What is expiation?

There was a piaculum, 'an expiatory sacrifice,' something satisfying for the individual involved in guilt, or what was offensive to God, what He could not tolerate from His very nature. This with the heathen, who attached human passions or demon-revenge to their gods, was of course perverted to meet those ideas. They deprecated the vengeance of a probably angry and self-vengeful being. But God has a nature which is offended by sin. It is a holy, not of course a passionate, one; but the majesty of holiness must be maintained. Sin ought not to be treated with indifference, and God's love provides the ransom. It is God's Lamb who undertakes and accomplishes the work. The perfect love of God and His righteousness, the moral order of the universe and of our souls through faith, is maintained by the work of the cross. Through the perfect love not only of God, the giver, but of Him, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, propitiation is made, expiation for sin, its aspect being toward God, while the effect applies to us in cleansing and justifying, though it goes much farther.

Expiation is more the satisfaction itself which is made, the piaculum, what takes the wrath, and is devoted, made the curse, and so substituted for the offender, so that he goes free. And here the noun kopher comes to let light in on the inquiry. It is translated 'ransom, satisfaction,' and in 1 Sam. 12:3 a 'bribe.' So in Ex. 21:30 a kopher (translated 'sum of money') is laid upon a man to save his life where his ox had killed his neighbour; but in Num. 35:31 no kopher was to be taken for the life of a murderer; for (ver. 33) the land cannot be cleansed, kaphar, but by the blood of the man that shed blood as a murderer. This clearly shows what the force of kopher and of kaphar is. A satisfaction is offered suited to the eye and mind of him who is displeased and who judges; and through this there is purgation of the offence, cleansing, forgiveness, and favour, according to him who takes cognisance of the evil.

In Rom. 5:11, it is commonly known it should be "the reconciliation," not "the atonement;" whereas in Heb. 2:17 "atonement," expiation, or propitiation would be correct, not "reconciliation" which is another word and truth. Atonement implies expiation as to sins, and propitiation as to God, Who is offended at sin, justly indignant at that which directly violates His will on the part of man, who resists His authority and commands. Atonement is God's intervention in His grace by Christ's death to expiate the sins and pardon the guilty who believe; and therefore is it the sole way in which He can righteously bring the sinner into reconciliation with Himself. Therein is God as truly glorified as the repentant soul is brought nigh to Him in peace. By that work the face of God becomes propitious to the sinner, so that his sins being judged on Christ are sent away never to be found again. "To propitiate, or make atonement, for the sins of the people," is the right sense.

Now, in Scripture, "covering" is atonement — i.e., expiation, putting away of sin. To atone is caphar, to "cover" only in an intensive form, which is of striking significance and beauty. Atonement is covering of the completest kind.

Propitiation is thus really the divine side of atonement; and he who accepts truly the one can make no difficulty as to the other: the expiation is the propitiation. Now let us look at this as exemplified in "the Lord's lot," "Jehovah's lot," on the day of atonement.

Propitiation I have called the Godward side of atonement, using the latter word in the larger sense in which we generally use it now; but in our common English Bibles no distinction of the kind appears. Atonement in the Old Testament, we may rather say, is the equivalent of propitiation in the New, which replaces it. It has been urged that we never find God as the object of propitiation, but only "sins," and that thus the thought is rather "expiation" than propitiation. It is thus only more completely the counterpart of the Hebrew caphar, of which the same thing is equally true.

On the cross Him Who knew no sin God made sin for us. Did not this include propitiation and more? Was it "in heaven and after death?" To the Romans Paul wrote (Rom. 5:10), that "we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son": were we "reconciled" without propitiation? To the Colossians he wrote (Col. 1:20-22), that "Christ made peace through the blood of His cross," to reconcile all things on the earth and in the heavens, as He will soon, but meanwhile "you … He reconciled in the body of His flesh," not when out of it, "through death," not "after it and in heaven," "to present you holy," etc. Was their reconciliation for so glorious a result without propitiation, or before it? Or is not the new doctrine evil and preposterous? Some, to help it, plead the distinction between the English words, "expiate" and "propitiate." It is baseless; for there is but one word in the Hebrew, as in the Greek. The verbal form is so used in Heb. 2:17 (for such as we find in Matt. 16:22, and Luke 18:13 have no place here). It was for man before God in heaven; but no sign ever appears of a fresh work in Christ's case done there after death.

