Bastardization
While seemingly an unseemly word, the meaning here is "the process of making something illegitimate; to lower in value or worth; to debase". This is exactly what the religious leaders of Jesus' day (and for most of the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew) had done to the Jewish faith. They had perverted the Law and the writings of the prophets to suit their own purposes. The system God had established through the patriarchs had completely broken down. We see Jesus' anger at this perversion in passages such as Matthew 21:12, when he overturned the money changers' tables at the Temple or in Matthew 23, when He called the scribes and pharisees "whitewashed graves" and "brood of snakes".
Something had to give. Or, rather, Someone had to give.
Propitiation
And His name shall be called "Immanuel", God-With-Us.
(Matt. 1:23)
But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8 NET)
I love words, in general, in case you have not figured that out. But, I especially love "propitiation", in the Greek "hilasmos". You won't find this word in the Pauline letters because it is only found twice in the New Testament. Both times, it is used by the apostle John, in his letter called 1 John (2:2 and 4:10).1 Basically, the word means "an offering to appease an angry God", and that offering is the spilled-out blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. A good synonym for "propitiation" would be "atonement".
and he himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the whole world.
1 John 2:2 (NET)
Previously, God had given mankind his Written Revelation and glimpses of Himself. In Jesus, the Godhead gave to us His physical revelation, God-With-Us, God-With-Skin-On.Reconciliation
God the Father, through God the Son Jesus Christ, made it right.
10For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? 11Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10-11 NET)
Elsewhere, Paul issued this plea:
We plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!” 21 God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.
(2 Cor. 5:20b-21 NET)
Justification
Now, we come to the most personal "-ion" word of them all: justification. All those which have come before are irrelevant unless this one is applied to the heart and soul. All previous fall under the category of intellectual belief until the soul lands here. At this point, the "forever" transformation of the spirit occurs, if the heart is open and willing. Because this is the crux of the matter, it is with these words Paul opens Romans 5.
1Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.
Paul makes it clear that our hearts become Christ's by faith alone. It is by our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ that we are declared righteous by a holy God. God's grace cannot be administered through any other conduit than through the conduit of faith, specifically, faith in His only begotten Son.
As we learned in Rom. 4:5, we must believe in Him who justifies the ungodly; it is then that His righteousness is credited to us.
Hallelujah!
Once again, dear brothers and sisters, I find myself "running long"!
We will explore the remaining "-ions" tomorrow.
Father, Father! "O to grace....how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let THY goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander...Lord, I FEEL it! Prone to leave the God I love! Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above."2 Amen.
Sources:
1 http://biblehub.com/greek/2434.htm
2 http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/c/o/comethou.htm
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