Since the new covenant is better than the old covenant, it was confirmed with blood that is better than that which confirmed the old covenant. It was confirmed with the blood of Christ, and now He is the perfect mediator between us and a holy God. Our sins put us under the sentence of death, and there was no way to cover our sins except with blood. But the sacrifices of the old covenant had to be repeated year after year; they could not make us righteous from the inside out. The sacrifice that Christ made is able to change us through and through, so He only had to offer Himself once.
"For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance---now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant." (Hebrews 9:15) All the sacrifices performed under the old covenant pointed toward Christ. Even before God made His covenant with Israel, as far back as the Garden of Eden, we find a sacrifice being made for man's sins when God made clothing out of animal skins to cover the nakedness and shame of Adam and Eve after they fell from grace. Even before the law was given, we find the blood of the Passover lamb being painted on the doors of the children of Israel so the death angel would only strike the firstborn of the Egyptians. In the story of Rahab, the harlot at Jericho who saved the lives of the Jewish spies, we find her hanging a scarlet thread in the window so she and her family would be spared on the day Jericho fell to the army of Israel. All these things pointed to the blood of Christ---the blood that would cause God's wrath to "pass over" our sins as if they don't even exist.
"In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, 'This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.' In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Hebrews 9:10-22) Under the old covenant, animal blood was substituted for human blood. Because of our sins we owed our own blood, but God loved us too much not to make it possible to offer us a pardon. He did this by using animals as "stand ins" for us. As much as God loves every creature He made, and as much as He takes delight in the animal kingdom, He loves human beings above everything else He created. But the sacrificial system could not cleanse human beings eternally from the inside out, so at the right time and in the right way God sent the perfect sacrifice: the Lamb of God---His own Son. A person could bring sacrifices under the old covenant, but in his heart he might not feel truly repentant. He might only be going through the motions without having been transformed in the inner man. But the person who acknowledges his sins and his need for the Savior will be changed at heart by the Savior.
Because the sacrifice of Christ was superior to all other sacrifices, His blood was not sprinkled on manmade things. He took the blood of the new covenant straight into the presence of Almighty God. The tabernacle, and later the temple, were merely copies of the true place of worship in heaven. The things of this world are temporary, so Christ took His sacrifice to the eternal Most Holy Place in heaven. "It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him." (Hebrews 9:23-28)
We owe a debt of sin, and that debt is death. If we reject the blood of Christ---the only sacrifice for sins that is acceptable to our God and Judge---we will have to pay the penalty ourselves. If we were incarcerated in prison awaiting execution, and someone came along and paid the penalty to set us free, wouldn't we be foolish to refuse to come out of our cell? How much more foolish is it to refuse to accept the eternal freedom that is offered to us through Christ?
No comments:
Post a Comment