Propitiation: Removing God’s Anger

There is perhaps no other word in the entire Bible that is more important or more packed
with truth when it comes to explaining the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ than the
word, “propitiation”. Without understanding the theological concept behind this
unordinary word, one cannot understand why Jesus really died. Yet sadly, it seems that the
truth behind this word has been largely lost in modern times, as the true nature of the
cross of Christ is often diminished or neglected in modern preaching in favor of
emphasizing the love of God or the more pleasant themes that people like to hear. Yet in the
face of all opposition, we must return to the biblical Gospel. And believing in and
understanding Jesus Christ as our propitiation is absolutely essential to believing the true
Gospel.

What is Propitiation?

The exact word “propitiation” appears just a handful of times in the New Testament among
the more literal English translations (such as the KJV, NKJV, NASB, and ESV). In Romans
3:24-25, we are told of, “…Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood.”

In Hebrews 9:5, the same Greek word that was used in Romans 3:25 (hilastērion) is
translated “mercy seat” to refer to the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. In 1 John 2:1-2, we
read: “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone
sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is
the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” Then in 1
John 4:10, the beloved apostle uses the term again: “In this is love, not that we loved God,
but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

The word “propitiation” refers to a sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath by satisfying His
justice. “To propitiate”, in Scripture, is to placate and appease the wrath of God on behalf of
a guilty sinner who deserves to be punished, and in terms of the Gospel, it is to turn such
wrath into divine favor. Let’s now look at the testimony of Scripture.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 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, to demonstrate at the present time His
righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom.
3:23-26).

In these verses, Jesus Christ is said to have been “set forth” on a public display as our
propitiation according to the sovereign plan of God. Specifically, the propitiation was
made “by His blood”, that is, His finished work in propitiating God on our behalf was
accomplished by the shedding of His blood (all that He accomplished in His substitutionary
death). The benefits of this propitiation, which include forgiveness and justification, are
received “through faith”by the one who believes in Jesus Christ. The reason God openly set
forth His own Son as a propitiation was to “demonstrate His righteousness” in order to
satisfy His eternal justice in such a way that He could forgive a guilty sinner without laying
aside what justice demanded, thus allowing God to be perfectly just while at the same time
pardoning guilty criminals who believe in Jesus.

In order to understand this passage of Scripture better, we need to understand something

about the flow of thought in the first few chapters of the book of Romans. In these chapters,
starting in 1:18, the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, lays down a masterful
prosecution against all of mankind, denouncing every member of Adam’s fallen race with
the charge of transgressing the holy Law of God. All the way through until 3:21, no hope is
offered to the guilty sinner who has been stripped bare and openly shamed by the scathing
indictment of the Holy Spirit. All are shown to be under sin, Jew and Gentile alike, and there
is not a breath of relief offered between these verses which are designed to stop every
mouth and show the whole world guilty before God (Rom. 3:19). All are shown to be guilty
and deserving of the wrath of God.

The apostle started his discourse by thundering forth the threat of the wrath of God: “For
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). Then he continued his discourse
expounding on the wrath of God: “But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent
heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God, who ‘will render to each one according to his deeds’… but to those
who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and
wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of
the Greek” (Rom. 2:5-6, 8-9). Then finally in chapter three, after he has completely destroyed
any vain hope of carnal security in works based righteousness, right when the reader is
grasping for breath and trembling under the thought of facing the vengeance of an angry
God, the apostle offers to the condemned sinner his only hope for salvation: the
“propitiation” that God set forth on the sinner’s behalf (see Rom. 3:25).

In other words, all the wrath that was building up as we suppressed the truth in
unrighteousness was poured out upon the propitiatory sacrifice. All the holy anger, fierce
wrath, and fiery indignation of God that we were treasuring up for ourselves by our
countless transgressions came crushing down on the head of Him who was our Substitute.
All the wrath that was stored up and waiting to be unleashed upon those guilty sinners who
would one day believe the Gospel was unleashed upon the Son of God on the cross of
Calvary. He bore the wrath of God expounded on in those first three chapters by bearing
the iniquities of those condemned there, and by being crushed by the Father in the place of
all those who would believe the Gospel so as to satisfy God’s wrath against sin on behalf of
those who have “faith in Jesus”.

