The idea of propitiation, taken from the shadows of the ceremonial law, is to find its truth, and true fulfilment, in the death of Christ; and in the death of Christ (and that alone) because it is that wherein God's righteousness is vindicated, and God's law established, while yet the sinner is justified in the sight of the righteous and holy God. In the Epistle to the Romans the Apostle is dealing, not with the ceremonial, but with the moral law, and he shows that the death of Christ was in order to this: that God might be just, and yet the justifier of him, that is by the faith of Christ; in other words, that God might justly justify those whom His own holy law had justly condemned with a judgment according to truth, and, therefore, could not justify.

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