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Propitiation in Christian theology is the penalty paid by the guilty party as required by the offended party, with the purpose of warding off a just penalty. It has affinities with the pagan idea of “appeasement.” In paganism the irrational and angry gods are kept happy by being offered a virgin as cast into a raging volcano. However, in Christian theology, as opposed to pagan concepts, God requires being propitiated and it is God who both provides and is Himself, in the incarnate God-Man the required propitiation. What God requires in propitiation God provides and pays.

In propitiation the action of the one who propitiates terminates upon the one who is propitiated, and so we say the Son propitiates and the Father is propitiated.

Liberals HATE the idea of propitiation because the doctrine requires the teaching of a Wrathful Deity and the last thing liberals want to preach or teach is a Wrath of God against sin and sinners which can only be quenched by the offering up of a blood sacrifice of atonement in order to turn God’s just wrath away. Liberals earnestly desire to stay away from all notions of “Wrath,” “Blood payment,” and “appeasement.” Liberals instead want to talk about the example of Christ that disciples must follow if they want to be right with God and not the death of Christ which alone can make men right with God.

Propitiation in Christian theology comes from a Greek word group ἱλαστήριον (Hilasterion) which has affinities in translation with the Hebrew word kapporeth, which in the OT means “covering,” and was used for the mercy seat which covered the ark of the covenant.

Exodus 25:²¹ You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony that I will give you. 

Exodus 30:⁶ And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the Testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the Testimony, where I will meet with you.

This mercy seat covering the ark (where God’s presence was most intimately associate with) was the place where on the day of atonement the High Priest would carry the blood of the spotless sacrifice so as to sprinkle the blood upon the mercy seat covering, thus making proleptic propitiation for God’s people and so providing reconciliation. One note of interest is that this propitiatory blood was sprinkled on the covering of the mercy seat which contained God’s law. The picture thus is that it is only the blood which can cover the just condemnation by the law which otherwise would stand without the blood of propitiation. The blood of the sacrifice covers the law.

Expiation in Christian theology, a closely associated idea with propitiation, is the idea that sin is taken away or removed. If liberals talk at all about the cross it will be in terms of Expiation and never propitiation.

In Biblical Christianity there is a need for both propitiation and expiation. Without propitiation God’s just wrath against sin and sinners remains un-quenched. Without expiation our sin remains present before God. Jesus Christ takes away (expiates) our sins by propitiating the Father.

In Biblical Christianity Jesus Christ is both our propitiation that satisfies God’s justice and our expiation which removes our sin and so gives us peace with God. In the Old Testament this was typologically signified by the two goats on the day of atonement, which together provided one sin offering.

Leviticus 16:5: “And he shall take from the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats as a [singular] sin offering”

The first goat was the Azazel goat of expiation (scapegoat). This goat had the sins of Israel confessed over it and was released into the wilderness away from the people.

Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, concerning all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a suitable man. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an uninhabited land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:21-22)

This was a picture of the sins of God’s people being taken away and removed. That the idea of the necessity of sins needed to be taken away was retained in many older European cultures with the custom of hiring a sin eater. The sin eater would take away the sins of the deceased by consuming food that had been placed upon the chest of the deceased. Symbolically the sin-eater was taking away the deceased sins. The sin-eater was a latter day pagan version of the Azazel goat.

Christ is our Azazel scapegoat. In the words of Isaiah 53:6,

“And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”

The second goat — the goat of propitiation was sacrificed as a sin offering and its blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat. This was a picture of God being propitiated by death and blood.

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, bring its blood inside the veil, do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull [see verse 14], and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. So he shall make atonement [Heb. kaphar; covering, cleansing, or purging] for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, for all their sins; and so he shall do for the tabernacle of meeting which remains among them in the midst of their uncleanness. . . . And he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD [the incense altar], and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. Then he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, and consecrate it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.

Leviticus 16:15-16, 18-19

The book of Hebrews teaches us that all this was both proleptic and tutorial since,

^10:4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

It was proleptic because inasmuch as this propitiation looked to Christ it had the reality of the fulfillment in it. It was tutorial because it taught there was a promissory fulfillment ahead that gave substantive reality to the typology.

Hebrews 9:12-14 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

This idea that Christ is the fulfillment of the OT shadows of the goat of propitiation is one reason why Protestants get so exercised about the Roman Catholic mass. Scripture teaches that the “blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God,” and yet Rome insists that sins can’t be forgiven without a constant re-sacrificing of Christ in the Eucharist preformed by the Priest. The Mass says the Scripture is not true and that Christ as the goat of propitiation,

Hebrews 9:²⁵ once at the end of the ages, has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 

All of this explains why Christianity teaches a hard exclusivity that insists that unless one knows a known Christ one is without God and without hope. The Father’s wrath continues to burn against those outside the circle of propitiation and expiation.

