Live Free

 DEVOTION

TO HEBREWS

LIVE FREE

Heb 10:1-14

10:1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. 2 If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, 4 because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7 Then I said, 'Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, O God.'"  8 First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made). 9 Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. 13 Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, 14 because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

NIV

It cannot be any plainer than what this author, this preacher said right here. Over and over this preacher is making the same point and if we do not get it, we will never get it. The Old Covenant with the daily sacrifices and the annual big day of atonement just could not do anything but remind the people they are guilty of sin, and continue to be guilty of sin endlessly year after year, and even day after day with the priest performing their religious duties of offering the blood of bulls and goats to take away their sins. How imperfect that system was, yet it was perfect in the sense that it showed the people they needed Christ, the Messiah, the Savior who would come to take away their and our sins once and for all. Jesus set aside the first covenant with all its laws, and all its requirements that could not make the people holy, and he established the second covenant that is so perfect there could not be anything more perfect. Because Jesus offered himself and in that one time, we have been made holy. Because we believe in Jesus, that is we have him as our Lord and Savior, our Master, our God, he has made us perfect forever because we are the ones he has made holy. We know at the present time we may not think of ourselves as being perfect for we know sin still grabs hold of us. How can we, who cannot stop committing sin, be holy and perfect forever? The point is that all men, in our fleshly form, being in a sense descendants of Adam, have sin within us. But offerings made by man cannot solve our problem of being cast out of paradise. Jesus is the only one who can and did make that sacrifice and because we accepted Him we became a descendant of God, through faith in Jesus we now have the right to be called children of God. Through faith in Jesus, we changed our ancestry from the first Adam to the Second Adam, Jesus. Because we are now a child of God, a descendant of Jesus, we have been made holy and righteous in the sight of God. He does not see our sin, because it has been taken away, and we have been made perfect because we are in Christ and He is in us. The guilt has also been removed forever. What we see and what God sees are not the same thing. The guilt we want to feel, God has not put upon us, but it is from our enemy that one day will be nothing more than a footstool for Jesus. Let us live as free as Jesus intends us to be, and see ourselves as God does, his children, co-heirs with Jesus of the everlasting paradise with eternal life, because we have been made holy and perfect in the sight of God.