In the same way that Paul presents Jesus as their propitiation, he presents to the Colossians that Jesus is their expiation. On the Day of Atonement after the high priest had sacrificed the goat and sprinkled its blood on the mercy seat as Israel’s propitiation, he performed a ceremony with another goat:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness (Lev. 16:21-22).

Whereas the first goat paid for the sins of the people, the second goat actually removed those sins from the people. This cleansing from their sin is what we call expiation.

Paul reminds the Colossians that they were “doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). The Colossians are reminded of their “old self with its evil practice” (Col 3:9, NASB). They were a people that were marred by their sin, but Paul also reminds them of the expiation of Jesus. Jesus “has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (Col 1:22). Through the cross of Christ, their sins are “set aside” (Col 2:14), and they are presented to God as holy. This is only possible because Jesus acted as their expiation, cleansing them from the filth of their sin.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, it is clear that he wants them see that Jesus is their propitiation. Wayne Grudem defines propitiation as “a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.”[1] This is a concept that would have been familiar to Paul’s Jewish readers in Colossae. Every year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would offer a goat as a sacrifice for the sins of the people in order to deter the wrath of God.[2]

Paul clearly shows the Colossians that they were under the wrath of God because of their sin. Paul tells them to “put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:5-6). The earthly things that are in them, their sin, will lead to nothing more than the wrath of God. Wright clarifies:

Destruction, indeed, will be the result for those who disregard the warning: because of these, the wrath of God is coming. It is not the case that God happens to dislike this sort of behavior and so has decided as it were arbitrarily, to punish it. On the contrary. ‘The wrath of God’, it hardly needs saying, is not a malicious or capricious anger, but the necessary reaction of true holiness, justice and goodness to wickedness, exploitation and evil of every kind.[3]

Paul wants the Colossians to know that their sin will lead to the wrath of God. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t simply present the wrath of God. He also presents Jesus as their propitiation.

Paul tells them that God the Father is “making peace by the blood of [Jesus’] cross” (Col. 1:20). In the same way that a goat’s blood was offered on the Day of Atonement for the sins of Israel to hold back the wrath of God, it is that Jesus’ blood is offered on the Colossians part to bring peace with God. Unlike the goat’s blood though, Jesus’ sacrifice was done once and for all “by canceling the record of debt…nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). It is through the cross that Jesus becomes a propitiation for the Colossians taking the wrath of God upon himself.

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[1] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995), 1252.

[2] Lev. 16:8-9, 15

[3] Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 135.