in our place.
    • In this way God is just—and the justifier of those who put faith in Jesus, who “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).
  • Thus, the righteousness of God the Judge is set forth in Paul’s doctrine of how divine wrath was quenched.
    • It is vital to his argument to show that the truths of salvation and damnation alike manifest the essential, inherent retributive justice which belongs to the divine character. In other words, God is just in justifying and just in condemning. However, the point is that in each case, salvation or damnation for man—retribution falls; punishment is inflicted; God is righteous, and justice is done.

• The Death of Christ

• The gospel tells us that our Creator has become our Redeemer. It announces that the Son of God has become man “for us men and for our salvation” and has died on the cross to save us from eternal judgment. The basic description of the saving death of Christ in the Bible is a propitiation, that is, as that which quenched God’s wrath against us by obliterating our sins from His sight.
• Jesus became our Substitute and saved us from God’s retributive justice (applying eternal condemnation for our sins and hostility to Him).
• Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed Himself to the “just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”
• No version of the gospel message goes deeper than that which declares man’s root problem before God to be his sin, which evokes wrath, and God’s basic provision for man to be propitiation, which out of wrath brings peace.
• We have all heard the gospel presented as God’s triumphant answer to human problems—problems of our relation with ourselves and our fellow humans and our environment.
  • The gospel certainly brings solutions to these problems, but it does so by first solving a deeper problem—the deepest of all human problems, the problem of man’s relation with his Maker. This is the supreme answer to all of man’s problems, and must be addressed first in order to answer life’s other problems that arise. Any gospel message without this is a misrepresentation of the gospel message, and half-truths presented as if it were the whole truth becomes something of a falsehood by that very fact.
  • No reader of the NT can miss the fact that it knows all about our human problems—fear, moral cowardice, illness of body and mind, loneliness, insecurity, hopelessness, despair, cruelty, abuse of power and the rest—but equally no reader of the NT can miss the fact that it resolves all these problems, one way or another, into the fundamental problem of sin against God.
    • Sin is not social error or failure to the first instance, but rebellion against, defiance of, retreat from and consequent guilt before God the Creator. Sin is the basic evil from which we need deliverance, and from which Christ died to save us. All that has gone wrong in human life between man and man is ultimately due to sin, and our present state of being in the wrong with our selves and our fellow man cannot be cured as long as we remain in wrong with God.
• Sometimes the death of Christ is depicted as reconciliation, or peacemaking after hatred and war (Rom. 5:10-11; 2 Cor. 5:18-20; Col. 1:20-22); sometimes it is depicted as redemption, or rescue from danger and captivity (Rom. 3:24; Gal. 3:13, 4:5; 1 Peter 1:18; Rev. 5:9); sometimes it is pictured as a sacrifice (Eph. 5:2; Heb. 9:1—10:18), an act of self-giving (Gal. 1:4, 2:20; 1 Tim. 2:6), sin-bearing (John 1:29; Heb. 9:28; 1 Peter 2:24), and blood-shedding (Mark 14:24; Heb. 9:14; Rev. 1:5).
  • All of these thoughts have to do with putting away sin and the restoring of unclouded fellowship between man and God; all of them have as their background the threat of divine judgment which Jesus’ death averted. In other words, they are so many pictures and illustrations of the reality of propitiation, viewed from different standpoints.
• Propitiation leads us to not only the heart of the gospel, but also the meta-narrative of the entire redemption story of the Bible.

