Propitiation means a sacrifice that actually turns aside God's righteous anger, not one that merely cancels a debt.
Propitiation is an English word, borrowed from Latin, chosen by translators to carry a small cluster of Greek terms: the noun hilasmos, the noun hilasterion, and the verb hilaskomai. In Greek religious usage generally, these words describe averting a god's anger, usually through an offering. The Bible uses the same word-group but redirects it: God himself provides the offering that deals with his own righteous anger against sin, most explicitly in Christ's death.
English resists one word here because two things are bound together that English keeps separate: dealing with sin (expiation, removing guilt) and dealing with wrath (propitiation, satisfying anger). Greek hilaskomai can mean either, depending on context. Scholars have argued for decades over which sense dominates, because the choice changes how you picture God, sin and the cross.
God presented Him as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand.
God puts Christ forward as the hilasterion, dealing with the wrath described earlier in the letter.
He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
Christ is called the hilasmos for sins, not just for John's readers but for the whole world.
And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Love is defined here as God sending the hilasmos himself, rather than us appeasing him.
Above the ark were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat. But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.
The same word, hilasterion, names the mercy seat, tying propitiation to the old tabernacle imagery.
The KJV and ESV keep 'propitiation' at Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2 and 4:10. The RSV, NIV and NRSV largely replaced it with 'sacrifice of atonement' or 'atoning sacrifice', partly to sound less like appeasing an angry deity and more like dealing with sin's stain. Hebrews 9:5 uses the same Greek word for the tabernacle's mercy seat, which most versions render literally rather than 'place of propitiation'.
The common mistake is treating propitiation as a primitive, almost pagan idea, an angry god bought off by blood, and preferring 'expiation' as the civilised alternative. C.H. Dodd's influential word study argued the Greek term really just means removing sin, not turning away wrath. But Paul explicitly names God's wrath against sin just before Romans 3:25, so the wrath side cannot simply be edited out.
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