A Propitiation

By Pastor Chad

The atonement is no ancillary doctrine that is only good for academic theologians and snobby armchair theobros. The atonement is an essential element of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remove the atonement and you void the gospel.   

What is the atonement? It is the magnitude, the majesty, the wonder, the significance, the splendor of what our Lord has done: He took the sins of the unrighteous to save the unrighteous. On Sunday morning we highlighted three aspects of the atonement. 

First, the atonement is the victory Jesus provided and won on Calvary. Through His victory on the cross, we too can be victorious over death. This victory does not come through human effort or any righteous merit of our own. It comes because Christ was our champion and destroyed the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). Jesus met a challenge we could not win. He fought a battle that we were sure to lose. The atonement is the biblical reality that Jesus became man to save man because man was incapable of saving himself. 

A second aspect of the atonement is that Jesus, as the Great High Priest, offered Himself as a sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God. In the Old Testament, the high priest would purify the people of God from the consequences of sin by offering an animal sacrifice in the Holy of Holies. This took place once a year on the Day of Atonement. Jesus, being the Great High Priest, has not offered the blood of goats or bulls, but He has offered His own blood as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Unlike the blood of animals, Jesus’ blood is a once for all sacrifice. We no longer need to sacrifice animals because Jesus provided the ultimate sacrifice.  

The high priest would also sprinkle blood on the altar outside the tabernacle. Then, the high priest would place his hands on a goat. In so doing, he placed the sins of the Israelites upon the goat. Leviticus 16:21-22 says, “Aaron will lay both his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites’ iniquities and rebellious acts—all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task. The goat will carry all their iniquities into a desolate land,and the man will release it there.” As the Great High Priest, Jesus did not place our sins upon a scapegoat. He bore our sins and iniquities, and He was sacrificed outside the city of Jerusalem on Golgotha. 

The third aspect of the atonement that we discussed on Sunday morning is that Jesus’ sacrifice was an act that appeased the wrath of God on our behalf. His death was a “propitiation” for our sins. That means Jesus’ death takes away God’s condemnation upon all who call upon the Lord. His blood removes the consequences of death and sin by reconciling us to God. The sacrifice of Jesus appeases the wrath of God by bearing the punishment for our sins.

You see, the atonement just is the heart of the gospel reality. Without it, we are still dead in our sin. Without the atonement, we are still held captive to death. Without it, we have no hope.