By a Single Sacrifice

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And if you would, open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10.
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Originally this week, every, Holy Week is the busiest week for me.
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It's even busier than Christmas time.
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Resurrection Sunday, I preach two sermons and I normally preach two additional sermons in that week.
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So it's a time where I'm preparing a bunch of different messages all on the theme of resurrection, on the crucifixion and resurrection.
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So it tends to be quite a busy time as well as planning our Seder, helping to participate in the Seder and all that.
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So there's a lot to do.
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And I was planning this morning during sunrise service to preach from Hebrews 10.
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However, Thursday, I guess it was, I just decided to choose the other passage.
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And for those who were here during sunrise service, I preached 2 Corinthians 5.
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So when Jack asked me if I would teach, I said, well, I guess I'll teach the passage I was gonna preach on sunrise.
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So it kind of worked out as I already sort of had something planned from this passage.
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So we're gonna focus our attention primarily on verse 14.
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So we're gonna read that, pray, and then we're gonna go back and study it.
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So if you wanna open to Hebrews 10, verse 14, it says, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of the word.
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I pray that as we study the word together, that you will be glorified by it.
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I pray that you'll keep me from error.
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Pray that you'll help my words to be clear, that you'll help me to enunciate your truth properly, and Lord, that you will apply those truths to the hearts of your people, that we will have a proper interpretation and a proper application as we are led by the power of your Holy Spirit.
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For Lord, if we were to try to understand the scriptures apart from the power of your spirit, we would try to do so in vain.
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Father, again, we pray for our sick friends who are not with us today.
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Brother Jack, who is home.
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Brother Jim, who's in the hospital.
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We ask you to be merciful to them.
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In all these things, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.
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Come on in, Mr.
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Eli.
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You want to sit right there? Yeah, yeah, come on in.
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We are in Hebrews chapter 10, and we're going to focus on verse 14, but that's not going to be all that we study.
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14 is going to be where we bring the consummation of our study.
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Because really, the entire book of Hebrews has a singular focus.
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The entire book of Hebrews is about the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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If you go back to Hebrews 1, it talks about Christ being above all things.
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He is above prophets.
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He is above angels.
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He's above everything.
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Jesus Christ is the all in all.
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And so the supremacy of Christ is stressed in Hebrews, and also there is in Hebrews warnings about those who would proclaim Christ, but do not follow Christ.
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And those who fall away are mentioned in Hebrews throughout what we would call an apostate.
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Who knows what an apostate is? Anybody know that word? What is it? Okay, well, I don't have to define it, but you've heard the word? An apostate is a person who claims to have faith, but later, through some process, demonstrates that their faith was not genuine.
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John tells us this in 1 John.
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He said, they went out from among us because they were not of us, for if they had been with us, or if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out from us to demonstrate that they were never of us.
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And that's the great apostasy passage.
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It demonstrates that there are in fact people who will come into the church, who will say the right words, who will do the right things, but it will only last for a time.
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They will demonstrate at some point that their faith was not real.
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Jesus told the parable of the soil.
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He said, there's seed that's scattered.
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He said, some will be scattered on the road and it will be immediately plucked away, but some will be scattered in, some will fall among the shallow soil and it will grow up for a little while, but then it will come and be plucked away, or no, I'm sorry, it will dry up and die because it has no root.
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And that's where a lot of people are.
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And Hebrews deals with that.
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Hebrews deals with the fact that there are a lot of people who have an outward expression of faith, but have no real genuine conversion.
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And so Hebrews deals with that a lot.
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But the other thing that is the, again, Hebrews being a long book, the other thing that we find in Hebrews is the understanding of Christ's work as our high priest.
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And that's what we're going to be focusing on today.
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We're going to be working, looking at the high priest, the high priest work, work of Christ.
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What is, this is not a good marker, let me see if I can switch.
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In the Old Testament, there were three offices.
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We had the office of prophet, priest, and king.
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Now we know that the king is the sovereign or the ruler.
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So we understand what a king does, he rules.
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But what is the difference between the prophet and the priest? Does anyone know? Prophet tells what's.
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Okay.
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Priest is a mediator for joy.
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Okay, they're both mediators.
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And that's a key, you're right, a priest is a mediator, but a prophet is also a mediator.
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The difference is the prophet speaks to man for God.
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The prophet speaks to man on behalf of God.
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God speaks to the prophet, the prophet speaks to the people.
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And God is speaking through the prophet.
