6.10.26 – The Mercy Seat (Hilasterion), Part 1

 Over the past eleven weeks, I have done my best to make the case about Jesus, blood, sacrifice—all of it. So now, without a doubt, every question answered, right? Lol, not quite. The purpose of continuing these studies is that the topic is limitless, and my understanding is limited. Yes, we have gained some insight. Some excitement may have been challenged, and maybe even relieved at some point. Hopefully, you have gained a greater understanding—bigger than what you might have inherited.

But then, at some point, you share this with someone. You try to communicate, and within about five seconds, they are going to open their Bible and point to a verse. At the top of that list, I think, is probably Romans 3:25. There are a handful of verses that people treat this way. Someone opens the Bible and says, "Heresy. It is right here. This is the one that says everything is wrong about what you believe." This is one verse. We are going to tackle this week. We will look at something a little more through the book of Romans. I know it does not seem like it can be done, but it will. Today, I am giving you Romans 3:25.

There is a reason, you will say. Even with the translations that I usually trust, there is some confusion. Look at Romans 3:24–25: "They are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith." If you set out to prove that Jesus died as a sacrifice to satisfy the anger of God, Romans 3:25 is certainly a good one to reach for—the smoking gun, if you will.

So let us look at it. I will start with a problem. Here in Romans 3:25, depending on which Bible you are looking at, you can probably find a different translation in each one. The Christian Standard Bible presents this as "Christ as a sacrifice of atonement." The New Living Translation says "as a sacrifice for sin." What does the King James say? "Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith." Who knows what a propitiation is? It is a pretty fundamental idea in Christian thought: that He was put forth as a propitiation. What does that mean? It means appeasement. It means an offering made to turn away the anger of a god. If that is the right word, then Jesus is the thing offered up. That is why this verse becomes the antidote, some would say, to all false teaching you have received for the last eleven weeks. Is that true?

There is a Greek word in there, and the various translations matter because they pack a lot of different meanings into it. Say it with me: hilasterion. Translations vary so widely because that one word—most of them make the same mistake with it. They turn it toward a victim and appeasement. But as usual, the context of the audience and the author's background opens up ways to read the word beyond just "propitiation." That is why this word hilasterion is so important to understand.

Does anyone ever read the Net Bible? It is actually pretty good. The Net Bible offers this translation: "God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat, accessible through faith." That is quite different from the rest. So we go back to the source. What is the source? When the Scriptures were put into Greek two or three centuries before Paul, the translator needed a word for a specific object: the gold cover that sat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. In Hebrew, it is called the kapporet. The Greek word they used to translate it was hilasterion. Twenty-one times that word appears in the first five books of the Greek Bible. Every single time, it means the same thing: the mercy seat, the covering—pure gold, in the most sacred room in the entire cosmos. Two cherubim on top, wings stretched toward each other, faces downward. It is a beautiful thing. The space between them—is that empty space? No. How do we know? Because of what God said about it.

So let us talk about the kapporet, the ark cover, the mercy seat, for a moment. In Exodus 25: "There I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the kapporet, from between the two cherubim." This is what we call the mercy seat. That is an address. That is the location—of all the square footage in God's creation, He brings His presence to that one spot. This seat, where heaven and earth come together, is a meeting point. Tuck that thought away. We met with the importance of the meeting place in our study of Isaiah 53. Hold onto that for a second—it is going to come up again. But for now, the immediate point: hilasterion is a meeting place. Nothing is killed on the mercy seat. The altar is outside in the courtyard, where the animals are slaughtered. The mercy seat is deep inside, past the veil. Once a year, the high priest carries in blood that was shed somewhere else. He brings it into the room and puts it on the mercy seat, meeting with God.

So when Paul says "whom God put forward as a hilasterion by his blood," he is not pointing to the place where the victim dies. He is pointing past the veil, to the room where the blood arrives, and where God meets His people. So when someone hears "by his blood" and says "it is a sacrifice of death to satisfy God," that is backwards geography. The blood on the mercy seat was never punishment. The blood on the mercy seat is doing something else: it cleanses, it covers. It carries life into the presence of God, so the meeting can happen at all. The mercy seat has nothing to do with death. The function of the mercy seat was never the moment of dying, but life carried afterward, past the veil into God's presence. And who carries it? The resurrected one, the living one. The crucifixion was the faithful obedience that qualified Him, and the resurrection sent Him—carrying His indestructible life—into the presence of the Father, opening the way. We will take it further next week with Hebrews. For today: blood at the mercy seat is life carried in, not death paid out.

Now, some say that the cross is the mercy seat. Have you ever heard this? That is where heaven and earth came together—at the cross of Jesus Christ. But it is not. The cross is where the world's violence fell on Jesus and He was murdered. It is where He died. The mercy seat is where life is carried in. In Paul's mind, Jesus functions as hilasterion—not the wood He was nailed to, but He Himself is the mercy seat. The mercy seat is the place where life met death and overcame it. That is why He became the Way.

And who set the whole thing up? We read Exodus again to know that God did. God designed it. God knows where to set it. God said, "I am going to meet with you there." Israel did not build the mercy seat to try to pacify God. God gave it so that He could come down. We see this as a throne-outward kind of movement. That is one meaning of this word, and it is very strong—the blood, the grammar, all of it. Does that not make more sense than propitiation? More sense than a sacrifice to satisfy anger? Jesus as the place where God and humanity meet—that is powerful. It does not have anything to do with wrath. It has everything to do with life.

But there is a problem. Paul is writing to believers in Rome. Most of them are not Jewish—they are Gentiles. Most never set foot in the Temple in Jerusalem. So when a Roman believer hears the letter read aloud, where it says Jesus is the hilasterion, would they understand "mercy seat" and "holy place"? My guess is probably not. So why did Paul use it in Romans? Because it has a second meaning—one that a Roman would have very quickly known.

That is for tomorrow :-) 

Shalom,
Alan