Is God mad at me? Is God angry with me?

Behind the truth of propitiation lies the fundamental fact of the anger of God against sin, which expresses itself in penal retribution. And yet how oft reiterated in Scripture! Terrible indeed, yet staring us in the face upon almost every page of our Bibles. God "hates wickedness," He is "angry with the wicked every day" and ultimately "the wicked shall be cast into hell" — whether men believe it or not.

The sinner is at war with God Whose judgment he cannot but dread. He is guilty and knows it, but the effort for him to forget it always is vain, still more so to hide it from God.

The teaching of the Bible is NOT that God is ill-disposed toward us, a frowning Deity to be continually pacified by propitiatory sacrifices which change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt heathen conception. The Bible presentation of the truth runs thus, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a propitiatory sacrifice, His heart which is toward man is the very source of all our blessing.

Propitiation is the meeting of all those prior claims in such full fashion that instead of righteousness being totally against man it is now "to all" (Rom. 3:22). On the ground of propitiation righteousness stands, as it were, with outstretched arms bidding any and every man to find shelter in its bosom. And the propitiation itself is the fruit of the love of God.

When the eye of God rested on the sprinkled blood He was satisfied, and He could righteously pass over the sins of His people from year to year, and still dwell in their midst, and maintain the relationships which He had established.

Christ has perfectly glorified God in the place of sin, by His perfect obedience and love to His Father, in His being made sin who knew no sin. God's majesty, righteousness, love, truth, all that He is, was glorified in the work wrought by Christ... God could shine out in favour to the returning sinner according to what He was; yea, in the infiniteness of His love, could beseech men to return.

Looking from self to Christ we see in Him One that is absolutely clear of all our offences, and the judgment they entailed. We see there is nothing between God and Christ, consequently there is nothing between God and the believer. This gives peace towards God. Peace within is the result of seeing that peace has been made without.

It is thus the believer's privilege to look at Christ, and say, "My position before God is set forth in Christ risen, and at the right hand of God. He is in the everlasting favour of God, and I am in the same favour (Rom. 5:2); He has been into my judgment and is for ever beyond judgment, and 'there is therefore now no condemnation' for me; He has been received into the glory, and I am accepted in Him — the beloved (Eph. 1:6).

Peace with God is a state of mind in the unclouded consciousness of what God is (but necessarily according to His nature) to us according to the value of Christ's work, and in Him.

Unbelief may look at the trials, and sorrows, and difficulties of the way, and the question may arise in the soul, "Can God be for me after all?" Faith knows that the everlasting witness that God is for us is not found in the circumstances that we pass through, but in the gift of the Son. If God "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all", He must indeed be "for us".

Arising out of the great truth that God is for us, there is a threefold challenge. First, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" The simple and blessed answer that meets every charge is, "It is God that justifies."

"I am persuaded" that none of these things "shall be able to separate us from the love of God" — that love which has found its perfect expression "in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The relationship of a child is permanent; the Father will chasten the child. He cannot wink at sin; but He does not make me a servant only if I am a child. Whatever my failure, I do not cease to be a child. The one offering of Jesus Christ has for ever perfected all them that are sanctified before God.

"My dear friend, do you not know that God's love is an everlasting love? that it does not change when you change, or cease when you fail to deserve it, and that all these twenty years He has been loving you, whilst you did not know it?"

May not the believer become careless and sin grievously? Alas! it is too true; yet God does not change nor forsake His child, but chastises him faithfully, and, if need be, even to the death of the body. ... Nevertheless, as these very scriptures show, He does not change from His grace even when He thus deals in His moral government. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." The Christian's failure brings out the loss not of relationship but of his enjoyment of communion; and Christ's advocacy works to restore his soul by self-judgment before God.

It was when we were "without strength", and "ungodly", that Christ died for us. When we were utterly helpless, unable to do anything for God, and ungodly, unwilling to do anything for God, then it was that love made the great sacrifice by dying for us.

If God only loved us as we love Him, He never would have loved us at all. ... "If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." (Rom. 5:10.)