We are looking at important theological, or biblical words that are important to our faith and understanding the Christian life in each lesson. We have already looked at five other words. We are going to look at the fancy word of propitiation this time.
This word is so out of sync with our vocabulary that many of the newer translations don’t even translate it as propitiation. They say something like, atoning, sacrifice or something along that line which really doesn’t cover the real meaning of the word propitiation. It’s only found a few times in scripture, but it is a very important word.
Let’s read Roman 3:25, “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed.” Here is one of our scriptures where propitiation shows up speaking of Christ as the “whom” that was displayed. The word itself means to satisfy. It is the flip side of the issue of redemption. When we ask the question: Why did Jesus come to earth and die on the cross? We give the answer that He came to redeem us from sin and set us free of the bondage of sin and to save us. Those are good and correct answers, but there is a flip side to that in which most people don’t think about. That is wrapped up in this word propitiation. It is the idea that God’s righteous justice and wrath against sin had to be satisfied in some manner. It helps us to understand what takes place here by looking at two central attributes of God. One is holiness and the other is justice. God is a holy God. He is righteous, He is holy, He is pure, and He is without sin. Because He is a righteous and holy God, He cannot simply look the other way at sin. He cannot simply airbrush it out of the universe and accept us into His presence complete with our sins. His wrath is poured out against sin because He is holy. That brings us to the word justice. Everyone wants to talk about justice today . . .