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So he's a mediator from God to man.
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The priest speaks to man, I'm sorry, speaks to God for man.
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He goes as the mediator before God, representing the people.
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The prophet represents God, the priest represents the people.
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Understand? Simple, right? This is why the priest is the one who makes the sacrifices.
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Because the priest is the one who is bringing the people before God, and to do that, there has to be this sacrifice that's made.
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There has to be this atonement which is made.
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And the priest is the one who does that.
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Okay? Christ fulfills all three roles.
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Christ is prophet, he spoke to us from God.
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He himself was God in the flesh, so he is the consummation of all the prophets.
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He is the great prophet.
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He's the king, obviously, Christ is the ruler, he sits on the throne of David forever.
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He fulfills the promise to David that his throne will never be vacant.
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He will have a king forever who sits on his throne.
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So Christ is prophet and king, but he's also priest.
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This is why the doctrine of the incarnation is so vital in the Christian faith.
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The incarnation is that God, the Son, Jesus, became flesh.
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First Corinthians, I'm sorry, John 1, 18.
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It says, the word Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us.
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It's essential that we understand that Jesus was a man as much as it is essential that we understand that Jesus was God.
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Because if we understand that Jesus was only God or only man, we miss the full understanding of who he was and who he is.
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Because if Jesus, as the Gnostics teach, was only spirit, I believe he was not flesh at all, then he didn't die a real death and he wasn't a real priest because if he wasn't really a man, he can't represent man to God.
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You understand? You have to be among the class to represent the class.
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And Christ had to become man to represent man to God.
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And that's what a priest does.
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And that's part of the reason for the incarnation.
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So Christ becomes a man, John 1, 18, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
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That's John 1, verse 18.
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And that is what Christ did.
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He became man to represent man to God.
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Now that priestly work of Christ is given to us very clearly in Hebrews chapter 10.
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I want to start back at verse one.
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And kind of explain as we go the importance of Christ's priestly work.
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It says in chapter 10, verse one, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continuously offered every year make perfect those who draw near.
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All right, let's just stop there.
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What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna read and give sort of a running commentary as I go.
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Because what he's saying here, he's saying, all right, we've got the law of God and in the law of God you've got sacrifices.
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And some of the sacrifices are done annually and some of the sacrifices are done daily.
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You have the annual sacrifice of Yom Kippur.
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You have the annual sacrifice of the Passover.
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You have other sacrifices that are annual sacrifices.
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Then you have other sacrifices that are done throughout the year.
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But then you have that daily sacrifice, once a day, every day, the priest goes up and he makes a sacrifice.
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If you remember the father of John the Baptist was a priest who was serving at the temple daily.
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That was his job.
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He was the one who went in and did that sacrifice.
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This was a daily thing.
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Why is it a daily reality? Because the one from yesterday doesn't apply to today.
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The one from yesterday can't account for today.
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I mean, go back and read again.
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For since the law was but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
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It just doesn't have the ability to perfect those who it's made for.
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The sacrifice itself doesn't have the ability to perfect the person that's being sacrificed for.
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So why? You do it again.
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And you do it again.
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And you do it.
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Because it's not finishing anything.
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It's not making anything perfect.
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It's just giving you another day of credit.
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It's just giving you another year of credit if it's the Yom Kippur sacrifice.
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It doesn't have the ability to be the final once-for-all sacrifice.
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It just didn't have that ability.
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That's where we're going.
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That's what Christ's sacrifice is.
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It just, kind of like I said, to kind of put forward in our mind, that's why Christ's sacrifice had that ability.
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It had the ability to be a once-for-all sacrifice.
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And they still feel like that, though, today? Well, they don't make sacrifices today because they don't have a place to make sacrifices today.
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The modern Jewish culture has eliminated the role of sacrifice, the sacrificial system, because they don't have a place.
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Their temple was destroyed in 87.
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They have not had temple sacrifices for the last 2,000 years.
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So they have come up with other ways to make atonement, which are not biblical.
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But they still do that, like, daily? Yeah, they have their daily rituals that they do, but they're not sacrifices because they don't have a place to do it.
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Well, the manna from heaven was good for that day, and the next day.
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It was not good anymore.
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It was new.
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They got new the next day again.
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Yep.
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That's a good comparison, too, if you think about it, because that's really the way these sacrifices work.
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It only works for that day or that year, if it's the Yom Kippur sacrifice.
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It's only for a time.
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It was never meant to be eternal.
