An act by which satisfaction is made for a crime and the liability to punishment for it is cancelled. It supposes penitence and faith on the sinner's part. Among the Jews, expiation was effected by a divinely appointed and typical system of sacrifices, all pointing to Christ. The New Testament shows Him to be the true sin-offering for mankind, "the Lamb of God," "our Passover," offering "his own blood," and putting away "sin by the sacrifice of himself," Joh 1:29; 1Co 5:7; Eph 1:7; Heb 9:26.

THE DAY OF EXPIATION, OR ATONEMENT, was a yearly solemnity, observed with rest and fasting on the tenth day of Tisri, five days before the feast of tabernacles, Le 23:7; 25:9. The ceremonies of this all-important day are minutely described in Le 16. On this day alone the high priest entered the Most Holy Place, Heb 9:7; but the various rites of the day required him to enter several times. First with the golden censer and a vessel filled with incense. Then with the blood of the bullock, which he had offered for his own sins and those of all the priests, in which he dipped his finger, and sprinkled towards the veil of the tabernacle eight times; and having mixed it with the blood of the bullock, he sprinkled again towards horns of the altar of incense seven times, and once above it towards the east; after which, having again left the sanctuary and taken with him the basins of blood, he poured out the whole on the floor of the altar of burnt-offering. The fourth time he entered to bring out the censer and vessel of incense; and having returned, he washed his hands and performed the other services of the day. The ceremony of the scapegoat also took place on this day. Two goats were set apart, one of which was sacrificed to the Lord, while the other, called the azazel or scapegoat, which was determined by lot to be set at liberty, was sent into the desert burdened with the sins of the people. All these solemn rites pointed to Christ, and in every age there were many believers who had spiritual discernment of their sacred meaning, Heb 9-11. They looked unto Him whom they had pierced, and mourned. As this day of expiation was the great fast day of the Jewish church, so godly sorrow for sin characterizes the Christian's looking unto the Lamb of God, and "the rapture of pardon" is mingled with "penitent tears."

Guilt is said to be expiated when it is visited with punishment falling on a substitute. Expiation is made for our sins when they are punished not in ourselves but in another who consents to stand in our room. It is that by which reconciliation is effected. Sin is thus said to be "covered" by vicarious satisfaction.

The cover or lid of the ark is termed in the LXX. hilasterion, that which covered or shut out the claims and demands of the law against the sins of God's people, whereby he became "propitious" to them.

The idea of vicarious expiation runs through the whole Old Testament system of sacrifices. (See Propitiation.)

See ATONEMENT.

Expiation.

[SACRIFICE]

See Sacrifice

EXPIATION, a religious act, by which satisfaction or atonement is made for the commission of some crime, the guilt done away, and the obligation to punishment, cancelled. The chief methods of expiation among the Jews were by sacrifices; and it is important always to recollect that the Levitical sacrifices were of an expiatory character; because as among the Jews sacrifices were unquestionably of divine original, and as the terms taken from them are found applied so frequently to Christ and to his sufferings in the New Testament, they serve to explain that peculiarity under which the Apostles regarded the death of Christ, and afford additional proof that it was considered by them as a sacrifice of expiation, as the grand universal sin-offering for the whole world. For our Lord is announced by John as "the Lamb of God;" and that not with reference to meekness or any other moral virtue; but with an accompanying phrase, which would communicate to a Jew the full sacrificial sense of the term employed, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." He is called "our Passover, sacrificed for us." He is said to have given "himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savour." As a priest, it was necessary "he should have somewhat to offer;" and he offered "himself," "his own blood," to which is ascribed the washing away of sin, and our eternal redemption. He is declared to have "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," to have "by himself purged our sins," to have "sanctified the people by his own blood," to have "offered to God one sacrifice for sins." Add to these, and to innumerable other similar expressions and allusions, the argument of the Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which, by proving at length, that the sacrifice of Christ was superior in efficacy to the sacrifices of the law, he most unequivocally assumes, that the death of Christ was a sacrifice and sin-offering; for without that it would no more have been capable of comparison with the sacrifices of the law, than the death of John the Baptist, St. Stephen, or St. James, all martyrs and sufferers for the truth, who had recently sealed their testimony with their blood. This very comparison, we may affirm, is utterly unaccountable and absurd on any hypothesis which denies the sacrifice of Christ; for what relation could his death have to the Levitical immolations and offerings, if it had no sacrificial character? Nothing could, in fact, be more misleading, and even absurd, than to apply those terms which, both among Jews and Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes and means of atonement and piacular propitiation, if the Apostles and Christ himself did not intend to represent his death strictly as an expiation for sin: