We understand the spiritual changes of our lives when we believe in Jesus Christ as we look at a whole gallery of pictures. Each picture gives us a different aspect of what we are saved from and what we are saved to.
The picture of propitiation is the most basic of all salvation images. All the other pictures depend on propitiation. It is also the hardest for us to see clearly. Whenever this picture shows up in everyday society, it seems negative and manipulative. The gospel, on the other hand, is always positive, beautiful, and effective.
Fixing Broken Relationships
The story of propitiation is how to repair broken personal relationships. Like warring countries, individuals can be at war with another person. They have been personally offended or insulted. They seek revenge or repayment. They believe they have been dishonored or damaged by someone they trusted. It hurts deeply. The idea of ever regaining friendship seems impossible. The loss of value and being mistreated are worth dying for and killing for.
Propitiation, however, gives hope that the offense can be repaired and the relationship restored. Propitiation is a sub-point under reconciliation. But in real propitiation, a deeper truth is revealed.
The repair of a broken relationship in this picture requires a pacification or appeasement to undo a previous act. The offense that aroused anger or vengeance cannot be ignored. Trust and friendship towards the one who betrayed are gone. “I am so sorry, I won’t do it again” is not good enough.
Our Offense and Betrayal against God
Human rebellion and sin against the love of our Creator was unprovoked, inexcusable, and self-defeating. God did nothing wrong to break the relationship. After we dishonored and rejected him, he came looking for us. God became one of us and offered himself as a propitiation for our sin. Modern Bible translations often render this word as “sin offering.”
Theologians make a distinction between "expiation" and "propitiation." Expiation is a satisfaction to remove the offense. Both people can walk away in peace, with no more resentment or anger. The victim has got even. But it does not assume that the relationship is fixed. Neither person is back to the intimacy or joy they once shared.
Propitiation does all that, and goes further. Propitiation does restore the relationship. The parties are not merely satisfied customers of a settlement. The hurt and anger are replaced by a full loving relationship that guarantees being intimate friends. It results in satisfaction on all sides. No hard feelings. No storing up grudges for later use. No waiting for the other shoe to drop.
How it Works Imperfectly in Society
In human society, the appeasement for an offense might be nothing more than a bribe. “You hurt me, and I am mad. But if you give me what I want, I won’t press charges.” Or it might be a demand for tribute payments or protection money. Under these conditions there is no once for all payment that restores. Rather it is an ongoing abusive treatment that will never be satisfied.
We know that such financial abuses are evil and harmful. So are the emotional equivalents of unending demands for reparations. People “become historical” by bringing up past offenses and failures. God is not like that. His propitiation works properly. He no longer remembers our sins against us.
Propitiation that Satisfies God
The satisfaction of our offense to God's righteous character is performed through Christ who bore the consequences of God's wrath in the place of all who trust in him. Hebrews 2:17 says, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
Propitiation is not an action or performance we are told to do. It is one-sided, depending entirely on what God did. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).
Can we see through the wrong ways people try to appease those they have wronged? Can we get a glimpse of how God perfectly makes us at one with himself? If so, propitiation suddenly emerges as a beautiful portrait of a God of love. It is kinda like we are welcomed home and closer friends than ever.
Propitiation that Saves Us
In Romans several of the pictures of salvation are connected in a chain. “[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:23-25).
He removes all reasons for alienation from God toward humans and from humans toward God (propitiation). He pays the ransom to redeem us from our slavery to sin (redemption). He declares us not guilty of any wrong (justification). It is all a gift of his grace which we receive by faith.