Who You Are In Christ, Propitiation 1John, 2:22

Well, today is the 4th of the 33, which is of God's grace. And this is propitiation. And we're going to find that actually the previous two in propitiation all kind of connect in a sense. They all kind of talk about what Christ has done on the cross and how God has taken that and applied it to our lives and satisfied himself, his holy character. It's all related. Redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation are all kind of related. In fact, I think last week Randy was talking about some kind of diagram or picture. I don't know what there is, but I know there's a relationship and scripture shows that.

You'll see, it'll talk about redemption and propitiation in the same passage. I didn't see reconciliation as much, but it certainly depends upon... We're going to see propitiation as the ground floor, if you will. If Christ wasn't acceptable to God the Father, the payment for our sins, then we're in trouble. We're still in trouble, but he was.

We're going to see the baseline understanding of what Christ did on the cross. Let's start with the definition. I got four bullets on definition. One is, the first definition is actually not a scriptural definition. The author, Weiss, says it's a pagan definition in the Greek culture.

This word, propitiation, was used. It was used in a sense of appeasing the gods to to make the gods propitious towards you. If you wanted the gods' favor, you had to propitiate the gods. An example of this guy who propitiated with gifts and he escaped the visit of an army. I'm not sure I can pronounce those two names, so that's why I'm just skipping over them. That's not the view in scripture. Here's a word that existed in the Greek language that was taken, and when scripture was penned, it took on a whole new meaning. So now we're kind of starting down that path. March Banks, who has, in fact, we've actually taught from his book, or actually it's not a book, it's a paper.

Anyway, he has a definition of propitiation. The word propitiation itself means that which propitiates, pointing to a person. It also means a place of propitiation. And we're gonna spend some time looking at that. And the word Jesus Christ is both of those. He's both the propitiation and he's the place of propitiation. Propitiation was carried out on Christ. All our sins were laid upon him. So, I mean, it's kind of a cool, you know, a neat thing. Okay. That which propitiates is Christ himself. The idea is one of who paid the price for, who makes satisfaction for.

And then actually Verne had a definition here. This is the satisfaction of God's character of righteousness, holiness, and justice, which must be satisfied so as to make payment sufficient for the redemption of every human being on the planet. And you can see already, we already have one of our other previous concepts kind of linked into propitiation. We're going to see that kind of through this today, how redemption and reconciliation are all kind of linked into propitiation.

Thoughts or comments on the definition? Have you heard other definitions? A lot of times we use satisfaction. That's not a bad substitute because you don't go around telling people, talking about propitiation. In our context we do, but in common language we don't talk about where is it used. To my knowledge, maybe your circles are different, but in terms of scriptural sense. Well, no. Appropriation is you would appropriate what God has done for you. In a sense, a lot of these are all connected in a way.

Stan? Doesn't it also mean appeasement? Satisfaction? Back up here, the root word did originally, but actually when you come to scripture, it's going to talk about that God was satisfied, or Christ paid He paid for our sins. Payment was made. Appeasement, in my study that I did, appeasement was maybe not the preferred word. Right. God's wrath was... God no longer has wrath toward the believer. Exactly. Right. That's exactly right. Okay. Good.

OK, so now we're going to start this. We're going to look at Christ, the propitiation for our sins. We're going to look at Christ, the place of propitiation. And then we're going to look at Christ's propitiation as being part of his very character. God is propitious or has propitiation for this world based upon his son. And we're going to see those, those three aspects. OK, the first verse.

In going through and looking at that, there's about six or seven verses. in the New Testament that use the word propitiation. It's not always translated propitiation. Sometimes it's translated mercy. Sometimes it's not mercy. Mercy seat. Sometimes it's translated... I've actually forgotten the other one. We'll get to it. It's not always translated propitiation. Now we're going to step through this verse.

Christ is a propitiation. This makes a statement, the first part of that verse. that he himself is a propitiation. And the construction in here, propitiation identifies a characteristic of the Lord Jesus Christ. It identifies that he is by his very nature the propitiation.

And I was going to ask a question here. What do you think? Is propitiation an ongoing process? Is it a one-time act? What do you think? This is kind of a trick question. You're going to say it's both? It's certainly propitiation occurred at the point when Christ went to the cross. He propitiated our sins. That is valid for all time. Sins are no longer an issue. Christ is not going back and propitiating. That has been done. That has been accomplished. I think that's important to see that connection. He went to the cross, he paid for our sins, all sins.

