“God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed” (Romans 3:25 NET).
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul the Apostle made a connection between the mercy seat of the Old Covenant and Jesus’ New Covenant work of atonement as the propitiation for human sin. One commentary offers a lengthy and detailed explanation that serves to illustrate that connection…
“One of the most unique types in the Old Testament is the mercy seat. This was the lid on the ark of the covenant and was covered with gold. At each end was a golden cherub, whose wings stretched toward the center of the lid. The ark was the meeting place between God and man. It contained the tablets of the Mosaic law (Ex 25:16–22). Therefore, the mercy seat was that which covered the law of God.
When the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament was made into Greek, which is called the Septuagint, the Greek word chosen to translate ‘mercy seat’ (Heb kaphorah) was hilasterion which means ‘the place of propitiation.’ To propitiate means to appease an offended party and the hilasterion (mercy seat) was the place where, by blood, the sins of Israel were atoned, the penalty paid, and wrath of God (the offended party) was appeased.
It is certainly no coincidence that the word Paul uses here to describe Jesus Christ is the same word used for ‘mercy seat,’ the hilasterion. Jesus Christ is our mercy seat. He is the person by whom our sins were atoned, our penalty paid, and the offended party appeased.” (1)
In addition to what we read here, three other New Testament passages refer to Jesus’ propitiation for our sins: Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; and 1 John 4:10. This act of propitiation is distinctly personal, for involves God’s righteous and holy wrath against humanity’s sinful attitudes and behaviors. Romans chapter one discussed God’s wrath and characterized it as a violent, passionate response to the presence of sin and evil. That response is not without justification, as we saw earlier in our study of Romans 3:10-18.
Christ thus propitiates God’s wrath through His substitutionary work on the cross. In that act of propitiation, He endured the divine wrath that should have been directed toward sinful humanity and satisfied the demands of God’s justice on our behalf. In doing so, God showed that “…he was being entirely fair, even though he did not punish those who sinned in former times. For he was looking forward to the time when Christ would come and take away those sins” (Romans 3:25 TLB).
(1) Edward E. Hindson and Woodrow Michael Kroll, eds., KJV Bible Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 2222.