Friday, August 26, 2011

Once for All


For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever. (Hebrews 07:26-28, NKJV).
In regard to Christ's propitiatory sacrifice for sin, the phrase once for all appears 4 times in the New Testament (Ro 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:12; 10:10), and 3 of those 4 are in Hebrews.

It is a phrase which contrasts the repeated ceremonial animal sacrifices with the sublime, ultimate sacrifice of the Son of God. It is a phrase that speaks to the complete efficacy of that sacrifice in taking away the sin of the world. It is a phrase that again points us to the ineffable superiority of Christ to any and all  that came before.

The priests of old officiated at the altar of blood. Their role can be likened to a ritualistic butcher, killing the offered animal, carving up the anatomy in accord with the proscribed regulations handed down by God through Moses.

It was an intricate and detailed job description, that encompassed not only desired results but required attitude and apparel. It spoke of God's micromanagement of the entirety of Judaism, and it was for one ultimate purpose: to sanctify the LORD God in the hearts of the priests and the people.

It's graphic dismemberment represented the heinousness of sin, and the holiness of God and repeatedly emphasized the necessary shedding of blood to atone for rebellion against God's goodness and graciousness.

In Western culture today, the majority of people have nothing to do with this bloody aspect of either religion or nourishment. For the most part, our meat is pre-butchered, pre-packaged and sanitized. We are far removed from the lowing of the livestock, the pouring out of the blood, or the thud of the expiring beast gasping its last, and collapsing under its own dead weight.

Not so the ancient Israelites. They saw the death, heard the rasping expiration of air, and smelled daily the offal and the coppery aroma of blood. And for centuries, in and around the focal point of their worship - first the Tabernacle, and then the Temple - these indelible sensory perceptions were purposely associated with the wages of sin.
It was blatant and overt conditioning, planned and executed by God Himself, for the sole purpose of revealing in as graphic and as effective manner as possible, the seriousness of sin.

We are removed from this, as well, in our Western prefabricated way of life. So much so that in our world, the word sin itself is in disfavor, fallen out of use, and diluted in its original catastrophic meaning.

And in losing this, we lose also the inherent level of awed appreciation for what our once for all High Priest has done on our behalf.

He not only officiated over the attenuated altar of blood, the Cross, speaking forsakenness and forgiveness while Himself impaled on the blood-blackened wooden beams, but He, as both Priest and sacrifice paid the incurred and future sin debt, once for all when He offered up Himself.
Don't overlook the blood-soaked magnificence of this one act, nor its epoch-shattering ramifications. It was a completing of the Father's long-awaited resolution for sin. It was a shutting of the door on further sacrifices, not unlike God Himself shutting the door of the Ark as the Flood of Judgment descended upon a God-hating world.

Yet, unlike the millions, perhaps billions, of human casualties from the flood, this time there was only One - the Son of God Himself.

What is a human soul worth?

Popular and cynical wisdom would declare that life is cheap.

Popular wisdom is worthless and inaccurate in this and so many other areas of knowledge.

The truth is that eight human souls were worth a planet to their Creator and Judge.

And now we know that your soul, and my soul, and each and every one of us, is worth far more than we can conceive - the death of God Himself as our substitute, individually and collectively.

Christ put Himself in our place and voluntarily took upon Himself the sin of the world, to wipe the slate clean, to cancel the debt which each one of us owe by paying it Himself.

Once for all.

And forever.