Saved From Wrath IV

Excerpts taken from John Piper's Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die (Crossway, 2006).

God's law demanded, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). but we have all loved other things more. I have loved

• Myself more
  
• Sports more
• Experiences more
• Possessions more
• The internet more

This is what sin is - dishonoring God by preferring other things over him, and acting on those preferences. Therefore, the Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We glorify what we enjoy most. And it isn't God. Our God is just, he does not sweep these crimes under the rug.....He feels a holy wrath against them. God sends His own Son to absorb his wrath and bear the curse for all who trust him. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13).

I am thankful for this term called "propitiation". It refers to the removal of God's wrath by providing a substitute. The substitute, Jesus Christ, does not just cancel the wrath; he ABSORBS it! and diverts it from US ----> to HIMSELF. God's wrath is just, and it was spent, not withdrawn.

Oh how I praise the Lord and give Him glory for this truth - Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for a dirty rotten sinner like me.