JESUS A PROPITIATION
Rom 3:25 Whom God
hath set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that
are past, through the forbearance of God;
Rom 3:26 To declare,
I say, at this time his righteousness: that he
might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
What a blessed truth this is!
God set forth Jesus as a propitiation.
We have to remember that men are rebels.
Our forefather, Adam, took of the forbidden fruit in the garden of
Eden. In Adam all of us participated in
that sin. We were and are at enmity
against God. It is while we were in this
condition that God loved us, and He set forth Jesus as the only propitiation
for us. That means God made Jesus the
means of appeasement between us and an angry God.
Through Moses God gave man the Law and all of its accompanying
sacrifices. Those sacrifices, however,
could not take away our sins Those
sacrifices were types of the true sacrifice.
They were a lesson to man that salvation is founded on the shedding of
blood. God told Moses that He had given
him the blood on the altar to make an atonement.
In His death on the cross Jesus remitted the sins of the past, that
is those that were before Him. With all
those sacrifices for so many hundreds of years their sins had never been taken
away. They were covered but not taken
away. It is important to note that only
as judgment had been passed on Jesus and the justice of God was thus satisfied
that God could righteously take away the sins of those in the past.
In
that same death He justified all those who have come after Him in faith. His justification is just. I sometimes here that God is not just, but
that He is merciful to us. That is not
exactly true. God's justice demanded
that sin be paid for. Sins then could
only be remitted or taken away when Jesus had offered Himself as the acceptable
sacrifice to God. Thus He is just and
the Justifier of all believers in Jesus.
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