77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #26)

26.     Didn’t Jesus propitiate God’s wrath by the Cross?

Nothing could be further from the truth.  God’s wrath against the stubborn and stiff-necked cannot be placated, appeased, or propitiated, either by the Cross or any other means.  Jesus never played that card for it would have meant trumping his Father’s unalterable, indeed, entirely incorruptible, character.  Inconceivable!  For perfect holiness is by definition everlasting and unquenchable.  Jesus came to be a protective covering or indemnity concerning sin, that is, to open a shelter where humanity could experience God’s exuberant graciousness, not to fend off His alleged wrath against every last human misdeed to satisfy a postulated ‘eternal moral order’.  Our Savior could do this precisely because he was perfectly wrath-proof!  He was even crucified—get a grip on this—in the graciousness of God, not His anger.  The proof is that our Lord bounced back to life even before the dust of death had settled, to mock the vengeful ‘penal substitution’ of a self-aggrandizing Jewish priesthood and to aggrandize instead the non-vindictive graciousness of his Father’s authentic judgment from heaven.  In a cosmic turning of the tables, God propitiated or appeased His embittered enemies by allowing them to sacrifice His chosen Messiah without countering with immediate punitive consequences!  Imagine that!

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #19)

 19.     Wasn’t God satisfied and appeased by the suffering of His Son?

Good grief.  Just the opposite!  This vicious manhandling of His Son, the royal heir and Prince of Peace, pained the Father’s heart profoundly; so when 40 years more of undiminished graciousness had gone the way of diminishing returns, the score was reluctantly evened.  He simply surrendered that bellicose generation to their own vindictive devices; internecine bloodshed and carnage finished the job.  But God was well pleased by His Son’s deportment in the face of barbaric brutality.  Jesus’ faithful obedience to all his Father’s directives, even to the bitter end, profoundly satisfied God.  The fact that our Master stayed resolutely in character, gracious and true to his agelong pledge, was all that his Father could have hoped for.