One Finished Sacrifice For Sin

Hebrews 10 and the Once-for-All Sacrifice of Christ

We continue our study this evening in the book of Hebrews, chapter 10. Hebrews, chapter 10. Before we look to the Word of God, let us ask the Lord to bless our time together. Once again, our gracious and merciful Heavenly Father, we handle your holy word and we ask that you would be with us.

We confess that without your Spirit we cannot begin to do justice to these words, begin to understand, begin to make application. So we pray you would be with us now, that you would lift up our hearts and minds, and truly to make us rejoice in what you have done for us in Christ Jesus.

We pray in his name. Amen. As you will recall, this morning we began looking at this 10th chapter. We actually entered into it on the last Lord's Day, but this morning looked at the argument from the 40th Psalm presented by the writer, and we just began touching upon really, I think, the central portion of the pinnacle of the very summit of the epistle itself, chapter 10, verses 10 through 14.

And having started to examine these things, we saw the importance of recognizing the finishedness of the work of Christ, the once for allness of the work of Christ, and especially we saw that the righteousness that is ours are being made holy in God's sight, that that is an act of God, and that there is only one way that one can have that proper relationship before God.

So let's remind ourselves of the text. It's possible, I was looking at it, we might try to do verses 10 through 18 tonight, but it may be an unspoken rule that Reformed Baptists cannot possibly do that many verses in one sermon.

I think it's something genetic, I'm not sure how it happens, but something tells me we will not get that far at all, probably be verses 10 through 14, but let's get the context beginning back at verse 1.

For the law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.

Otherwise, they would have ceased to be offered because the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins. But in those, specifically sacrifices, there is an anamnesis, a reminder of sins year by year.

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when he comes into the world, he says, Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.

In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come, in the scroll of the book it is written of me, to do your will, O God. After saying above, Sacrifices and offerings, and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, you have not desired, nor have you taken pleasure in them, which are offered according to the law.

Then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will, we have been sanctified to the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their hearts and on their mind I will write them.

He then says, And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Now, this morning we worked through the argument from the 40th Psalm.

The Meaning of Once for All in Hebrews 10:10

And we saw that the Lord Jesus, in fulfilling the will of the Father, provides a perfect way of salvation. He does away with the sacrifices, offerings, whole burnt offerings. He has taken away the first in order to establish the second, that second being, His having done the will of God in the offering of His own body once for all, resulting in the being made holy, the sanctification of those who are His.

So in verse 10 we have this assertion, By this will we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Now, one question we did not really deal with this morning as we were running out of time is that phrase at the very end, once for all.

We've run into it so many times already. If anything, we would say the writer is overdoing the point if it was possible to do so. But it's not possible to do so because it seems that mankind's constant desire is to undo the once-for-allness of Christ, stitch up that veil, bring those priests back in, find some way of undoing this once-for-allness because if it is once-for-all, then nothing can be added to it.

And if nothing can be added to it, then how can we make up religions and ways of controlling people and cults and isms and everything else? And so, mankind finds his way, but the question is when we look at verse 10, when it says once for all, what's it referring to?

Now, we know we've seen given once, given once, given once, but what about this concept of being made holy? Because it says by this will, the fulfillment of God's will, we have been made holy by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Is the once-for-all only to be attached to the offering, because certainly it has been many times before this. We've already seen that more than once. Does it have nothing to do with the being made holy?

Well, I don't think that on any grammatical level, you can neatly cut the verse into pieces like that. It seems to be one statement, and since it's placed right at the end of the statement, then I interpret it as having to do with the entirety of the assertion.

That is, this work of God, whereby there is sanctification, there is this setting apart, there is this being made holy of us. Notice the writer includes himself. We have been made holy by this will, by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

I don't think the once-for-all here, certainly there's no question that it is attached to the offering in the sense that there is only one offering. By this point, one could not miss the author's argument.

But it would seem that the being made holy, this act of God, is just as certain from God's perspective as the one offering of Jesus Christ. In other words, what I'm seeing here is that in the author's mind, there can be no possibility of the work of Christ failing to accomplish its intention.

