A Gift Propelled by Love
God showed his love for us by sending his only Son to give us life through the propitiation for our sins
The following is a fictional story, any resemblance to real events is pure coincidence.
The daughter looked all nervous and excited as she approached her father and said: “Dad, he told me that he loves me. He said I am beautiful, smart and unique, and that he is in love with me”. The dad stared at her as he pondered internally: “LOVE! What is love? Would he stick around when your youthful features are gone? When he discovers that you don’t agree with him in everything? Would he stick around if you get sick with cancer? Would he then say ‘I LOVE YOU’?”
What is love? How do you define love? What words, or actions, or behavior come to mind when you think about love? What is love? That is the question we are going to answer today.
We will seek to understand love biblically, from 1 John 4:9-10. So would you please open your bibles in the first letter of John, it is towards the end of the Bible, just a few books before Revelation. Let’s read 1 John 4:9-10
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 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.
Let us pray
During this Christmas season, we are going through an Advent series based on a meditation titled the “Gift of Gifts”, which tells how God the Father gave us the gift of gifts in his son Jesus Christ. Robin kicked off the series last week, and this week the theme is that the giving of the gift of gifts was propelled by love.
Let me read the first stanza of this meditation from the book The Valley of Vision
Gift of Gifts
O Source of All Good, What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts, Thine own dear Son, begotten, not created, My Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, His self-emptying incomprehensible, His infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.
Now we will seek to understand this extraordinary love as presented by 1 John, chapter four. Verse 9 starts with this phrase: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us” and then he elaborates. In this specific way, John says, the love of God was revealed, unveiled, made clear, visible, manifest, known among us. Verse 10 is a parallel verse that starts with a similar statement: “In this is love”. So both verses explain, manifest, show, reveal the love of God.
I believe the message these verses communicate can be summarized as:
God showed his love for us by sending his only Son to give us life through the propitiation for our sins
That is the way God expressed, manifested his love for us, by sending his son to, number (1) give us life and number (2) to be the propitiation for our sins. There are some big concepts here that need explanation, but we will get there as we tackle these two expressions of God’s love one at a time. Let’s start with #1
1. Sent to give us life
Now remember, we are trying to answer the question: what is love? More specifically, we want to know and understand the love of God. If you want to know how God manifests, reveals, shows his love here’s how John explains it
In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him
God sent his only son into this world, with this goal, so we might live through him. He sent him to give us life. That is the way God reveals his love.
Let me ask a few questions to dive deep into the significance of this verse
Who is the sender? Who is the initiator? Who is the one who executes the verb, the one who sends? God is!
God sent his only Son
More specifically, God the Father, the first person of the trinity, and we know that because the one who is sent is the Son, not the Father.
God the Father, eternal, invisible, omnipotent, he sent his messenger, his representative, his ambassador.
Now: who is this representative, the one who was sent?
God sent his only Son
The one who is sent is God’s one and only son, Jesus. He is unique, one of a kind. There are not many sons, only one, only one who dwelt from eternity past in complete and perfect harmony with the Father. The one and only Son was sent by his Father.
Where was he sent?
God sent his only Son into the world, into our world
Jesus, the only son of God, took human form and came into the world, a world that was created through him. He was born in a small village called Bethlehem. He who has infinite power and strength came into the world and felt hungry and cold and weak. When he came out from the womb of his mom, he cried. He who is self-sufficient, became dependent on his earthly parents for food, care, shelter and provision. He took human form, a body with flesh and bones and blood, just like ours. He came as a vulnerable, small, innocent child, while he still kept the universe by the word of his power. That baby, in whom unimaginable potency was concentrated, more powerful than a thousand nuclear bombs, or a million burning stars, became flesh and was born in a manger where animals eat from. There was no room for him in Bethlehem, not a decent, clean hotel, not a palace for the majestic King of all kings and Lord of lords. He came to our world with a goal, with an important mission of unsearchable love.
What was this mission, what was his purpose? Why did he travel so far?
So that we might live through him
The purpose of God the Father in sending his son into the world was so that we might live through him.
