Original Entry: May 5, 2008
McMinnville, OR
He is the
atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of
the whole world. 1 John 2:2
In 2001 I
was able to take a unique forked horn I call The Marble Buck. Top of one of his
antlers is deformed and round like a marble.
“Big” Darby and I had made our trek into the Hell Hole the previous day
where we planned to dry camp on and adjacent knoll and hunt the next day hiking
out by headlamp. As the gray light
surrendered to the western sun, Darby and I glassed from our camp site on the
knoll.
“There’s
one,” Darby yelled under his breath, “It’s a buck!”
Hunters
have rules. We live by these rules in tense situations so friendships are not
ruined. One rule is, “Whoever draws first blood get the animal.” Another is,
“Whoever spots the buck has the first option to shoot.” Knowing Darby spotted
the buck my heart momentarily sank, knowing my hunt was over even though the
work load would be the same.
That’s
when it happened. Darby’s voice smiled,
“Hey, why don’t you take this one Jimmy.”
A short
sneak, one shot from my Weatherby 7mm, and The Marble Buck was mine. To this
day it hangs in my garage as a reminder of the sacrifice of “Big” Darby.
As I
studied 1 John 2:2 I was awestruck
by the differences in translation between the New International and New
American Standard Versions of the Bible.
The NIV reads, “He is the atoning
sacrifice for our sins…”
However,
the NASB however is quite different, “He
himself is the propitiation for our sins.”
Big Bible words can be scary and confusing to me and the word “propitiation” was no different.
Fortunately
for me, to the upper left of the word “propitiation”
is a small bold numeral one, which means, “Check it out! This word has another
possible translation.”
That other
possible translation is the word “satisfaction”
which could change the reading of this verse to, “He himself is the satisfaction
for our sins.” I then took some
liberty and combined this with the New International Version’s “atoning sacrifice” and deduced that
the “sacrifice” of Jesus was the “satisfaction” for “the sins of the whole world.”
Piecing it
all together I came to realize that for every worthy sacrifice there is
satisfaction. Darby sacrificed his
chance at the Marble Buck for my personal satisfaction. As parents we sacrifice our time and
resources to satisfy the opportunity of a better life for our kids. In churches lay people sacrifice their time
and resources to satisfy the vision of the church. In other words, a worthy sacrifice satisfies
someone or some higher vision.
The next
logical step for men is to ask, “Who am I bringing some kind of satisfaction to
through my sacrifice today?”
Will I
choose to satisfy myself or the needs of someone else today?
