In his book about the wonderful grace of God, Good News for Bad People, Roy Hession proposes that there are three classes of people:

1. “The bad who do not know they are bad. The great majority of us, whether we are in churches or out of them, do not regard ourselves as bad. Whatever our lifestyle or conduct, we have found some way to justify ourselves. . . . The fact that he may be religious only reinforces his good opinion of himself.”

2. “Bad people who are trying to be good. Sincere as their trying to be good may be, whatever direction their efforts may lie, it is vain for such [people to hope that it is going to improve their relationship with God at all, or that it will greatly change their personal experience.”

3. “The third class is composed of the group in whom the Holy Spirit has done a melting work, the bad humbly confessing to God that they are bad and not pleading any extenuating circumstances. As far as they are concerned, there is only one person at the bar before God and that is themselves. When they take that stand they immediately become candidates for the good news Jesus has for them and for the grace that is greater than all their sin. For them, Jesus is the end of their trying and the beginning of all their finding.”

Much of today’s evangelism, with all of the pop-psychology that is now part and parcel of it’s presentation either ignores the real problem of sin, or speaks of sin as if it’s some non-personal entity that merely separates us from God. Jesus died to remove the gulf or cloud between fallen man and God (expiation) rather than died in our place (propitiation).

I would offer the question – Which is it, expiation, propitiation, or are there elements of both to be found in scripture?