Romans 3:25
Propitiation
Woodlawn Baptist Church
December 11, 2005
Introduction
1 John 2:2
“And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
1 John 4:10
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Romans 3:25
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”
How would you define propitiation, and what does it mean to you? Tonight I want to speak to you on the subject of propitiation and have you consider three facts about this great doctrine and pillar of our faith. What exactly is propitiation? What does it mean and how is it connected to our salvation? Like the doctrine of justification that we discussed a couple of weeks ago, here is a wonderful truth found in the Scriptures that has been largely overlooked in the Lord’s churches, whether because the word is big or because we feel like we don’t need to understand it for our Christian faith. However, once we come to a clearer understanding of this Bible doctrine not only will we grow in our knowledge of what the Word teaches, but I believe we’ll have a better appreciation for the God of our salvation. Three facts about propitiation for you to consider:
Propitiation Satisfies God’s Justice
Simply put, propitiation means a covering for the sins of men and carries the idea of complete satisfaction for our offenses. In our society we have a set of standards which we call the law. When one of these laws is broken we have a judicial system that requires vindication for the crimes committed. We call that justice. A judge cannot look at the evidence, see the person is guilty, and say, “Well, we love you so we are going to let you go scot-free.” No! Our laws state clearly that certain crimes are to be punished by certain penalties.
God’s justice is the same, only He treats all sin alike. God’s justice must be vindicated. The penalty for breaking His laws must be satisfied. Death is that penalty which God’s justice demands. It will accept no other. As guilty law breakers we cannot do anything to correct our wrong, and because God does love us He wants to declare us forgiven and free from the penalty of our sin, but He cannot unless the demands of justice are met. There must be death. It is that death that is under consideration in this matter of propitiation. According to Romans 3:25 it was God who provided propitiation, and that propitiation was through nothing but the blood of Jesus.
I want you to turn with me to Leviticus 16. In the Old Testament, the word propitiation is used in the sense of atonement. It has to do with the act of getting rid of sin which has come between God and man. In Leviticus 16 we have the instructions for the annual Day of Atonement. After Aaron took care of his personal sin, two goats came into consideration: one for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. You might say that one was for the Lord and the other was for the people. It is this goat that was for the Lord that has to do with propitiation. Read verses 15-19.
Now Aaron took the blood and sprinkled it upon the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat. But below that lid or below the mercy seat was the box that contained the Ten Commandments, which were representative of all the Law. Now this Law condemned the people. Remember that without the mercy seat, this box was an Ark of Judgment. It judged the people as sinners and guilty. These tablets demonstrated that the people had violated the commands of God. However, on the Day of Atonement the High Priest stood before God’s judgment representing the people, sprinkling the sacrificial blood on the mercy seat. The blood came between the violated law and the violators, the people.
What a beautiful picture of the blood of Jesus Christ which was offered for us! There was God in perfect righteousness and holiness before a sinful humanity. In his sin man stood condemned. God’s justice required it. But the blood of Jesus satisfied the just requirements of God’s holy law which mankind broke, paid the penalty for man, and thus removed the guilt and penalty for sin which had separated a holy God and sinful man.
This truth is communicated in Isaiah 53:10-11.
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul and offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.”
When God saw the travail of Christ on Calvary He was satisfied – that is, the requirements that His justice demanded were fully satisfied. You see, “he made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” and “expressed his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died in our place.” God’s justice demanded death, and Jesus died that death for you.
Propitiation Publicly Proclaimed God’s Righteousness
In Romans 3:25, Paul said that God set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, but why? Here is a thing you need to remember. We say very often that God sent Jesus to die because He loved us, and we know that He did, but that’s not the only reason God sent Jesus to die. Verse 25 says that He sent Him to be a propitiation “to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.” Why did God send Jesus to die? To emphatically declare that He is righteous!
We might normally think of God’s punishment of sin as a deterrent against further sinning. We might even think of hell in that way, as though hell is a place we don’t want to go and therefore should cause us to be right. Even though there is a degree of truth to that, these are not the primary purposes of punishment and hell. The primary reason is so God will be glorified in the universe that he created.
