1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins . . . Jesus Christ the righteous . . . 2 is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
God does not want us to sin—of course. And so John writes this letter to help us not to sin, to give us a greater understanding of God’s solution to the sin problem. The knowledge that Christ is our advocate and our propitiation empowers us in our efforts to resist temptation. Victory does not come by keeping a Christianized version of the law. Absolutely not! A big part of our efforts comes from accepting the fact that we will sin, and knowing what God has already done about it. When John writes, “if anyone sins,” he is not making provision for inferior Christians who just can’t live the righteous life. He is speaking to all of us. The force of his assertion is this: “And when we sin . . .”
John is now speaking to Christians—he refers to us as “[m]y little children,” a fatherly, affectionate reference to believers. As an older man now, he speaks with profound, deep knowledge of what God did on the cross. His is a seasoned theology that plumbs the depths of God’s character. Jesus, as the completely righteous one, is “the propitiation for our sins.” Significant studies have been written on this word and theological systems debate the application of this propitiation to only the elect or to “the whole world.”
The word at its core means that God’s justified anger against our sin has been fully satisfied in Christ. In other words, the court of God has correctly and righteously handed down a guilty verdict on us, yes, on all of humankind. John doesn’t go into all the details here, assuming his readers are familiar with other Scripture on this topic. But he focuses on the manifestation of God’s righteousness in a very precise way: Jesus Christ satisfied the just punishment commensurate with our guilty verdict (Rom. 3:23). Our Lord paid the penalty, which is death (Rom. 6:23). He satisfied God’s righteous anger against us because of our sin; that is what propitiation means.
God poured out His anger against the sin of all humankind on the crucified Christ. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Now, we might ask, why does not God, therefore, forgive everyone, since Jesus is the propitiation for the sins “of the whole world”? Why is salvation not universal? In 1 John 1:9, we see that forgiveness is contingent upon our confessing our sin. He provided propitiation, and this is good, therefore, for all who would believe and receive it.
Prayer: Lord, I rest in the assurance that You took on the anger of God that I deserved.
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