When we read the description of Jesus on the cross and the journey that leads up to it,

it's brutal and heart-wrenching. So why does the Apostle John describe this scene as the ultimate display of love?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg walks us through the amazing mercy and compassion depicted in the events surrounding Jesus crucifixion.

First John chapter 4 and verse 10 in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This is one of the summary statements that we find in the New Testament letters that clarify large chunks of the gospel narratives.

We're introduced by John who is of course the disciple that Jesus loved and one who writes extensively about love both in his gospel and in his letters.

He introduces us to a love that is unconstrained by anything in us. In other words, it's not like human love whereby we said our affections on someone because we found something lovable in them or something that attracted us to them.

This love has no such attraction. It is a love that takes the initiative in crossing the vast chasm which exists between God and his holiness and men and women in their sin.

And it is a love which as you will note is expressed at great cost.

And it is this glorious theme of the love of God that is expressed here by John. Now there is a big word in the text. There is a theological word in the text.

This word is frequently shied away from, that if you haven't found the word it is propitiation, for the simple reason that what it means is setting aside the wrath of God.

And this of course is a very strange notion and a very unappealing notion not simply to people who are distanced from any consideration of Christianity but for some who apparently are the proponents and professors of Christianity.

They feel that some are another and there is a real difficulty in speaking to anyone about the wrath of God.

But an actual fact it is only when we realize how justifiably God hates sin.

That his wrath is not capricious, it's not volatile, it's not a nasty hasty volatile outburst. His wrath is the inevitability of his holiness.

It is the only way that because of who he is he can respond to sin in all of its dimensions.

And so it demands that we think ourselves through to that so that we then may be amazed at the mercy of God.

But until we have any sense of God's displeasure with us in our sin there is no real reason for us to rejoice in his mercy.

If we think that we are just rather outstanding individuals and that God whoever he is has shown up just to help us a little bit in our lives just if you like to be our life coach.

And of course there will be no wonder, there will be no mystery, there will be no worship, there will be no bowing down, there will be no tears.

Why ever should there be?

You know I think it is partly because sin doesn't incur our wrath that we have difficulty believing that sin provokes the wrath of God.

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