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Propitiation and Expiation
PROPITIATION AND EXPIATION (Gr. hilastērion, hilasmos). KJV and NASB used the word propitiation three times—“God set forth [Christ] to be a propitiation” (hilastērion,
Propitiation and expiation are not synonyms; they are very different in meaning. Propitiation is something done to a person: Christ propitiated God in the sense that he turned God’s wrath away from guilty sinners by enduring that wrath himself in the isolation of Calvary. Expiation is what is done to crimes or sins or evil deeds: Jesus provided the means to cancel, or cleanse, them. The NT clearly affirms that Jesus’ death provided an expiation for the sins of the world; but was it necessary for Jesus to provide a propitiation (to avert God’s wrath against guilty sinners) in order to provide expiation (cleansing, forgiveness, and pardon)? Scholars who hold that the biblical portrayal of God’s wrath describes a real, perfect attitude of God toward sin (of which genuine human righteous indignation would be an imperfect analogy) recognize that propitiation was necessary and that Christ’s death was such. Scholars who hold that God’s wrath is not his personal attitude toward sin and sinners but rather only a way of describing the results of evil and sin in the world, prefer to think of Christ’s death as only an expiation. Yet, even when it is accepted that hilastērion and hilasmos point to God’s genuine active anger toward sin being appeased by Christ’s death, the translation “propitiation” is not always used.
Bibliography: Leon Morris, The Atonement, 1983.——PT