Romans 3:25,26

‘Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God, for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season, that he might himself be just, and the justifier (reckoner as in the right) of him who has faith in Jesus.'

For God set Him forth as a propitiatory sacrifice (compare 1 John 2:2), appropriated through faith in His sacrificial death. The idea here is that something was required in order to satisfy God's antipathy to sin. Sin had to be punished. A price had to be paid. And it was because of this sacrificial death that God had been able righteously to pass over ‘sins done aforetime', the many sins of believers from the time of Adam. And it is also because of this sacrificial death that He is even now at this present time able to remain totally righteous while at the same time declaring as ‘in the right' the one who has faith in Jesus, even though he be ungodly (not in present behaviour and attitude but condemned as such because of his past life - Romans 4:5). As a consequence of this His antipathy to our sin is removed, because our sin has been transferred to Jesus Christ. God no longer counts anything against us. It is a sacrificial death that covers all men for all time when they come to believe in Him. He ‘perfects for ever those who are being sanctified' (Hebrews 10:14).

This offering of Christ as a propitiatory sacrifice is in order to ‘show God's righteousness'. It was necessary that He be seen as ‘just'. That is why He could not simply forgive without any necessity for the paying of a price. His righteousness and holiness must be displayed in what He did. And the question was, how could He be seen as ‘just' while reckoning as righteous the ungodly? The answer lay in the shedding of Christ's blood on our behalf. Because He took the sentence of death on Himself for us, being made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), bearing our sin (1 Peter 2:24), we who are ungodly and under sentence of death may go free. The justice of God is fully satisfied with what He has done. He can thus ‘account as righteous' the ungodly who believe in Him (Romans 4:5; Romans 5:7). So now those who are in Him can be ‘reckoned as righteous' because of their faith in Him, with His death being reckoned to them because they are now in Him (Galatians 2:20).