A Propitiation. Romans 3:25 God is justifiably angry at sinners who have chosen to rebel against Him, thereby cutting themselves off from Him and His power to give them abundant life. However, God Himself declared the death of Christ on our behalf to be a sufficient propitiation for our sins that will satisfy His justice. Before Christ came, He left sin unpunished in view of the coming sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Old Testament believers looked forward to “The Lamb of God that bears away the sin of the world.”
After hundreds, even thousands of years of not punishing human sin but covering it with the blood of atonement, God now acts to permanently make the cleansing of all guilt possible. He is legally and righteously able to justify us freely by His grace by means of the redeeming work of Christ. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross did not just cover over sin temporarily as the sacrifices of the Old Testament did, but as the propitiation for our sins, the just holy wrath of God has now been satisfied by the death of His Son, and the blood He shed to deal once and forever with sin.
It is not just that God is merciful and accepts people at the mercy-seat, but the blood has been shed on behalf of sinners, and God can be propitious toward us because of the proof of sin's price being paid once and for all. It never has to be done again. Christ entered the presence of God with His own blood, and we come into God's presence as those who are accepted because He died for me. The righteousness of God is not compromised in any way. All those years of the past when God did forebear to carry out judgment, there were the sacrifices made that pointed the sinners of the past to the coming Redeemer who would turn the wrath of God aside. His death on the cross was for the remission, the passing over, of sins done from Adam to the cross. Adam and Eve had the skin coats of sinless animals whose blood was shed so that Adam and Eve could live. Abel also brought his sacrifice at the appointed time. Through the generations and in all cultures and nations, people have been trying to propitiate for their own sins in their own way. But the fact is, "without the shedding of blood, there is no remission."
God left sin unpunished in the past because He knew that "in the fullness of time," He would send His Son to put away sin "by the sacrifice of Himself." There was no animal sacrifice that could put away sin. That could only cover it. No human being could put away our sins because "death has passed upon all men, for all have sinned." So, God demonstrated His righteousness regarding all sins, past, present, and future, when Christ Jesus provided the needed redemption. He could do this because of His perfection as a man. He was one of our own kind and yet perfectly sinless. God could look upon Him with favor and satisfaction that here was One who could deal with God's justice on account of sin. The Righteous, Holy God had to be just, so He needed the perfections of the Lord Jesus Christ to be a substitute for past sins. He is also the propitiation (turning aside righteous wrath and judgment) for us today.