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It was never meant to be forever.
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So we go on to verse two.
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It says, otherwise they would have ceased to be offered since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins.
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You see what he's saying? He's saying, if they would have perfected them, they would have stopped.
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If they would have made a sacrifice that perfected, they wouldn't have had to come back next year.
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They wouldn't have had to come back next month or tomorrow.
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If the sacrifice made it perfect, then it would have been over.
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No more need.
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And that's the proof.
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And this is, again, the author of Hebrews is making an argument.
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The proof that it didn't last forever was that they had to do it again.
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The proof that it didn't last forever is that they had to do it again.
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You know, it's like filling up your car.
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If you had a perpetual fuel cell that ran your car, you never had to, if somebody came to you and said, Jimmy, I'm gonna sell you a perpetual fuel cell, you only have to fill it up every day.
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He'd say, it's not a perpetual, you're a liar.
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It's not a perpetual fuel cell if I gotta fill it up every day.
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That would be, you know what I'm saying? But that's the, but if I said, here's a perpetual fuel cell that lasts forever, you never have to do anything else.
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You put this in your car, and your car will run forever, and you never have to need one more trip to the gas station.
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Not only would you thank me, but you would say, okay, that's different.
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That's a perpetual cell.
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Well, that's it.
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This is not a perpetual thing.
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It was never intended to be.
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So it goes on in verse three.
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It says, but in these sacrifices, there's a reminder of sins every year.
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See, not only did the sacrifices not eliminate sin or perfect the person, but they also worked as a reminder of sin.
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Why do we have to do the sacrifice again today? Why do we have to do the sacrifice again this year? Because we're still sinners.
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The whole reason that we have to do it again is because we haven't stopped sinning, right? So they not only become a perpetual thing that has to be done, they become a perpetual reminder of what we're doing.
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Verse four gives us a very important passage.
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And this is one, a good memory verse.
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For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
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Now this becomes an issue of theology because there are passages in the Old Testament that talk about the goat or the lamb or the bull as being those that are there for sin.
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They're sin offerings.
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Think about on the day of Yom Kippur, the once a year sacrifice, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the priest, the high priest would come and he had two goats.
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One of them, he would pray over.
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He would say, all of the sins of Israel are on the head of this goat.
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And that goat would be led out into the wilderness and released.
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Well, yeah, yes.
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And that goat goes and takes that, what that was called the scapegoat.
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Have you heard that term scapegoat? The goat is carrying the sins of the people away.
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It's the perpetual carrier of those sins.
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Now, the other goat is the perpetuatory goat.
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He's the goat that's punished.
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His blood is then poured out on the mercy seat by the priest.
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His blood is made an offering to God.
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So you've got one goat that the sin bearer, the expiatory goat, and then you have the perpetuatory goat, the one who's getting the punishment in our place and his blood is placed on the altar.
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Actually on the mercy seat of the, because he would go in through the holy place.
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If you remember how the temple was built, you had the outside, you had the altar, which is where they had the burning of the sacrifices.
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And then the sacrifices were done here.
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Here you had the holy place.
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And then you had the most holy place or in the King James, it's the holy place and the holy of holies.
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You've heard that in Latin, the sanctum, sanctorum.
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This is the place where the Ark of the Covenant was.
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Ark of the Covenant had the cherubim on top.
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And it was basically a gold box that had the Ten Commandments in it and it had the stones of the Ten Commandments, had Aaron's rod, and there had a bowl of manna that you mentioned were in the Ark of the Covenant.
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So the priest would come, he'd make the sacrifice here.
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He would go into the holy place here.
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And here you had the lamp stand and the table of showbread.
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He would pass this and there was this curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place.
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That curtain, they say, was a hand-bred thick.
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It was woven to a hand whip thick.
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It was like a wall of material that had been woven for the most holy place to be separated from the holy place.
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He went in.
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Tradition says he went in with a rope tied around his leg because if he went in and died, they would have to pull him back out because nobody could go in and get him.
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That we don't know.
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We do know there were bells on the, there were things that made noise on his outfit that you could hear him doing the work in there.
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And again, if those bells ever stopped moving, then I guess you'd wonder, well, did he not make it? Because again, this is the presence of God.
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He's going into the presence.
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Once a year, he had to do a sacrifice for himself before he ever did any of this.
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He had to atone for himself.
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Then he had to go and make the atonement for the people.
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Then he had to take that atonement in, go through the curtain into the holy place where he would then pour the blood out on the mercy seat.
