Concluding Remarks As I have explained in producing this book to counter the teaching of N. T. Wright on propitiation, I have had no thought of influencing Wright himself, nor the many evangelical scholars who support him in his views, nor the seminary faculty who are teaching his doctrine, nor the would-be pastors who are imbibing it. But I would have been remiss if I had not done something to help the silent and, I fear, unsuspecting, often unsuspicious majority of believers who, as always, are on the receiving end of false doctrine. My purpose has been to try to point out to such believers some of the things they need to wake up to and think about, and think about very seriously. If the customers stopped buying rights wares, the dealers would stop selling them. As long as the market exists, however, so long will such doctrine thrive, and I fear that may well be for a very long time indeed. At the moment, the market seems particularly buoyant, a bull market. In this brief conclusion, I want to underline some of the leading points I have tried to raise. In the introduction, I spoke of three areas which are suffering, and suffering disastrously, under Wright's teaching. The gospel, the life and ministry of the ecclesia, and the integrity of the Godhead. My concluding remarks are gathered under these three headings. First, the gospel. Can anybody doubt that Paul wanted to see sinners saved? The apostle told us how anxious he was to preach the gospel, and we know why. It wasn't that he liked the sound of his own voice. It wasn't that he liked to bounce on any passing rostrum to catch all the kudos that was going. Indeed, as he explained to the Corinthians, the prospect of preaching held a sense of terror for him. No. It was the plight of sinners under the wrath of God that drove him on, and gave him his desperate sense of urgency. The wrath of God towards sinners. That's why he wanted sinners saved, and that's why he preached the gospel. It was because the gospel preached, in the widest sense of the term, is the means God uses to bring sinners to Christ in salvation. And that's why he preached the unadulterated gospel. That's what motivated him. Take his heartfelt words about his fellow Jews. I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers. my kinsmen, according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. Yes, the Israelites have been endowed with tremendous advantages, but even so, the majority of them were heading for damnation. As the apostle explained, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, to everyone who believes. That's why the apostle was so eager to preach the gospel. Now I'm speaking to you, Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order to somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. Here we have a man who is at his wit's end to see sinners converted to Christ and so be saved. Necessity has laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. Nevertheless, what a word. Nevertheless, in light of all that, consider once again the way opened his exposition of the gospel in Romans. He began with an extended section on the wrath of God. A man who was desperate to see sinners saved began his exposition of the gospel with the wrath of God. Let that sink in. A moment or so ago, I used the word nevertheless. I did so deliberately, deliberately. As I will show in the second area of concern, in today's evangelical world, speaking of the wrath of God and speaking of it at such length and in such detail as Paul did when writing to the Romans is considered counterintuitive, counterproductive. It can only get in the way of appealing to sinners. Tell them about God's love, his love for them. Stress the positive. Concentrate on the goodies. It's love, love, love, stupid. That's the way. Don't put them off or get their backs up by using the wrath word. Save that for later, when the fish are truly gaffed and in the keep net. but not for Paul. When writing to the Romans, Paul started his exposition of the gospel with the wrath of God, spelling out that wrath in such specific, personal, penetrating, convicting detail, and doing so, as he said, in his exposition of the gospel. Only one conclusion is possible. Without the wrath of God being made as clear as noonday and right from the start, there is no gospel, and sinners will not be truly converted. Paul was desperately concerned, anxious to see sinners saved, nevertheless. But nevertheless is the wrong word. It was because of the reality of God's wrath, because of its severity, because of the desperate plight of unconverted sinners, that Paul was so anxious for the success of the gospel that sinners might be saved. And knowing that the gospel is the only channel of salvation for sinners, the gospel must be maintained at all costs. Jude was of the same mind, and integral, no, fundamental to that gospel is the wrath of God. That is why Paul began, began I stress again, his exposition of the gospel with a detailed, personal, and convicted exposition of the wrath of God. I make no apology for belabouring this. Vital isn't the word. Paul knew that sinners by nature stand in desperate need. And there is only one way of redemption or deliverance, the gospel. They're under the wrath of God until