The sins that have not been committed have been paid for, which is kind of mind-boggling. That's a mind-boggling concept that a sin that we might commit tomorrow has been paid for. God is able to do that, and it seems something that man can't handle. He can't understand that. How is God able to propitiate sins not committed in our time frame? Well, God is infinite. He can do that. That's a marvelous thing, and we're going to see the impact that this verse really has a progression, if you will. There's actually a couple of verses I want to look at. I didn't write them down, but they're in Hebrews. Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 9. Can I get someone to read Hebrews chapter 9 verses 11 and 12?

Christ being come and high priest of good things come. by a greater and more perfect heaven after all, not made with hands, that is to say, not of his will, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, obtaining eternal redemption for us. Right, okay.

So particularly verse 12, and this is kind of back to this this single act and it was for all but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption. So here we see the linkage back to redemption and there's actually another another verse here over in chapter 10 of Hebrews and other verses I should say. Let's look at someone could read 11 through 14 in chapter 10 of Hebrews And every priest stands daily ministering and offering, oftentimes, the same sacrifices, which can never take away sin. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right-hand side of the church.

How about 14? So we see the impact here of what Christ did on the cross. He has offered one sacrifice for sins, plural, for all time. The magnitude of this is incredible. His one sacrifice on the cross was was effective for all. I mean, it's just something that man can't do. One thing to notice as we go through here, how much are we involved in this? Do you see anything in our involvement here? Are we getting in the mix here and doing something? We're not.

God is declaring what he's done. God is saying, this is what I've done. And this is who it's effective to. And that's just incredible. So okay, here's a question. Looking at this verse, and hopefully you haven't quite looked already, but anyway, whose sins is Christ's appreciation for? It's kind of a trick question. What's that? Good, good. What would tell you that in this verse? Okay. All right. Well, I'm trying to make this... Good, okay, alright. Roger? Yes. Back to you tonight. Okay, alright. A lot of strokes and talks.

Isn't that also referring back to the Mosaic Law? The Mosaic Law did not do it. Right. Actually, that could not. It's interesting. It talks about that. Actually, we're going to look at that a little bit. We get to the mercy seat. We're going to look back, and propitiation has a connection back to that Jewish custom. We're going to see that. That's really neat. We're going to get there. We're going to get there.

Whose sins is Christ's propitiation for? Well, we kind of do this little pattern here. The propitiation for our sins. Propitiation not for ours. I actually have a spelling error here. It should be ours is plural, like it is in the verse. Propitiation not for ours only, but the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

So, it's effective to the whole world. So, is everybody saved then? It's another trick question. Is everybody saved? No, it's not. But what's marvelous is you can tell an unbeliever, you can say, God has paid for your sins. He's asking you to trust Christ as your savior. This verse is a tremendous verse, as are others along this line. But this verse just nails it down. The effectivity of his death on the cross was for sins of all time for all people. Will they take advantage of that? Will they trust him?

Many do not. The majority do not, which is really sad. Christ has done this marvelous work, but so many do not want him, just like when he was here on earth. They say, oh, the Savior, he's here, the Messiah. No, he didn't. A few did. But the effectivity of his work is for the whole world. All right.

Okay, let's go on. So we have another verse along the same line. Christ, the propitiation for our sins. And this is going to kind of connect God's love and propitiation and kind of show a connectivity between those two. So let's just kind of step through the verse here. I'll just read the verse first. And this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

And just a little note here. When my kids were small, They couldn't pronounce that word, which you can probably see why. My daughter and my son called it propitiation, which I didn't think was a bad pronunciation. It wasn't a bad concept. Propitiation. It sounds pretty good to me. One of those things that is kind of fun when you're with your kids, you can read with them. It's hard sometimes. It's hard to read those verses.

This is love. This verse is going to tell us what God's love is all about. It makes a negative statement first. We did not love God first. What does that mean? What does that tell you about man? What does that tell you about what God has to do? We did not love God first. I kind of flipped it around a little bit, so it's not that we love God, but in essence, it's we did not love God first.