The good news is that Jesus Christ still offers Himself as God’s solution to God’s wrath.

  

“What does biblical repentance look like for someone who identifies themselves as a “gay Christian” (i.e., someone with same-sex attraction)?”

Question for Tim Challies
Toronto Conference

Of course Challies, like most modern Evangelicals / Reformed ducked and weaved through this question. Challies gave all the requisite nuances and qualifications and codicils so that everyone would know how he is in tune with modern sensibilities.

What drives me nuts is the underlying presupposition in this question that is never exposed. The underlying presupposition is that we have now risen above our former troglodyte position of noting that this attraction is the result of Scripture calls “God giving men up to their vile passions” (Romans 1:26).

Here is my question,

Why don’t Christians get grossed out any longer at the thought of males and / or females being attracted to their own sex?

If we are going to ask this question can we please be consistent and ask the following questions once the effeminate Reformed answer the question at the top with all their codicils and qualifications?

What does biblical repentance look like for someone who identifies themselves as a “necrophiliac Christian” (i.e., someone who is sexually attracted to dead bodies)?

What does biblical repentance look like for someone who identifies themselves as a “pedophilia Christian” (i.e., someone who is attracted sexually to your 6 year old son)?

What does biblical repentance look like for someone who identifies themselves as a “bestial Christian” (i.e., someone with a sex attraction to your milk cow)?

Will we really answer those questions with the serious qualification of;

“Well, as long as they don’t actually follow through on their attractions, then praise God they’re sinners just like you and I, only with different besetting sins.“

No… we wouldn’t answer that way because we know to have those kinds of attractions, even if not acted upon, are SICK SICK SICK.

We would never communicate to people with sexual attractions for our dead Uncle Wilbur, or sexual attractions for our milk cow Bessie, or sexual attractions for our 6 year old son Jr. were normal as long as they didn’t actually act on those sexual attractions.

And yet when questions are asked about sodomite (not gay) Christians then suddenly we want to show how sensitive we are. In point of fact what we are showing is that we ourselves have accepted the whole category of sodomite (not gay) Christian.

It’s just a matter of time until we accept sodomite Christians as not really needing to be celibate as long as they are really really committed.

Having said that, of course there is grace for those who have all these attractions who also resist the devil. And that grace includes the grace to share these deviant attractions only with one’s Pastor and not make them the stuff upon which conferences are built.

Last week we examined the idea of being theocentric in our thinking vis-a-vs being antrhopocentric (man-centered) in our thinking. This week we want to try and apply that to the central reality of our christian faith; to wit, the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I spent the first week seeking to tease out the impact of man-centered thinking in all our thinking and doing. I noted that we are man-centered in our thinking because that self-centeredness is part of what it means to be in Adam… part of what it means to have original sin… part of what it means to be fallen. Much of the effect of the fall is that we are self-centered in our thinking and doing.

And that even bleeds over into our Christianity. Whole theological systems are labeled as Christian which are in point of fact really exercises of using Christian language to mask the anthropocentrism of our system.

We do it even with the Cross work of Jesus Christ. We end up, with all the best of intentions, making it primarily about us. This is one effect of man-centered thinking as it enters the realm of Christian theology.

One main thrust of the message this morning is that the Cross is not ultimately about us. In point of fact the Cross of Jesus Christ is only proximately about us. Before we can say anything true about the Cross in relation to us, we must first speak about the Cross and its meaning in relation to God.

At this point we are seeking to talk about what Theologian C. E. B. Cranfield in his commentary on Romans talked about as “the innermost meaning of the cross” (The Epistle to the Romans, 213).

And frankly, in all my reading and study one doesn’t stumble across very often this God-centered understanding of the Cross. In all the sermons I’ve listened to it is only been occasional the the case that the sermon was dealing with the God-centered understanding of the Cross.

What we get instead is man-centered language such as these few examples I culled from online Sermon help sites, Rev. Steve preached,


“God knew what He was doing right from the beginning of time. And He knew exactly what He was doing when He sent Jesus into the world. And His priority was the salvation of mankind through the cross of Christ!” … God’s priority was to allow Jesus to suffer on the cross for us so that we could be saved. THIS IS WHAT THE CROSS OF CHRIST IS ALL ABOUT! Without the cross of Christ, without the death of Christ,… there would be no doorway into heaven!

Steve
The Cross Of Christ

1.) God’s priority was the salvation of mankind.
2.) God’s priority was for Jesus to suffer on the cross so Man could be saved
3.) THIS IS WHAT THE CROSS OF CHRIST IS ALL ABOUT!

You see… that is a man-centered understanding of the Cross. There may be elements of it that are true but they are only half truths and half truths told alone end up being un-truths.

