POPULAR POSTS
-
From the book The Person in the Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, and translated by Esther Williams "&q...
-
Eventhough the Council of Carthage was a local North African Council it became Universal when the decrees were added to the 6th ecumenical ...
-
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware talks about Saint Gregory Palamas , Apophatic Theology, and the Essence vs. Energies Distinction Apophatic The...
-
Audio Confronting the Doctrine of Sola Scriptura , by Fr. Jon Braun. (This one is mostly about what some Protestants call Solo Scriptura , o...
-
From Scripture: Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the f...
LORD JESUS CHRIST,
SON OF GOD,
HAVE MERCY ON US,
THE SINNERS.
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
4 comments:
uhhhh...obviously, we've made this way more complex than it needed to be! God be merciful to me a sinner!
The word for merciful in Luke 18:13 is hilastheti, from hilaskomai, which most literally means "be propitious" to me the sinner. Now what, according to Scripture, makes God propitious towards sinners? Obviously enough the hilasmos or hilasterion, i.e. the propitiation, makes God propitious. And who or what might be the propitiation? It's none other than Christ and his cross, upon which he offered his atoning sacrifice and accomplished our redemption.
God is able to be propitious and forgive and justify sinners precisely because of the propitiation made by the blood of Christ (Rom. 3:21-26; 1 John 2:1-2)
Wesley,
did you see any "Atonement" tag attached to this post? :-)
Speaking of which: what do the words atonement, to appease, and to propitiate actually mean? -- Here's a hint: www.etymonline.com.
You also got things backwards: it's not Christ's sacrifice that empowers God's love or mercy, but rather the other way around: it's God's love and mercy that enable Jesus' sacrifice on Golgotha; the Cross is an expression of God's love and forgiveness, not their basis: it's rather God's love and forgiveness that are the ground for Christ's sacrifice on the Cross (see Romans 5:8).