Tuesday, May 1
Read Hebrews 7:24-27, 8:6. What great hope is given to us in these texts?
Christ is able to save completely due to several qualifications that no other priest could ever have. He is God, who has authority to forgive sins. He has a permanent priesthood. During the Christian era He is interceding all the time for His people, with the same loving compassion as when He healed the sick and comforted the lonely. He is also human but was born sinless and remained that way. And, as the sinless One, He died under the staggering weight of the sum total of human sin. Only He, then, as the God-Man, can intercede for sinners in heaven’s sanctuary.
What these texts show, too, is that Christ’s sacrifice was once and for all. It needed to happen only one time, and it was sufficient to bring salvation to every human being.
After all, considering who it was who died on the cross, how could such an offering not be sufficient for every human being?
Read Hebrews 9:11-15. What has Christ obtained for us through His death and now His ministry in heaven?
Hebrews 9:12 says that Christ has “obtained eternal redemption” (NKJV). The Greek word translated “redemption” also means “ransoming”, “releasing”, and “deliverance”. It’s the same word used in Luke 1:68, when Zacharias declared that God has “visited and redeemed His people” (NKJV). The reference to Christ’s blood — the blood of the only sufficient sacrifice — means that it was Christ, as the sacrificial Lamb, who obtained this redemption, this deliverance. And the great news of the gospel is that Christ obtained this, not for Himself, but for us, and it becomes efficacious for all who accept Christ’s sacrifice for them.
Dwell on this idea, that Christ has “obtained” “eternal redemption” for us, and it was only after He accomplished this that He entered into His work in the heavenly sanctuary on our behalf. What hope does this offer us regarding what Christ is doing for us in the heavenly sanctuary?
