#DailyDevotion Jesus’ One Perfect Sacrifice Institutes The New Covenant
Hebrews 10:11–18
11Every other priest stands and serves day after day, and over and over again brings the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But He made one sacrifice for sins, good forever, sat down at the right hand of God, 13and since then is waiting for His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet. 14By one sacrifice He forever made perfect those who are made holy.
15The Holy Spirit assures us of this. First He says: 16“This is the covenant I will make with them after those days,” says the Lord: “I will put My laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.” 17Then He adds: “I will not remember their sins and their wrongs anymore.” 18Now, where sins are forgiven, there is no more sacrificing for sin.
We continue in Hebrews with the themes Jesus is better than the Levitical priests and he is better than the sacrifices they bring. First with the priests, they have to stand and serve every day and over and over again bring the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. Morning and evening they had obligatory sacrifices. Then they had the sacrifices the people brought. But these could never take away sins. The were made in view of the sacrifice Jesus himself would make of his own body and blood.
Jesus as our high priest made one sacrifice for sins. That sacrifice is good forever and never needs to be repeated. He is the fulfillment of those sacrifices in the Torah. He only needs to be sacrificed once and for all because he not only fully human but he is fully God. With God’s weight in the scale, who is eternal, his sacrifice is eternal. Having made the sacrifice once and for all he sat at the right hand of the Father where he intercedes for us as he waits for his enemies to be made a footstool.
His sacrifice is perfect that is complete as he forever makes perfect those who are made holy. The sacrifices of the old covenant set apart the people of God as his people and made them ritually, outwardly clean. Jesus sacrifice not only sets a people apart for himself but it makes them clean inwardly. His sacrifice cleanses us outwardly and inwardly. He gives us his Holy Spirit, makes us born of God, gives us a new heart, mind, living soul (resurrects it), affections, desires, etc..
You see, his sacrifice instituted the New Covenant which abrogates, takes away, the Old Covenant. When he gives us his Holy Spirit in baptism this is when he writes his Torah, his laws on our hearts and minds. This is the eternal Torah, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As the New Covenant states, “I will not remember their sins and their wrongs anymore.” John tells us as much in his Gospel ch. 1, 17“The Law was given through Moses, but Jesus Christ brought grace and truth.” Paul says 2 Cor. 3, 6 “He has made us able servants of a new covenant, not of a written Law but of the Spirit, because the written Law kills, but the Spirit makes alive.” It is the forgiveness of sins, won through the sacrifice of Jesus which rules and governs the hearts of God’s people. It is only through faith in the forgiveness of sins that God’s people fulfill the Law. As it is, there is now no more sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ one perfect sacrifice fulfills it all.
Merciful God and Father, grant us faith in the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus that we may be partakers of the New Covenant and be made perfect in him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.