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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - 1 John 2:2 - 2:2
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And He (καὶ αὐτὸς)
The He is emphatic: that same Jesus: He himself.
The propitiation (ἱλασμός)
Only here and 1Jo 4:10. From ἱλάσκομαι to appease, to conciliate to one's self, which occurs Luk 18:13; Heb 2:17. The noun means originally an appeasing or propitiating, and passes, through Alexandrine usage, into the sense of the means of appeasing, as here. The construction is to be particularly noted; for, in the matter of (περί) our sins; the genitive case of that for which propitiation is made. In Heb 2:17, the accusative case, also of the sins to be propitiated. In classical usage, on the other hand, the habitual construction is the accusative (direct objective case), of the person propitiated. So in Homer, of the gods. Θεὸν ἱλάσκεσθαι is to make a God propitious to one. See “Iliad,” i., 386, 472. Of men whom one wishes to conciliate by divine honors after death. So Herodotus, of Philip of Crotona. “His beauty gained him honors at the hands of the Egestaeans which they never accorded to any one else; for they raised a hero-temple over his grave, and they still propitiate him (αὐτὸν ἱλάσκονται) with sacrifices” (v., 47). Again, “The Parians, having propitiated Themistocles (Θεμιστοκλέα ἱλασάμενοι) with gifts, escaped the visits of the army” (viii., 112). The change from this construction shows, to quote Canon Westcott, “that the scriptural conception of the verb is not that of appeasing one who is angry, with a personal feeling, against the offender; but of altering the character of that which, from without, occasions a necessary alienation, and interposes an inevitable obstacle to fellowship. Such phrases as 'propitiating God,' and God 'being reconciled' are foreign to the language of the New Testament. Man is reconciled (2Co 5:18 sqq.; Rom 5:10 sq.). There is a propitiation in the matter of the sin or of the sinner.”
For the sins of the whole world (περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου)
The sins of (A. V., italicized) should be omitted; as in Revelation, for the whole world. Compare 1Jo 4:14; Joh 4:42; Joh 7:32. “The propitiation is as wide as the sin” (Bengel). If men do not experience its benefit, the fault is not in its efficacy. Düsterdieck (cited by Huther) says, “The propitiation has its real efficacy for the whole world; to believers it brings life, to unbelievers death.” Luther: “It is a patent fact that thou too art a part of the whole world; so that thine heart cannot deceive itself, and think, the Lord died for Peter and Paul, but not for me.” On κόσμου see on Joh 1:9.