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And at that point, and there's a beautiful thing if you think about the 10 commandments there, it's a, there's a sort of an analogy that God is looking down at the commandments and he sees our sin and then the blood and the goat goes over the commandments and covers our sin as if to cover the commandments, to cover what we've broken.
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Very beautiful picture there of the atonement, atoning work of the goat that's been killed.
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So this is all that's what's happening.
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Every year, this happens.
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Every year, this reminds the people of their sin and their need for atonement.
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Every year, it reminds them of their separated relationship with God.
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And here we come to verse four of Hebrews 10, and it says, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin, which means this, not one time did that sacrifice get made that it actually did the removal of the sins.
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All it did was, and this might sound maybe a little like I'm being too simple if, too simplistic or too simplistic.
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All it did was kick the can down the road because it never paid for the sin.
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It just kicked it down the road till next year.
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All it did was kick it down the road till next year.
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But every one of these looked forward to a final fulfillment in Christ.
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See, every one of these look forward to Christ who is both the scapegoat, the one who carries our sins, and the propitiatory goat, the one who bears in himself the wrath that we deserve.
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So he becomes to us both.
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He becomes to us all that we need on the cross.
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So that's just, this is the point that the writer of Hebrews is making.
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All those sacrifices, all of those gallons of blood.
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You know, on the day of Yom Kippur in Israel, the blood that flowed, I'm sorry, not Yom Kippur, the Passover, because every animal had to kill, every family had to kill a goat, and they would bring it to the priest, and he would kill it, and the blood that flowed, it would turn the Kidron Valley, the brook that's in the Kidron Valley, which is at the base of Jerusalem, would turn it red.
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The whole river would flow red with how much blood came out of the sacrifices.
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Gallons and gallons and gallons of animal blood.
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And here the writer of Hebrews said not one drop of that blood ever really paid for anything.
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It was a picture.
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It was a, as one of my professors in school said, it was as if their sins were being put on a credit card.
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Hadn't yet been paid, but it was being held by those sacrifices till the one sacrifice would come.
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It was as if their sins were on credit.
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And the payment, it was pending payment.
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Pending payment until that one would come.
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And then he says, verse six, or verse five, sorry.
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Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired.
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This is, he's quoting Scripture here, Old Testament.
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But a body you have prepared for me in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
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Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.
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You see, there's promises in the Old Testament that there was coming a sacrificial lamb who would be the final one.
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Isaiah 53, which I preached on Friday night.
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There is this one who by his stripes, we will be healed.
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That God's wrath will be poured on him.
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It would please the Lord to crush him and he will bear the iniquity of us all.
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There's a lamb coming.
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This is why when John saw Jesus coming, he said, behold the lamb who takes away sin.
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And that's Jesus.
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Verse eight, when he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.
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These are offered according to the law.
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Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will.
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He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
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And by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.
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And mark these words, once for all.
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That's the beauty.
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The work of Jesus Christ, once for all.
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Now, verses 11 through 14, give sort of a synopsis of all that we've just learned.
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He says, and every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.
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But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemy should be made a footstool for his feet, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
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You know what priests never did in the Old Testament sacrificial system? They never sat.
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They never sat during the priestly work.
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This was never over.
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They went in, they did their work.
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They didn't have a bench where they sat down.
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They did the work perpetually.
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I mean, of course, they went home at night and sat down.
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My point is during the work, it was not a duty where they went in and sat down.
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They had to stay moving.
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Get in, do the sacrifice.
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Get in, get out.
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There's no, they don't go on the holy holies and have a lunch break.
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They got in, they got out.
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Exactly.
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But Christ sat down.
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And he said, well, what's the significance? It shows the work is done.
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The sitting down is the picture of the work being complete.
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When you get done with your work, what do you do? You sit down and you rest.
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You look at what you've done and you're satisfied with what you've done.
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At the end of six days, God did what? He rested on the seventh day and he admired what he had done and he said all that he'd done was good.
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And the same way with Jesus.
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When he was done with the sacrifice, when he ascended into heaven, he sat down because what he had done is done.
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And it was good.
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And it was over.
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And there was no need to repeat.
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You say, why do you keep stressing the no need to repeat? Well, there's a lot of bad theology out there.
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One of the worst, I would say, is the theology of the mass.
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You've heard me talk about this before.
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The theology of the mass, the Roman Catholic system, is that the priest, when he comes up to the table, the bread and the wine become the body and the blood of Christ.