This is why the prophet Isaiah wrote: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for
our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our
peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We
have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”
(Is. 53:4-6). Notice the prophet says Jesus was, “bruised for our iniquities”. The Hebrew
word for “bruised” here is “daka”, which should literally be translated in modern language
as “crushed” (see ESV). In the same chapter a few verses down, in verse 10, we read: “Yet it
pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.”The same Hebrew word is used
here for “bruised” (crushed) as in verse 5. Thus verse 10 reveals to us that it wasn’t the
Roman soldiers that crushed the Son of God, it wasn’t merely the scourges or the scoffing or
the nails or the crown of thorns. Nor was it Jews who crushed Him. It was actually “the
LORD” who crushed His own Son! God’s holy justice was offended by guilty criminals and
the Lord demanded that the just nature of His Law be vindicated. Thus wrath had to be
poured out on the guilty. But instead of the guilty suffering for their own sin, the Son of God
in His love and mercy came down and bore their iniquities and was crushed in their place
in order to satisfy justice and secure for them the pardon of God.

The picture is of a holy God who is absolutely perfect and just and utterly abhors sin, but
who has been offended by guilty sinners and whose righteous anger against sin is boiling
over and ready to burst forth in the full fury of omnipotence upon the guilty party, but yet
in His great love, wanting to spare the sinner from eternal condemnation, sent His only Son
to bear upon His own self the wrath and fury of divine justice as the sinner’s Substitute. In
such a way, justice is satisfied and God can forgive the sinner without doing damage to the
demands of the perfect justice that His just nature required.

A cup of wrath was awaiting the sinner and justice demanded that it be drank to the last
drop (see Isa. 51:17, Jer. 25:15, Rev. 14:10). Yet Jesus Christ drank the cup in the sinner’s
place, and emptied divine justice of all its’ claims upon the sinner who believes the Gospel,
leaving not a single drop of condemnation left in the cup to be poured out over the head of
the pardoned sinner. This is why Jesus said in John 18:11: “Shall I not drink the cup which
My Father has given Me?” Notice that it was the Father who gave the Son the cup to drink.
This wasn’t just a cup of suffering the pains of being tortured and murdered by men, but
this is the cup of the wrath of God given to Him by the Father and poured out upon the Son
by the Father. This is the cup of which the psalmist said: “For in the hand of the LORD there
is a cup, And the wine is red; It is fully mixed, and He pours it out; Surely its dregs shall all the
wicked of the earth drain and drink down” (Psa. 75:8). Jesus Christ drank that cup of wrath
in the place of the wicked. He drank down the dregs of that cup and dried the wrath of God
of its fury against those who believe the Gospel. In this way He propitiated the wrath of
God.

Jesus was treated as if He were sin so that the sinner could be treated as if he were
perfectly righteous. “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). He bore the iniquities of all who
would believe the Gospel, and He, the Just One, suffered and died in the place of the
unjust: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to
God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Now the ungodly sinner who believes with a true faith in the Son of God
can be saved by the grace of God: “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who
justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). God did all this for
us because He loves us, and now, we are saved from the wrath of God by faith in the blood
of Jesus Christ: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be
saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:8-9).

So how can a just God forgive a guilty sinner and still remain just? How can God “be just,
and the justifier” of the guilty at the same time? Jesus Christ Himself is the answer to our
great dilemma. He was our suffering Substitute and now, as a result, is our sinless Savior
who saves us from the wrath of God.

As mentioned earlier, the same Greek word that was used in Romans 3:25 (hilastērion) is
translated “mercy seat” to refer to the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in Hebrews 9:5. In the
Septuagint (an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament), the same Greek word was
used almost exclusively to refer to the mercy seat on the Ark of God. If we apply the concept
of the mercy seat to Romans 3:25, we learn that Jesus Christ Himself is our “mercy seat”.
This may have very well been in the mind of the apostle Paul when the Holy Spirit inspired
him to write such words. Let’s take a look at this concept.

