¹⁷ Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Fifth in the list of reasons Christ became incarnate (and died) was so that He could “make propitiation.” The logical sequence involves three steps: 1) Christ became like us. 2) So that He could become our priest. 3) So that as our priest He was able to make propitiation for our sins.

First, God was compelled by His own purposes; it was His divine prerogative to make the requirement for effective propitiation for sins that the priest had to be like the people. A priest is the go-between, standing between God and us.

So it follows that the priest must be like us in order to understand us as we are, so that his representation is accurate and in our best interests. The priest is not to be a harsh individual with judgmental demands. But being someone like us, he would understand us and sympathize with us. He would be merciful toward us. He would also be faithful to us, for he would be representing his own. He knows God so that our interests are presented in the way that is faithful to our real needs and in a way that is acceptable to God. And in particular, our interests have to do with how we can become right with God.

What is the acceptable way to become right with God? There needs to be a propitiation of God for our sins. The idea of propitiation is at the heart of turning our backs to the Law and embracing Christ. The Law has to do with getting right with God, because at the heart of the matter we are not right with Him and He is angry with us. No matter how hard we try to keep the Law, we not only cannot successfully keep it all, but we cannot even make up for the Law that we fail to keep. To attempt living by the Law is like using a red-hot poker to heal a burn in our flesh. It only makes things worse. Propitiation has to do with satisfying God’s anger; it is what makes up for our breaking the law.

Propitiation does not simply mean that God’s anger is expiated, in the sense of His just calming down and no longer making a big deal about our sin. Rather, propitiation is a complete satisfaction of God’s anger. He didn’t just fly off the handle and had to be appeased. He was justifiably angry and could not ignore it without contradicting His own holiness. But Christ provided propitiation, or complete satisfaction for our sins, when God’s wrath was poured out on Christ at the cross. This neither minimizes our sin nor diminishes His holiness. We are no longer under His wrath. Christ is our propitiation! God is satisfied.