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And people say, well, that's strange, but Jesus did say this is my body, this is my blood.
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Well, Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me.
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It's a memorial to his body and his blood.
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But be that as it may, even without arguing that point, here's the sin, here's the heresy of the Roman system.
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They believe that when the priest offers up the words of consecration, that he, and this is written in the Roman documents, I'd be happy to let you read them, that the priest lifts his hands up into heaven and brings Christ down again so as to offer him again as a sacrifice for the sins of people.
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That the priest literally sacrifices Christ, yet again, they call it the unbloody sacrifice because the bread and the wine, of course, are not bloody sacrifices.
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This is why in the Roman Catholic Church, the table is not called a table, it's called a altar.
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They believe that the sacrifice is being perpetuated again and again and again.
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And beloved, that is heresy.
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This is the reason for the Reformation because we believe as Protestants, as the Reformers did, that the sacrifice of Christ is a perfect sacrifice and does not need repetition.
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It was a once-for-all event, never needed to be repeated, never needed to be done again, and the idea that the priest is, as he is called in Latin, alter Christus, another Christ, that he, again, is performing the sacrifice of Jesus, so he becomes himself another Christ.
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And if that surprises you, what is the Pope called? Vicar of Christ.
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What does the word vicar mean? Vicarious, the one who stands in place of Christ.
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Pope Pius X said he was Jesus.
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He said, it's not as if I represent Jesus, I am Christ to the world.
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It's a false system, it's a dangerous, heretical system.
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And this verse is, to me, where I would go.
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And I would say, how can you say that we need this perpetual sacrifice of the mass when it says in verse 14, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified? Beloved, that is the verse of verses in this whole text, because it tells us what the work of Christ did.
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One, it says it was a single sacrifice, not a perpetuating sacrifice, not one that needed to be done over and over, but it was done one time.
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Two, it tells us he perfected.
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That means, and this is a beautiful thing, it means if you're in Christ, you're perfect.
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You know, one of the things I hear people say all the time, well, Christians aren't perfect, they're forgiven.
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Let me just take an aside here.
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If you've ever seen the bumper sticker that says, Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.
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I have a lot of problems with that.
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Number one, I understand what they're trying to say.
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As a Christian, I still battle sin, and I'm not perfect in and of myself.
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So I understand what they're trying to say.
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But let me just say this about that, okay? If I can say this about that.
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You should never put the word just in front of the word forgiven.
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You know, I might say, well, I'm not much, I'm just, whatever, you know.
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I'm not much, I'm just a pastor.
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I'm not much, I'm just a man.
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I'm not much, I'm just a Christian.
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You should never put the word just in front of forgiven.
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As if to say that's just a small thing.
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I'm not perfect, I'm just forgiven.
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That, I have a big problem.
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But the other thing, if you are in Christ, you have been perfected in him.
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Not that you live a perfect life, but when you stand before God, you will stand before God as having been made perfect in him.
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If not so, there would be no other way for you to go into glory, because God does not accept that which is not perfect.
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Christ's blood perfects you before God.
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He covers you, as Martin Luther said, we are like snow-covered piles of dung.
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Martin Luther had way with words.
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And he said, you know, in the mountains, or in the fields of Germany, they would gather the dung, the animal dung, and make piles of it, because they would use it when the spring would come, they'd use it for fertilizer.
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So they'd pile those dung, but when the snow would fall, you'd look out and you'd see all these piles of beautiful white snow, and you don't want to go jump in that.
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But you'd see these giant, beautiful mounds of white snow.
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And Luther said, that's what we are.
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We who are sinners, we who are depraved, we who are lowly and broken and dead in our sins have been covered by the perfect blood of Christ, and now before God, we stand as white as snow.
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Having been made perfect in him, yes.
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Okay.
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I want to reconcile your record.
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Yes, sir.
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And so, we'll say, it seems to me that when the Holy Spirit comes within you, then you become a Christian.
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Yes.
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That you are changed, and you have a new nature.
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Yes.
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That, to me, says that Christ indwells me.
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He indwells me, but at the same time, I sin, so you say it has to be an imputation.
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It's not, you're not really righteous in yourself.
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Here's the difference between, and this will help you, the difference between Roman Catholic theology and Protestant theology, it's the difference between imputation and infusion.
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Okay? Imputation means to charge to one's account.
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Infusion means to become something by adding.
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Okay, to become something by adding.
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So, here's the idea.
