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Weekly Devotion
Rom. 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Rom. 3:25
[Christ Jesus,] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
What is propitiation? One NT scholar succinctly defines it as a "wrath-removing sacrifice." Thus, propitiation is not merely about atonement for sin but satisfaction of God's righteous wrath against sin.
Many people recoil at the thought of an angry God. For instance, William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, writes in another book of his, "Who originated the cross? ... If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser, who in divine wisdom created a means to torture human beings in the most painful and abhorrent manner. Frankly, it is often this very cruel and monstrous god that the atheist refuses to acknowledge or grant credibility in any sense. And rightly so. Better no god at all, than this one."
What Young and many others misunderstand is that God's wrath is unlike that of humans. Our wrath is imperfect, imbalanced, tainted with other motives, and often uncontrolled. But God's wrath is his settled revulsion against all that contradicts his holiness.
Moreover, what Young and many others overlook is that God's wrath magnifies his grace, because God’s wrath is propitiated by himself. Hence, see that the Apostle Paul "closes the loop" in the early portion of his letter. He, first, states that the wrath of God is revealed against all sin 1:18). All have sinned, and are all justly deserving of God's wrath. But God in his grace did not leave humanity in this hopeless and miserable condition. He gave us Christ who took the wrath of God on our behalf (3:25). And with sin atoned for, God's wrath is satisfied, freeing mankind to be reconciled back to God.
When we reject the notion of God's wrath, we minimize the gravity of sin. But when we accept God's wrath, along with his grace in Christ, we see the God who is both just and the justifier.