Here is another example by Rev. John W.

“Imagine. The punishment for all of man’s sin fell upon the shoulders of our precious Saviour as he paid the ultimate price on that cruel cross…. “

Now, what is said here is true enough but it is a truth that only comes after other truths that are primary.. If we only say these truths and don’t explore the Ultimate truths we are anthropocentric in our thinking.

One more examples from Rev. Gatts

5. God sees us as we really are: sinners. Jesus died to change that description. Now we can be the Children of God, reconciled to God! 1. Christ’s death on the cross also enables us to have peace with one another. Christ’s death on the cross enables people to be reconciled to one another in peace regardless of differences: Jew and gentile; black and white; male and female.

John G.

Again, this type of thing is a pretty common staple and true as far as it goes but it is not the theocentric meaning in the Cross. It is the anthropcentric meaning in the Cross.

Now, I want to be clear I’m not denying that the Cross has effects, consequences, and glorious implications for man. However, I am convinced that before we talk about the secondary meaning of the Cross we should talk about the primary meaning of the Cross.

Steve Camp captured something of what I am going to be driving at this morning when we talk about what it means to think theocentrically about the cross.

Camp wrote these lyrics,

Christ died for God and God was satisfied with Christ
Pure, unblemished sacrifice
Oh, Son of Grace

Christ died for God and God has made Him Lord of all
For He drank the bitter gall
The cup of wrath

Christ Died For God
Steve Camp

There it is. The theocentric meaning of the Cross.

Christ died for God.

The deep inside meaning. The Ultimate meaning. The theology from above. The primary meaning. The theocentric meaning.

How many times have you heard this from pulpits? From your own reading? I was in the ministry for almost a decade before I stumbled across it in Jonathan Edwards and before him for John Owen.

Hear Owen for example in a catechism he used to teach.

Q. In what does the exercise of his priestly office for us chiefly consist?

A. In offering up himself an acceptable sacrifice on the cross, so satisfying the justice of God for our sins, removing his curse from our persons, and bringing us unto him. — Chapter 13.

John Owen

Note that before Owen speaks about the curse being removed from our persons he notes that Christ satisfied the justice of God for our sins. There it is. Christ died for God. Theocentric thinking on the Cross.

Well, where did they get this idea that Christ died for God? They saw it in Scripture.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

There it is. “The Father sets forth the Son as a propitiation by His Blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness.”

Christ died for God.

The Old Testament anticipates Romans when in Isaiah we read,

“But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.”

Isaiah 53:10

There it is. The theocentrism of the Cross. The Lord is pleased to crush the Son.

There is a vertical dimension of the Cross that must be spoken of before we speak of the horizontal dimension. Christ dies for God before Christ dies for man.

Before the Cross can be about our forgiveness the Cross is about the Father’s propitiation. Propitiation is the price God the Son paid in order to turn away God the Father’s just wrath against sin and sinners. The death of Christ not only takes away sin but it also pays the penalty for sin as required by the law of the Father. There could have been no forgiveness for sinners like you and I unless Christ dies for God before He dies for us.

Out of love the Father sends the Son forth to take upon Himself the Father’s just penalty for sin. Out of eternal love the Son defends the honor of the Father’s promise to give sin it’s full recompense. Christ died for God. Died for His glory. Died to give Him all honor. Died that the Father might be just and justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.

God Himself — whose justice required the price of propitiation in order to forgive sins. God Himself who rendered up the price of the just penalty required by God. We see thus that it is God who justly required the penalty, and God who paid the penalty. God who required Justice and God whose Justice when it fell, fell as mercy for us.

Christ died for God.

Donald Macleod gets at all this in his “Christ Crucified: Understanding the Atonement — p 71”

“It was no part of the work of Christ to make God love us, The very fact of his being on earth at all was proof of the divine love. The business of the atonement, therefore, was to propitiate the God who already loves us: to lay the foundation for an advocacy directed towards him specifically as Father (1 John 2: 1). God unequivocally requires such propitiation, but in the last analysis God also provides the propitiation and God even becomes the propitiation. The whole cost of our redemption is borne by the triune God. In that sense, the atonement is a transaction entirely internal to the trinity. But by virtue of the incarnation, it is also external. It takes place not in heaven, but on Calvary; not in eternity, but on Good Friday.”

This is the theocentric view of the Cross. This is the God intoxicated understanding of the Cross. Before we speak about our reconciliation, our redemption, the sacrifice for us, before we speak of ransom, expiation, propitiation for us, we have needs to speak of this theocentric idea that Christ died for God. Christ satisfies and exalts the Father’s justice before it satisfies our sin problem.

