Day 8 Perfect Completion

Perfect Completion

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll – I have come to do your will, O God.’   Hebrews 10:5-7

The regular round of sacrifices under the old covenant could never address the problem of sin and guilt in the consciences of the worshippers. These sacrifices could offer purification for outward impurities. They could also assure people of continuing membership in Israel, despite their sins. But they could never achieve the rich, full and deep cleansing that the blood of Jesus offered and gave. They couldn’t ‘take away sins’ (10:4).

The old covenant sacrifices could never ‘make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once and for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, ‘because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins’ (10:1-4).

Our text above, Psalm 40:6-8, and quoted by Hebrews’ author, explains that what God truly sought was the perfect life and voluntary offering of a God-man. This was what the temple sacrifices and offerings pointed to. They were signposts pointing to this One who would come. Because the old system pointed ahead to the new, the old declared itself to ultimately be redundant. It was never designed nor claimed to last forever.

It spoke truth in shadows – shadows cast by the bright light coming from God’s future. The contrast was always between the present and the future realities. Jesus, who has gone ahead of us into God’s future reality, will reappear when that future reality bursts into the present for the whole world (at His second coming).

The old covenant sacrifices needed to be repeated constantly because they didn’t deal with the real problem. At the heart of the new dispensation was the obedient, self-offering of the Son. Over against the sacrifices, He has come to do God’s will. So the law, for all its goodness, was never going to be God’s final word. What Jesus, the Messiah, has done, once and for all time, is both the crown and completion of God’s previous purposes and is the new reality that takes their place. Now that God’s ‘for all time’ replacement has come, no one could possibly think of going back into the old temporary one, especially if they had experienced the new, permanent dispensation God has brought to birth in Christ.

Christ’s sacrifice of His life for you is complete. Nothing has to be added. Enjoy the height, length, breadth and depth of your salvation.

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