Propitiated, Not Covered
“In this 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
Imagine if we went out to dinner together. I chose a nice restaurant, we had a great meal, good conversation, and enjoyed a tasty dessert. Once we finish, the waiter sets the check on the table, and I grab it. I pulled out my wallet, give him cash, and tell him to keep the change. I happily paid for the meal in full.
Afterwards, we get up and start walking away, you say, “Let me pay you back.”
“No,” I respond with a smile, clearly letting you know it was my pleasure.
We get to our vehicles to say goodbye, and yet again, I hear, “Matt, here, take this,” as you hold out some cash.
“I already paid for it, my friend. You’re good,” I retort with a chuckle.
Yet on my drive home, you send me a text: “I’m paying my part of that meal.”
“No, you’re not. Have a good night,” I reply using talk-to-text.
The next morning, I receive a Facebook message that reads, “Where can we meet so I can pay you back? Do you have Venmo?”
“Please, stop. Keep your money. The meal is paid for and we are good.”
That evening, you show up at my door and try yet again to give me money.
“Here’s my part of the meal.”
You just will not accept the fact that I had paid for the dinner in full, and you have no say-so in the matter.
Well, unfortunately, a lot of Christians treat God in the same way. Sure, we believe Jesus paid for our sins, but we still spend our lives trying to pay Him back. It reminds me of that old hymn which makes no sense, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.”
He won’t allow you to pay Him back.
Paid in full means paid in full, and that’s exactly what He’s done with His blood on the Cross. His sacrifice was more than enough to pay your entire sin debt, which has propitiated your sins. Propitiation sounds like a fancy word, but it simply means “satisfying sacrifice.” God is more than satisfied with the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Just look at what John said:
“And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)
Propitiation is the opposite of atonement, which means “to cover.”
Atonement is what the blood of animals provided once a year at the temple. It covered the sins of the people for the past year. Then, it had to be repeated the next year, and the next year, and the next. This is first mentioned in Leviticus, and then the author of Hebrews explains its usage:
“This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year.” (Leviticus 16:34)
“But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:3–4)
Do you see that it was for all their sins once a year? The box church has ignored that fact and made it even more difficult for children of God by teaching that they must individually turn from, confess, and make amends with God over every sin—but even the Jews didn’t do that. All their sins were covered for an entire year. Yet instead of taking those sins away, the annual sacrifice reminded them of how many commandments they had broken.
They may have felt temporary relief after the sacrifice was offered and they walked down the temple stairs, but their consciences were never permanently cleansed. The next time they broke a commandment, the guilt returned, but nothing more could be done about those sins with God, through the Day of Atonement, until the following year. By way of atonement, their sin debt was never paid in full. It was simply put on the books, so to speak. This is referenced in Hebrews 9:9:
“The gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.”
Atonement would be me paying for your dinner with my credit card. Yes, the dinner was temporarily paid for, but the debt still remained.
Propitiation, however, is what the blood of Jesus provided. It paid the debt in full, closed the account, and cut up the credit card so there is no possibility of the debt ever accumulating again. Here’s how it’s described in Hebrews 9:12:
“Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”
Redemption means purchased. Paid for. This is why Jesus didn’t merely atone for your sins. He propitiated them. In fact, John said Jesus is the propitiation. What He did with our sins on the Cross completely satisfied our Creator’s wrath concerning all of them. Look at what Paul told the Romans:
“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:9)
In the most up-to-date translations of Scripture, we never see Jesus atoning for your sins but propitiating—paying for your sins in full, taking them all away, and redeeming you completely (see Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17, 9:5, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10).
This includes the sin of unbelief, which Jesus paid for as well (see John 16:9).
So you can stop asking Him if you can pay Him back because you can’t. Simply say, “Thank You.”
There’s nothing more to pay for.
GOD PROVIDED WHAT GOD REQUIRED
Thousands of years before Jesus went to the Cross, God gave us a glimpse of what was coming. God told Abraham to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice. As they traveled up the mountain together, Isaac noticed something was missing.
They had the fire.
They had the wood.
But they did not have an animal for the sacrifice.
“Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ Then he said, ‘Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’” (Genesis 22:7)
That was the question.
Where is the lamb?
Abraham answered: “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:8)
What happened? God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and instead provided a ram in his place.
Isaac walked back down the mountain alive because another life was sacrificed in his place. The ram died, so Isaac didn’t have to. God didn’t simply provide a sacrifice—He provided a substitute.
A couple thousand years later, Abraham’s words would reach far beyond what happened on that mountain. God would provide for Himself the Lamb. Only this time, the sacrifice wouldn’t be an animal caught in the thicket. It would be His own Son (see John 1:29, 3:16-18).
He wouldn’t wait for humanity to find a worthy sacrifice because no such sacrifice has ever existed. The Jews couldn’t provide what was needed for our Creator. Neither could you. Neither could I.
So our Creator provided it for us.
He wrote Himself into His own Creation and did what only He could do.