Now let us take this one step further. Why is it that we are redeemed, reconciled, and propitiated for? Is it simply in order that we might be delivered from our peril? No … a thousand times no. Our rescue isn’t about us. Our rescue is so that we can make God’s name as famous as it never ceases to be.

This was all limned out even in the Old Testament,

The Redemption of Israel from Egypt accomplished by God is God-centered. For, as Ezra will later say to the Lord, in saving Israel, “you made a name for yourself (Ezra 9:10)”

Thomas Schreiner
The Beauty of the King — p. 217

Why would we think it any different when that typological Redemption of Israel is fulfilled in Jesus Christ Redeeming His Church? That Redemption as accomplished by God was and remains God centered. God’s intent in saving His Church is not primarily about our rescue, or our being delivered from sin, Satan, self, and hell. No, those are only proximate purposes of God’s redeeming His people. Ultimately God’s redeeming His Church, in the sweep of Redemption centering in Christ, remains to make a name for Himself. God Redeemed His people so that His name may become as famous as it never ceases to be.

Our Redemption is not about us. Our Redemption did not find its teleological purpose and end on and in the Elect. God did not Redeem us primarily because He loves us, though indeed He does. God Redeemed us because He primarily loves Himself and His glory. God Redeemed us so that He might make a name for Himself through His Redeemed people.

We were not the center of God’s purposes in saving us. The center was and is the making known of the majesty and glory of God. The center was and is that the goodness and beauty of God might become legendary among those with eyes to see. The center was and remains that in our Redemption the Cosmos would be awe-struck that such a great God could take such a lowly rabble as the Redeemed and use them to conquer all opposition while making the glory of His name known.

When we reduce Christianity to being contained within the Church, thus allowing the public square to be just a common marketplace wherein all the gods negotiate for renown we evacuate the center of why God provided Redemption in Christ. When we reduce Christianity to being primarily fire insurance we evacuate the center of why God provided Redemption in Christ. When we reduce Christianity to sentimental and pietistic niceties we evacuate the center of why God provided Redemption in Christ. This is the sub-Reformed Christianity of R2K, of Evangelicalism, of neo-nomian and anti-nomian Pietism.

Now let us trace another God centered (theocentric) reality here. If the Father sent the Son in order to fulfill both the requirements of the law as well as the condemning work of the Law do we really want to believe that the effect of the cross was to the purpose of God’s people no longer being obligated to the law? In the Cross the condemning work of the law was fulfilled so that the legislative work of the law could operate apart from the sting of condemnation always hanging for our failure to walk in perfection to the law’s just requirement. As united to Christ we have been delivered from the power of the law to condemn and delivered to the legislative power of the law as a guide to life informing us how to glorify God…. how to make His name as famous as it never ceases to be. We cannot continue to make God’s name known unless God’s character as revealed in His Law is the standard by which we make that beautiful name known.

The purpose of Redemption was and remains to make a name for God. Are we making a name for the most exalted God of all splendor?

Oh Lord Christ, give us a burning passion to make a name for you as consistent with who you are.

The Pentecostals are squirrely
The Barthians make no sense
With Baptists my head goes whirrly
The Presbyterians are extra dense

The Roman Priests are predatory
With Lutherans it’s a mystery box
The Word-Faith is phony glory
Anabaptists are never orthodox

The Holiness folks gives us feeling
The Methodists are all Reds
The Cambellites are unappealing
The Anglican bones are dead

R2K excels in all things Gnostic
Federal Vision is back to Rome
McAtee is cynical and caustic
He’s the worst of all syndromes

They all say they love the Savior
“He’s the fairest of the fair”
Do us all a big favor
And offer up a prayer

Psalm 13:1 How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
² How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

The failure in the Christian life in terms of how we handle our emotional life is not in having difficult and even negative emotions. The failure in the Christian life is thinking that God has never seen those emotions before and wouldn’t know how to handle them if you brought them before Him. In the Psalms we see a wide range of human emotions set in the context of prayer and praise.

Thus far we have seen then that while the Psalms are Theocentric / Christocentric they also demonstrate how to not get lost in our emotions. This is important to note. Modern man has become almost an exclusively emotional being. He is completely conditioned and blown about by his emotion. This sense of no anchor for the uninformed and macro-contextual-less emotions makes for a reckless instability in modern man. The Psalmists reveal where to find an anchor for our emotions. The anchor is found in the Character of God. Whatever the emotion … whatever the turmoil … whatever the joy … the Psalmist takes it all before God in Prayer and / or praise. He allows the character of God to be an anchor to his emotion unlike the Modern who allows his emotion to be his God. The Christian thus allows the Character of God to be the context in which his emotion is conditioned and so finds meaning as opposed to the Modern whose emotion is like a loaded pistol in the hand of a 3 year old.