they come to trust Christ. And God, in his love, has sent his son to die to redeem his elect, not to make them happy, not to give them a sense of well-being and fulfillment, but to deliver them from his wrath. But, and this is the point, the wrath of God is the absolute fundamental. How often it can be seen throughout the New Testament, as I hope I have made clear in my book, without the wrath of God at the forefront, There can be no gospel, no evangelism. Indeed, there is no motive for evangelism. In short, taking the wrath of God out of the picture, muting it, downplaying it, or whatever spells the ruin of the gospel. But this is precisely what N.T. Wright and his devotees are doing. Christians awake. There is a second point. Getting rid of the wrath of God not only ruins the gospel and the motive for evangelism, it has a devastating effect on the life and ministry of the ecclesia in its responsibility to aim for conversions. And it explains why all this discussion and determination about propitiation is vital today. Alas, in our day, churches are desperate in wanting to attract people into attendance and holding them in it, This, for many, has become the be-all and end-all of church life. Consequently, for a preacher to start with the wrath of God and to expand on it would be a classic case of shooting oneself in the foot. Counterproductive doesn't come near it. God sends us to be fishers of men, but to talk of wrath is a surefire way of driving away the fish. Keep to the note of love. Emphasise the many therapeutic advantages of becoming a Christian. Get the attendees to join the process. Keep things cosily gentle. That, it seems to me, is becoming the dominant thought pattern in the evangelical world, the standard way to preach the gospel to sinners. The conclusion is inevitable. Those who make the attraction of pagans into church attendance and are devoted to an all-embracing inclusivism in church life and preaching are bound to be more than eager to grasp any teaching which weakens the doctrine of propitiation. This means that Wright, with his doctrine on propitiation, is shooting into an open goal with welcome chalked on the turf. as I said in the introduction, the Keeper has quit the field and is relaxing in the entertainment lounge. Adopting Wright's views while proving a massive boon and a gigantic boost to the modern re-engineers of the Ecclesia will prove to be a death blow to the Gospel, will be a disaster for the unconverted, and ultimately will take the churches even further away from the pattern of the Ecclesia revealed in the New Covenant. Christians awake. The third, and ultimately the fundamental point, concerns the integrity and wisdom of the Triune God Himself. In short, His name and His glory, His very existence. This is why we must never concede any ground on propitiation. As we have seen repeatedly throughout these pages, all three persons of the Trinity are involved in redemption. God the Father planned it, God the Son accomplished it, and God the Spirit is applying it. And propitiation sits at the centre of that plan. Propitiating His wrath was the only way God could be both just and the justifier. Did ever an and carry such weight? God just and God the justifier. It would appear that God could be one or the other, but not both. And so it would have been, apart from propitiation. But of course, without both, God would not have been the God of the Bible. The root issue is the wrath of God. The Bible teaches that God, in His holiness, is justly angry with sin and the sinner. In order to show mercy to sinners, and forgive them, and to justify them, that wrath must be placated. God must be appeased. His wrath must be satisfied. A mere decree to forgive would betray His holy wrath. To damn the entire world would betray His love for the elect. Propitiation deals with the fundamental why and wherefore. Opponents of the biblical doctrine of propitiation invent caricatures, men of straw. They do so in order to play down the biblical sense of sin and God's wrath towards rebels. Let me clear away some of these caricatures. Man does not make God willing to save. Man does not appease God. Not even Christ appeased his father. God himself took the initiative. He planned, appointed, sent, and manifested Christ as the Repreciation, the one by whose death he appeased his wrath towards the elect. all on the basis of love, to eliminate another caricature. Propitiation does not mean that a loving Christ had to appease his Father who is a bully full of wrath. The Son is gentle, Jesus meek and mild, the Father the angry God. Rubbish! There is such a thing as the wrath of the Lamb. What a seeming oxymoron! At the opening of the sixth seal, John explained, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, and the great ones, and the generals, and the rich, and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks. Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand? Without propitiation, there is no way of maintaining the biblical integrity of the Godhead. Thomas Kelly, whose hymns I normally like and like very much, wrote, We sing the praise of him who died, of him who died upon the cross. The second verse reads, Inscribed upon the cross we see, in shining letters, God is love. He bears our sins upon the tree. He brings us mercy from above. While I certainly do not quarrel with Kelly in that the cross does speak and speaks loudly about the love of God, this is not all it speaks of. In Christ, on the cross, we see both the wrath and the love of God. Much better than Kelly, Isaac Watts, having spoken of God's glory in creation, came to this. but when we view your strange design to save rebellious worms, where vengeance and compassion join in their divinest forms, here the whole deity is known, nor dares a creature guess, which of the glories brightest shone, the justice or the grace. Another, nature with open volume stands to spread her maker's praise abroad, and every labor of his hands show something worthy of a God. But in the grace that rescued man, his brightest form of glory shines. Here on the cross, his fairest drawn in precious blood and crimson lines. Here his whole name appears complete, nor wit can guess nor reason prove which of the letters best is writ, the power, the wisdom, or the love. Here I behold his inmost heart, Where grace and vengeance strangely join, Piercing his son with sharpest smart, To make the purchased pleasures mine. O, the sweet wonders of that cross, Where God the Saviour loved and died! Her noblest life my spirit draws, From his dear wounds and bleeding side. I would forever speak his name in sounds to mortal ears unknown, with angels joined to praise the Lamb and worship at his Father's throne. And the psalmist spoke of the union of the attributes of God Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him. The glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky. Barnes commented, It is only in the divine government that this has been accomplished, where a true and perfect regard has been paid to truth in the threatening and to mercy toward the guilty by an atonement. It is true indeed that this passage does not refer to the atonement made by the Redeemer, but there can scarcely be found a better illustration of that work than occurs in the language used here. Gil, likewise. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other as friends. Righteousness may intend the essential justice of God, which will not omit of the pardon and justification of a sinner without a satisfaction, wherefore Christ was set forth to be the propitiation for sin, to declare and manifest the righteousness of God, His strict justice, that He might be just and appear to be so, when He is the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. And Christ's blood being shed, and His sacrifice offered up, He is just and faithful to forgive sin and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. and thus the law being magnified and made honourable by the obedience and sufferings of Christ. an everlasting righteousness being brought in, and justice entirely satisfied, there is peace on earth, and goodwill to men. Peace with God is made by Christ, the Peacemaker, and so the glory of divine justice is secured, and peace with God for men obtained, in a way consistent with it. And Christ's righteousness, being imputed and applied to man and received by faith, produces a conscious peace, an inward peace of mind which passes all understanding. A footnote in Calvin's commentary. Mercy and truth are very generally applied by commentators to God. The passage is understood as the celebration of the harmony of the divine attributes in the salvation of man. The description is one of great beauty and sublimity. Adam Clarke commented, This is a remarkable text, and much has been said on it, but there is a beauty in it which I think has not been noticed. Mercy and peace are on one side, truth and righteousness on the other. Truth requires righteousness, mercy calls for peace. They meet together on the way, one going to make inquisition for sin, the other to plead for reconciliation. Having met, there are differences on certain considerations, not here particularly mentioned or adjusted, Their mutual claims are blended together in one common interest on which peace and righteousness immediately embrace. Thus, righteousness is given to truth and peace is given to mercy. Now, where did these meet? In Christ Jesus. When were they reconciled? When he poured out his life on Calvary. In short, for all three reasons, the Gospel, the Ecclesia, and the integrity of the Godhead, we must keep a firm grip on the doctrine of propitiation. Christians awake. Going back to the first paragraph of my introduction, I ask the question I started with, Listener, have I been concerning myself with a peanut and inviting you to do the same? A short hymn. I drew my title from a part remembered hymn. I close by tentatively offering this attempt to set out in verse what I've been trying to say in the book. It can be sung with some vocal agility to the tune Finlandia. Why was he there? by God a man forsaken, the Son of God to shed his blood in death. Why was he there? Ah, yes, there is an answer. For God in love his awful wrath to bear sent him to die upon that cruel tree. Why was he there? Praise God, there is an answer. To satisfy the wrath of God Most High, to free His people, Jesus came to die. Why was He there? To die alone that He His blood could shed, to set His people free.