Right, right. Well, it's interesting, but you'll hear people, and many times they're not believers, they'll say, oh, I love God so much. You'll hear, I don't know whether, maybe not a lot, but I've heard people say that. And it's interesting. We're going to see something that I think is a neat aspect here. So people will make claims of loving God.

But what's interesting, this verse here, it actually, literally, it says, we have not loved God, is the literal translation of that. And actually, it's in this Greek tense called the perfect tense. Does anybody remember what the perfect tense is all about? It's a past completed action with abiding result up into the future. What this is saying is, you could translate this in an expanded translation, sometimes Vern will do it, sometimes others will do it.

You could say, we did not love God in the past, that's one aspect, and we continue not to love God up into the present. At first thought, that's kind of you think, wait a minute here. We didn't love God in the past, and we continue not to love God up into the present. That's what that verb, that's what that tense means.

So what is our part in this? What does God ask us to do once we trust him as our savior? What's our job description? What's that? Right. Exercise faith, right? Do we have to do a whole other list of stuff besides that? That's only one thing, but then there's another long job description of things we do. I'm kind of helping you.

Our part really, in a sense, if you think about it, it says we did not love God first. It took his action. God loved us first. He had to take the action. before we can love him. So it was God's action that produced our action. And our action is faith.

Our part of this equation is faith. And actually, in this case, this is in the Greek tense. It's a past point fact. It's called the Eris tense. At a point in time, God loved us first. And we're going to see when that was here just very shortly. Roger? Yes, go ahead.

Could we say that we could not love until we have accepted his love for us. That's excellent. We don't have the ability. As an unbeliever, people will say I love God, but they don't have the ability to love God. Because actually, in a sense, it's God's life. It's his life, right? They can love him. I like what Mike Doyle does. It's equals. We're on a different plane. As unbelievers, we're not on the same plane as God. we're defiled, we're unrighteous. But when we have trusted Christ, he sees Christ when he sees us. So we have equals. So God can be loved through us. One of the questions is, who's doing the loving too? Go ahead, Sam. Is that what appropriation means? Appropriation means counting upon the fact, trusting the facts.

I trust that in myself I cannot love God. I remember my daughter had a hard time with that. and unfortunately still has a hard time, loving God. She somehow thought that was required of her, and I never was able to really explain that well. That's one of these sad things with your children. You talk to them about different things. I just don't love God, she said. I didn't explain it as well as I should, but basically I should have told her, well, you can't love God. He can only be loved through you as you trust him. He's asking you to trust him, not to love him.

And that's kind of a hard thing to maybe grasp. The love will come out of us as we walk with him by faith. Love will be manifested. We won't have to worry about that. But our job description says not to love him. It's to exercise faith, to trust him. That's what we're here to do. We're to appropriate what he's told us. We're to count upon what we have. So it's kind of a startling thing in a sense.

So here's where God's, his love was demonstrated by sending his son. God loved us first and he demonstrated that by sending his son. And then we get down to our word here. His son was sent to be the propitiation for our sins, the satisfaction for our sins. So it talks about God's love and defines what that love was. His sacrifice, his payment for our sins on the cross. His satisfaction of God's character for our sins.

Other thoughts on this verse? Now we're going to kind of switch here. We've talked about two verses that talk about Christ's propitiation for our sins. And now we're going to kind of switch as Christ being the place of propitiation. Actually, a place, a physical place. And we're going to see a connection to the Old Testament here. And this is what Doug was talking about here, I think. Christ as a place of propitiation. So let's look at Hebrews. A lot in Hebrews today. Hebrews chapter 9 and verses 1 through 5. I'll just go ahead and read it this time. My turn to do it here. Okay.

Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle prepared the outer one in which there were lampstands and tables and the sacred bread. This is called the Holy Place. Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies. Having a golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold in which was a golden jar holding the manna and Aaron's rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant.

And above it were the cherubims of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat. But of these things we cannot speak in detail. Okay, so here's verse 5. So what's interesting here is this word for mercy seat is the same word that was used in the 2 and 1 John. propitiation, it's a form of that same word. You could say, you could read this as, and above it were the cherubims of glory overshadowing the place of propitiation, probably would make it a little bit easier to say. The place of propitiation, but of these things we cannot speak.

What I want to show you here is, actually I have a picture here. The mercy seat is a place, here's a photograph. I got this on another presentation. The mercy seat is right here. That's the mercy seat right there. It's the lid. The mercy seat is actually this whole, this thing doesn't do a good job, you can't even see it. It's a lid of the Ark of the Covenant. So the mercy seat is right here.

