The New Testament in Three Words
(Message Excerpt by John Piper, January 21, 2019)
The New Testament in three words: Propitiation by Substitution.
In his great mercy, God himself stepped into history in the person of His Son and took on a human nature so that he could endure for us his own wrath and bring us to himself in everlasting joy.
…I would say to you that you just don’t know what the love of God is unless you know the magnitude of his wrath. You don’t know what the love of God is. The world talks about the love of God, but they don’t have a clue what the love of God is. This is the love of God: while we were still wrath-deserving sinners, Christ the Son of God, sent by God in love, died for us. He bore God’s wrath for us – bore our guilt; took our sin.
What happened when Jesus died? What happened when the Son of God died? Romans 8:3, “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Paul had to say likeness of sinful flesh because he said sinful and Jesus committed no sin. But he looked like he was just like us. He was just like us in every way but sin – and he was clothed as divinity. He took on flesh and God condemned sin in that flesh. Whose flesh? Jesus, the Son of God’s flesh. Whose sin? He had none. How can you condemn sin in the flesh of Jesus when he had none? Our sin.
J.I. Packer sums up the whole New Testament with propitiation by substitution.
You may have a worldly, naive view of God that says he can just let sin go, that he can just sweep sin under the rug of the universe. No, he can’t – with his character of holiness and righteousness. Every sin will be punished either on the cross or in hell. No sin goes unpunished.
So, in the work of Christ, everything is accomplished for sinners to be justified and God’s wrath to be satisfied, which is why we sing that God’s wrath was satisfied on the cross when Jesus died.
Romans 5:9 puts wrath and the work of Christ together: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Propitiation by Substitution!
By John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org
a PK Musing 
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