Propitiatory Grace Propitiatory Grace
Propitiation means:
• The act of pleasing and making calm one who is annoyed with you
• Actions intended to please make one feel calm
• To appease
• To assuage
Propitiatory means:
• Calming and relaxing
1John 2:2 is the Grace of God seen from the perspective of God and the standpoint of Propitiation which is a function of the sovereign Will of God, without human volition involvement, to accept and be satisfied with the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of The Lord Jesus, The Christ as EFFICACIOUS payment for the penalty of ALL HUMAN PERSONAL SIN. This requires an examination, in part at least, of the Essence of God which includes:
• Absolute Justice
• Absolute Righteousness
• Perfect Love
• Eternal Life
• Sovereignty
• Immutability
Considering these aspects of the Essence of God the unquestionable fact is that God MUST be consistent with his own character or essence. Satan impugned the character of God in saying, that a God of LOVE, cannot cast his created creatures into an Eternal Lake of Fire based only on his Absolute Righteousness and Absolute Justice. Many people often say, “How could God allow such terrible things to happen to anyone”, yet they do not consider that the ultimate source of these “terrible” things is Man himself NOT GOD and they fail to recognize that Man just like Angels has Volition, FREE WILL, to choose what he will or will not do. God is and always has been and always will be perfect and He is immutable and if, therefore, God were inconsistent within himself HE COULD NOT BE GOD. Immutability, as a component of the Essence of God, infers TOTAL STABILITY in the character of God, therefore, God cannot change and cannot be inconsistent. THEREFORE, the Love of God, the Motivation of God, must always be tempered by the Absolute Perfect Righteousness of God and the Absolute Perfect Justice of God making it IMPOSSIBLE for God to LOVE any creature who is UNRIGHTEOUS. Clearly and obviously Unrighteousness is an INSULT to the Absolute Perfect Righteousness of God and therefore the only thing which God can do to the unrighteous is to JUDGE and CONDEMN them.
At physical birth man receives the Grace Provision of the divine imputation of soul life to his format soul which is combined with the Biological Life of his fetal human body forming Human Life. As a result of Adam's failure in Original Sin and the genetic distortion resulting from that causing his Spiritual Death and total separation from God, every human being, as a result of being genetically descended from Adam, is born Physically Alive but Spiritually Dead. Every
human born into this world has this same genetic distortion passed down through the male
gamete during fertilization resulting in the possession of a genetic Old Sin Nature. Therefore, EVERY human being MUST BE JUDGED immediately at the moment he emerges at physical birth, as soon as he opens his mouth and cries, demonstrating to the world his possession of human life with a Genetic Old Sin Nature. In addition there is the divine imputation of Adam's Original Sin to this genetically transmitted Old Sin Nature resulting in Adam and all his genetic
descendants being condemned and outside of the Plan of God. ( Rom 5:12-14) Therefore every newborn human being is instantly judged as a result of his possessing an Old Sin Nature, having Adam's Original Sin imputed, lacking a Human Spirit and thus being in the status quo of Spiritual Death. Consider if you will then that every time a person is born into this world IT IS AN INSULT TO THE CHARACTER OF GOD. The sweet innocent beautiful little baby is born into this world possessing a VICIOUS DESPERATELY WICKED OLD SIN NATURE. Each and every person alive has this vicious desperately wicked Old Sin Nature, and they love to USE IT REGULARLY. Therefore God cannot have anything to do with any human being based on any human merit and simply one’s birth and presence in this life with this Old Sin Nature and his basic unrighteousness is an incredible INSULT to the Absolute Perfect Righteousness of God. Therefore, God can have nothing to do with man except to judge and condemn him and as a result of being born spiritually dead man is TOTALLY INCAPABLE of initiating and having any kind of relationship with God who possesses eternal spiritual life and Absolute Righteousness and Absolute Justice. Consider if you will that God is Eternal Spiritual Life and Man is in the status of temporal spiritual death. Consider, man is physically alive but eventually his physical life ceases at the point of his death, can that one who is no longer physically alive have any relationship with those still physically alive? This is the problem for man being born spiritually dead and condemned into this life and the only solution to this problematic status quo of man MUST and CAN come only from GOD!
The issue put forward by Satan in the appeal of the Angelic Conflict Trail is whether the Love of God works with the Justice of God and Righteousness of God consistently in all cases and in all situations. Satan questioned this principle indicating that from his distorted perspective this was not so. In the Garden of Eden the Love of God motivated the provision of everything for Ish (Adam) and Ishah (Eve) under his GRACE policy until they violated his one single prohibition at which time they came under the consideration of the Righteousness of God and Justice of God. There are periods of time in the Plan of God when believers are, and Adam and Ishah as our first parents were, under unusual blessing and also periods of time when they are under the “casual” blessing of Divine Discipline. There are times when believers are under great pressure and adversity and times when they are not. All of this is an expression of Grace, the Policy of God toward man, motivated by the Love of God but tempered by the requirements of the Righteousness of God and functions of the Justice of God, demonstrating the absolute perfect consistency in the functions of the Essence of God toward his creation.
Man can only understand this through his own consistency, after having made Salvation
Adjustment to the Justice of God, in the Perception, Cognition, Inculcation and Metabolization of Bible Doctrine. Therefore, to understand Grace one must start at the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of The Lord Jesus, The Christ on the cross for all human sin where Grace was first administered to the believer.
When The Lord Jesus, The Christ reached the point of the cross He was, in his humanity, the possessor of perfect righteousness and being perfect righteousness and accepting the imputation of all human sins this satisfied the Righteousness of God the Father. In addition to this when He was judged by God the Father for these human sins and thus died a Substitutionary Spiritual Death for them this satisfied the Justice of God the Father. This total satisfaction of God the Father by the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Christ on the cross is PROPITIATION. Thus, God the Father is Propitiated by the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Christ on the cross, HE IS SATISFIED WITH THE PAYMENT FOR HUMAN SINS. The believer must understand that he has gained Eternal Salvation NOT by anything he has said or done but by the simple nonmeritorious act of accepting the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of Christ for HIS OWN PERSONAL SINS. Thus Propitiatory Grace is the willingness, ability and obligation of God to accept, without compromise to his character, the Substitutionary Spiritual Death of the humanity of The Lord Jesus, The Christ on the cross for all the sins of mankind as PAYMENT in FULL for these transgressions of man against the Plan of God and Character of God. This is God’s Obligation because, in fact, it is the mechanic of the GRACE Plan of God to enable condemned man to acquire Eternal Salvation and live with God forever, DESPITE, his total lack of qualification to do so, simply by ACCEPTING this provision of God’s Grace.