“I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me.”―Genesis 32:20,
I BELIEVE in these words you have the soul-history of many described, possibly of some who read this. How many labor under the delusion that they have something to do to propitiate God, What a mistake! “I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me.” Of course if your present is the ground upon which you are to appear before God, you may well say “peradventure.” Can you appease Him with a present? Impossible! Yet that is the first thought in the heart of the sinner when he would draw near to God. He wants to appease Him.
It is in the heart of a child even. I remember perfectly a lady telling me once of her niece who was disobedient. Her mother bade her go to bed at a certain hour, and left the house. When the hour came, the aunt said, “Now, Mary, go to bed.” The child refused. The aunt rejoined: “Then I must put you to bed. Mother’s orders must be obeyed.” The child retorted, “If you put me to bed, I will not say my prayers,” and kept her word, as to bed she was put, and the gas turned out. Very soon conscience began to work in the darkness, which no child of six years of age likes. Her aunt soon heard a pitiful voice calling her. “What is it, my dear?” she asked. “Aunty, if I were to buy that box of sweets I saw yesterday in Ferguson’s shop window, and give it to God, do you think He would forgive me?”
I hear you say, “That was a child.” But the same thing comes out in your history and mine. Did we not each think―if not pay― “I will appease him with the present”? He needs no appealing, or turning of the heart to us. His feelings toward us were shown in the gift of His Son. “God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”... and “to be a propitiation for our sins.” You do not need, in that sense, to appease Him. His heart is towards you. There is nothing in His heart towards you but love. We needed to be reconciled to God; not God to us. He ever was, and is for us.
I quite admit that, because sin has come in, there must be propitiation. But propitiation is not to turn God’s heart towards us. It is required in order to meet the righteous claims of His throne, and that He may be able to let His heart flow out to us in grace, and accept of us in righteousness. The love of God is shown in the gift of His Son, and His righteousness in the death, of His Son on the tree. The holy, spotless Son of God—Jesus—who had no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He offered Himself voluntarily on the cross to God, and met the claims of God in respect of sin. In the cross righteousness was demonstrated, holiness maintained, and the character of God vindicated. If God passed over our sin, as lightly as man would pass it over, where would be His holiness? On the other hand, if He judged sin without giving an opportunity of escape, where were His love? The cross of Christ is the divine solution of these problems. I get the love of God displayed in the provision of the Victim, and I get the righteousness of God maintained in the death of that Victim in atonement. On the altar the righteous claims of God are met, and sin is put away. God’s holiness is justified, and His righteousness is demonstrated. The blood of the Victim cleanses away the sins of the poor, guilty sinner.
Thus, you have not to appease Him now. But you may turn and say, I have been so long away from Him that I am afraid to come to Him. You need not be afraid of Him. He would fain win your heart’s confidence. I know it has been said that Jesus came to do the work by which the Father is now reconciled to us. Such a thought is totally foreign alike to Scripture, and to God’s nature. God was never unreconciled. God’s heart was ever towards man. Man turned away from God. Man would not trust God. “God is love,” and “God is light.” And what He is, He has ever been. His character has been shown us in the manifestation of His love, and in the maintenance of His righteousness.
If you were to get forgiveness without the cross of Christ, you would never be really happy. You would not be sure that God might not some day raise the question of righteousness with you. If, on the other hand, you see that God is just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus; if you see that His holy nature has been expressed in the judgment of sin on the tree, when Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust; if you see that atonement has been made, and that all God’s righteous claims have been met to the uttermost in the atoning death of His blessed Son, then you have a firm basis—an imperishable and unshakable groundwork for the peace of your soul. The atonement alone can be that firm basis; by it you see God saves you, and saves you righteously. He saves you in love, but He saves you on the ground of a righteous atonement.
There is a doctrine abroad that God is so good, that He will not judge sin. He loves everybody, and will judge nobody. Lie of hell! Judge nobody? Well, if He does not judge anybody, He is not God. He is no better than you and I. If He does not judge sin, He is no better than the sinner. God must judge sin to the uttermost, and, blessed be His name, He has judged it in the cross of His dear Son, that He may save the sinner who trusts in His Son, who once died on the tree. That is the gospel. He maintains His righteousness, while saving the vilest. Hence the apostle can say, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” And then, he says: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Rom. 8:32, 33). Look! God is on your side. And if God be for us, who can be against us?
My friend, if you have thought to appease Him with a present, may your mind be changed henceforth. If you have thought, “I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me,” listen, and I will tell you what I know. Atonement has been made by Jesus, and accepted by God, and the One who offered the atonement to God has gone up into glory to God, and He has been accepted for me, and I know I am accepted in Him. Jesus did everything, and I get all the benefit and the blessing of His work. Oh, silly soul, to harbor the thought of appeasing God with a present. You need conversion. You need to be reconciled to God. You need to have your thoughts of God changed. You need to be broken down. You need to get alone with God. That is a different thing altogether from appeasing Him.
When Luther went up the five hundred steps at the Vatican on his knees, he was doing what Jacob did here. He was practically saying, “I will appease Him,” but when he got half way up, he was struck by the text, “The just shall live by faith,” saw his mistake, and went quickly down. The poor Indian Fakir, with the hook in his back, who is hung up for hours in the eye of the sun, no doubt thinks that he is going to appease God by that. He too is mistaken. When his servants said to Naaman, “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?” (yes, he would surely have done some meritorious act to get his leprosy cleansed;) “how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?” (2 Kings 5:13), it was the same spirit. But you will never appease Him with presents. He does not want to be appeased. All He wants He has found in Christ, and all you need, sinner, you can find in Christ.
W. T. P. W.