You see, had God not punished sin and had Christ not come to pay the penalty for sins, God could not be shown to be righteous. When we think of our sins, we do so with the understanding that Jesus died for them two thousand years ago, but what if we had lived on the other side of the cross? Up to that point, there had been no payment for sin, no punishment for it.
Look at that word remission in your text. In this verse that word means the passing by of sins for the present time. You see, through the period of the Old Testament God did not punish sin. It would be punished on the cross one day in the future, so for the present time He passed by the sins of humanity.
Whenever God passed by of sin before the cross and saved believing sinners without having their sins paid for, He was bestowing mercy without having justice satisfied. This made God appear as if He condoned sin, which had to be set right in the thinking of the human race. People could accuse God of unrighteousness by making the assumption that a God who does not punish sins is not a righteous God. Now remember that there was never a question of whether God was righteous or not in the mind of God. The cross was just as clear to Him before it happened as it does now after it happened. In the words of one man, “It makes no difference with God whether He saves sinners before or after the Cross.”
For the several thousand years before the cross, you might say that God was storing up the punishment that belonged to all those Old Testament people and then, in perfect righteousness, he gave that penalty to Christ on the cross. The cross exonerated God from the charge that He was passing by sin and demonstrated that when He declared a believing sinner righteous He all the time maintained His own righteousness.
Now listen, there was another way God could have demonstrated His righteousness. He could have punished sin on the spot, but in His infinite wisdom He demonstrated that not only could He be righteous, but that He could be merciful to us. But never forget that He could not be merciful to us unless the penalty for our sins was paid. As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins alone, God the Father poured out on Jesus the fury of his wrath. For you Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world.
God had not simply forgiven sin. He did not forgive your sin and treat it as though nothing had ever happened. He forgave your sins because His righteous anger had been satisfied for all the world to see on Calvary. Sin was paid for, not condoned, and sin was paid for by the righteousness of God.
Propitiation Made Possible Our Justification
Now, the last fact I want you to consider is that had God’s righteous anger not been propitiated we would have no salvation. Let’s back up and read Romans 3:24 and then 25 together.
“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”
When God justified you He declared that you were forgiven of all your sins past, present and future. He declared that those sins were forgiven and now treats you as though you had never sinned because He imputed, or considers Christ’s righteousness as belonging to you. When God looks at those of you who have trusted Christ as Savior He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ. How can He look upon you in that manner? He can because your sins have been covered by His blood.
Jesus, acting as our Great High Priest, entered into the throne room of God, the heavenly tabernacle, and offered His own blood as the covering for our sin. Had He not done this God could not have been propitious toward us. God could only be propitious, or merciful toward us so long as His justice was satisfied, so when Christ was offered as a propitiation for our sins His justice was satisfied and now He could say to the guilty man or woman, “Even though you are guilty I love you, so I am going to let you go scot-free.” Free to you, but it was at a great cost to Him.
Now, from God’s perspective, the way is clear for you to be justified. John said that Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” However, just because Jesus was the propitiation for all our sins does not mean that everyone is granted justification or salvation. The qualifier again is faith. Have we believed? Verse 26 goes on and says,
“To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which what?” Of him which believes in Jesus. That means more than simply believing in the man Jesus or that He did some great things. It means to believe with the view of trusting Him and Him alone. You could never have satisfied the demands of God’s justice on your own. You could never have entered into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled your own sinful blood. You could never have stood in the presence of God to propitiate His righteous anger. To attempt to do so would only result in being consumed in your arrogance and self-righteousness, which is what will happen when multitudes stand before Him and hear that they are being sentenced to hell.
To believe in Jesus Christ is to trust that His death on Calvary was for you: that He took upon Himself your sins and offered Himself without spot to satisfy God’s demands for justice which required your death. He died that death for you so that when you repent and place your faith in Him there will be no death, but life everlasting.
Have you done this? Have you repented and placed your faith in Christ?