Which means that apart from the advent, the coming of the Son of God, we are dead! Apart from the Son who was sent to give us life, you and I are dead.
What does that mean? In what sense are we dead?
We are by nature spiritually dead to the reality of the glory, the majesty, the infinite worth of God. We cannot see them or perceive them, we are like a dead corpse unable to sense those realities and truths of the spiritual realm.
Have you ever been in front of a dead corpse? Besides being in funerals, I think I have only been once in front of a dead corpse. It’s sobering and sad. When you contemplate a dead corpse, you can’t escape the finality of death. There in front of you is an inanimate body, the lungs are not breathing, the heart is not beating, the organs have ceased to function. It is just like an object, with no life, with no hope, with no future…
That is the picture the Bible uses to illustrate how you and I are without Christ. And that is why we need a giver of life, that is why the one and only son of God had to be sent into our world so we might live through him, so we may have a chance to live, and escape the miserable finality of death.
Apart from Christ we are trapped in our coffin, our casket, condemned to eternal damnation. That is why God had to send his only son into the world, so that we might have life through him, and that is how the love of God was made manifest among us.
God showed his love for us by sending his only son to give us life! That is the first way God revealed his love for us, by sending his Son to give us life.
Now let’s talk about the second way God sent his son as a demonstration of his love.
2. Sent to be the propitiation for our sins
God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins
The second verse is parallel to the first one. It also seeks to explain and reveal the love of God.
“In this is love”, verse 10 starts. And then it first clarifies in a negative way where there is a lack of love.
In this is love, not that we have loved God
Love is not initiated by us, love does not start with us. By default, we think we can approach God by behaving well before him. We think we first have to love and obey God enough to earn his love. But this verse completely debunks and refutes that thinking:
“In this is love, not that we have loved God”
Oh no, we did not love God first. And therefore God did not love us because we first loved him. All the opposite. We do not love God as we should, and that is actually the problem. We do not love God as we should, and in fact we cannot love God. We are incapable of loving him, because we are born with this innate propensity to love ourselves above God.
This comes pre-programmed in our genetic code by default since the fall. We are self-centered, just like our parents Adam and Eve. We want to be like God, we want to be our own god and live independently from him, disobeying his commandments. As the apostle Paul bluntly states elsewhere: “We are all sons of disobedience pursuing our selfish passions and by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind”. We are all on the same sinking boat.
Our self-centeredness and ungodliness are at the root of our fallenness: anger, bitterness, envy, dishonesty, pornography, sexual immorality, murder, war, genocide. In one way or another, our sinful nature comes to the surface undeniably. In the heavenly court, enough evidence is found to declare us guilty and deserving eternal damnation.
This sounds very harsh. Isn’t God supposed to be kind and nice? Why can’t he just forgive and forget our sins? Why can’t he just grade with a curve, and let the best go to heaven? Because then he would not be a perfectly just, holy, incorruptible God!
Would you like a God like that? If you witness the evil of a cruel man who tortures and murders thousands, would you be ok if God says: “oh fine I am a merciful God so I will let him go” No, that would be atrocious! You want the man to pay for his wrongs.
Or if you hear the story of someone who took advantage of young kids and abused them, would you be ok if the judge says: “oh he just had a difficult upbringing, so his behavior is justified, let him go free”, Oh no! That would be abominable! You do not want a judge like that! What if someone very close to you, who you dearly love, or even yourself is the victim of this perpetrator? Would you be ok if he never pays for his evil? No! You want justice to prevail! You want the perpetrator to pay for what he did, and the terrible consequences of his actions.
You do not want to live in a world where there is forgiveness without justice, you do not want to live in a kingdom where the King is an easygoing dude who lets everyone do whatever they want with no consequences. You want a just, righteous, holy, incorruptible King, who you can trust and respect and honor! And that is exactly who God is. He hates sin with all his omnipotent being, and he is committed to eradicate sin forever. He gets angry in a holy way against evil, and because he is just he must punish the offenders as they deserve.
