Propitiation

Christ our atoning sacrifice

Paul writes that God "presented Him as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith" (Romans 3:25). Older English Bibles say ‘propitiation’ here. The Greek word, hilastērios (ἱλαστήριος), is the word the Greek Old Testament and Hebrews 9:5 use for the ‘mercy seat’, the cover of the ark where the high priest sprinkled blood on the Day of Atonement. John uses its relative hilasmos (ἱλασμός) when he calls Christ "the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 2:2), and the tax collector who beat his breast in the temple prayed with the related verb, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13).

Scripture speaks plainly of God's wrath, "revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men" (Romans 1:18), and says of those justified by Christ's blood, "how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!" (Romans 5:9). God's wrath is not a fit of temper but the settled opposition of his holiness to evil. And the one who provides the sacrifice that turns it away is God himself:

And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:10

That is why biblical propitiation is the opposite of pagan religion, in which worshippers try to buy a god's favour. John Wesley, on Romans 3:25, insisted on the point: "But if, as some teach, God never was offended, there was no need of this propitiation" Wesley. At the cross God does not treat sin lightly, and yet he receives sinners, "so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). The related but distinct idea of restored friendship is treated under reconciliation.

Where the traditions differ

In the twentieth century the British New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd argued that these words mean expiation, the wiping away of sin, rather than the turning away of God's wrath. Others, among them Leon Morris, answered that in Romans the word stands in a passage about God's wrath (Romans 1–3), so that the turning away of wrath belongs to its meaning. English translations divide accordingly: ‘propitiation’, ‘expiation’, ‘atoning sacrifice’. Many scholars hold the two meanings together. Many Orthodox theologians prefer to speak of cleansing and healing rather than of God being appeased.

Catholics and Protestants also differ over how this sacrifice reaches us now. The Council of Trent taught that the Mass is a truly propitiatory sacrifice, the one sacrifice of the cross offered without the shedding of blood Council of Trent, Decree on the Sacrifice of the Mass; the Catholic Church explains that it is not a new or repeated sacrifice but the same one. The Reformation churches confess that Christ "offered for all time one sacrifice for sins" and sat down (Hebrews 10:12), so that the Lord's Supper is a commemoration of that one offering and a receiving of its fruit, not itself a sacrifice for sins Westminster Confession 29.2. For the wider setting see atonement, penal substitution and the lesson The cross and atonement.