Understanding of this ONE WORD forever refutes the false teaching that Christ died for every single person. That Christ died for all men is true, but the “all men” He died for were all believers. All of that group.
1 John 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loves us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins.
God is immutably just and His moral excellence demands punishment or expiation for sin.
( to expiate a sin is to make atonement for, reconciling the offender to God)
Satisfaction of God’s justice is necessary if sin is to be forgiven.
Christ was set forth as the propitiation in order that God might be just in justifying the ungodly. If sin could be pardoned without satisfaction “then Christ died in vain” (Galatians 2:21)
No other propitiation is needed and no other is possible.
Expiation and propitiation go together.
The sinner is expiated by the atonement, and God’s justice is propitiated.
Romans 3:25 (Jesus Christ) whom God displayed publicly as
a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed v26 that He might be just AND the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Hebrews 2:17 Therefor He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
PROPITIATION for the sins of the people.
1 John 2:2 and He Himself is the
propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world (read 1 John 2: 1-10 for the fullness of the text)
John’s use of the wider sense of ‘world’ extends the propitiation into the future for God’s people in all generations.
If Christ was the propitiation for EVERY man, then every man is justified and is not under wrath, for this is the true meaning of propitiation: that Christ reconciled man to God by His blood, and the reconciled man is not under judgment but is saved from wrath
example: when the priests of the OT made sacrifice (propitiation) for the people, it was for a PARTICULAR people of a particular group, and not for ALL people.