What does it mean that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10)?

1 John 4:10. But we were not only in a state of death before God, unable to enter into His thoughts or do one thing that pleased Him; we were guilty sinners, having done many things displeasing to Him; ever having sought, in sin, to please ourselves. Love has come in to deal with our sins as well as with our state: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Love is indeed of God, so richly, so perfectly made known towards us; manifested at infinite cost to Himself, and to His beloved Son. God's love has been measured in all its infinitude by the gift that it gave; measured in the unfathomable depths of sorrow and judgment into which His dear Son went to accomplish this great work of propitiation. The Son Himself is the propitiation, for all the wonderful efficacy of the atoning sacrifice abides in Him where He lives before the Father: Himself, as the propitiation, the abiding witness to God's infinite and eternal love. What sovereign love! There was not a single feeling of love towards God that prompted the love to send His Son: in our natural estate as guilty sinners we did not love Him: all originated in God's own heart; the work was completed on the cross that enabled God to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, long before we thought of Him.

But we were guilty also, as responsible beings before Him. Here His love has met us. He has given His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is not law, nor duty, though it was there, but because it was there, ruin, failure, and condemnation. But love is not in that we love God (which is what we have to look for in our hearts if we seek the proof of life there, but then really under law); that law required, and rightly - but in that God loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. It is not requiring what we ought to be from us, just as this is, but putting away, making a holy propitiation for our sins. We are dead in sins, and He gives us life. We were guilty, and He has given Him to make propitiation for our sins. He has met our whole case, in both its aspects as sinners. Now the love of God is known, the heart free, the conscience purged, he can exhort us to love one another.

By asserting two things. First, that the teaching of the Bible is NOT that God is ill-disposed toward us, a frowning Deity to be continually pacified by propitiatory sacrifices which change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt heathen conception. The Bible presentation of the truth runs thus, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a propitiatory sacrifice, His heart which is toward man is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.

God is love. This is indeed a dogmatic statement; and if men seek confirmation of this dogma, in the sinful and disordered world that surrounds them, they will fail to find it. We must look in the right direction. There has been a perfect manifestation of God's love, but only in one direction, as verses 9 and 10 so plainly state. The sending of the Son, and all that was therein involved, completely manifested it. The Son was sent into the world, where we lay under the weight of our sins spiritually dead. He came with the object that we might live through Him, and to this end He made propitiation for our sins. Life was the objective, but if we were to live propitiation was a necessity.

He who is our Advocate on high is also "the propitiation for our sins." This fact brings us back to the rock foundation upon which all rests. By His propitiatory sacrifice every claim of God against us has been met, and He takes up His advocacy with the Father upon that righteous basis. His propitiation has settled for us as sinners the eternal questions which our sins have raised. His advocacy now settles the paternal questions which are raised. when as children of God we sin.

Propitiation is what we may call the Godward side of the death of Christ. It is concerned with the most fundamental matter of all; the meeting of the Divine claims against sin. The meeting of the sinner's need must be secondary to that. Hence when we have the Gospel unfolded by Paul in the epistle to the Romans, we find that the first mention of the death of Christ is "a propitiation through faith in His blood" (Romans 3:25). We do not get substitution clearly stated until reaching Romans 4:25, we read of Him as "delivered for our offences."

The death of Christ was primarily the offering of Himself to God as a sacrifice of infinite value and fragrance. Propitiation was thereby effected, and satisfaction made, so that the claims of divine righteousness have been met and vindicated in regard to the whole matter of man's sin.

O sinful man, O doubting believer, accept the witness God has given concerning His Son. Professing Christian, go not below what godly Jews shall yet confess. As Isaiah here predicts to be fulfilled in them for the kingdom on earth; so we ought to know still more fully according to the gospel for heaven. "Herein is love, not that we loved God [as we surely ought], but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Indeed He loved us beyond parallel, and doubly. We were dead in sins; and God's love was manifested in sending His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him. We were guilty sinners; and He sent His Son as the only and the efficacious sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

In like manner we may see that propitiation is, by John, associated with the Lord's person. He does not present it as the work of the Lord; this we have elsewhere. But in the First Epistle of the apostle of love we read, "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2. 1, 2); and, again, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Jesus Christ, then, is Himself the propitiation for our sins. This is as infinitely blessed as it is simple; for if I, as a poor sinner, needed a propitiation for my sins, and I am told that Christ is that propitiation (however little I may be able to explain the meaning of the term), I can rest assured in the fact that Christ being it, it will be 'more than adequate for my guilt.

Christ is above in all His grace. Righteousness remains in all its undiminished worth; and so does the propitiation through His blood. It is the joy and boast of the Christian that nothing touches either the risen Christ or the efficacy of His work on the cross for us. If the earth is blind and deaf, heaven never forgets what these are for God's glory and our purification. Only here we have another thing to observe. The apostle says that the propitiation of Christ is not for our sins only. It is also "for the whole world." Now we never find the propitiation for sins, except definitely for those that believe, as of old; now for those that are God's children. Christ is a propitiation in a general way for the whole world, but only "for our sins." There is a marked distinction, when he speaks of the whole world. This makes the putting in of "the sins" objectionable, when the world is in question. It is going beyond Scripture. If the Lord had been the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, the whole world would get its fruit and go to heaven. If He bore their sins in the way He bore ours, what has God against them? He is the propitiation for our sins; He has annulled them for ever, blotting them out with His blood. Were it thus for the world, it would stand clear.

In Hebrews 2:17 we should read that Christ is "a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people." Here again we have it emphasised that whilst propitiation is needed on account of "the sins of the people," it is essentially Godward in its bearing.