• The Driving Force in Jesus’ Life

• If you were to read through the gospel of Mark, you will receive an impression of Jesus which includes at least four features
  • A man of action: always on the move, always altering situations and precipitating things—working miracles; calling and training disciples; upsetting error that passed as truth and irreligion that passed as godliness; and finally walking starting and open-eyed into betrayal, condemnation, and crucifixion.
  • A man who knew Himself to be a divine person (Son of God) fulfilling a messianic role (Son of Man). The more Jesus was known, the more He became an enigma and harder to understand—the closer they came to Him, the less they understood Him. He assumed authority in all naturalness (Mark 1:22, 27; 11:27-33), and on the other hand assumed that He was the “I am” (14:61-62).
  • He was one whose messianic mission centered on His being put to death. Four times at least after Peter had hailed Him as the Christ, Jesus predicted that He would be killed and rise, though without the disciples being able to make sense of what He said (8:31). “The Son of Man [came] to give His life as a ransom for many” (10:45).
  • He was one for whom this experience of death was the most fearful ordeal. In Gethsemane, “horror and dismay came over Him, and he said…’My heart is ready to break with grief’” (14:34 NEB). The inward revulsion experienced was as a result of what He knew He was about to face. How strong was His desire to say “amen” after “take away this cup from Me,” we shall never know…instead He said, “nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”  Then, on the cross, Jesus bore witness to inward darkness matching outward darkness with His cry of dereliction, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (15:34 KJV).
  • How then, should we explain Jesus’ belief in the necessity of His death?  He spoke of it all throughout His ministry…but how does one explain the way His death ended in horror as He cried out, as compared to martyrs like Stephen who faced death with joy, and even Socrates, the pagan philosopher, drank his hemlock and died without a tremor… Jesus, the perfect servant of God, who had never before showed the least fear of man or pain or loss, manifested in Gethsemane what looked like blue funk, and on the cross declared Himself God-forsaken.  Luther commented, “Never man feared death like this man.” Why? What did it mean?
  • Those who see the death of Jesus as a tragic accident, no different essentially from the death of any other falsely condemned good man, can make nothing of these facts at all. The only course would be to assume some morbid and timid streak in Christ. But since Jesus was raised from the dead and made it clear that His death was a necessity (Luke 24:26-27), it was not just some misfortunate tragedy. Moreover, those who deny the atonement have nothing better that they can say.
  • However, if we connect the facts about the necessity of Christ’s death and the apostolic teaching about propitiation, all becomes plain at once. Then, the “experiences of deadly fear and desertion are one of piece with the fact that in His death and in the agony of the garden through which He accepted that death as the cup which His Father gave Him to drink, Jesus was taking upon Him the burden of the world’s sin, contesting to be, and actually being, numbered with the transgressors…” (The Death of Christ, 1911 ed., p. 46).
  • Jesus bore all sin, and as a result, bore God’s judgment on sin, which caused Him to tremble in the garden, and declare Himself forsaken on the cross. The driving force in Jesus’ life was His resolve to be “obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8), and the unique dreadfulness of His death lies in the fact that He tasted on Calvary the wrath of God which was our due, so making propitiation for our sins. Centuries before, Isaiah spelled it out in Isaiah 53:4-10…”the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all…”

• What of Those Who Reject God?

• The destiny of those who reject God? A universalist will say that there is no condemnation for those who reject God. However, the Bible indicates otherwise—decisions made in this life will have eternal consequences (Gal. 6:7). Those who in this life reject God will be forever rejected by God. Universalism says that among others Judas will be saved. But Jesus didn’t think so…Mark 14:21.
• How can we understand what they who reject God will bring upon themselves? 
  • On the cross, God judged our sins in the person of His Son, and Jesus endured the retributive comeback of our wrongdoing. Look at the cross to see what form God’s judicial reaction to human sin will finally take.
    • What form is that? Withdrawal and deprivation of good. On the cross Jesus lost all the good that He had before: all sense of His Father’s presence and love, all sense of physical, mental and spiritual well-being, all enjoyment of God and of created things, all ease and solace of friendship, were taken from Him, and in their place was nothing but loneliness, pain, a killing sense of human malice and callousness, and horror of great spiritual darkness.
    • The agonizing physical pain was only a small part of the story; Jesus’ chief sufferings were mental and spiritual, and what was packed into less than 400 minutes was an eternity of agony—agony such that each minute was an eternity in itself.
    • So, too, those who reject God face the prospect of losing all good, and the best way to form an idea of eternal death is to dwell on this thought.
    • In our normal life, we cannot fully understand the vast amounts of common grace poured out upon us until it is quickly taken away. Consider a flood, a stock market crash, an earthquake, etc. We never value health, friendships, respect from others until we have lost them.
    • Calvary shows that under the final judgment of God nothing that good remains for those who reject God. It is terrible to consider, but the reality of it is more terrible yet… “it would have been better for him if he had not been born.”

• What is Peace?

• God’s gift of peace. What does the gospel offer us? Many will say peace with God, but not all will understand. Too often this idea of peace is accompanied with inner tranquility or a happy carefree life that the knowledge of God will shield one from the life’s hardest knocks.
  • But this is a misrepresentation, for, on the one hand, God does not featherbed His children in this way, and anyone who thinks he does is in for a shock, and on the other hand, that which is basic and essential to the real peace of God does not come into this concept at all. 
• Two misconceptions about God’s peace:
  • power to face and to live with our badness and failings
  • contentment under “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (God’s wise providence)”
    • The truth which this account ignores is the basic ingredient of pardon and acceptance into covenant—that is adoption into God’s family. 
• The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us.
  • No account of God’s peace which does not start here is at best misleading.
    • The irony of the liberal and radical movements which attempt to remove wrath, guilt, condemnation and the enmity of God, have made it impossible for themselves to present the gospel at all, for they cannot now state the basic problem which the gospel of peace solves. In other words, if there is nothing to fix with sinful man and holy God, then why would there be a need for peace?
• The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance—and the source from which it flows is propitiation. When Jesus came to His disciples in the upper room at the evening of His resurrection day, He said, “Peace be with you”; and when He had said that, “He showed unto them His hands and side” (John 20:19-20).
  • Why did He do that? Not just to establish His identity, but to remind them of the propitiatory death on the cross whereby He had made peace with His Father for them. Having suffered in their place, as their substitute, to make peace for them, He now came in His risen power to bring that peace to them. “Look the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).  This is where understanding of peace begins (Col 1:20).

