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Christ Our Propitiation
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"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" (Rom.3:25). The thought behind this word "propitiation" is that of a means of blotting out sin. It is not that of conciliating an offended Deity, the idea upon which much erroneous Christian theology has been built. To our English minds this understanding does not come so easily as it did to the first readers of Paul's epistle to the Romans, for when their eyes fell upon the world "hilasterion",which has been translated "propitiation", they thought instantly of the "mercy-seat" in the Most Holy of the Tabernacle - a means of covering sin and reconciling man with God - and so Christ was set forth as a "mercy-seat". When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, several centuries before Christ, the translators had been faced with the problem of finding a suitable Greek word to describe the "mercy-seat". They chose "hilasterion", which was the word for an altar or other means of offering sacrifices to appease or placate the pagan gods of Greece. This Greek translation, the Septuagint, was the one in general use in the time of Paul, and he would naturally use the same term. This is quite correctly translated "propitiation" in English. In a similar fashion, centuries later, the first English translators of the Hebrew Bible adopted "mercy-seat" to express the Hebrew "kapphoreth" because, as it is quaintly expressed in one early rendering "There God appeared mercifully unto them; and this was a figure of Christ". Now, "kapphoreth" means simply and solely a place of covering, and the "mercy-seat" was so named because the sins of Israel were "covered" by the annual sprinkling of the blood of the sin-offering. "Kaphar" - to cover - is not used in the sense of putting a roof on a house or a hat on one's head, but it is a word which implies the absolute obliteration of that which is completely covered. It means, primarily, to paint an object with pitch or bitumen, and is also used in reference to an animal that is covered with a shaggy fur, or to the obliteration of writing by drawing the writing instrument completely over the characters. Here are some examples of its use:- Gen.6:14. "Thou...shall pitch it (the ark) within and without with pitch." Isa.28:18. "Your covenant with death shall be disannulled" (i.e., the written agreement or covenant shall be obliterated). Prov.16:6, "By mercy and truth iniquity is purged." It is this thought of covering, so as to obliterate completely, that lies behind the terms "reconciliation" and "atonement" in the Old Testament, for both these words are translated from "kaphur". Thus we have:- Lev.8:15. "To make reconciliation upon it" (the brazen altar). Dan.9:24. "To make reconciliation for iniquity." Ezek.45:17. "The meat offering, and the burnt offering, and the peace offerings, to make reconciliation for the house of Israel." Lev.16:6. "And Aaron shall...make an atonement." Lev.16:30. "On that day shall the priest make an atonement for you." Ezek.16:63. "When I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord." And so God says (Isa.44:22) "I have blotted out as a thick cloud...thy sins." When the High Priest sprinkled the blood of the bullock upon the "mercy-seat" on the Day of Atonement he was covering over and obliterating the sins of Israel from the sight of God. There is perhaps, more of mystic truth than we have recognised in the lines of that familiar hymn: "The Cross now covers my sins, AOH |