The Priest Who Sat Down at the Right Hand of God

And this is something that frequently in our conversations with one another, we all have maybe relatives, friends, fellow Christians from other churches, and they don't understand why we are so stuck on theology.

We're so stuck on stuff like insisting that the death of Christ is particular and purposeful, and it's not just this peanut butter atonement where it sort of makes some hypothetical salvation possible, but it really doesn't accomplish anything.

They sort of look at us like, man, why are you people so weird? And we try to explain, and we try to go to Scriptures, and here would be one of the things that I would want to try to communicate to someone as we look at this issue.

That is, many of our friends, many of our fellow believers, many are believers in Christ, and they're going to be in heaven, and they're going to be right next to us, we need to recognize all of those things and not draw our robes around us and look down at other people.

But what is rarely included in discussions of the cross and the intention of the cross, the intention of the triune God in the cross, first of all, what's rarely discussed is that God had an intention.

I mean, a lot of people don't even sit back and give thought to, well, what did God want to do in the cross? A lot of people would say, well, He wanted to make salvation a possibility, but if you really think about that, so He just wanted to make it a possibility?

He was just going to put a plan out there? Is that really what God intended to do? Well, He wanted to save as many people as He could. You just don't find that kind of language in the New Testament. You find amongst the philosophers and people like that, but you don't find it.

What was God's intention in the sacrifice of the cross? What did He want to accomplish? Or did He want to accomplish anything at all? What I'm seeing in this text is, yes, the accomplishment, the result, the fruit, the purpose of the cross is just as much a part of God's decree as the actual act itself.

Our God acts purposefully. He had an intended result. And guess what? He accomplishes it. By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The question we have to ask our friends and ourselves is did the triune God accomplish what the triune God intended to accomplish when the second person of the Trinity said, Tetelestai, it is finished.

What was finished? The provision of a possibility? A theoretical redemption? It seems to me that what we have here in verse 10 is that this divine act and I would assert that the form of the action here would indicate that it's God that's doing this.

We have been sanctified. We didn't sanctify ourselves and bring this about for ourselves. We have been sanctified by means of something that God did. The offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Now, I want you to sort of make a note there. Mental note or physical note, however you do these things. Because the end of this chapter, about 17, 18, 19 verses from now, we are going to encounter a section that people focus a lot of attention on and there are a lot of people who say this shows that a person who's truly in the new covenant can be lost.

And what God's intention and the result of the sacrifice really is will become determinative when we look at that text a little bit later on. Now, the next few verses remind us of the ministry of the priests.

And as I was thinking about what the main point of this was, I couldn't help thinking yesterday morning, Saturday, Saturday's a great day to sleep in and rest, right? So, I got up at 3 .20 and I got in my car and I drove up to Prescott Valley and I got on my bike and I rode over Mingus Mountains toward Jerome.

I couldn't get to Jerome. If any of you are going that direction, don't bother right now. They're finally, thank you, paving the road. So, I went up Mingus Mountain twice and the second time up, I ran to some other cyclists and we were talking at the top of the mountain.

And the guy was saying, have you ever come up from Cottonwood? I said, that's something I've got on my list to do. And he made this comment. He said, man, it's a killer climb. There's never any place to rest.

And I understand what he means. It's just a constant grade. You never get a break. You don't get a little nice downhill. It's just, it's work, work, work, work for many miles and thousands of feet of climbing and no shade or anything else either.

And I was thinking about that. It certainly wasn't his intention to have gotten things going, but you have lots of time when you're flying down a mountain to be thinking about other things other than what you're supposed to be doing.

You do sort of need to concentrate on that, but I was thinking about this text because, see, the point of the next few verses can be summarized in this. There was no place to rest in the Holy of Holies.

That's what it says. Notice it says, every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.

Now, we're obviously not talking about only the sacrifice on the day of atonement because that was the only day you went into the holy place. But the writer's sort of putting together all the sacrifices, the daily sacrifices that would take place in the offering of various sacrifices, peace offerings and things like that, as well as that great sacrifice for the high priest would go into the holy place.