• The Dimensions of God’s Love

• Paul prays that the readers of his Ephesian letter “may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18-19). The touch of incoherence and paradox reflects Paul’s sense that the reality of divine love is inexpressibly great; nevertheless, he believes that some comprehension of it can be reached. How?
• The answer: considering propitiation in its context.  That is, by reviewing the whole plan of grace set forth in the first two chapter of the letter (election, redemption, regeneration, preservation, glorification), of which plan the atoning sacrifice of Christ is the center-piece.
  • See the key references to redemption and “remission of sins” and the bringing near to God of those who were far off, through the blood (sacrificial death) of Christ (1:7; 2:13). See also the teaching of chapter 5, which twice points to Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice of Himself on our behalf as the demonstration and measure of His love for us, the love that we are to imitate in our dealings with each other (5:2; 5:25).
• Christ’s love was not free, not elicited by any goodness in us (2:1-5); it was eternal, being one with the choice of sinners to save which the Father made “before the creation of the world” (1:4); it was unreserved, for it led Him dow to the depths of humiliation; and it was sovereign, for it has achieved its object—the final glory of the redeemed, their perfect holiness and happiness in the fruition of His love (5:26-27), is now guaranteed and assured (1:14, 2:7-10, 4:11-16, 4:30).
  • Dwell on these things, Paul urges, if you would catch a sight, however dim, of the greatness of the glory of divine love. It is these things that make up “His glorious grace” (1:6); only those who know them can praise the name of the triune Jehovah as they should.

• The Glory of God

• What is the meaning of God’s glory? In the upper room, after Judas had gone out into the night to betray Him, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him (John 13:31). What did He mean?
  • “Son of Man” was His name for Himself as Savior-King who before being enthroned must fulfill Isaiah 53; and when He spoke of the present glorifying of the Son of Man, and of God in Him, He was thinking specifically of the atoning death, the “lifting up” on the cross, which Judas had gone to precipitate. Do you see the glory of God in His wisdom, power, righteousness, truth and love, supremely disclosed at Calvary, in the making of propitiation of our sins?  The Bible does; and we venture to add, if you felt the burden and pressure of your own sins at their true weight, so would you.
• In heaven, where things are better understood, angels and men unite to praise “the Lamb, who was slain” (Rev. 5:12; see 7:9-12). Here on earth those who by grace have been made spiritual realists do the same.

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
He left his Father’s throne above
(so free, so infinite his grace!),
emptied himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam’s helpless race.
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free,
for O my God, it found out me!
If thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my room endured
The whole of wrath divine;
Payment God cannot twice demand,
First at my bleeding Surety’s hand,
And then again at mine.
Turn then, my soul, unto thy rest!
The merits of thy great High Priest
Have bought thy liberty;
Trust in His efficacious blood,
Nor fear thy banishment from God,
Since Jesus died for thee.

• These are these songs of the heirs of heaven, those who have seen “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face [that is, the person, office, and achievement] of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The joyful news of redeeming love and propitiating mercy, which is the heart of the gospel, spurs them to never-ending praise.

…Practical Implications for Us Today…

1. Gratitude
   • The first of many implications of the gospel is a heart of gratitude. A consideration of the wrath that was poured out upon Christ by His Father (and not us as the guilty criminals), as well as the price that was paid for our sins by Christ on the cross compels us to express this gratitude toward God. Paul demonstrates this heart of gratitude in many of the salutations in his letters.
2. Initiative
   • A second implication of how the gospel is expressed in our lives is that of initiative. We see God’s divine initiative toward us, and we cannot help but marvel at how He didn’t wait for us to come to Him, but rather initiated fellowship with us. This is a compelling implication that moves us from our posture of expectation of fellowship to a posture of engaging others where they are and seeking to bridge fellowship to them.
3. Sacrifice
   • A third implication of the gospel in our lives is expressed in sacrifice. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” The instruction is to express sacrifice in our lives just as Jesus sacrificed His life for us. However, fear tells me to stay where I am so I don’t get hurt or so I don’t get exposed, and moralism tells me to move toward others so that they will approve of me or so I will win the favor of the Lord. However, the gospel moves me to sacrifice on the basis of love.
4. Love
   • Finally, a fourth implication of the gospel in our lives is expressed in love. God is the basis of love, He is example of love, and He is the author of love. 1 John 4:7-8 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The evidence of true conversion is love. Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” If we don’t have love for others, then we are not God’s child; and as a result we cannot ever expect or be expected to understand the gospel. However, a God of child will love others just as God loved them. And the heart of the gospel is once again expressed in 1 John 4:9 “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.”

Glory to God!

— April 15, 2016