Zodhiates on Propitiation

2434. ἱλασμός hilasmós; gen. hilasmoú, masc. noun from hiláskomai (2433), to propitiate, expiate. Propitiation. The benefit of Christ’s blood for the sinner in the acceptance by the Father. Hilasmós refers to Christ as the one who not only propitiates but offers Himself as the propitiatory sacrifice. He is both the sacrifice and the officiating High Priest (John 1:29, 36; 1 Cor. 5:7; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10:14; 1 Pet. 1:19; Rev. 5:6, 8). The sacrifice of Jesus Christ in shedding His blood, both as the victim and the high priest, is indicated by the use of the basic verb hiláskomai (2433) in Heb. 2:17: “To make reconciliation for the sins of the people,” which means to pay the necessary price for the expiation and removal of the sins of the people. This was parallel to that which the high priest did, but it was perfect and a far better sacrifice in that it was permanent and unrestricted. Tó hilastḗrion, the mercy seat (Heb. 9:5), was the lid or cover of the ark of the covenant on which the high priest sprinkled the blood of an expiatory victim (Ex. 25:17–22; Lev. 16:11, 13–15). The use of all these words must, therefore, be connected with the blood of Christ shed on the cross. The cross was the place of expiation (the mercy seat) and Christ was the sacrifice whose blood (His sacrificial death) was sprinkled on it.

The periphrastic use of the verb is found also in Heb. 8:12, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” The expression here is híleōs ésomai (híleōs [2436], merciful; ésomai, [fut. act. indic. of eimí {1510}, to be], I shall be), “I shall be merciful” (a.t.). The Lord Jesus is declaring here that He, through the sacrifice of Himself, will become the means of the removal of the sins of His people and of their status of unrighteousness or enmity with God.

Hilasmós, found only in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10, is equivalent to hilastḗrion (2435) as used by Paul in Rom. 3:25. It is the means of putting away sin and establishing righteousness. God is never presented as changing His mind toward the sinner or the sin that estranged the sinner from Him. Man is never said to be able to appease God with any of his offerings, as in the heathen religions where man offered gifts in an attempt to accomplish this.

In the NT, we find man incapable of offering anything to placate God because He is a righteous God. For Him to accept sinful man, it was necessary for God, not man, to do something to deliver man from his sin. This is the reason why, in 1 John 2:1, we find Jesus Christ presented as the righteous One. God demands that the payment for sin be made once and for all. It is Christ Himself, therefore, who becomes hilasmós, the means which is acceptable to God to satisfy His righteousness or His justice. This does not merely appease God but provides the means for the redemption of man. Christ is the propitiation which supplies the method of deliverance from our sin and, being reconciled to God, we are acceptable for fellowship with God. Christ became the vicarious and expiatory sacrifice for our sins. John adds that this sacrifice of Christ was a historical event. Jesus Christ does not need to shed his blood and die again for any new believers because it is all–encompassing. Nobody’s sins have ever been permanently removed in any other way except by means of the Lord Jesus Christ and His death on Calvary’s cross. OT sacrifices pointed toward Christ’s sacrifice, which is an objective accomplishment, a finished work for the whole world as a basis from which individual forgiveness and cleansing from sin proceeds.

The virtue of the propitiation extends beyond the subjective experience of those who actually are made partakers of grace. 1 John 2:2 presents the propitiation of Christ as vividly personal: “He is our propitiation” (a.t.). The life of Christ as well as His death is involved, His person as well as His work. The use of the word hilasmós by John refers not only to the process of the atonement, but also to its final achievement as a fact: “He is the propitiation”; “His blood is cleansing us from all sin” (a.t. [1 John 1:7]). It is more than a completed act. The propitiation abides as a living, present energy residing in the personality of Christ Himself. According to John, therefore, the propitiation is the cleansing from sin rather than merely the work of justification before God or the acceptance of the sinner as if he had never sinned.

Paul associates Christ’s propitiation as more closely connected with the righteousness of the Law. In John, love and propitiation become interchangeable realities necessary to one another, with one explaining the other, even lost in one another. John defines love by propitiation, and propitiation by love: “In this have we come to know what love is, that He for us laid down His life” (a.t. [1 John 3:16); “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). When John speaks of God as love, he refers to Him as the means of reconciliation of man to God. See hiláskomai (2433), to propitiate, to reconcile to oneself; hilastḗrion (2435), propitiator, mercy seat; híleōs (2436), mercy, merciful, propitious.

Zodhiates, S. (2000). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.