When we sin, we remind ourselves that standing with us before the Father is Jesus Christ. Jesus accomplished a perfect righteousness in our place and died on a cross, bearing the full weight of the wrath of God for us. Our total trust, our total reliance, and our total dependence are not in any notion that we are sinless (because we are not). Our total trust, reliance, and dependence are in the truth that Jesus, through His sacrifice and perfect righteousness, makes us acceptable in the presence of God.

“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 that 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. These people argue that this word means that Christ came and died and brought forgiveness, but that God did not need to have His wrath appeased because a loving God is not angry.
The problem with this view is that the Bible clearly presents God as angry not only with sin itself but also with sinners. In Psalm 2:12, the kings of the earth are enjoined to “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.” Our God is a God of wrath who becomes angry with sinners and sin – especially the sin of rejecting His Son. This anger toward sinners is just and warranted. It is the just anger of a holy God who rightly exercises wrath against what is truly evil and wicked.
David writes in Psalm 7:11 that God “has indignation every day.” What is it that makes God’s wrath necessary? It is the fact that He is a righteous judge, and the world is full of wicked people. God is not some petulant deity who becomes angry without cause. Our God, as a righteous judge, must exercise wrath against those who are wicked and defy His divine law. If he wasn’t angry at evil, he wouldn’t be righteous.
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As believers, we are reminded afresh of the full forgiveness of our sins through the death and resurrection of Christ. The good news of the gospel never gets old to the heart of a redeemed sinner because we never stop needing grace. We know that never-ending grace is ours because of our Savior’s empty tomb.

Sin is not a popular topic to discuss in our world today. Our culture has virtually banished sin out of its vocabulary. Sin has been re-defined, re-labeled, re-directed, and even revered. People who sin are not sinners because nearly everyone is a victim.
The reality, though, is that you can erase sin from a culture, but you can’t erase guilt. There is the sense that all human beings have that we are guilty of doing wrong. We are born into this world having been created in the image of God, and because we live in God’s world as creatures who bear His image, we can never escape the reality of our guilt because of our sin.
What has been so fascinating and so tragic to watch over the past several years is that the more the world has tried to deny the reality of sin, the greater the guilt they feel. We can see the reality of that all around us. Wokeness, social justice, anti-racism, virtue signaling, false religions, vague forms of spirituality, mindfulness, psychology, and more – all attempting to do one thing: erase the guilt we feel over our sins and make us feel like we are good, righteous people. But all of these attempts at self-justification are ultimately futile and useless.
The real tragedy is that they don’t work at the spiritual level. Denying your sins will never erase your sins before a holy and just God. The real problem we have as sinful human beings isn’t that our existential happiness is hindered by sin; it’s that we are destined for an eternity under the wrath of God because of our sin. This is the tragedy of denying your sin; simply wishing it away or pretending your sin is virtue doesn’t deal with the problem of the wrath of God abiding on you. And you know that in your conscience, and you can’t escape it no matter what you do.
It’s into this setting of a world of sinners in need of real forgiveness from God that Mark begins the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Mark tells his readers from the outset that he has good news to share with sinful people about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. He ensures we understand at the outset of his Gospel that Jesus has come into this world to defeat Satan by bringing forgiveness to sinners. The miracles, the healings, the casting out of demons are external signs of a spiritual truth, that Jesus has the authority to do the most important thing for us that we need: to forgive our sins. That’s the good news of the gospel that Mark is writing about.
As this Gospel progresses, we learn in Mark 10:45 exactly how Jesus is going to provide forgiveness for our sins. He will do it in the most degrading manner possible, by giving His life for sinners on a cross. There’s one detail, though, that Jesus includes in Mark 10:34 that will vindicate Jesus’ claim that His sacrifice was accepted by God and brought forgiveness to sinners: He would rise again three days later.
Here, we come face to face with the most crucial fact of all: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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I pray that we love Christ so greatly that our souls feel that Christ deserves more love than we have toward him, so we continually cry out to Him to help us love Him more. I pray that we love the Lord Jesus Christ with an incorruptible love.

In the final verse of Ephesians, Paul brings up something he has not mentioned at all previously in the book: the believer’s love for Jesus Christ. Five times he has mentioned Jesus’ love for us, and eight times he describes our love for each other, but he saved this final category for the very end. It is as if everything Paul had written in this incredible letter (and everything God’s grace accomplishes in us) is supposed to lead us to loving Christ. Inevitably and gloriously this is the all-important goal of Christian life. And not just any kind of love: it is an incorruptible love for Christ which marks out a true Christian.
Thomas Vincent began The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ with this:
The life of Christianity consists very much in our love to Christ. Without love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass when the soul is fled from it is without natural life…Without love to Christ, we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature.
Where there is no love for Christ, there is no true Christianity.
That’s why this Ephesian church, some 30 years later in the book of Revelation, was threatened by Christ to be destroyed. Although they had all of their doctrine right and were fastidious about kicking out false teachers, they had neglected true love for Christ. The same warning applies to each church that has lost its love for the Savior.
Nevertheless, the goal of the gospel is true love for Christ, incorruptible love for Christ in our hearts. This should be the heart’s desire of every church that seeks to honor and follow the Lord.
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The enemy is real. He is dangerous. And he wants to destroy you. He is operative in the hearts of the ungodly, and we must realize that everything wrong with everything around us is part of the spiritual war. There are children of light and children of darkness. There are children of God and children of the devil. People are enslaved to sin, or they are enslaved to righteousness. We serve God, or we are held captive by the devil to do the devil’s will.

Many people were rightly shocked and outraged after a music awards show this past Sunday night produced a Satanic-themed performance for attendees and viewers. While these emotions are right, it should come as no surprise to Christians that demon-filled adulation and worship is becoming more mainstream as our world and society grows more wicked by the hour.
If anything, performances such as the one on Sunday night should bring us full circle to the fact that our earthly lives that are defined by what is happening and what has happened in the heavenly places. What happens in this world is but a manifestation of what is happening in an unseen world around us, where spiritual battles are underway for the souls of every human being within every world event around us. No one should be oblivious that there is a spiritual war going on or which side will be victorious in the end.
The Bible exhorts us to walk worthy of our calling, seeking to walk with a renewed mind, in love, in light, in wisdom, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Yet, we are confronted by the stark reality that we have spiritual enemies desperately trying to oppose us, to hinder us, and to destroy us. These spiritual forces of wickedness do not want us to be controlled by the Spirit; they do not want us to walk in light or love; and they do not want us to be a display of God’s wisdom as we live as the unified body of Christ.
Christians must understand the reality of spiritual warfare and its implications for us as believers. Understanding this reality is transformative for how you view everything happening in our world today and all the various people involved.
Here’s the reality: we are all in a spiritual war.
The enemy is real. He is dangerous. And he wants to destroy you. He is operative in the hearts of the ungodly, and we must realize that everything wrong with everything around us is part of the spiritual war.
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