The Ark of the Covenant was located in the Holy of Holies inside the tabernacle and later,
the temple of God. Inside it was the tablets of the Law of God (Ex. 25:16, 21). Covering the
Ark was the mercy seat, with two cherubim seated on top with their wings stretched out
over it as the guardians of the holiness of God. Between the cherubim, above the mercy
seat, was the immediate presence of God (Ex. 25:22, Psa. 80:1, 99:1). Nobody except the
High Priest of Israel was permitted to enter into the Holy of Holies and approach the Ark,
and he was only allowed once per year on Yom Kippur, the annual Day of Atonement (see
Lev. 16). On that day, he would enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of the
atoning sacrifice upon and before the mercy seat in order to make atonement for the sins of
God’s covenant people. In that way, God’s wrath would be propitiated and their sins would
be forgiven. Of course, all this was just a shadow and not the real substance of salvation,
because “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins” (Heb. 10:4).
Yet we see in this a wonderful picture of the Savior’s work.

Hebrews chapter 9 relates the Old Testament Day of Atonement to the work of Christ on
our behalf. It says that Jesus Christ is our great High Priest and He entered the immediate
presence of God for us in Heaven. “But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come,
with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this
creation. 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” (Heb. 9:11-12). He is not only
the High Priest, however, but He is also the sacrifice and it was His own blood that He
offered to God. And He is not only the High Priest and the sacrifice, but He is also the mercy
seat, the very place where a holy God comes into reconciliation with sinful man and meet
him in mercy by means of a propitiatory sacrifice.

Inside the Ark of the Covenant, under the mercy seat, was the testimony of the Law of God
that man had violated. This broken Law cried out for justice and for the death of those who
transgressed it. Above the mercy seat, God was enthroned in His perfect purity and
holiness as a righteous Judge, full of wrath against sin. Yet in between God and His violated
Law was the mercy seat, acting as a mediator between the two. It was precisely on this
mercy seat that the blood of atonement was sprinkled by a Man (God who became a Man)
in order to reconcile God and man. The offended Law was appeased by the blood of the
sacrifice, and God could forgive His covenant people, those who repent and believe the
Gospel, because Christ is the bloody mercy seat that reconciles us to God. “For there is one
God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). Just as the
blood-covered mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant was the place where sinful man (the
High Priest representing the nation of Israel) met with a holy God, so now, Jesus Christ as
our great mercy seat is the place where we, as sinful creatures, meet in peace with a just
and holy God and find reconciliation.

In the Old Testament, we see this tremendous doctrine of propitiation symbolically

foreshadowed in numerous places in addition to the Day of Atonement spoken of in
Leviticus 16. In the book of Numbers, we read of a situation that happened when the
children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron (and thus complained against the
Lord). And they had the audacity to do this right after the rebellion of Korah after seeing
the ground open up and swallow them alive into the pit!

Here’s the story: “On the next day all the congregation of the children of Israel complained
against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the LORD.” Now it happened,
when the congregation had gathered against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the
tabernacle of meeting; and suddenly the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD appeared.
Then Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of meeting. And the LORD spoke to Moses,
saying, “Get away from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.”
And they fell on their faces. So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a censer and put fire in it from the
altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them;
for wrath has gone out from the LORD. The plague has begun.” Then Aaron took it as Moses
commanded, and ran into the midst of the assembly; and already the plague had begun
among the people. So he put in the incense and made atonement for the people. And he stood
between the dead and the living; so the plague was stopped. Now those who died in the plague
were fourteen thousand seven hundred, besides those who died in the Korah incident. So
Aaron returned to Moses at the door of the tabernacle of meeting, for the plague had stopped”
(Num. 16:41-50).

Notice in this story that the children of Israel had sinned, and that the wrath of God was
unleashed upon them for their sin. God was consuming them in His anger. But then, Aaron,
who was the High Priest, took a censer with fire from the altar and put incense on it and
ran into the midst of the congregation to make atonement for them. The fire was taken
from the altar of burnt offerings where sacrifices for sin were offered continually, and thus,
the fire symbolically represented the blood of atonement. Then he stood between the dead
and the living, mediating on behalf of the living, and the plague was stopped. Aaron’s
mediation had propitiated the wrath of God.

This is what Christ our great High Priest has done for us. We had sinned and offended God
and His wrath was to be unleashed upon us like a plague. But Jesus Christ offered up His
own self as a sacrifice to God and His life of perfect obedience was as the sweet smelling
aroma of the incense offered with the sacrifice. He propitiated the wrath of God and now,
God can accept us because of His priestly work on our behalf, and not only has His wrath
been propitiated on our behalf, but the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us as a free gift
and God can take pleasure in accepting us.