And when we think about it, think back for a moment. I know it's been a number of months, but we took the time to sort of look at how, because we were trying to figure out where everything was in the tabernacle to follow what the argument was in the book of Hebrews.

And one of the things we noted was that in the holiest place itself, there were only a certain number of things. And if you think back upon it, one thing you never find was a place to rest. What if the high priest had entered into that place and he's overcome with the awesomeness of being in the presence of God and offering sacrifice upon the altar, and he thinks of all the other men who have been there before him and the people before him and how great they were and what a privilege it is.

What if he just wants to stay there for a while and bask in the presence of God? Well, that really wouldn't be a good idea. But what if he did? And if you were to look around, there's no place to sit down in here.

There were no chairs. There were no seats. There was no place for the high priest to simply come in and stay. And have you ever noticed that's one of the main differences in what the shadow had in comparison to the fulfillment?

Because notice, until his enemies made a footstool for his feet, what's he doing? Does it say that he simply stands? No. The language is he sat down. Remember, this is that incredible text. Psalm 110, once again, but he having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he does what the old high priest could never do.

Sits down. The old high priest could not sit down because his work wasn't done. Oh, that year's sacrifice might be finished. He's done everything he's supposed to do and he's put the blood right where it needs to be and he's done everything he needs to do.

He's done for this year, but now he's going to have to leave because he can't stay here. He's come to do what he's supposed to do, but he can't stay here. I love being in the presence of God, but the veil's still there and you've offered the sacrifice, but it's not really taken away sins.

That's exactly what it says. They offer the same sacrifices which can never take away sins and that's why there is no provision allowed for the high priest, even though he represents God's people, to just stay in the presence of God.

So he has to... no matter how much he enjoys it, how great it is, he has to leave. He has to turn around. He has to leave. But verse 12 gives us that contrast. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time.

One sacrifice for sins for all time. I mean, again, the writer is laboring the point. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time onward until his enemies who made a footstool for his feet.

The fulfillment of the prophetic word of Psalm 110 requires us to believe that something fundamentally has changed. He has entered into the very presence of God. He has opened the way through that veil.

And he doesn't have to come in and then leave. Come in and then leave because the sacrifice he has offered has taken away, dealt with sin. And now those who are in union with him, just as the high priest represented those who drew near in worship.

Now we have one high priest who has entered into the heavenly holy of holies. We unite with him, therefore have direct access into his presence. No longer to have to go out. No longer to have to offer another sacrifice.

But to have that kind of access, that kind of union, requires perfection on the part of the high priest's sacrifice. And that is why verse 14 says what it says. For by one offering, he has completed the very same route, and in fact, almost the exact same form if it wasn't for the fact that one was spoken by Jesus and here it's being described to somebody else.

Tetelestai. Here it is tetelaioken. He has completed. He has finished. For by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being made holy. Well, you could translate it that way. But it's the same group of verse 10.

Those who are sanctified. Those who are made holy. Now, before I address the one way that people try to get around this, because if this is the case, then Jonah was right. Salvation is of the Lord. Period.

End discussion. But before I get to the objection, follow that thought through with me. Why does verse 14 have to say what it says? Why is it that by one offering, He has perfected for all time? You see, you can't have sin and imperfection in the presence of God.

This morning we talked about that righteousness that is ours. And I guess we could in the language of Hebrews, and its sacrificial language, and its more Old Testament language, we could use the language of the holiness.

Remember, when we talk about the Old Testament law, we talk about the holiness code. The biggest 18 -20. The holiness code. The code that gives you an idea, an understanding of what to be set apart unto Yahweh really involves for His people.

And I guess if we were to use that language then, those who are sanctified, those who are placed into that right relationship of being set apart as God's people so that they can be there in the presence of God, how does that happen?

What is necessary to bring about a situation where unlike under the Old, you had that high priest, and yes, he could come in, but then he has to leave. What can finally overcome that so the people of God can truly be in the presence of their God?

We can have the fulfillment of all of those Old Testament promises. I shall be their God. They shall be my people. What has to happen? Well, what has happened is God and God alone has brought this situation to fruition because He is the One who has perfected for all time.

