StrongerBible

hilasmos

ἱλασμός

GreekG2434“atoning sacrifice, propitiation, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Jn 2:21Jn 4:10
Word studyResearch-gradehi-la-SMOSnoun

What hilasmos means

atoning sacrifice: the God-provided means by which sin is dealt with and the judgment it deserves is turned aside

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested

This word names the atoning sacrifice itself, the provision that deals with sin and sets things right. In the wider Greek world before the New Testament, the family of words it belongs to meant winning back the favor of an angry god or ruler with a gift. The Greek Old Testament reshaped it: there God takes the initiative, and the word can even name God's own forgiveness. Both times it appears in the New Testament, in the same short letter, it describes not a ritual but a person: Jesus himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The phrase John uses, "the atoning sacrifice for our sins," deliberately echoes the sacrifice-for-sin language of the Old Testament law, where an offering was brought to cleanse guilt and restore a broken relationship. So the word points less to a feeling in God that has to be soothed and more to a concrete thing God supplies. Two close relatives fill out the picture: the verb ἱλάσκομαι, "to make atonement," and the noun ἱλαστήριον, the "mercy seat," the place in the tabernacle where atonement was made. Behind all of them stands the Hebrew verb כפר, "to make atonement."

The key to reading it rightly is the direction of the action. In this letter it is God who sends the Son as the atoning sacrifice, and he does it out of love; the sacrifice is not something people offer up to buy off a hostile God. Because sin does provoke real judgment, the act genuinely turns that judgment aside, but the whole movement begins in God's love rather than in human effort to appease him.

1Jn 2:21Jn 4:10

Disputed

What ἱλασμός denotes in 1 John: the turning aside of the divine judgment sin deserves (propitiation), the removal or cancellation of sin itself (expiation), or a fuller atoning-sacrifice sense that holds both dimensions together, with God as the source rather than the object of the action.

  • majorityAn atoning sacrifice that holds both dimensions together: sin is removed and the judgment it provokes is averted, with God himself the source of the act. The old propitiation/expiation binary is a false choice.; Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John (Pillar New Testament Commentary), 73-80; Stephen S. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (Word Biblical Commentary 51), 35-40; Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement (Hebrew Bible Monographs 2, 2005)
  • minorityExpiation: the cancellation and removal of sin, with the wrath-averting dimension excluded, since 1 John contains no wrath vocabulary and grounds the sending of the Son in divine love.; C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (1935), ch. 5; Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible 30), 217-222; John Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John (Sacra Pagina 18)
  • minorityPropitiation: the turning aside of God's wrath is central and cannot be removed from the word group, which never lost its propitiatory force in the first century.; Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (3rd ed. 1965), 144-213; Roger Nicole, "C. H. Dodd and the Doctrine of Propitiation," Westminster Theological Journal 17.2 (1955): 117-157; Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John (Baker Exegetical Commentary)
  • minoritySimple forgiveness or pardon, neither propitiation nor expiation, appealing to the Greek Old Testament of Psalm 129:4 and Daniel 9:9 where the word plainly means divine pardon.; Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John (New Testament Library, 2008)

What scholars say about hilasmos

ἱλασμός is a rare noun of action, twice in the New Testament (1 John 2:2; 4:10) and about nine times in the LXX, where it renders at least four Hebrew nouns spanning "atonement" (כִּפֻּרִים, Lev 25:9; Num 5:8), "sin-offering" (Ezek 44:27), and "forgiveness" (סְלִיחָה, Ps 129:4 LXX; Dan 9:9 Theod.). Classical and Hellenistic usage of the ἱλάσκομαι group (Homer, Plutarch, the confession inscriptions, Josephus, Philo) is uniformly propitiatory, denoting the appeasement of an offended deity. The modern debate began with C. H. Dodd (The Bible and the Greeks, 1935; Johannine Epistles, 1946), who argued that the LXX emptied the group of wrath-appeasement and gave it the sense "expiate, cancel sin," a reading that governed the RSV/NEB. Leon Morris (Apostolic Preaching of the Cross) and Roger Nicole (WTJ 17, 1955) rebutted Dodd, showing the LXX itself preserves wrath-aversion (Num 16; 25; Exod 32) and that no first-century reader could miss the propitiatory register. David Hill (Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings, 1967) and, after James Barr's methodological critique (Semantics of Biblical Language, 1961), a mediating consensus emerged: sin's removal and the averting of judgment are inseparable because sin evokes judgment. The כפר debate (Milgrom's "purge/decontaminate" vs. Levine's "ransom," synthesized by Sklar and Wenham) runs parallel. Daniel Bailey's Cambridge dissertation (Jesus as the Mercy Seat, 1999) reframed the cognate ἱλαστήριον as a concrete referent, though his conclusions concern that noun, not ἱλασμός. For 1 John specifically the decisive datum is the LXX sin-offering formula περὶ ἁμαρτίας behind "for our sins," together with the letter's own lack of wrath vocabulary and its grounding of the sending of the Son in divine love, which is why BDAG notes the unique feature relative to Greco-Roman usage is the initiative taken by God.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ἱλασμόςlexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. ἱλασμόςlexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domain 40lexicon
  • Friedrich Büchsel, "ἱλάσκομαι κτλ.," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 3, 300-323theological-dictionary
  • C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (1935), ch. 5monograph
  • Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (3rd rev. ed. 1965), 144-213monograph
  • Roger Nicole, "C. H. Dodd and the Doctrine of Propitiation," Westminster Theological Journal 17.2 (1955): 117-157article
  • David Hill, Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings (SNTS Monograph 5, Cambridge, 1967), 23-48monograph
  • Daniel P. Bailey, Jesus as the Mercy Seat (PhD diss., Cambridge, 1999); summary in Tyndale Bulletin 51.1 (2000): 155-158monograph
  • I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John (New International Commentary on the New Testament, 1978), 117-119, 212-219commentary
  • Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible 30, 1982), 217-222commentary
  • Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John (Pillar New Testament Commentary), 73-80commentary
  • Karen H. Jobes, 1, 2, and 3 John (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 2014)commentary
  • Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John (New Testament Library, 2008)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἱλασμός

accusative m s

ἱλασμὸν

1Jn 4:10

nominative m s

ἱλασμός

1Jn 2:2