246 "Atonement" occurs but once in the New Testament, and there it should be (Rom. 5:11) reconciliation; and expiation occurs but once in the Bible (Num. 35 33), and that is in the margin, "no expiation for the land": so we may drop that word. Propitiation is towards God. There is the holy and righteous character of God to be met; and this is propitiation. God is not changed by it; but, being righteous and holy, this is responded to, that His love might go out according to righteousness and holiness, and mercy and righteousness be consistent. Atonement is more when the blood is applied. Blood was sprinkled upon the altar, because sin was there, blood of atonement, It is the actual putting away of sin by the sprinkling of the blood. The idea is, a thing or person is in a state in which they cannot have to say to God, as here "the iniquities of the children of Israel among whom I dwell"; and that condition must be dealt with. You must have the blood where the sin has been, you must have it for God to be in relationship with such. The blood is brought in, and the thing sprinkled, and so the thing is put right. Here reconciliation is the same word.

E. — This is remarkable. Why it is the very doctrine of Rome again. I have just been reading it in Dr. Döllinger, perhaps the clearest writer the Church of Rome has. It really sets aside true expiation for sin. The word ‘atonement’ is never found in the New Testament, except once, and that is a mistranslation. (Rom. 5:11.) We could not receive the atonement, but we do receive its effect — reconciliation. I could understand it, if a Roman Catholic had written this; but surely the writer knows that ‘at-one-ment’ is English, and that the Hebrew word is caphar. It is found ninety-eight times in the Old Testament. Get your Hebrew Concordance and find me one single instance where it can mean ‘at-one-ment,’ or union of two persons, as God and man: It means, “to cover;” hence it is used in the covering of the ark. (Gen. 32:20.) But in its connections, as you may see in Exodus and Leviticus, it can only mean real expiation for sin; types of the expiatory death of Jesus putting away our sins — covering them by that death, to be seen no more. All these types were needed, to show the infinite value of that expiation. It is Christ on the cross, forsaken of God. See Daniel 9:24: “To make reconciliation [the same word as is translated “atonement” elsewhere in the Old Testament] for iniquity.” Can this possibly mean ‘at-one-ment’? And so in many other cases. We are reconciled, brought back to God, as the effect of the atonement. But this is not sinful man at one with God; but his sins, borne in awful judgment on the cross, once.

But besides this there was the positive responsibility of man to be met; guilt, uncleanness, and offence were all under God's eye, in those whom He would take to Himself. I do not speak now of renewal of heart and moral cleansing — that is figured by the washing of water. But Christ came not by water only, but by water and blood. Nor is guilt alone put away and offence forgiven; there is a judicial purgation or cleansing of sins — a καθαρισμός. The Kopher <span style="font-family: 'H ebraica'"> rp,Ko </span> or Kippooreem <span style="font-family: 'H ebraica'"> myrIPuKi </span> was made or offered, death coming in, expiation, and so propitiation, blood being shed, God's character in righteousness, supreme claim, and holiness being perfectly met and even glorified. Further, our sins, borne and sent away on the scapegoat, never to be found; or met in an ordinary sin-offering, which in Christ was once for all, who bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Thus the atonement, expiation, and propitiation are perfect, and we are forgiven. Redemption too was accomplished.

To the idea of "covering," however, we must add the thought of "propitiation" — a "propitiatory covering." Thus Keil says, "The meaning 'to make atonement' lies at the foundation in every passage in which the word is used metaphorically, such as Gen. 32:20, where Jacob seeks to expiate the face of his angry brother, i.e., to appease his wrath with a present; or Prov. 16:14, The wrath of a king is as messengers of death, but a wise man expiates it,' i.e., softens, pacifies it; Isa. 47:11, 'Mischief (destruction) will fall upon thee, thou wilt not be able to expiate it,' that is to say, to avert the wrath of God which has burst upon thee in the calamity, by means of an expiatory sacrifice. Even in Isa. 28:18, 'And your covenant with death is disannulled' (annihilated) the use of the word is to be explained from the fact that the guilt which brought the judgment in its train could be cancelled by a sacrificial expiation; so that there is no necessity to resort to a meaning which is altogether foreign to the word, viz., that of covering up by blotting over. … The meaning of expiation which properly belongs to the verb kipper, is not only retained in the nouns kippurim and kapporeth, but lies at the root of the word kopher, as we may clearly see from Ex. 30:12-16, where the Israelites are ordered to pay a kopher at the census, to expiate their souls."

To this may be added that the Septuagint uniformly translates the verb kahphar in its primary application by exilaskomai, to "propitiate," a word which in the New Testament is taken up (only dropping the intensive ex) when we are told that Christ was "a merciful and faithful High-Priest to make propitiation for the sins of the people." (Heb. 2:17, R.V.) Moreover, in their translation of kapporeth, the mercy-seat, they have set the example of dropping the "ex" and speak of it (more literally than our common English word) as the hilasterion, or "propitiatory." (Heb. 9:5.) Thus the inspired Greek confirms the meaning of the Hebrew.