Lesson 6-Propitiation Series-Thursday February 17, 2022-The Propitiatory Sacrifice in 1 John 2.2
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday February 17, 2022
Propitiation Series: The Propitiatory Sacrifice in 1 John 2:2
Lesson # 6
The apostle John teaches in 1 John 2:2 that Jesus Christ is the propitiatory sacrifice for not only the sins of those who would trust in Him as Savior but for the sins of all of sinful humanity.
1 John 2:1 My dear children, I am presently writing these things for the benefit of each of you in order that each of you would not enter into committing a sin. However, if anyone enters into committing a sin, we possess an advocate with the Father, namely, Jesus, who is the Christ, who is a righteous person. 2 For you see, He Himself is the propitiatory sacrifice for our sins. Indeed, by no means for ours only, but in fact also for the entire world. (Lecturer’s translation)
1 John 2:2 contains an explanatory statement which is followed by an emphatic correlative clause.
The former provides the reason for the fifth class conditional statement in 1 John 2:1 and the latter advances upon and intensifies this explanatory clause.
In the fifth class conditional statement in 1 John 2:1, the apostle John asserts that if any believer enters into committing a mental, verbal or overt act of sin, they possess an advocate with the Father, namely, Jesus Christ, who is a perfectly righteous person.
Now, here in verse 2, he asserts that Jesus Christ Himself is the propitiatory sacrifice for the believer’s sins.
Therefore, John is telling the recipients of this epistle that Jesus Christ is the believer’s advocate with the Father because He Himself is the propitiatory sacrifice for the believer’s sins.
In other words, he is asserting that Jesus Christ is the believer’s advocate with the Father when they sin because He suffered the penalty for those sins when He died spiritually and physically on the cross as a substitute for all of sinful humanity.
The Father has accepted this sacrifice and His holy character and standards are upheld and He is propitiated or satisfied by this sacrifice because His Son is a righteous person.
In other words, because His Son is perfect like Himself, the Father accepted His substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross as paying the penalty for the sins of the entire human race.
His holy standards were thus satisfied or propitiated because His Son is perfectly righteous like Himself.
Therefore, when we compare this fifth class conditional statement in 1 John 2:1 with the explanatory statement in 1 John 2:2, we can see that John is teaching us that Jesus Christ’s advocacy on behalf of His church, His body, is effective because He is a righteous person or in other words, because He is sinless.
Furthermore, when an unregenerate sinner trusts in Jesus Christ as their Savior, the Father forgives them all their sins and accepts them into His family and gives them every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because of the merits of the person of His Son and the merits of His work on the cross for them.
He delivers the sinner from eternal condemnation, spiritual and physical death, bondage to the sin nature and Satan, personal sins because of the merits of His Son’s spiritual and physical deaths on the cross which have merit with the Father because His Son is perfectly righteous like He is.
When the sinner is declared justified by the Father through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, they appropriate the Son’s work in propitiating the Father.
They also appropriate the reconciliation His work on the cross effected and the redemption His spiritual and physical deaths on the cross provided.
On the other hand, those sinners who refuse to trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior do not appropriate this reconciliation, redemption and propitiation of the Father which Christ’s death provided for the sinner.
In the same way, when the believer sins after justification but confesses these sins to the Father, the Father restores them immediately to fellowship with Himself because of the merits of His Son Jesus Christ’s spiritual and physical death on the cross as a substitute for them.
Again, these deaths have merit with the Father because Jesus Christ is His Son and thus perfectly righteous like Himself.
If they refuse to confess their sins, then they will not experience the forgiveness of sins and will not be experiencing fellowship with God.
“The propitiatory sacrifice” for the sins of the believer means that Jesus Christ’s voluntary substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross “satisfied” or “propitiated” the holy demands of God which required that the sins of every person in human history-past, present and future be judged.
They propitiated the Father in the sense that they paid the penalty for the sins of the entire world.
Every human being stands condemned before a holy God because they are sinners by nature and practice (cf. Rom. 1:18-3:23).
God’s holy nature and character stands opposed to the entire human race because they possess a sin nature and as a result commit sin.
Consequently, they are under God’s wrath, which refers to His legitimate anger towards sin and sinners.
God’s wrath or righteous indignation is an expression of God’s holiness.
In 1 John 1:5, John declares that “God is light,” and that there is absolutely no darkness in Him none whatsoever, which is a reference to His holiness.
However, from His attribute of love, God provided His Son as the sacrifice which would resolve this problem the human race had in relation to God’s holiness (1 John 4:10).
God provided His Son as a substitute for the human race.
He would experience God’s righteous indignation on the cross in place of every member of the human race because of His attribute of love.
Jesus Christ’s substitutionary spiritual and physical deaths on the cross on behalf of all sinful humanity paid the penalty for the human race being sinners by nature and practice.
On the cross, Jesus Christ experienced God’s wrath or righteous indignation in the place of everyone in the human race.
His spiritual and physical deaths on the cross demonstrated that this was the case.
In 1 John 2:2, “our sins” refers to the sins of believers both Jew and Gentile and not merely the sins of Jewish believers as some expositors contend.
They come to this conclusion because they do not believe in the “unlimited atonement” but rather the “limited” atonement.
The “limited” atonement doctrine contends that Christ died for only the elect or in other words, believers whereas “unlimited” atonement contends that Christ died for “all” people, all inclusive, without exception and without distinction.
The context of 1 John 2:2 and within the context of the entire Bible clearly indicates that John is referring to the church in distinction with the rest of unsaved humanity.
In John 1:29, John the Baptist clearly stated that the Lord Jesus Christ came to take away the sin of the world.
Thus, the Lord died for all people and not simply believers.
1 Timothy 2:4 states that God desires for all men to be saved and in order for His desire to have any possibility of becoming a reality, He would have to send His Son into the world to die for all men.
The problem of those who adhere to the “limited” atonement doctrine is that not only do they reject major passages of Scripture, which clearly teach the “unlimited” atonement but also they failed to understand the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin to every person born into this world.
Romans 5:12-19 clearly indicates that every person in human history received the imputation of Adam’s sin in the garden, thus making every person who comes into the world physically but spiritually dead and qualified for grace.
Therefore, if God imputed Adam’s sin in the garden to every person born into this world, it would be unjust for God not to send His Son into the world to die for every person as well.
The emphatic correlative clause which follows the explanatory clause in 1 John 2:2 advances upon and intensifies this explanatory clause and it asserts that Jesus Christ is by no means the propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of every believer only but also for the sins of every non-believer.
Therefore, this correlative clause is emphatic that Jesus Christ is the propitiatory sacrifice for the personals sins of every non-believer in human history-past, present and future.
The advancement and the intensification is obvious, namely Christ not only died for the believer but the non-believer as well.
This emphatic correlative clause is therefore, describing the extent of Jesus Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice on the cross.
What John asserts here with this correlative clause refutes the doctrine of the “limited” atonement which contends that Christ died for only the elect or in other words, believers whereas “unlimited” atonement contends that Christ died for “all” people.
His death was all-inclusive, without exception and without distinction.
There are two figures of speech contained in this expression peri holou tou kosmou (περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου), “for the entire world.”
The first is “synecdoche of the whole” where the world is put for the persons in all parts of it and the second is the “metonymy of the subject” where the world is put for its inhabitants.
Therefore, the doctrine of the unlimited atonement is emphatically taught here in 1 John 2:2 and the doctrine of limited atonement is likewise emphatically refuted and proven to be false.