1 John 2:1,2 - Turning aside God's wrath

2:1

John has been talking about the problem of sin. There are two main dangers in our approach to sin. One is that we regard sin as being not really important. The other is that we cannot live with the fact that we do sin. John is addressing this problem here. His goal is that people do not sin, our aim in life should be to live godly lives. We will never be sinless this side of eternity, but we should definitely aim to sin less. As John makes clear in this letter, if someone has no concern about how they live, then they do not truly know God. However, when we do sin we have an advocate with the Father, the righteous one, Jesus Christ. Without an advocate we would have to live in unreality, we would have to pretend that we do not sin, we would need to live lie. Alternatively, we would have to say that sin does not matter. But the gospel enables us to live in reality, to face up to who and what we are, and to do so with hope. We can face up to the reality that we are sinners because (i) Jesus has paid for our sins; (ii) the Holy Spirit is working in us to make us ever more Christlike. Along the way we will stumble many times, but because of Christ we can get up again.

2:2

Christ is the propitiation for our sins. That means He is the one who turns aside God’s wrath. Some people have a problem with this concept, for they have an unbiblical picture of a vengeful God being reluctantly persuaded by Christ not to send us to hell. Such a picture shows total ignorance of the Bible. First we need to look at the wrath of God. As I have said on several occasions before, and will do so many more times, the wrath of God has two key aspects to it. The first is a passionate hatred of sin, and the passion component is important. God has this passionate hatred because He knows the true awfulness of sin, of what my sin does to me, and of what my sin does to other people. Those who have soft views on the cross have no conception of the true nature of sin. The second aspect of God’s wrath is that it is perfectly rational and just. Human wrath is usually associated with being out of control, a fit of rage. This is not so with God. His wrath is perfectly rational and just. On the cross Jesus and the Father were working together. The cross is an act of love, it is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together in love, out of love for each other, and out of love towards us.