We also read of a similar happening in 2 Samuel 24. We are told that David sinned against
the Lord by taking a census of the nation. The wrath of God was unleashed and swept
through the nation like a plague and killed 70,000 men. Finally, by the word of the prophet
Gad, David went up to threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite to offer a propitiatory
sacrifice, and we read: “And David built there an altar to the LORD, and offered burnt
offerings and peace offerings. So the LORD heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague
was withdrawn from Israel” (2 Sam. 24:25). God’s wrath was propitiated and the plague
ceased.

There are some who reject the idea of Christ suffering God’s wrath in the place of the
sinner. Among them are those who object by saying: “If man has sinned and deserves
the eternal wrath of God in Hell, than how is it that Christ is his actual Substitute if He only
bore temporary wrath on the cross?” They reason that if the punishment due to sinners is
eternal, than how could Christ have literally suffered in their place to take the wrath of God
upon Himself which they deserved if He did not suffer an eternity under the wrath of God?
Thus they reason with their carnal minds that a “finite” sacrifice of six hours upon a cross
could not have possibly been the equivalent of taking the punishment of an eternal Hell
which is infinite in duration, which every sinner deserves. Yet this type of reasoning is not
only flawed in logic but is blasphemous in nature. How dare you, oh man, suggest that the
cross of Jesus Christ was a finite and not an infinite sacrifice! It is true that sinners deserve
an infinite punishment in an eternal lake of fire, but the sacrifice of the Lord of glory was an
infinite sacrifice because while upon that tree He bore the full force of the fury of the wrath
of God in His Person all at once (something no finite creature could have done), and not
only that, but His sacrifice was of infinite value! He was able to propitiate the wrath of God
on behalf of every sinner who would believe the Gospel because He is worth more than all
those sinners combined! He is of infinite value, thus His sacrifice was infinite in power and
worth, and thus He was able to propitiate the wrath of God on behalf of sinners by being
their actual Substitute for the infinite punishment they deserved!

It was the blood of Christ as our atoning sacrifice that propitiated the wrath of God on our
behalf (Rom. 3:25). Sinners who refuse to repent and believe the Gospel will spend a whole
eternity in the lake of fire because such torments can never atone for their sin and
therefore they will be eternally cursed (Mat. 25:41). Fire and torment cannot finally
appease the wrath of God because they cannot make atonement for sin, and as long as sin
remains God’s wrath remains. Only the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse from sin and
remove sin (Heb. 9:22, 1 Jn. 1:7). Therefore, those condemned to suffer the vengeance of
God for all eternity will never find relief because their sin will remain forever, forever
separating them from the favor and blessings of God. Yet on behalf of those who believe the
Gospel, Christ bore the vengeance of His Father upon the cross and experienced the full
force of His just wrath and in that time on the cross, experienced what it meant to be
treated as sin, to become a curse and to be forsaken by God (2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:13, Mat.
27:46). Then finally, after bearing such trauma as the sinner’s Substitute, in addition to all
the blood being shed since the agony of hemorrhaging blood in Gethsemane all the way
through the six brutal hours of hanging between heaven and earth upon the cross,
ultimately the spear that pierced His side spilled the blood that quenched the flame of
eternal vengeance and flowed like a river to wash away all the stains of guilty sinners.

Some object to the idea of propitiation by saying that the whole notion of it makes God out
to be an angry tyrant or a monster of some sort. They view wrath as an undesirable or ugly
emotion that is far from the perfection that characterizes God. They say that God is only
love, and that God doesn’t require an actual payment to be made to satisfy any wrath on His
part, and they object by saying that this idea of appeasing angry deity with a sacrifice is a
pagan concept. Some even go so far as to call the idea of propitiation “blasphemy”. Yet,
these objections find their origin in pagan Greek philosophy and not in the Hebrew
Scriptures, and are propagated in modern times by the humanistic spirit that has pervaded
much of modern scholarship. We have already shown that the concept of the wrath of God
against sinners is taught all throughout Scripture, and we haven’t even scratched the
surface of all the texts which speak of it.

