R.C. Sproul

Is that clear?

There is involved in expiation and propitiation an act of placation.

There's a phrase in one of the older Reformed confessions in the Latin when it speaks of the atonement.

I think the Latin phrase goes, era placate Deo.

That is that the work of Christ was done to placate the wrath of God, to placate the

the wrath of God.

Now this idea of placating the wrath of God has done little to placate the wrath of modern theologians.

Modern theologians have become very wrathful about the idea of placating the wrath of God.

I grant that we need to be very careful in how we understand the wrath of God and all of that.

But let me remind you that the concept of placating the wrath of God has to do here not with a peripheral, tangential point of theology, but with the essence of salvation.

What does the term salvation mean?

It can give you an excedrin headache if you try to explain it quickly because the word salvation is used in about 70 different ways in the Bible.

If somebody is rescued from certain defeat in battle,

they experience salvation.

If somebody survives a life-threatening illness, that person experiences salvation.

If somebody's plants are brought back from withering to robust health, they are saved.

We talk that way in our own language.

We save money.

A boxer is saved by the bell.

When we say that he's saved by the bell, we don't mean by that that he's been transported into the eternal kingdom of God.