That's why I think we have a parallel back to verse 10. For all time. That very same thing. It's God's work. It is not imperfect. It is not partial. He has finished. He has perfected for all time by one offering, so it's solely by the means of the cross, not some synergistic cooperation of man's will with the grace of God where the cross has made it possible the cross has merited for us grace that brings us back to a moral neutral point or something.

No, by that one offering He has finished, perfected for all time a certain people. A specific people. If that offering does not accomplish what God's intention was, then how can we truly have peace with God?

How can we truly enter into His presence and stay in His presence? One offering. God has done it. God has completed and perfected. He's done it for all time and it's a specific people. How can this verse then be fit into what we would have to identify as sub-biblical views of the atonement?

Why Hebrews 10 Rejects Synergism in Salvation

Well, this is the only way I can figure out. I mean, I'll be perfectly honest with you, and we need to understand this. The vast majority of those with whom we have interaction to discuss the subject of the atoning work of Christ have never given consideration to these questions.

Just never done it. This is not the kind of stuff that is normally being discussed in evangelical churches. So you can't just go, well, haven't you read Hebrews 10 .14? You have to be very careful how you present this to people.

But the only way that I can think of, and the only way that I've seen this done, is you look at those who are sanctified, the last two words of the verse, and you say, ah, see? Those who are being sanctified, there's where we come in.

Yes, God will perfect, but we are the ones who are bringing about the sanctification. It's our faith, our repentance. We're the ones. You see, it's not that everyone couldn't have this. It's just that we're the ones who have chosen to be sanctified.

And that's how you smuggle some type of synergism, which fundamentally controls the grace of God, into the text. Now, of course, you and I sit back and go, the writer's not even talking about that. The writer doesn't even focus upon that.

In fact, the very next words go on to talk about what God has done in the New Covenant. And where would you get that? But I know, I know. But that's where it comes from. Is you look at that term, those who are sanctified, and say, ah, see?

There's where we come in. God does everything else. It's sort of like saying, well, God has elected to save those who believe in Jesus. That's a nice way of saying you believe in election, but you don't actually believe in predestination and election.

Because what God has done is he's elected a group. Actually, he's elected a plan. And if you believe in Jesus, then you get into the plan. And here, it would be God, by one offering, will perfect for all time those who are sanctified, but you've got to get yourself into the group that's sanctified.

Okay? That's how folks work this out. Now, if you're looking for some kind of magic bullet refutation, folks, if there are people who, for whatever reasons, want to read the Bible with a focus upon themselves rather than upon what God accomplishes, there isn't a magic bullet for that.

You can't change someone's heart where they are no longer the center of what they read in Scripture. You can give them examples and you can try to reason with them. But, you know, I've had people that have actually brought me over to talk to people, thinking that somehow, well, you'll get them.

Doesn't work that way. You can try to show them the inconsistency. You can try to... But until God, by his grace, causes a person to recognize his centrality in the fact that the gospel is about him and what he does and his glory, and not about me, as long as there are folks taught on themselves, there's almost no verse of sovereign grace you can't shoehorn some foreign concept into to just try to give yourself an escape.

And as long as you're trying to escape the Scriptures rather than exegete the Scriptures, that's what's going to happen. But how do we respond? Is there something in this sanctification that makes room for that?

Well, I don't believe so. Notice that verses 10 and 14 really explain one another. They play off of one another. Because in verse 10, it says, by this will, we have been made holy. Not we make ourselves holy.

So even the being made holy through the offering the body of Jesus Christ once for all, that's God's work. He is the one who sanctifies. He is the one who sets us apart. That means God is the one who chooses those that he is going to set apart unto himself.

And it's that same group that's in mind then. Nothing is changed in one or two sentences. So when we keep that in mind, four by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. The sanctification is the work of God.

And the perfection is the work of God. The completion, the bringing to finishedness, it's all because of what Christ has done in his one offering. Now, I look at this and I read these verses and we have toiled for many hours.

I think Jamie added up how many hours I had preached on Hebrews a few weeks ago. How many? Thanks. I appreciate that. An engineer answer there. Many hours. Many, many hours of preaching on the subject of Hebrews.

