What is propitiation? What is expiation?

Question 7101

Propitiation and expiation are two words that most Christians have met in a hymn and few could define. They are not interchangeable, and the difference between them was the subject of one of the sharpest translation debates of the twentieth century. It matters, because what is at stake is whether the cross deals with the wrath of God or only with the stain of sin.

The short definitions are these. Propitiation turns aside righteous anger by satisfying it. Expiation removes the guilt or defilement of sin. One is directed towards God, the other towards the sin itself, and Scripture teaches that the cross accomplished both.

The Greek Behind the English

The relevant family of words centres on hilasmos and hilasterion. The first appears in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10, the second in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5, where it denotes the mercy seat, the lid of the ark where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement.

In classical Greek this vocabulary consistently means to appease or placate a deity. That is not in dispute. The dispute concerns whether the New Testament writers, drawing on the Greek Old Testament, drained the words of that meaning and left only the idea of cleansing. C. H. Dodd argued exactly that in the 1930s, and his influence explains why several mid-century translations render the terms as expiation rather than propitiation.

Why Propitiation Cannot Be Dropped

Leon Morris answered Dodd carefully and, to my mind, decisively. His observation was simple: look at the context. Romans 3:25 comes after Paul has spent two and a half chapters establishing that the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness. When he finally arrives at the remedy and calls Jesus a hilasterion, the problem he has been describing is divine wrath. To translate the solution as though it addressed only defilement is to answer a question Paul was not asking.

The same holds in 1 John. God loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). If nothing needed to be turned aside, the sending is difficult to account for. Propitiation and expiation are both needed precisely because sin creates two problems at once: it defiles the sinner and it provokes the righteous opposition of God.

What the Wrath of God Actually Is

Much resistance to the word propitiation comes from a misunderstanding of wrath. People hear it and picture divine temper, a God who loses control and must be calmed. That is pagan religion, not biblical revelation. The wrath of God in Scripture is His settled, righteous, personal opposition to evil, and it is an aspect of His goodness rather than a lapse from it.

A God who felt nothing about child abuse, torture and betrayal would not be loving; He would be morally asleep. It is because God is good that He is implacably against what destroys His creation. So propitiation and expiation are not concessions to a primitive view of deity. They are what a genuinely righteous God had to accomplish if guilty people were to be received.

How This Differs From Pagan Appeasement

In pagan religion the worshipper supplies the offering in order to change the god’s disposition from hostility to favour. In Scripture the direction is reversed at every point. God is the one who provides the offering. God is the one who puts Jesus forward as a propitiation (Romans 3:25). And He does it because He already loved the people concerned, which is exactly what John says.

So the sequence is not that Jesus makes God love us. God loved us and therefore sent Jesus. The wrath is real, the propitiation is real, and the initiative is entirely God’s. Once that is seen, the objection that propitiation makes God look pagan simply falls away.

What Expiation Adds

Expiation deals with the other half of the problem. Sin does not only provoke God; it defiles the sinner. That is why the Old Testament ritual system is so preoccupied with cleansing, washing and the removal of uncleanness. A conscience can be defiled as truly as a garment.

Hebrews is where this comes into its own. The blood of Jesus purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). John writes that the blood cleanses us from all sin. This is not about turning aside anger but about removing filth, and any account of the cross which handles propitiation and expiation as rivals will lose something the New Testament plainly asserts.

The Mercy Seat and the Day of Atonement

The Old Testament picture holds both ideas together in one piece of furniture. Above the ark lay the mercy seat, and inside the ark lay the tablets of the law which Israel had broken. The blood was sprinkled on the lid, so that when God looked down He saw not the broken law but the blood of the sacrifice.

That is why Paul’s choice of hilasterion in Romans 3:25 is so deliberate. Jesus is the mercy seat. The righteous requirement of the law is not ignored; it is covered by blood, and the worshipper is received. Propitiation and expiation meet at that lid, which is a considerable part of why the Day of Atonement was given to Israel in the first place. There is more in the wider treatment of the atonement.

Why This Matters for Assurance

If the cross accomplished propitiation, then there is no wrath left for the believer to fear. It has been spent, and it cannot be spent twice. Paul says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and the therefore is doing real work. And if the cross accomplished expiation, then the defilement that makes a believer feel unfit to approach God has been dealt with too.

Those two together answer the two things that keep people at a distance: fear of judgment and sense of filth. That is why I would not let either word go. Anyone wanting to see how this fits with the mechanism of the cross should read substitutionary atonement alongside this.

Why Propitiation and Expiation Belong Together

It would be possible to hold one without the other, and both errors have been made. Some traditions have emphasised wrath turned aside until the cross became almost a legal transaction with no effect on the worshipper’s inner life. Others have emphasised cleansing until the righteous opposition of God to sin disappeared from the account altogether.

Scripture holds both. Sin is an offence provoking righteous judgment and a defilement requiring cleansing, and the same blood accomplishes both. That is why the vocabulary of the New Testament moves so freely between the courtroom and the sanctuary. Propitiation and expiation are two effects of one sacrifice rather than two competing translations of one word.

What the Hymn Writers Understood

The older hymns are often better teachers here than modern ones. Charitie Bancroft wrote of one who bore my sin and satisfied the claims of righteousness, which is propitiation stated plainly. Isaac Watts wrote of a fountain filled with blood in which sinners plunge and lose their guilty stains, which is expiation.

Both instincts were sound, and both belong in our singing. A congregation that only ever sings about cleansing will not know what to do with the wrath texts when they meet them, and a congregation that only ever sings about satisfied justice will not know what to do with a defiled conscience. There is more on the mechanism in the survey of atonement theories.

Propitiation and Expiation in the Levitical System

The Old Testament ritual holds both ideas in a single ceremony, and reading Leviticus 16 slowly repays the effort. Blood was taken into the holiest place and sprinkled on the mercy seat, which addressed God. Blood was also applied to the altar and to the people, which addressed defilement. The same sacrifice was directed in two directions.

The Hebrew verb kaphar covers both notions, carrying the sense of covering or wiping clean while also being used of appeasing anger. This is why propitiation and expiation should never have been set against each other as rival translations. Israel’s own vocabulary refused the choice.

The scapegoat completes the picture. One goat died and its blood went in; the other carried the confessed sins away into the wilderness. Penalty borne and guilt removed, and propitiation and expiation set out in a ceremony a child could follow.

So, now what?

Read Romans 3:21 to 26 and then 1 John 4:9 to 10 together, and notice that the same God who is righteously opposed to your sin is the one who provided the remedy for it. Propitiation is not a doctrine to be embarrassed about; it is the reason a guilty person can come near without fear. If you have been approaching God as though the wrath were still pending, what would change tonight if you took it as already spent?

“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 4:10