Romans 3:25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
Propitiation is not a word we commonly use but there is no understanding of the Cross work of Jesus Christ apart from understanding “Propitiation.” In the Cross, the Son offered up Himself as the means ordained by the Father in order to turn away the Father’s just wrath against sin.
Scripture teaches that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The shedding of blood was the means by which God eternally ordained to be necessary in order for forgiveness to be gained. Christ’s death was that shedding of blood that propitiated (turned away) the Father’s wrath.
Some have noted the close relation between propitiation and the pagan idea of “appeasing the gods.” There is indeed some correlation but there is also a major difference that bars us from using the idea of appeasement. In the pagan understanding, the gods are angry and only can be satisfied by some kind of blood reckoning offered up by an innocent victim. Once the victim is offered up the gods are appeased. The difference between pagan appeasement and the Christian doctrine of propitiation is that while in Paganism the gods pay no price in being appeased in Christianity God Himself lays upon Himself in the incarnate 2nd person of the Trinity the penalty demanded by God. God demands the price and the God-Man meets the price. What God requires God gives.
There is a reason it is called “Good-Friday.”
Liberals do not like the word “propitiation” because the word implies the wrath of God and the necessity for God’s wrath to be turned away. Indeed in many bibles where we find the Greek word for “Propitiation” (Hilaskomai / Hilasterion) we get translations like “expiation,” or (in the NIV) “sacrifice of atonement.” This is done so as to avoid certain theological implications bound up in the proper translation “propitiation.”
However, having said that, we must understand that in the Cross work of Jesus Christ expiation is one dynamic. The Son, on the Cross not only turns away the Father’s wrath by meeting the just demands of a righteous and holy God but the Son also expiates the Father. Expiation and propitiation work in harmony. You can’t have one without the other. As we have said Propitiation is the turning away of the Father’s wrath by the just demand upon the penalty of sin. Expiation, however, is the taking away of sin. Christ in His work on the cross not only pays the penalty for sin but He also does the work of taking away sin.
All this was prefigured in the old and worse covenant where on the Day of Atonement two goats would provide atonement. One goat would be sacrificed as a propitiation to turn away the Father’s wrath. This goat’s blood would then be sprinkled on the Mercy seat. The second goat — called the Azazel goat or scapegoat — would have the sins of the people confessed over it by the High Priest and then would be led into the desert to be released. This was to picture the idea of sins taken away (hence expiation). Atonement required both propitiation (God’s just wrath being turned away by blood sacrifice) and expiation (Sin being removed from God’s people).
Jesus Christ on the cross was both our propitiation and our expiation. Jesus Christ takes away our sins as he, like the Azazel goat, bears our sins away in a desolate place.
There is a reason they call it “GOOD FRIDAY.”
