Book of 1 John Chapter 4 Vs. 10

 God Is Love

1 John 4:10 "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins."

not that we... Our love to God did not induce God to give His Son to die for us. It was God’s love, not our merit, that caused Him to undertake our redemption from slavery to sin and Satan, and from eternal hell (Rom. 5:5-11.

Propitiation, in this verse means appeasement or satisfaction. An atoning sacrifice that Jesus bore in His body for the punishment due us for our sin; in so doing He propitiated God, satisfied God’s just demand that sin be punished.

propitiation for our... Hebrews 9-5 translates a from of this word as the mercy seat. Christ literally became our mercy seat like the one in the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest splattered the blood of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:5). Christ did this when His blood, spilled on behalf of others, satisfied the demands of God's holy justice and wrath against sin.

The strangest and most wonderful part of this is that, He loved us when we were totally unlovable. We were yet in sin, when God sent His Son to save us. He did not wait until we had cleaned up our lives to save us. He saved us, and then helped us clean up our lives. We not only did not love God, we did not know that He loved us.

Greek: hilasmos, the atoning sacrifice for sins (1Jhn. 2:2; 4:10).

Propitiation, in this verse, means atonement. In other words, He paid the penalty for our sins in full. We have no debt to pay. Our bill is marked paid in full. The great love of God for man is made real to us in this.

the propitiation (ἱλασμός)

Only here and 1Jhn. 4:10. From ἱλάσκομαι to appease, to conciliate to one's self, which occurs Luke 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, hat 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 (2Cor. 5:18 sqq.; Rom. 5:10 sq.). There is a propitiation in the matter of the sin or of the sinner.

Moreover, this love was not a response to man’s love, but an initiative on God’s part (1Jhn. 4:10). By it the Son became an atoning Sacrifice hilasmon, propitiation; see comments on 1Jhn. 2:2) for our sins. Nothing less than God’s love in Christ is the model for the love Christians should have toward one another.