But we may discern a further element of propitiation in the death of our Lord. The law of righteousness, the justice of God, demands not only obedience in the present, but retribution for the past. 'The sins done aforetime' had been 'passed over in the forbearance of God' for His own purposes, which are not revealed to us: this 'passing over' had obscured the true nature of sin and of the Divine justice. Men had come to have easy thoughts of sin and its consequences; the heathen felt but vaguely the burden of guilt, the Jew trusted in the mere external works of the law. In the death of Christ a manifestation was made of the righteousness of God, of His wrath, the absolute hostility of His nature to sin. 'God set Him forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by His blood, to shew His righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God.' But this manifestation of Divine justice might have been made by mere punishment: it became a propitiation, in that He, the self-chosen victim, by His acceptance of it, recognised the righteousness of the law which was vindicated on the cross. Men had refused to acknowledge God's justice in the consequences of sin; nothing but the willing acceptance of suffering, as the due portion of the human nature in which the sin was wrought, could have so declared the justice of God's law as to be a propitiation of Divine wrath. The cross was, on the one hand, the proclamation of God's ordinance against sin, on the other it was the response of man at length acknowledging the righteousness of the condemnation[223].