As can be seen by reading through the Bible, punishment for sin is not just the natural
consequence of sin, but punishment for sin has been pronounced forth by a righteous Judge
who demands that the standards of His holy nature as revealed in the Law be satisfied.
There are some who say, “God doesn’t punish anybody because He’s good”, but little do
they realize that it is because God is good that He must punish sin. A good judge must
execute the penalty of the law upon the guilty criminal. If a good judge were to pardon a
criminal without satisfying the demands of the law it would not be a good action, it would
be an abomination to God (Pro. 17:15). Punishment for sin in Scripture is not just suffering
the natural consequences of sin in itself, such as the result of sticking your finger in a fire
and experiencing the natural consequences of such an action. No, there is a holy judge who
says that the wicked will have coals of fire poured out over their heads and will be cast into
fire (Psa. 140:10).

As the prophet said: “God is jealous, and the LORD avenges; The LORD avenges and is furious.
The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies”
(Nah. 1:2). This is the God to whom we will have to answer one day. His love does not
contradict His wrath. His mercy does not contradict His justice. His acceptance of sinners
does not contradict His holiness. And He can now forgive sinners and justify them and
accept them eternally in the Beloved because of what the Son of God did on their behalf on
the cross. Because of the cross, “Mercy and truth have met together Righteousness and peace
have kissed” (Psa. 85:10). God can now show mercy to sinners without contradicting the
truth of His righteous nature. Justice has been satisfied on behalf of the one believing in
Jesus, and because of that, God can now be at peace with those against whom He was
previously opposed to in His holiness. We can now “have peace with God through the Lord
Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).

It is important to understand at this point, however, that the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ
did not abruptly change the mind of God and force God to do something He otherwise did
not want to do. Some preachers have portrayed God in this sort of way, as if the essential
nature of the Father were one of only holiness and wrath while the essential nature of the
Son were one of only love and mercy. The Son did not come and change the Father’s mind
and force the Father to be propitious toward sinners against His desire. It was God the
Father Himself who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and the Son came
willingly according to the eternal plan of the Father to lay down His life for sinners (see
John 10:18). And all this was motivated by the unfathomable redeeming love that God had
toward His elect since eternity past. This is why Jesus is spoken of as “the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).

It is because God is love that God sent and delivered up His only begotten Son for us. God’s
love is what motivated Him to send His Son, and the Son’s love for the Father and for His
elect is what motivated Him to lay down His life. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is
of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not
know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent
His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn.
4:10). If God wasn’t love, the death of Christ on the cross would have never occurred. He
would have never bore the wrath of God on behalf of hell-deserving sinners if God was not
love. But it was precisely the love of God that motivated Him to ordain the death of His own
Son in order to satisfy His justice and appease His wrath against the sin of all those who
repent and believe the Gospel.

Now, because the propitiatory sacrifice has been made, God takes pleasure in forgiving
sinners. There is rejoicing in Heaven when a sinner repents (Luke 15:10). Like the father of
the prodigal son who rejoiced to see his son return home, God rejoices with great joy to see
sinners repent (see Luke 15:22-24). It is the heart of God revealed in the Gospel of His Son
to save and not destroy men’s lives (Luke 9:56). “For God did not send His Son into the world
to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. “He who believes in
Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17-18). God sent His Son into
the world who made a propitiation to satisfy His holy wrath because, as God said through
the prophet Ezekiel, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live…’” (Ez. 33:11).

Now the test of whether or not we are under the wrath of God, or whether we are under the
grace and favor of God, is whether or not we are in Jesus Christ. “He who believes in the Son
has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God
abides on him” (John 3:36). All sin requires punishment by the just Judge of the universe.
The question is, dear reader: Has your sin been punished in Jesus Christ on the cross of
Calvary, or are you still yet in your sin, about to face the punishment for your own sin
yourself? If you are still in your sin, then you can be sure that the wrath of God is treasuring
itself up over your head like a black cloud ready to burst forth with an almighty storm of
holy indignation. Yet if you repent and believe the Gospel, if you thrust yourself in complete
surrender upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and lay your life at His feet looking up to Him and
Him alone to save you, then you can know that He Himself bore your sin in His own body
upon that tree, and that there is no condemnation left for you (1 Pet. 2:24, Rom. 8:1). Oh,
what a price He paid for unworthy sinners like us! How can our hearts not swell up with a
deep, profound, and lasting love for Him who so loved us!