"In this is the love, not that we ourselves have loved God, but rather because He Himself loved us and He sent His Son a propitiation about our sins."
-God is love. Everything about Him is love, and all love comes from Him. Now we have an example, and John says, IN this is love. So this example is not the be-all end-all only way to love - but it is the consummate archetype. This act of love shows us love - and shows us how to love.
-But let us be perfectly clear about the situation here. We do have (or had, for those who are IN Christ) a sin problem. And things are bad - in fact, they couldn’t get much worse. Our sins not only separated us from God (Isaiah 59.2, Romans 3.23), they incurred His wrath. They made the God-Who-is-love angry. He hates sin, our sin, my sin. To be sure, He doesn’t hate me, or you, but He does really hate our sin. He can’t even look at it. And the penalty for sin is death (Romans 6.23). Death is the awful consequence of our heinous sin (Romans 5.12). But in the midst of that tragic news is the silver lining, in that sin can be - wait for it - propitiated.
-So yes, the God-Who-is-love sent His Son - His only begotten Son (we just touched on this) to be the propitiation for our sins. The propitiation. What is that, anyways? That wins the award for churchiest word ever. It is something which propitiates a god or spirit. Well, that’s not helpful. Propitiate means to win or regain the favor of a god by doing something which pleases them. Maybe we are more familiar with the word, propitious. Something which is favorable. In this case, there is a God, and we have lost favor with Him, fallen completely out of favor, in fact, by living into a mindset and lifestyle which favored me over Him. Me first, me-myself-and-I. Me and other things (anything other) in His rightful place. Because this God, He made me. He fashioned me and all we earthly sojourners out of so much dust, breathed into us the miraculous breath of life, burdening us with glorious purpose and blessing us with the best of Himself. To which we kicked Him off the throne of our lives and basically stuck Him on a bus to Altoona. Nothing wrong with Altoona. But we took over - that is sin - and this sin had to be paid for. The good news is that it CAN be paid for! Although there’s a catch - it can only be paid for by the shedding of blood. The blood sacrifice of a innocent (sinless) person is the only way to fully expiate (pay for and remove) the guilt of someone’s sin - and that is because life is in the blood. We don’t think much about blood sacrifice anymore in the west. Seems so primitive and barbaric. Our culture doesn’t spend much time trying to appease an angry god or spirit. But don’t you think much of that is because of the truth of what God did in sending His Son to be the final all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins, and that all that is needed now is to trust in that, to believe in Him? Is it not fair to say that this truth has indeed so effectively permeated and transformed our culture that this is one huge reason why we have moved beyond the more instinctive appeasement approach? Go to other parts of the world, other cultures, and observe the appeasement mindset still in full flower, how desperate are the peoples of the world to appease divine anger against their sins.
-But the point is - we were off the ranch, and God brought us back. He loved us. We were so far out of favor, and it was our fault, but God rebuilt the bridge. He restored us to favor with Him, undertook the whole operation by Himself. We basically brought nothing to the table. He loved us first - more on this in verse 19 (1John 4.19). God sent His Son, He sent His only Son - John says it three times in this paragraph alone - to be the all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins. THE Propitiation. To shed His perfect blood and fully turn away God’s wrath from us so that we could come home to Him in our hearts. And in doing so He set us totally free from being enslaved to appeasement, He has set us free from the law of sin and death, no more condemnation or guilt anymore because God sent His Son (Romans 8.1-2). Surely words are inadequate to express the depth of gratitude which we must have towards our Father in heaven, Who so loved us... Thank. You. Lord.
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