Christ died for the ungodly, that is, Jesus of Nazareth suffered all the divine wrath of God for His enemies. This story illustrates the love of Christ: A young man once gave his love to a vicious woman who demanded of him as proof of his love, that he bring to her his mother's heart to feed her dog. The young man took a knife, slew his mother, and cut out her heart. As he was running back to the evil woman, the young man stumbled and fell, and his mother's heart flew from his grasp. As it rolled on the ground, that mother's heart was heard to cry in a still, small voice, "Are you hurt, my child, are you hurt at all?" Christ died for ungodly. In this story, your sin is the evil woman, and the heart of the mother is the heart of Christ. Jesus cried from the Cross of Calvary, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"
Propitiation – the act of appeasing wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the atoning sacrifice of Christ Jesus offered to God to assuage God wrath toward sinners. Christ became our Substitute and bore our sin, assumed our guilt, and covered it and took it away by the punishment which He endured. Christ’s Blood and Righteousness makes God just and the Justifier of the ungodly. Jesus Christ was smitten of God, bruised by the Lord, He received God’s fist of wrath, so we could receive God’s kiss of mercy, forgiveness, and pardon.
Nothing sinful or evil can ever exist in God's presence. God is absolute Goodness. God cannot overlook, condone, or excuse sin as if it never happened. He loves us, but His love does not make Him morally lax. If we will simply trust in Jesus, we will never have to bear the penalty due to our sins (I Peter 2:24). We can be freely acquitted by Jesus bloody, atoning Sacrifice.
Christ Jesus is God's sacrifice of Atonement. God is justifiably angry at sinners like you and me for sinning against His Law and Grace (by rejecting His Son). They have rebelled against HIm and cut themselves off from His life-giving power. God declares Christ's death as the appropriate, designated sacrifice for our sin. He stands in our place, having paid the penalty of death for our sin, and Jesus completely satisfies God's holy demands. Christ's sacrifice brings pardon, deliverance, and freedom to doomed and miserable sinners under the wrath of God. The price of sin is death and Jesus paid the price in full with His own life's blood. Christ Jesus stands before God as our Mediator because His death satisfied the wrath of God against sin and paid the death penalty for our sin. He both satisfied God's holy requirement and removes our sin. In Christ, we are forgiven and cleansed.
There is a forgotten word in the English vocabulary today: it is Propitiation. Propitiation means the act of appeasing God's wrath. The reason propitiation is nearly forgotten, is simply because man today in the 21st century has forgotten that God is holy and just, that He hates sin, and that He will judge all sinners in righteousness. No sinner by his own works or religion can satisfy God's holy requirement - absolute sinless perfection. The Bible states clearly that the 'wrath of God' abides on all sinners that have not placed their 'trust' in the Lord Jesus Christ's blood and righteousness to save them from the wrath of God.
Propitiation is a word that means, simply, "satisfaction". It refers specifically to a sacrifice that endures the full and final demands of God's wrath and holiness. The Lord Jesus Christ's sinless blood Sacrifice on Calvary's Cross satisfied the wrath of God. He alone was the spotless Lamb of God. You must receive Christ Himself and trust His Blood and Righteousness in order to go to Heaven when you die. God requires a propitiation for every man to be saved, so God in infinite love became a human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He bore all the sin of mankind on the Cross, and became the Propitiation for the whole world by suffering the wrath of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ's sinless and substitutionary death satisfied the demands of the LAW which God Himself gave men to keep. All men are sinners and under the wrath of God because they have broken the law of God (by lies, lusts, selfishness, gossip, thefts...) and rejected the Savior of men - the Lord Jesus. No sinner is sinless. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. The glory of God is absolute Holiness.
Only one man who lived here on earth was Sinless, and that was Jesus Christ the Lord. All God requires of man to have eternal life is to be sinless. To satisfy this demand for righteousness, Jesus Christ came to earth and lived a sinless life and suffered a sinless death and then He proved His sinlessness by not staying dead. Christ Jesus rose from the dead victoriously and is alive right now. See Rom 1:3-4; Acts 17:30-31. In the process, Jesus Christ makes a Payment for sins (Gal 3:13; I Pet 2:24; Isa 53:1-8) called a "ransom" (I Tim 2:6; Mt 20:28) It meets the requirements of demands of the perfect holiness of God. II Cor 5:11;Lev 26:16; Job 6:4; Gen 35:5; Ezek 32:32; Deut 4:34; Jer 32:31; Isa 10:33; Jer 17:17.
Perfect love is this: a Sinless Being (the Crucified Creator) loving you (a sinner) enough to die for your sins. Eternal life can only come from Eternal Blood - God's blood that ran through the God-man's veins. The life of the flesh is in the blood and Christ had eternal life residing in His flesh (I John 5:20). The blood that was pounding though Christ's arteries and veins was eternal blood, that was God's blood. A medical doctor, Luke the apostle, called it God's blood when he wrote Acts 20:28. It was JEHOVAH GOD who showed up "in the flesh" in Bethlehem's manger. The 'wise' men bowed down and worshipped JEHOVAH GOD who manifested Himself in human flesh to save your guilty soul by shedding His blood to pay for your sins (Matt 2:11; I Tim 3:16; Matt 1:23).