Does anyone remember what happened on that mercy seat? In Israel, they had the Day of Atonement. they atone for their sins. What happened in that mercy seat? What transpired in that mercy seat? Something transpired, which is really kind of interesting. Kind of connects it back to Christ. What happened in that mercy seat?

We're going to read about it. I'm kind of curious if you... I didn't remember until I started reading it. Thank you, God. Sacrifice. Okay. Yes, there was a sacrifice. Abraham or Isaac. No, not so much that. There were sacrifices. What's that? Was it the lamb? There were lambs. There were like the scapegoats. One was called the scapegoat. There were two goats.

Isn't that where God appeared? Excellent. Okay, right. God, and we're going to see this. We're going to read this shortly. He said, I will appear over this mercy seat. I will fellowship with you. I will have interaction with you because of what has transpired on this place of propitiation or mercy seat. I will be able to have an interaction with you. I'm going to tell you the answer. What had to be put on this mercy seat for God to be able to come and interact with these people?

Something had to be done to them. It couldn't be nice and clean. It couldn't be real pretty. Yes. Blood had to be sprinkled on there. We're going to see the connectivity back that Christ's blood had to be shed for us to have a place of propitiation with our Savior.

God is, it's holy. So he needs a holy place in this sinful world to be if he's going to communicate with man. It takes blood, which goes back to Leviticus, because it said life is in blood. It takes life for sacrifice. I think the real neat connectivity is that it was the blood of the sacrifice.

And we're going to see it's the blood of the sacrifice of our Savior, which allowed God to be able to interact with man. And this is just pointing to what Christ would do. We're just kind of gabbing away here, which is good. OK, let's look at some verses here. Exodus 25. Exodus 25. OK. So that's a lot of work. Well, you might be wanting to read 12 verses. If not, I could do it. OK, thanks. In a initial mate in the carpet, she didn't work. two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.

And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without, and shalt thou overlay it, and shalt thou make it a crown of gold around about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof, and two rings shall be on one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it.

And thou shalt make staves of chickenwood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, and the ark will be born of it. The staves shall be in the rings of the ark, and they shall not be taken from it. And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.

And thou shalt make the mercy seed of pure gold, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, and a beam of it, shalt thou make them in two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end, in the mercy seat. Shalt ye make the cherub or cherubims on two ends thereof. And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings.

And their faces shall look one to another, and toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. And thou shalt put the mercy seat above above upon the earth, and in the earth shall they put the testimony that I shall give them. and there will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, and from the two cherubims which are on the ark of the testament, of all things which I shall give thee, in the commandment unto the children of Israel. Great. Thank you. That's a lot of reading there. Thank you. That's great.

Well, the last couple of verses really kind of put it, you know, in 21 it says, and you shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark. So it's, as we call it, the lid of the ark. And there's some things inside. There's Aaron's rod that budded. And there's the two tables of the Ten Commandments, basically. And then in 22, it says, and there I will meet with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims. And there's the cherubims with their wings touching each other over the mercy seat, which are upon the ark.

I will speak to you about all that I will give you in the commandment with the sons of Israel. The other part of this is where the blood comes in. Let's just read a portion of that. In Leviticus 16, it's going to talk about the Day of Atonement, getting ready for the Day of Atonement. So I just want to read the section that talks about the blood. So Leviticus 16, and let's start in verse 11. shall offer the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his household. And he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself.

And he shall take a firepan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense, and bring it inside the veil. And he shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord. And the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of the testimony, lest he die.

And then verse 14. Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his fingers upon the mercy seat on the east side. Also in front of the mercy seat, he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his fingers seven times. So actually, if you read on, you'll see it's repeated. He does it for the tabernacle. He does it more than one time. Basically, blood was applied.

Blood had to be applied to that mercy seat for God to be able to interact with man. That's neat. We see that same kind of picture when we look to the Lord Jesus. He had to shed his blood to propitiate our sins before God could have a relationship, before God could have fellowship with us. That had to be done. That's kind of a neat picture.