Now we have a big problem, because before the eyes of the incorruptible, infinitely just judge, none of us is without fault. We have all sinned against him and against others countless times. We are all guilty sinners.
And if God is to remain just, holy and blameless he must punish sin. The transgressor has to pay for his wrongs! We all have to pay for our iniquities. We all deserve eternal damnation, a never ending existence in pain, misery and hopelessness, paying eternally and justly for all our sins against God and others.
“Wait a minute,” you may say, “this is supposed to be a Christmas message, an encouraging, uplifting, make-me-feel-good message, but all this preacher is talking about feels dark, hopeless, and frankly uncomfortable. Isn’t this supposed to be a message about love?”
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.
Let me explain what propitiation is. Propitiation simply means to pacify or satisfy God’s wrath against wrong, against sin. Propitiation is to pacify God’s holy wrath against sin.
A big part of the Old Testament vividly illustrates propitiation. It speaks of animal sacrifices that propitiated God’s wrath against the sins of his people. God had commanded his people to regularly and constantly offer animal sacrifices. Sometimes they would kill a lamb and spread its blood in their doors so the angel of judgement would pass over their homes. Sometimes the priests would have detailed instructions on how to slaughter lambs and goats, sprinkling their blood in the temple to satisfy God’s wrath against their sins.
At the center of all those ceremonies was the reality that the Israelites constantly sinned against God, and that their sins could not go unpunished. Their sins were so serious before God that they had to pay for them with their lives, but God established a temporary provision through the sacrificial system. His justice would be temporarily satisfied by the shedding of the blood of animals who were sacrificed as substitutes in place of the sinners, the Israelites. It was a temporary way to let the corrupted sinners dwell with God and survive without being consumed by his burning holiness. The animals had to be killed, their blood shed, their lives taken away as a sobering picture of the gravity of sin and its consequences. Through the death of those animals in place of the sinners, God’s holy anger against their sin was temporarily pacified, averted, satisfied, consumed, propitiated.
But those sacrifices were imperfect. They did not change people. Sacrifices had to be offered over and over again, because people kept sinning over and over again. The sacrifices satisfied God’s wrath imperfectly, because the substitutes were animals in place of people.
A permanent solution was needed. A decisive, perfect, once-and-for-all sacrifice was necessary to fully satisfy God’s justice and his righteous anger and wrath and aversion against sin. A sacrifice, a substitute that would propitiate, consume, pacify, placate God’s wrath forever.
In this is love, that God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins!
God sent his one and only son to offer him as a propitiatory substitute for the sinner. His only son, Jesus, came to this world to die, to be sacrificed on the cross, to shed his blood, to give his life in place of the ones who would believe in him so they might live through him!
At the cross, Jesus, the beloved, only son of God, was doing the unthinkable. He was absorbing himself the just wrath of his Father against the iniquities, transgressions and sins of the ones he came to save. The Son offered himself as a sacrifice, averting, consuming, absorbing, placating, pacifying, propitiating the furious, just, burning wrath of his Father against sin, so we may never experience it ourselves.
In that way God the Father satisfied completely his justice, because a life was paid for the transgressions of the sinner, except that that life was not the life of the sinner, but the life of his only Son! He unleashed his wrath over his son to satisfy his justice, so that you and I may gain his favor and live.
Oh that indeed is the best gift of all gifts, a gift propelled by unsearchable, extraordinary, incomprehensible love.
You want to know what love is? This is love, that the Father propelled by love sent his only precious, beloved Son Jesus. That in love, Jesus was willing to be sent into our world to lay down his life in our place, satisfying, consuming, propitiating the wrath of God that we justly deserved, so that we might live through him. There is no greater love! There is no better gift!
Merry Christmas! What a happy Christmas is for us who believe in him! If you don’t, come and receive this gift of love, the gift of gifts, and join us to celebrate, because…
God showed his extraordinary love for us by sending his only son to give us life through the propitiation for our sins.
Let us pray
O Source of All Good, What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts, Thine own dear Son, begotten, not created, My Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, His self-emptying incomprehensible, His infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.