"Conformed To God"

"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous: And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2: 1 & 2) The word for 'Propitiation' which was found in Romans 3:5 is 'Hilasterion', and it is equivalent to the word use here in 1 John 2:2, which is 'Hilasmos': It is the means of putting away sin and establishing righteousness. This word 'Hilasmos' is only found here in 1 John 2:2 and in 1 John 4:10. Remember, God is never presented as changing His mind toward the sinner, or the sin that estranged the sinner from Him. Man is never able to appease God with any type of offering, or by his works. Man is incapable of offering anything to appease God, because He is a Righteous God, and in order for Him to accept a sinful man, it was necessary for God, not man, to do something to deliver man from his sin. This is the reason, in 1 John 2:1, we find Jesus Christ presented as the Righteous One. It is Christ Himself, therefore, who becomes 'Hilasmos', the means which is acceptable to God to satisfy His righteousness or justice. In 1 John 2:2, the virtue of propitiation extends beyond the subjective experience of those who actually are made partakers of Grace; here, he presents the propitiation of Christ as vividly personal; where the Life of Christ, as well as His Death is involved, His person as well as His work. John refers not only to the atonement, but also to it's final achievement as a fact, "His Blood is cleansing us from all sin". It is more than a completed act; the propitiation abides as a living, present energy residing in the personality of Christ Himself. According to John, therefore, the propitiation is the cleansing from sin rather than merely the work of justification before God, or the acceptance of the sinner as if he had never sinned. Paul associates Christ's propitiation as more closely connected with the righteousness of the Law; in John, Love and propitiation become interchangeable realities necessary to one another, with one explaining the other; even lost in one another. John defines love by propitiation, and propitiation by love: "In this have we come to know what love is, that He for us laid down His life". When John speaks of God as Love, he refers to Him as the means of reconciliation of man to God. "Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that He Loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)