Chrome-Shining Faith

Barbara Derksen

Chrome Shining Faith

 

 

 

Please enjoy this excerpt from

Chrome-Shining Faith

by Barbara Derksen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROPITIATION

is a big word that means appeasing another person’s anger by the offering of a gift. The human race,

because of Adam’s sin, is judged by God’s perfect standards, the standards that define sin in the

first place. We fall short of that standard. The sin we commit against each other and against God is in

 

direct opposition to His holy nature. The Bible says that this makes God angry because He cannot

 

look on the very thing He created to have fellowship with Him. He misses us. God’s anger is not an

 

irrational lack of selfcontrol, as it so often is with humans.  However, God’s opposition to sin cannot

 

be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It requires something much more substantial

to appease it, to pay the debt we owe handed down as a judgment when Adam was tossed out of the

garden. And the Bible states that it was only the cross that did this.  Jesus willingly became “the

 

propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world”. When the

 

New Testament speaks of “propitiation,” it means that Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of

 

mankind put away God’s wrath against his people once and for all.

 

And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole

 

world

1 John 2:2 (KJV)

Droplets of sweat dotted his cold damp forehead.  Crater sat on the lumpy cot, cringing inside,

contemplating his death. He was innocent but that didn't seem to matter to these people:

 

the prison guards, prison warden, the prosecutor and the judge who had sentenced him. They

believed he was guilty and deserved their harshest punishment. Crater knew who should

be there instead of him. He loved the man.

He’d never squeal on him. So he waited.  The inmates on either side of him, waiting with

him, seemed to sense his preoccupation with the next steps in his life, the steps that would

take him, and someday them, to the gas chamber.  They tried to distract him but they, too,

were preoccupied with the clock ticking nearby.  Each tick grew louder as time rushed towards

completion of the sentence handed down by the judge, a righteous man, who believed he

 

was doing the right thing.  Jesus Christ walked this path for you and me.  He knew we were guilty of

 

the sin He was going to be executed for and yet He said nothing.

His heart did not feel anger towards us for the position we’d put Him in. He extends to us

LOVE, unconditional. He walked the Via Delarosa to hang on a cross. Someone had to pay

the price exacted by God for the sin we committed.  We turn our backs on God’s perfect

standards every day. Jesus was the appeasement that would bring us into right fellowship

with our Creator.

If you have not done so already, accept that Jesus died in your place, for your sins. Feel the

emotional impact of those words and His deed.  Repent. Begin life anew. Place your trust in the

Holy Spirit to teach and guide you as you walk toward eternity.

Father, thank You for providing a way that I can sit before Your throne in heaven some day.  Thank you for loving me so much that You willingly went to that cross.  Help me to be worthy of Your sacrifice from this day forward.  Amen