And always in the back of my mind, verses 10 -14 of chapter 10. That's what we're moving toward. And as I think of all the repetition of the arguments, who Christ is, He is Yahweh come in flesh, the high priest, the Melchizedek priesthood, the work of intercession, it all comes down to providing the foundation.

It provides the foundation upon which this amazing statement can stand. And you see, when people consider these words without everything that came before, the weight just cannot be all that great. It's just one verse amongst many verses.

Four by one offering He has perfected. You see, if you just read those words out what came before, you'd have to go, who is He? And how can this one offering be so different than all the other offerings?

See, without everything that's come to this point, it's just one verse and you'd have many questions. But now the light is on all the way. And so we know about the one offering. We know about the one high priest.

We know who He is. Remember Hebrews 1 long ago? Yahweh in human flesh, Creator of all things. The unchanging, eternal God entered into human flesh, for by one offering He has perfected. For all time, those who are sanctified, we can stand back and we can look at that and go, there's the Gospel and it is all of God.

It is perfect. There is no wonder why we will spend eternity praising and honoring and glorifying and blessing this one. Because His works, they're perfect. There can be no diminishment. There can be no failure.

There's the statement. And that is why we emphasize so strongly the need to see the Gospel as what glorifies God first and foremost. It is what God has done. It is not first and foremost a message about us.

It is a message about God. It is a message about Christ. And when even well-meaning brothers and sisters in the Lord, because of their traditions, because of what they've been taught or not taught, diminish that Gospel by diminishing all of the things that come up to this point.

We can understand why when we see many of these people on television, we hear them on the radio, they have opportunity to give a strong witness. The witness just isn't full and complete because they don't have a clear understanding of what the Scriptures state.

Hebrews. Nothing to go back to. But in the process of proving to these believers there is nothing to go back to, I don't know about you, but I have never seen in all of God's inspired Word a clearer argument for the glory, perfection, fulfillment of what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit accomplished on Calvary than what we have here.

Oh, Romans comes close. Ephesians is great. I'm not trying to create a contest. But here we have, I think, the longest sustained argument that explains to us that cross which is on the tops of so many buildings and around so many necks on the backs of so many cars.

And yet, how many who possess the Word of God in their hands ever engage in laborious work and it can be work of understanding the Scriptures' own argument and come to the clear conclusion this is what God has done.

This has always been His intention. What an amazing condescension that He who is described in chapter 1 as the One through whom all things were made, the exact representation of the Father's Person, His character, the One who created all things, the unchanging Creator described in Psalm 102, this One took on human flesh.

He became like His brethren in all things. And He becomes our High Priest and the offering that the High Priest offers, so that by one offering, He is perfected for all time, those who are sanctified.

The Assurance and Joy of Standing Complete in Christ

My friends, no matter what you experience in this life, no matter the trials, tribulations, or pains you experience, when you are one of those who draws near to worship through Jesus Christ, here is a promise, a reality, and a fulfillment the world can never take from you and should always be your greatest joy.

No matter what your situation. You stand before God and you stand complete not because of what you've done, not because of your accomplishments, but you stand complete because of what He has done in your...

Let us thank Him for it. Indeed, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we come before you at this time and as we do during the supper, as we think about what you've done. Your Word this evening has brought us to that same place and we have considered the perfection of your work.

And it's hard for us, Lord, we confess, to think about how before we ever took our first breath, you had mercy upon us. You foreknew us. You chose to spread your love and mercy into our lives and to provide for us the only way into your presence.

As we consider these things, we would ask, we would pray, Lord, help us to not ever take these things for granted as something we've known for many years. May you keep alive the freshness of our realization of your love, for when we live in light of that, our hearts are warmed and caused to love you and we do the good works you call us to do not to add to His one offering.

No. But because we've made new creatures, it is natural for us to do the right thing. To react and to respond out of love. And so, our gracious God, we thank you for this great revelation. And we would ask that you would help us to live in light of it, to seek to live in holiness, to honor you, and to proclaim this message to the honor and glory of the name of Jesus Christ, for it is indeed in His name that we pray.