Dr Paul Allen

“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 The word propitiation, as used by the apostle John in 1 John 2, has been the subject of much debate throughout the centuries. The question is this: Does John mean by propitiation that Jesus Christ, through His death on the cross, obtained forgiveness for us, or does John mean that through His death, Jesus not only obtained forgiveness for us but also satisfied the wrath of God against us? How you answer this question will either lead you to the gospel of Jesus Christ and a saving knowledge of God or to a faulty understanding of who God is and what He requires as payment for our sins. Some would say that God is not a God of wrath.   They would say God does not demand blood sacrifice to satisfy His wrath against sin and sinners. They claim that God is pure benevolence – a loving God who would never have this kind of wrath that needed to be satisfied against sin. The...

God’s wrath is his revulsion against evil, his settled displeasure with sin and sinners. The wrath of God is not a popular concept in the liberal West. It is widely ignored, denied, or radically reinterpreted. Yet it is a prominent doctrine in the Bible. In the Old Testament, there are over 580 references, using more than twenty different words. In many instances, God’s wrath is portrayed in dramatically personal terms, as in Nahum 1:2–11. In the New Testament, it is again frequently mentioned, though generally in less personal terms, with few passages stating explicitly that God is angry. It is widely recognized that talk of God’s wrath is anthropomorphic or, to be more precise, anthropopathic. God is portrayed in human terms. It is important not to equate God’s anger with often-sinful human anger: God does not have mood swings and does not “fly off the handle.”  God’s love is also anthropopathic; we must not fall into the error of equating divine love with human love in all its...

“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son , but the Father.” ( Mark 13:32 ) This verse has always been difficult to understand. If Jesus was God , how could He be ignorant of the time of His second coming? Indeed He was, and is, God, but He also was, and is, man. This is a part of the mystery of the divine/human nature of Christ . In the gospel record, we see frequent evidences of His humanity (He grew weary, for example, and suffered pain), but also many evidences of deity (His virgin birth, His resurrection and ascension, as well as His perfect words and deeds). He had been in glory with the Father from eternity ( John 17:24 ), but when He became man, “in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” ( Hebrews 2:17 ), except for sin. As a child, He “increased in wisdom and stature” like any other human ( Luke 2:52 ). Through diligent study (as a man), He acquired great wisdom in the Scriptures and t...