But it was after our Lord’s resurrection that the sacrificial and propitiatory character of his death was most fully revealed.  We have seen the view taken of it in the epistle to the Hebrews.  With this the other writers of the New Testament are in harmony.  Jesus Christ is the great sufferer foretold in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, who “was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities:  the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed;” upon whom the Lord “laid the iniquity of us all;” who was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth; whose soul God made “an offering for sin;” who “was numbered with the transgressors,” and “bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” 1 Pet. 2:24, 25; Acts 8:32-35; Mark 15:28; Luke 22:37.  He “hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18); He has redeemed us to God by his blood (Rev. 5:9); has “loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev. 1:5); and his redeemed “have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14).

To recite all the declarations of the apostle Paul on this great theme would be a superfluous work.  It is not through Christ’s example or teachings, but through his blood that we have “redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  Ephes. 1:7.  “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13), words which teach as explicitly as human language can, that Christ has delivered us from the penalty of the divine law, which is its curse, by bearing the curse in our behalf.  This he did when he was hanged on the tree.  His death on the cross was, then, vicarious, a death in our stead; and propitiatory, for in view of it God releases us from the curse of the law.  This is what is meant by a propitiatory sacrifice.  Finally, as if to cut off all ground for the assertion that the efficacy of Christ’s death lies wholly in its moral influence upon the human heart—­its humbling, softening, and winning power—­the apostle teaches that God has set forth Christ Jesus as a propitiation through faith in his blood for a manifestation of his righteousness, “that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”  Rom. 3:25, 26.

    Every word of this weighty passage deserves serious
    consideration.  We give by the side of the English version
    another translation, intended to be somewhat more literal: 

Whom God hath set forth to Whom God hath set forth, a be a propitiation, through propitiation, through faith, faith in his blood, to declare in his blood, for the his righteousness for the manifestation of his passing over [marginal righteousness in respect to rendering] of sins that are the overlooking of sins that past, through the