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PROPITIATION*
The act of appeasing another person’s anger by the offering of a gift. The word was often used by the pagans in antiquity, for they thought of their gods as unpredictable beings, liable to become angry with their worshipers for any trifle. When disaster struck, it was often thought that a god was angry and was therefore punishing his worshipers. The remedy was to offer a sacrifice without delay. A well-chosen offering would appease the god and put him in a good mood again. This process was called propitiation.
Understandably, some modern theologians have reacted against using the term in reference to the God of the Bible. They do not see him as one who can be bribed to become favorable, so they reject the whole idea. When they come to the term in the Greek NT, they translate it by “expiation” or some equivalent term that lacks any reference to anger. This is an unjustified avoidance because, in the first place, the Greek term for propitiation occurs in some important biblical passages (Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10). In the second place, the idea of the wrath of God is found throughout the Bible; it must be taken into account in the way sin is forgiven.
The idea that God cannot be angry is not based on the OT or the NT. God does have anger for the sins of the human race. Whenever his children sin, they provoke the anger of God. Of course, his anger is not an irrational lack of self-control, as it so often is with humans. His anger is the settled opposition of his holy nature to everything that is evil. Such opposition to sin cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It requires something much more substantial. And the Bible states that it was only the cross that did this. Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2, KJB). This is not the only way of looking at the cross, but it is an important way. If God’s anger is real, then it must be taken into account in the way that sin, which caused that wrath, is dealt with. When the NT speaks of “propitiation,” it means that Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of mankind put away God’s wrath against his people once and for all.
See also Atonement; Expiation; Wrath of God.