Romans 3:25 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.’ The elect are saved not only because Christ died for them, but because the Father willed it so. The Scripture never teaches a reluctant Father being persuaded by his Son to save lost souls. What does the word propitiation mean? A propitiation is a wrath-dispensing sacrifice, a wrath-abolishing sacrifice, a wrath-removing sacrifice. Christ's sacrifice on Calvary removes the wrath, the indignation of God. God in his holy character cannot abide sin. God's heart is moved at your plight. He created you. He made you exactly as you are, apart from your sin. He gave you your abilities and your gifts. He fashioned you, we may say reverently, with loving care. But look at you, look at me: sinners before him, dreadful sinners, every one of us – ‘being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder’ and all the other things mentioned (Romans 1:29). His very being, the whole nature of God, is filled with indignation against sin. He is holy and he hates it. When Christ went to Calvary, he had to bear my unrighteousness and yours, if you trusted in him. He had to bear your wickedness, yours and my covetousness, yours and my maliciousness, envy, deceit, malignity, whispering, backbiting, and boasting.’ The holy one had to bear the guilt and the stench of our sin. What love ever brought him from heaven? What love ever led the Son of God to become a man, to go through all that in order to redeem us? He becomes whom God has set forth to be a propitiation, a wrath-consuming sacrifice. May we say it in this way? We take this from the epic poem by E. H. Bickersteth in Victorian times: God, the Father, veiled his face and poured out upon his beloved Son his punishment for all those things, and his wrath and indignation against sin was borne by our Saviour. What love, what a price to pay. ‘Whom God has set forth to be a [wrath-consuming sacrifice] through faith, trust in him, and his shed blood.