The Bible teaches that God defines reality. For example, the Bible says that “God is love” (see 1 John 4:10). God also defines justice. When you consider the justice system that operates in your country or city, God’s being possesses a bigger and more powerful understanding, administration, and execution of justice that’s all-knowing and all-powerful. God’s legal court has a higher authority than any human institution. God’s rulings are also perfect, unlike human ones. Evil still exists in the world because God’s perfect justice will be enacted at a specific time in the future when Jesus returns to earth to judge the world.

     If you look at the verses at the start of this chapter, you’ll see we’ve already talked (in previous chapters) about how humans have fallen short in Romans chapter 3 verse 23. These verses repeat ideas we’ve covered, including that, because of the sin in humans, we’re no longer able to live up to God’s original intentions for our perfect humanity. We’ve become inferior because of sin. We’ll talk about verse 24 soon, but for this section I want us to think about verse 25, and particularly about the word “propitiation”.

     The word “propitiation” means to satisfy anger. This verse is saying that Jesus was sent to earth to propitiate, or in other words, to take God’s anger of judgement against sin. God’s wrath and anger against sin were poured out on his son Jesus in our place. This satisfies God’s anger towards us. God sent Jesus to satisfy his internal standard of justice in this way.

     Simply put, we deserve to suffer God’s anger, wrath, and judgement for our own sin, but Jesus was sent to take this anger. As we’ve talked about, we can see this was God’s solution because he’s perfectly just. It’s impossible for God not to punish sin and be perfectly good at the same time. For God to forgive humans, he needed to find a way to punish the sin of humans without punishing them.

     This is what connects Jesus to us. Through Jesus, God presents us an offer. This offer is that we can start a new life in relationship with God because of what Jesus has done in taking God’s anger, wrath, and just punishment for our sin upon himself. Faith also connects this work of God to our lives, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Because God knows our hearts, he knows whether or not we truly receive this offer of Jesus’ life for ours by faith.

     Considering all this can be confusing, here are some more clarifying points. Because God is beyond time, Jesus’ death is effective for us, even though we’re in the future. Jesus’s death is a provision of forgiveness for those in both the past and future who turn to God.

     Jesus also suffered more deeply than we can understand. When Jesus died, it says the eternal trinitarian relationship between God the Father and Son suffered, as if being deeply wounded (though it was restored). The Bible also says Jesus travelled through spiritual places between his death and resurrection, though we’re not entirely sure whether he went to hell or not. And even though we’re not sure exactly how propitiation works, the main point is that God’s justice is satisfied by it. Because God’s justice is perfect, and only he knows what can satisfy his own justice, he prepared Jesus’ death as the opportunity for God’s anger against us to be removed. By receiving Jesus as our propitiation, we can enjoy a restored relationship with God again.

Chapter Summary:

• God operates as a supreme ruler and judge who perceives all evil and knows exactly how justice should be fairly enacted.

• The word “propitiation” means to satisfy anger. Jesus was sent as a sacrifice of propitiation to bear the perfect anger of God in place of the anger and judgement from God that we, sinners, deserve.

• Because it’s impossible for God not to punish sin, God presents us an offer of reconciliation through his son Jesus.