Once and For All

“But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”

HEBREWS 10:12-14

 

PONDER THIS

There is a phrase we need to remember and hold onto: “For Christ also suffered once for sins.” (See 1 Peter 3:18.) That does not mean once upon a time; it means once for all. When Jesus said, “It is finished” (see John 19:30), He meant the debt had been paid absolutely. In Rome, when a man was found guilty of a crime, he would be locked up and a certificate of debt would be placed on his prison door. And then after he had done his time and had paid the penalty, they would write across the certificate of debt, “Paid in full” and give it to him. The word on the certificate was “Tetelestai”: It is finished; it is paid in full. If they ever arrest him for that crime again, he may say, “Yes, but I have paid.” This is why it matters that Jesus has once suffered for sin. It is blasphemy to say that there needs to be another sacrifice for sin. He is sufficient.

What sins trouble you? How can you seek to believe Jesus has paid the price for your debt?

How do you feel when a large debt is paid? How should the payment of Christ change the way we live?

PRACTICE THIS

Confess to an accountability partner the sins that trouble you and pray for one another, thanking Jesus for His complete payment for your debt.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God’s Final, Decisive Word

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

The last days begin with the coming of the Son into the world. “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” We have been living in the last days since the days of Christ — that is, the last days of history as we know it before the final and full establishment of the kingdom of God.

The point for the writer of Hebrews is this: The Word that God spoke by his Son is the decisive Word. By the Son’s own design, that word has been captured for the ages in the writings of the New Testament. He explicitly made provision for this, lest every generation be left to itself to dream up the decisive word of God. This word will not be followed in this age by any greater word or replacement word. This is the Word of God — the person of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, and the work of Jesus, captured by inspiration in the apostolic writings we call the New Testament.

When I complain that I don’t hear the Word of God, when I feel a desire to hear the voice of God, and get frustrated that he does not speak in ways that I may crave, what am I really saying? Am I really saying that I have exhausted this final, decisive Word revealed to me so fully and infallibly in the New Testament? Have I really exhausted this Word? Has it become so much a part of me that it has shaped my very being and given me life and guidance?

Or have I treated it lightly — skimmed it like a newspaper, clicked through like a quick series of internet postings, dipped in like a taste-tester — and then decided I wanted something different, something more? This is what I fear I am guilty of more than I wish to admit.

God is calling us to hear his final, decisive, inexhaustible Word — to meditate on it and study it and memorize it and linger over it and soak in it until it saturates us to the center of our being.

John Piper