09
D4G – Propiti whut?
Posted by admin | Posted in Devotion | Posted on 09-02-2010
1 John 2:1-2
1 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous One. 2 He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world. (HCSB)
Words can be fun. For the longest time our youngest daughter Rachel would get onto Tanya, Bethany and myself for using an expanded vocabulary in seemingly everyday normal life. We have never used words to make us sound like we are more than we are, but being that our life has taken us to some wonderful places and experiences our word banks had grown from what they where when we were younger.
When I was in college in the south I remember hearing some . . strange vocabulary as well. But most of the time it consisted of modifying a word or dropping an ending off of a word. It took me nearly 6 months to figure out that Barvoul was actually the name of the city next to us, Barberville.
When we come across a fancy or strange word in the Bible we can sometimes get stumped or try to gloss over it. Propitiation is one of those words. Who, outside of Bible college and church, uses the word PROPITIATION? No one, that’s who. So what does it mean and why is it important?
To boil it down to the simplest elements, propitiation means, atoning sacrifice. I know, atoning is not used very much as well but we will run with it.
John says in this passage that he hopes that we would not sin, but if we do we have an advocate, someone to speak on our behalf. His qualifications to speak for us, and take the wrap for us is that he died for us. Propitiation!
Jesus is able to stand before the Father in our place because of His love for us, that love lead Him to die for us. That right there is pure win and awesome.