Isaac’s question was temporarily answered through the ram caught in the thicket, but not permanently. Jesus, however, was the permanent answer to what God required. Ultimately, God didn’t even want animals to be sacrificed. He loves animals. Those sacrifices were never His ultimate desire or final solution (see Hebrews 10:4-5), but sin had to be paid for with blood (see Leviticus 17:11, Hebrews 9:22). So He paid for it Himself with His own blood.
This is what makes the gospel different from religion. Religion is humanity attempting to offer something to God to make Him pleased with us. We offer improved behavior, good deeds, commitments, “self” sacrifices, promises to Him while ignoring His promises to us, and anything else we believe might move us onto His good side. Then rinse and repeat once the shame has reached its peak.
That’s not the abundant life Christ came to give us.
Comprehending the gospel begins with comprehending this: God provided what we never could by providing Himself.
He never asked you to bring something to Him, but instead, to accept what He has brought to you.
Jesus.
JESUS DID NOT MAKE THE FATHER LOVE YOU
Some of us picture God the Father as furious with humanity, while Jesus is compassionate and always trying to calm Him down. In that version of “the gospel,” Jesus throws Himself in between an angry Father and a terrified group of people, and somehow convinces Him not to destroy them.
But that is not what 1 John 4:10 tells us. John said God loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The Father didn’t send Jesus because He hated you. He sent Jesus because He loves you.
The character of God wasn’t changed at the Cross. It was revealed.
Paul tells the Romans about this truth:
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
The Cross did not cause Him to love you. His love is what caused the Cross.
Sin had to be dealt with, so He dealt with it. If He didn’t love you, He would have left you on your own with sin.
This doesn’t mean God ignored His wrath toward sin. If you look at the Old Testament, He was still dealing with it, as well as Israel’s rebellion against the Old Covenant—and it was ugly. Sin and its consequences are ugly. But in the midst of all of that, He was protecting the line of Judah through which the Messiah would come, the One who would deal with sin in its ugliest form: His undeserved death on the Cross, which was the propitiation.
Propitiation means God’s wrath was satisfied through the sacrifice God provided. He provided it because of His great love for you.
The Father and the Son are not playing good cop/bad cop.
If you’ve seen Jesus you’ve seen the Father (see John 14:9).
God so loved the world that He sent Jesus (see John 3:16). He didn’t so hate the world that He sent Jesus.
The Father sent the Son, the Son willingly gave His life, and the Spirit now lives within everyone who believes this.
The Father wasn’t divided against Himself while Jesus died.
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
In Christ, God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was doing for us what we were incapable of doing for ourselves. That’s love.
THE MERCY SEAT WAS POINTING TO A PERSON
Inside the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle—and later Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the Old Covenant. Within the chest of the ark were the stone tablets containing commandments from the Law. Sitting on top of the ark was the mercy seat, a covering made of pure gold, on which the high priest sprinkled blood during the Day of Atonement.
The Law inside the ark condemned the Jews, while the golden mercy seat above it served as the barrier. The blood of bulls and goats atoned for the sins of the people once a year—complete forgiveness for the past 365 days of sinning, of breaking one or more of the 613 commandments in the Law.
The broken Law was beneath.
The mercy seat was the covering.
The blood was sprinkled on the covering, allowing the high priest temporary access to the presence of God.
That animal blood stood between the people and the judgment demanded by the Law they continued to break, but the mercy seat was not the final answer, nor was the ongoing bloodshed of the animals.
Just like everything else in the Old Covenant sacrificial system, this symbolism was pointing to Jesus (see Hebrews 8:4-5, 9:9,23-24, 10:1, Colossians 2:16-17).
In Romans 3:25, Paul said, “Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness.”
The Greek word Paul used for propitiation is hilastērion—the same word translated as mercy seat in Hebrews 9:5. Paul was showing his readers that Jesus is where God’s justice and mercy meet.
The mercy seat was no longer merely a place hidden behind a curtain—a place only the high priest could enter once a year. He was required to bring incense and offer blood for his own sins before he could present blood for the people—or he’d die.
The mercy seat was a Person hanging on a Cross. But this time, the blood was His own, offered once for all time.
The Messiah didn’t carry animal blood into an earthly temple. Instead, He offered Himself. He became the place where your sins were judged, paying the full debt with His own blood once and satisfying God’s justice forever. God’s mercy was extended to you in full and is received through faith.
This is why mercy is not God pretending you’ve never sinned or will never sin again. Mercy is God dealing with every sin you would commit throughout your lifetime, as well as the power of sin, through Jesus—and then refusing to ever charge those sins to you again.
The punishment didn’t disappear. It fell on Jesus.
That’s the perfect love John wrote about—the love that casts out all fear—so you don’t need to be afraid.
GOD WILL NOT COLLECT THE SAME DEBT TWICE
Imagine a lender receiving the full amount owed on an account and then continuing to demand payment. If the balance has been paid, the lender has no right to keep collecting, correct?