Actually, this word mercy seat in the Old Testament When the Greeks translated the Old Testament, that's called the Septuagint, they used the word propitiation for the word mercy seat. So it's interesting, that connectivity between the Old and New Testament, between the mercy seat that Israel had and our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificing his blood on the cross. Thoughts or comments on this? The next one will kind of now focus more on Christ being the place of appreciation. This verse kind of focuses looking back to the Old Testament. So in Romans here, it says, verse 24, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith, this was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed."

And there's a lot. We could spend an entire lesson just on this verse, but I just want to focus on a couple things here. If you think about what we just read about the mercy seat, God, it was a public display. When that blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, everyone saw that actually. Who saw that, right? Only the high priest could go in. It wasn't that public in that sense, but it was public in the sense they knew that he was to go in and do that. Only the high priest was allowed to do that.

In that sense, it wasn't as public as I was trying But if you think about Christ, Christ was more public than that mercy seat was in the Old Testament, right? Because he was displayed for all to see on the cross. So God displayed Christ Jesus publicly as a propitiation in his blood.

And I was just kind of thinking, there's just a bunch of, in this word display, displayed is to set before one's eyes publicly. So there were some verses here that I wanted to kind of look at here. I'll kind of just go through them briefly here. In Hebrews, I'm back to Hebrews again. So this is just going to kind of show the public display of Christ as taking on the sins of the world. A lot of them we know and there's a lot more we probably could bring to mind, but this is just to show that Christ was the place where God interacted to take care of the sin problem, and it was a public display. Hebrews 12, 2. Thank you.

So that last part of the verse says that it wasn't a very pleasant interaction, right? That wasn't a very pleasant scene. As the mercy seat wasn't a very pleasant scene, taking the blood of animals and dripping it and sprinkling it on that mercy seat, God's wrath upon Christ was not a pleasant scene. And it was a shameful scene.

And then in Philippians chapter 2, in verse 8, And being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. So Christ voluntarily gave his life, gave his blood. Now as I went through some of these, I was thinking there are probably a lot more. You start looking for certain ones and if there are ones that come to mind, I'd be happy to read them. That would be great. But I was just trying to show the public aspect of Christ shedding his blood on the cross.

Galatians 6.12 Galatians 6.12, those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised simply that they may not be, actually, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Galatians 6.12. I'm not sure about that one.

Let's try Acts 2.23.

Acts 2.23. Let's just go back to 22 then.

Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus of Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst. This man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. and God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in his power.

The cross was the place of propitiation, the mercy seat in the Old Testament vernacular. Now we're going to look at Christ is propitious in his very nature. There's a couple of verses that talk about Christ being propitious. in his very nature. Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. In this case, it's been a noun that described the place of propitiation, or who Christ is.

This is action to make propitiation for the sins of the people. And then Wyss renders it. We'll kind of notice here, he's kind of taking the idea of a sacrifice here. I like to use a Wyss translation because it's kind of an expanded translation. For this reason, it was an obligation for him in all things to be made like his brethren. in order that he might become a compassionate and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God, with a view to the offering that sacrifice for the sins of the people." He tried to expand that idea of propitiation by putting in other words in there. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it's not. He's just trying to show you that this is a sacrifice, this is a payment for the sins of the people. the sins of the people that would perfectly meet the demands of God's justice. I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'm just going to add, that's why they go into Melchizedek, because he was the king of the high priesthood. So he had peace with God, and he had no lineage, because they don't know where he came from, and all these other mysterious things about him. So that's why they compare Christ to Melchizedek. If you trace through the Old Testament, you can find what they call the appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ. You can trace through where Christ appeared before he came through Mary. But that word itself means king of peace. Okay. Okay. All right. And then Hebrews has for, I will, and here it's got to be translated as merciful. I know it may make sense within the context, but it's actually per perpicious.

I will be, I will be propitious to their iniquities. Actually, what's interesting is the word merciful, there's a whole bunch of other words for merciful in scripture, but here this word is actually propitious. For I will be propitious to their iniquities. I will remember their sins no more. Then weast here again, this is an adjective in this case. Because I will be merciful in the case of their unrighteousness and their sins, I will no wise remember anymore.

So we've actually looked through. This is six verses. There actually is one other one that's used, but I didn't really cover it. So that made six, seven occurrences of the word propitiation or propitious or place of propitiation. So what I want to do as kind of closing here is just kind of go through and look at our three concepts we've covered the last three weeks.

