Once and For All--August 9, 2021

Once and For All--August 9, 2021

"Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, [Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself." [Hebrews 9:25-26]

There are so few things in this life that truly are once-and-for-all accomplishments that it can be hard to believe any are real.  So much in our lives wears down, wears out, needs replacing, loses its effectiveness, or stops functioning that it's easy to be skeptical when someone comes along and said, "No, really!  This time it's permanent!  This time it's done, completed, final, perfected, once and for all!"

The new flooring you put in your living room has a warranty and a shelf life, and if you live there long enough, you'll have to replace it some day.  The paint on the wall, too.

The new computer, tablet, or smart-phone that seems like it will be the thing to solve all your office tech problems will be obsolete before long, and you may have to buy a new power cord for the new one you buy, too.

The employer you counted on as the last time you'd ever have to worry about going through an interview, with the job you hoped you could stay in for a whole career, sometimes drops you like a hot potato, and you're left without the promise of security you had been counting on.

The COVID vaccine, as great and effective as it is, may end up needing booster over time in the future.  The garden you happily planted in the spring keeps needing to be watered.  Even those big-ticket items we think of as one-time purchases end up spread out over time with monthly payments--your mortgage, your car, your phone.  My goodness, even permanent marker wears off your hand after a few days of life and handwashing.

In science, they call it the Second Law of Thermodynamics: that everything eventually moves from organized to disorganized, orderly to chaos, new and shiny to old and broken-down.  Everything, it seems, wears out. And that means just about everything in our lives needs to be fixed, repainted, redone, or repeated to keep it maintained, like you refill your vehicle's gas tank, repaint the porch, mow the grass over and over again, and re-wash your clothes.

So I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little hesitant, a little cautious, to really believe the promise we hear in these verses from Hebrews that Jesus is different and that in his death and resurrection, we have at last something that truly is once-and-for-all.  Accomplished.  Permanent--for real.  Complete.  Done and impossible to un-do.

But those are exactly the stakes we hear from these verses: that unlike countless generations of ancient Israel's high priests offering sacrifices over and over again, what Jesus has done is a truly unique and unrepeatable event. In his death, a life offered up for us all like the old sacrifices of lambs and goats, Jesus ends sacrifice--once and for all.

Interestingly (but maybe helpfully, too), the writer of Hebrews doesn't try to explain how Jesus' death accomplishes our right relationship with God here.  He just focuses on the once-and-for-all-ness of it.  We don't get into the muddy waters of atonement theories, and the author doesn't get into suggesting that Jesus' death pays a debt, or satisfies some divine bloodlust, or offers a ransom.  Instead, the focus here is on the permanency, the uniqueness, of Jesus' gift of his own life.  

And maybe that's enough for us to live with for today.  Even if we don't understand the "how," we are given the assurance that Jesus' choice to lay down his life for us has done something that never needs to be done again, something which can never be undone.  In a world where everything else wears out or wears off, Jesus really has changed things between us and God... forever.

That also means that there is no amount of extra goodness or merit badges requires of you to keep your standing in the Heaven Club, and no amount of additional badness or demerits on your record that can disqualify you from God's love.  There is no need for any fine print, asterisks, conditions, or add-ons, and there is never any, "Oh, but of course, you also have to do the following..." that comes with this arrangement.  What Jesus has done is done.  

And you can count on that.

Lord Jesus, help us to trust that you have accomplished forever what our efforts could never do.  Give us courage to face the day with that news.