Why the Wonder of God's Love Cannot Be Known Without the Horror of His Wrath
By Drs. Steven L. Childers and John M. Frame
Editor Note: These reflections on the cross are excerpts from the Applied Theology series books and courses by Childers and Frame on the biblical doctrine of propitiation.
Did you ever wonder why God’s love shown on the cross is not more meaningful to you? This is because you can never know the depth of God’s love for you in Christ until you first know the depth of God’s wrath poured out on Christ for you on the cross.
The cross of Christ is meant to be a constant, vivid reminder that God’s holy justice requires him to pour out his wrath against all sin. Because God is holy, he cannot be neutral regarding evil. Instead, God must be strongly and personally active in opposition to all evil.
Leon Morris writes, “Unpalatable though it may be, our sins, my sins, are the object of God’s wrath. We must realize that every sin is displeasing to God and that unless something is done about the evil we have committed, we face ultimately nothing less than the divine anger.”[1]
God was able to create the world out of nothing by just the power of his word. But God is not able to forgive you by just “deciding” to forgive you. God’s righteous nature demands that sin be punished with the full outpouring of his wrath. Before God can forgive, his just demands must be met.
The good news is that Jesus fully met these just demands for you on the cross. The Father struck Jesus with the full blow of his wrath and judgment that you deserve.
It was on the cross that Jesus—who as the eternal Son of God had for all eternity looked into the loving face of God his Father—was now, as the God-man, looking into God’s face as his wrathful Judge, experiencing the full agony and punishment that you deserve in your place.
One of the biblical words used in the New Testament to help you deepen your understanding of God's love for you on the cross is the word translated propitiation. To propitiate means to placate, pacify, appease, and conciliate someone. The Greek word ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion) translated “propitiation” is also translated “sacrifice of atonement.” Propitiation is a personal word. Someone propitiates a person.
The Bible tells us that:
Jesus, as our “merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God,” has made “propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).
John writes, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
Paul tells us that Jesus is the one “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (Rom. 3:25).
This is the astonishing news—that God satisfied his own wrath against you by substituting his own Son for you on the cross so that God can look on you without anger, and you can look on him without fear.
John Stott writes, “It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating, and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease his own righteous anger by bearing it himself in his own Son when he took our place and died for us.”[2]
God’s love for you is not because you are without sin but because you are a sinner for whom Christ died. Your faith rests not on what you do or don’t do, but in what Christ has done for you on the cross.
The holy justice of God displayed in the cross is meant by God not only to humble you but also to become the anchor of your soul.
If God is just and you are outside of Christ, that means that God must punish you. He cannot do anything but punish you. But since Jesus has already been punished for you on the cross, this means that God cannot punish you. In fact, if God punished you now for your sin, that would make God unjust—because God cannot demand double payment for the one debt that Jesus has already paid in full. That would be double jeopardy.
J. I. Packer writes, “Between you and the thunderclouds of God’s coming wrath stands the cross."[3] If you have faith in Christ, God’s wrath can never touch you. You are no longer awaiting a future verdict from God regarding your sin. The verdict has already been made. You are forgiven and loved in Christ forever because of the cross.
Through the cross of Christ, God means to draw out of your soul fervent praise to him for delivering you from the fire of God’s wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).
The story is told of a time when a father and his daughter were walking through the grass on an open prairie. In the distance they saw a prairie fire, which would soon engulf them. The father knew there was only one way of escape. They must quickly build a fire right where they were and burn a large patch of grass. When the huge prairie fire drew near, they could stand on the section that had already burned. When the flames did approach them, the girl was terrified, but the father assured her, “The flames cannot get to us. We are standing where the fire has already been.”
The good news to all who trust in Christ is that you will be standing where the flames of God’s judgment have already been. You will be standing in Christ under the cross.
When Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished,” he declared that the provision for your forgiveness with God is complete. Nothing more needs to be done. Nothing more can be done—except for you to hear it, believe it, and begin to boast in it, responding from your heart with the prayers of the hymn writer:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride...
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.[4]
Footnotes:
[1] Leon Morris, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance, IVP, 1983.
[2] John Stott, The Cross of Christ, IVP, 1986, p. 159.
[3] J. I. Packer, Knowing God, IVP, 1973, p. 182.
[4] Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” 1707.
