Hebrews Chapter Seven, Once For All

 

Hebrews 7:27 who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

 

Continuing the contrast between the Aaronic priesthood and Jesus Christ, the author makes another telling point. Our Lord, unlike the priests that worked under the Mosaic Law, does not need perpetual sacrifice. The priests under Aaron never ceased their work; they did not sit but kept the fire kindled day and night. And every officiating priest still needed sacrifices offered on his own behalf, as well as Israel’s commonwealth.

But Jesus, we are informed, did this once for all by the sacrifice of Himself. Like a burnt offering, Jesus offered Himself to the Father in payment for sin. When did this happen? On the cross, of course. But make no mistake: our Lord’s payment for sin had nothing to do with His ill treatment at their hands both prior to and during His crucifixion. The misunderstanding that suffering purges sin is fostered by the Roman Catholic pale, and even today there are men and women in various countries that wear hairshirts, or practice self-flagellation with a whip called a discipline to perform penance. Extreme sects have gone so far as to have themselves crucified to associate with Jesus’ physical suffering on the cross.

 

None of this is efficacious for the removal of sin. What Christ did on our behalf is. But it was not the physical torment He endured that paid for our sins. Yes, there is the verse, “by His stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5. The NASB renders this passage, “by His scourging we are healed.” The Tanakh, Septuagint, and DSS all agree that the passage is rendered, “by his bruises we are healed.” This is an interesting unity, because if we skip ahead in Isaiah we read, “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin,” Isaiah 53:10. The bruising our Lord received was not from men; it was from the hand of God. Why? Because Christ became the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:10), and the desert He was released into was the wasteland of His death for sin, for OUR sin.

 

The Father made our Lord an offering for sin; more to the point: He made Christ’s soul that offering. Spiritual torment was what our Lord endured on the cross, and that being between Him and the Father. Men had nothing to do with it, and the brutality they afflicted Him with only magnified their guilt; they by no means contributed to their salvation. We read, “Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying…”My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Mark 15:33, 34. Hell is the absence of God’s presence. This is what Christ our Lord endured on our behalf, suffering Hell’s torment, separated from the Father as God poured out His wrath upon His own Son in payment for our sins. Payment on our behalf was being offered and accepted. That is why our Lord could victoriously declare, “It is finished!” before dismissing His spirit, John 19:30, Matthew 27:50. The loud voice Jesus exclaims with in Mark 15:37 may well have been His final three words before dying, as John recorded.

 

Death is the payment for transgression. Jesus suffered the spiritual death that awaits the lost, taking it in our stead, and dispensing eternal life in its place for any who come to God through Him by faith. He died on the cross to evidence that payment had been successfully rendered. In fact Jesus could not have died a moment sooner; no person on earth (or Heaven, or Hell) could have taken His life from Him since He was sinless and did not owe the debt of death that humanity possesses through Adam’s inheritance.

 

Jesus said, “I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again,” John 10:17, 18. This is a lengthier explanation of what our Lord told the Jews when they asked for a sign and He told them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” John 2:19. Several times people attempted to take His life before the time, Luke 4:29, 30, John 8:59, 10:39. However, every effort failed, and we are told why quite concisely. This was because, “His hour had not yet come,” John 7:30. Peter would later explain that God determined an hour in which, by His foreknowledge and consent, evil men did what they did to Messiah, Acts 2:23. On their part it only incurred more guilt; on God’s part His plan formed before the world’s foundation bore fruit, Revelation 13:8, Isaiah 53:11.

 

Christ our Lord did not need to offer sacrifice for His own sin, because He did not have any sin to atone for. He is, as verse 26 declares Him to be, separate from sinners. This fitting High Priest, who is higher or loftier than the Heavens, is fitting for such as us because He does not need daily oblation. His one time meritorious and universal act vouchsafed salvation for all of humanity throughout all time. The Epistle of Hebrews was written to the Jewish Christians to elevate their thinking about the person of Jesus, and the invaluable worth of His atonement.