That would be theft because the debt had already been satisfied.
Now apply that to your Creator.
God is not going to collect the same sin debt twice. He isn’t going to place your sins on Jesus, allow Him to suffer, accept His sacrifice, and then turn around and demand another payment from you.
Isaiah described what would happen to Jesus, hundreds of years before the Cross:
“But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Jesus was pierced for our transgressions.
Jesus was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was placed on Him.
Isaiah then said:
“And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (See Isaiah 53:6)
God laid our iniquity on Jesus. He did not divide it between Jesus and us. He did not place most of it on Jesus and leave a small portion behind for us to pay through guilt, stress, or religious effort.
Our complete iniquity was laid on Him.
This is exactly why Paul could say:
“For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh.” (Romans 8:3)
God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus by the flesh of Jesus.
To be clear, the Greek word for the flesh is sarx—a separate entity associated with lifeless human effort and old coping mechanisms. It is not our physical body, which is sōma (see Romans 8:3–9). When you see the three-letter word the before flesh, know that it is not referring to your physical body. Also, hamartia is the power of sin that operates in the body without ever being the body (see Romans 6:12, 7:17–23). God condemned hamartia once and for all through the body of Christ because you were in Christ when He was sacrificed (see Romans 6:10, Galatians 2:20).
For those who now belong to Christ, sarx—the flesh—has been crucified—past tense (Romans 8:3, Galatians 5:24). Therefore, believers are no longer sinful by identity, nor are we in the flesh, although we can still incorrectly walk according to it—which is unnatural for saints (Romans 8:4–9, Galatians 5:16).
Does that mean every bad decision is free from earthly consequences? No. Are you free from heavenly condemnation? Yes. But here on earth, sinning can damage your health, finances, relationships, and peace of mind.
God’s grace doesn’t make foolish decisions somehow wise, and that’s why we always want to mature out of any particular sinful action or attitude. But earthly consequences are not God collecting another payment for sins Jesus already propitiated.
When you know you’ve made a poor choice or said the wrong thing, it’s a very healthy thing to do everything you can to repair what you damaged. Apologize to those you’ve hurt or decide to give up that destructive pattern or addiction, but none of that adds to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The debt between you and God was satisfied at the Cross.
YOUR GUILT CANNOT IMPROVE THE FINAL SACRIFICE
As strange as it may seem, religious guilt has a way of making us feel productive.
We assume that if we feel terrible for long enough, we are somehow honoring God, and staying miserable proves that we understand how serious our failures are. So we punish ourselves.
We replay what happened again and again, call ourselves names, think we’ve pulled away from God, and refuse to bask in the peace Jesus died to give us. Of course, we’d never say His blood was insufficient, but we live as if our guilt is helping His blood work.
It isn’t.
Your guilt cannot improve the sacrifice of Jesus because that sacrifice was sufficient.
Feeling bad about hurting someone or behaving in a way you know is not fitting for you can lead you to make things right. That’s healthy. That’s maturing. That’s renewing your mind to the truth of what Jesus has done and what you really want. But condemning yourself doesn’t repay God, remove your sins, or increase the value of Jesus’ blood.
The Son of God does not need your help being the propitiation.
Jesus never asked you to suffer alongside Him until God was finally satisfied. The only way you could come up with such a notion is if certain Bible passages are ripped out of the proper context. Jesus suffered for you because you could never satisfy your sin debt yourself.
Peter said, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
The Just suffered for the unjust. The suffering is complete.
Jesus did not suffer once in order to give you the opportunity to finish the process. He brought you to God. You trusted Him, and there is now no condemnation for you because you’re in Him (see Romans 8:1). If He’s not condemning you, don’t condemn yourself.
THE FATHER IS COMPLETELY SATISFIED WITH THE WORK OF JESUS
You will never find lasting peace by trying to become satisfied with what you do and don’t do. If you inspect your actions and attitudes closely enough, you will always find something you could have done better.
You could have expressed more patience or generosity. You could have prayed longer, studied harder, reacted differently, or kept the promise you made. There will always be another reason to examine your choices and wonder if you’ve finally done enough.
Propitiation, however, redirects your attention away from your performance and back to Jesus.
As you do, your mindset shifts from Am I satisfied with what I’ve done? to The Father is satisfied with what Jesus has done. So He’s satisfied with me too. Thank you, Jesus.
When your head shifts from what you do to what Jesus has done, your heart follows, moving you toward deep gratitude.
God doesn’t accept you because He’s impressed by your religious performance. He accepted you because you’re literally in the One whose sacrifice completely satisfied Him. The work of Jesus is enough.
You do not need to spend another day attempting to satisfy a Father who has already been satisfied by His Son. You do not need to add guilt, promises, suffering, or religious achievements to what happened on the Cross.
So stop offering what He is not asking you to provide.
Rest. Trust. The Propitiation is sufficient.
This devotional is from an upcoming book! Check out Matt’s other bestselling books here!