4. Fourth and further yet, the Bible teaches that _Jesus Christ died as a propitiation for our sins_. God the Father gave Christ the Son to be a propitiation by His blood. That is to say that _Jesus Christ, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which God's holy wrath at sin is appeased_. We read in 1 John 4:10, +"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."+ And we read in Rom. 3:25, 26, +"Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in His blood, to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; (26) for the showing, I say, of His righteousness at this present season: that He might Himself be just, and the justifier of Him that hath faith in Jesus."+ The meaning of these words also is as plain as day. The two Greek words in these two passages are not exactly the same words (_hilasmos_ and _hilasterion_) but are from the same root. The word used in 1 John 4:10 is _hilasmos_ and the word used in Rom. 3:25 is _hilasterion_. The definition given of the first in Thayer's Dictionary of New Testament Greek, the standard work, is "a means of appeasing." The definition given in the same lexicon of the second word is "an expiatory sacrifice." So the thought that is in both passages is that the death of Jesus Christ was a "propitiation," "an expiatory sacrifice," the "means of appeasing" God's holy wrath at sin, or in other words, that _Jesus, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which the wrath of God against us as sinners is appeased_. God's holiness and consequent hatred of sin, like every other attribute of His character, is real and must manifest itself. His wrath at sin must strike somewhere, either on the sinner himself or upon a lawful substitute. It struck upon Jesus Christ, a lawful substitute. As we read in Isa. 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah _hath laid on Him_ the iniquity of us all." The word translated "hath laid," according to the margin of the Revised Version, means literally, "hath made to _light_." More literally still it means, "hath made to _strike_." Reading it this way, what God says is, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah _hath made to strike on him_ (i.e., on the Lord Jesus) _the iniquity of us all_." And in the eighth verse of the same chapter we are taught that "the stroke due" to others fell upon Him, and He was consequently "cut off out of the land of the living." The death of Jesus Christ has its first cause in the demands of God's holiness. This is the Bible doctrine versus the Unitarian and Christian Science doctrine of atonement. The doctrine is often misrepresented and caricatured as being that "God, a holy first person, took the sins of man, the guilty second person, and put them on Jesus Christ, an innocent third person," and it is objected that this would not be just. No; this would not be just, and it is not for a moment the doctrine of the Bible, for the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus Christ was not "a third person," but was Himself God, and that He was Himself man, so He is not a third person at all, but both the first person and the second person, and the doctrine is that God Himself, the offended first person, substitutes His atoning action whereby He expresses His hatred against sin, for His punitive action whereby He would express the same thing; that God, instead of visiting the sins of the sinner upon the sinner, takes the punishment upon Himself. This certainly is something more than just, it is wondrous love.
5. Further yet, the Bible teaches us that _Jesus Christ died to redeem us from the curse of the law by bearing that curse Himself_. We read in Gal. 3:10, +"As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law, to do them."+ So then, every one of us is under the curse of the broken law, for not one of us has continued +"in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them."+ But we read in the 13th verse, +"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us+ (literally, _in our behalf_): +for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."+ _By His death by crucifixion He redeemed us from the curse which we deserved by taking that curse upon Himself._ This certainly is "an atonement of blood and recompense."