So redeemed, the one who has been redeemed is the one who has had the debt paid in full and the payment has been recognized and acted upon by the captive slash debtor and by the one holding him captive. So the debt has been paid. So we're going to see, this requires propitiation to already have happened, right? For him to redeem. The redemption depends upon propitiation. And then we're going to see the same thing with reconciliation. By the death of Christ on its behalf, the whole world is thoroughly changed in its relationship to God.

You think about what we read in 1 John 2.2.

He's a propitiation for the whole world. God has acted unilaterally and not asked for man's opinion, his homage or anything. He's acting unilaterally and Christ has paid for the sins of the whole world. It's a marvelous thing. So this definition from Schaeffer is kind of wrapping into it. But God is never said to be reconciled to man. He reconciles man to himself.

The world is so altered in its position, respecting the holy judgment of God through the cross of Christ, that God is now not imputing their sins unto them. the world is thus rendered savable. So the world can be saved. When Christ's death was accomplished, the world can now be saved through faith and trust in him. And then lastly, and I sort of had a portion of this earlier, propitiation is the satisfaction of God's character of righteousness, holiness, and justice, which must be satisfied so as to make payment sufficient for the redemption of every human being on the planet. the payment sufficient to affect the forgiveness of the whole world and to declare each one righteous, a justification. God was completely satisfied in this regard in the death of Jesus Christ. So in some ways, it's kind of some heavy things here, but the wonderful bottom line to all this is that God has sent his son to be the propitiation. And that has been accomplished. And we're to rejoice over that and count upon that.

And not go back and try to, in a sense, say, well, here's a sin that I can't be forgiven for. People will get in that state, even believers. Something happens and they say, well, I did something that was really bad and I can't... No, that's already been accomplished. Trust what scripture says. That sin has been accounted for. Now, that may cause some issue with fellowship, but not in terms of the payment for that sin.

So that's wonderful. And that's one of the wonderful things, going through these wonderful truths to understand what we have in Christ, what's in our spiritual bank account, if you will. What can we count upon? So next week, we're going to be going, let's see, where are we going next week? Forgiven all trespasses. So we're going to talk about forgiveness next week. Which kind of links into this. You can't affect, like Schaefer said here, by being reconciled, the world is now savable. But will they take advantage of it? Will they accept that? And when they accept that, they're forgiven.

The unbeliever, even though Christ has paid for it, is not forgiven. Because he hasn't accepted it. If he accepts it, he's forgiven. And that's kind of a subtle point too. The idea between it's already paid for and being forgiven. It seems like they're almost synonymous, but if you think carefully about that, until you trust Christ, you really can't take advantage of his payment for your sins. And that's kind of where forgiveness comes into that. So any other last thoughts or comments?

I was listening to a guy the other night about Zachariah. and going into the Holy of Holies and how the high priest would go through all this ritual. And it had to be precise because while Aaron's sons failed because of strange fire. So they knew the holiness of God and the perfectness of God. Can you imagine being a high priest and going behind the veil and seeing the creator of I know, I know. God would meet with you there. I mean, isn't that incredible? I don't even think thoughts like that. I don't know. That's so huge.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean the fact that he would actually not only come down as man to save him, but to come down and commune with man. Right. Really puts a new picture on this unconditional love that he has for the world. The whole concept is just so mind-boggling. It is, it is. And the thing is man wants to, I think even believers to some degree, that they want to somehow participate in that.

But God says, I've done it. I want you just to trust me, just to believe me. I mean, it's simple. Our job description, I like to tell, is a very simple job description. Trust, faith, reliance upon what he's done. And say, I believe it. Lord, you say you've paid for the sins of the whole world. Every sin, and on this sin tomorrow I might commit that might be terrible, you paid for that. I thank you for that. There may be consequences for that sin. He doesn't believe the consequences in an earthly sense, but he's paid for it. You don't have to have this burden of guilt We're free in Christ. We're free to recognize what he's done for us.

So that's a marvelous thing. So hopefully as we go on through this, we'll see more and more of this. Well, thanks. It was great. Let's just pray. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for our time, Father. We thank you for your marvelous provision through your Son. how he's provided for the sins of the whole world, Lord, and he asks man to simply trust Christ, who he is and what he's done, Father. We thank you for that. We ask it in his name. Amen.