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In the Roman Catholic system, they believe that when you are a Christian, that God infuses you with Christ's righteousness, and by that, you become righteous yourself.
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You become practically righteous.
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You actually live a righteous life, and you are worthy of heaven, then, because you are now living a righteous life.
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That's false, but that's what they believe.
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This is why they have- Do you ever sin again? No, they do believe you do, and that's why they had to come up with the doctrine of purgatory, because you'll never be perfect.
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Purgatory is the place where, because you'll die imperfect, you have to go be purged before you can go to heaven.
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They've come up with two different types of sin, mortal and venial sin.
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Venial sin adds to your time in purgatory.
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Mortal sin removes the grace of justification.
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So, mortal sin sends you to hell.
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Venial sin adds to your time in purgatory.
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They have this entire false system, which is undublical.
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But the idea that you become righteous by adding Christ's righteousness to your righteousness, thereby you becoming righteous, is false.
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That's the infusion of wrong.
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Imputation means something that's charged to your account.
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Your ledger book is full of sin.
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Christ's ledger book is full of righteousness.
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If you think about, like, money.
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You've got a million dollars worth of sin.
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Christ has a million dollars worth of righteousness.
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Christ has billions of dollars worth of righteousness.
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His righteousness is perfect and full.
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Your sin is also pretty full.
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It's very full.
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It's filled to the brim.
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God takes your ledger book out.
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He removes that, and He charges that to Christ's account.
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He takes Christ's righteousness, and He charges that to your account.
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And now you stand before God, not with your own righteousness.
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As Paul said, having a righteousness not that comes from within me, but which comes to faith in Jesus Christ.
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The righteousness of God, which comes through faith.
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That's the righteousness.
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When I stand before God, I cannot say, God, you gotta let me in because I was a pastor.
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God, you gotta let me in because I got baptized.
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God, you gotta let me in because I took communion.
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God, you gotta let me in because I sat through all those terrible sermons.
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No.
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But there's no infusion, as you said.
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No, I'm saying that the Roman Catholic system says we are saved by infusion.
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Now let me step back.
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Because you're now, you have to understand the distinction between justification and sanctification.
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And because I don't have a lot of time, I'll make it simple.
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We are justified by the work of Christ alone.
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When we trust in Christ, we stand justified before God because of His work.
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But that does not mean that we have no growth or change.
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In fact, quite the opposite.
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The Bible says that the Holy Spirit comes to live within us and we begin to then live for Christ.
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In fact, what is the test of a man who believes he's saved but is not? He's not living for Christ.
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If you're not living for Christ, you might say you're saved, but your testimony doesn't match what you said.
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But here's the difference.
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Boy, time never gets my friend.
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Here's the thing.
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This is important.
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There are several different views of sanctification, but the biblical view of sanctification is simple.
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When we get saved, when we come to know Christ, and then at our death, I guess you can say that's a tombstone, that there will be a growth in grace.
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You see? That there will be a growth in our sanctification.
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Some people believe that's not true.
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They say you stay the same.
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The Bible doesn't say that.
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The Bible doesn't say you stay the same.
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It says when Christ comes into your new creation, old things pass away, all things become new.
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2 Corinthians 5, 18 tells us we are going to be changed, and we're going to start following after Him.
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If we're not, then we need to reevaluate our salvation.
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Now some people, like the Wesleyans, believe that there's a second act of grace.
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Again, I think they've added the scripture here.
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As I say, you get saved, and then at some point the Holy Spirit comes, and now you're sanctified perfectly.
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And they have a doctrine called sinless perfection, where you can actually be in this life sinless, at least practically.
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And I think Wesley was off the reservation on that one.
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I think he was wrong.
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The Bible doesn't describe such a thing.
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Yeah, this is what we call the second blessing, and you've heard that very popular in holiness churches.
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They talk about the second blessing, and it's the blessing of being given the ability to live without sin.
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We don't believe that.
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We believe that a person, when they come to Christ, will begin to be conformed to Christ.
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There will be peaks and valleys in his life.
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There will be times when we deal with sin.
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There'll be times where we fall.
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But God will lift us up.
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God will continue us on, because it is Him who works within us to will and to do His good pleasure.
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All right, guys, we gotta go, because it's time.
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Let's pray.
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Thank you, Father, for your word.
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Thank you, God, for what you've done.
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We pray that it's been glorifying to you, and it has been in accord with your truth.
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In Christ's name, amen.