MADE PERFECT FOREVER

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. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool. For by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Heb. 10: 10-14).

Don’t you love the finality of the writer’s words? One sacrifice . . . perfect forever. What other man-made religion can make an authoritative and convincing statement like that?

What does it mean for us? Jesus sat down – not literally, of course – but in the sense that, firstly, His work was accepted. When the high priest had sprinkled the blood of the second goat on the Mercy Seat in the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, he would come out from behind the curtain and sit down, signifying that the sacrifice had been accepted and the sins of the people atoned for, for another year.

Secondly, when Jesus sat down, it meant that His work was complete. Unlike the Levitical sacrifices which had to be offered year after year because they could never do away with sin, the offering of His own blood was acceptable forever, never to be offered again. He took His place in heaven to take up His work as mediator of a new covenant, since the old covenant had now become obsolete.

Thirdly, He sat down at the right hand of God because it is the place of authority and power which He had earned by His victory over the devil, and over the works of the devil. He had conquered sin and death and become the firstfruits of the resurrection. To Him was given the right to rule over His enemies; to make them His footstool.

Fourthly, and this is a part of His work that we find difficult to grasp and even more difficult to accept, He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. There is something awesome going on here. The writer speaks about the work of Jesus as already complete but also as happening now. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, God sees those who believe in Him as already perfect from the perspective of eternity but, at the same time, we are in the process of being made holy, from the perspective of time.

God looks at us through the lens of Jesus’s perfect righteousness which He has attributed to us as a gift. We cannot achieve perfection according to God’s standard by our own efforts because we are already sinners from birth. We are already alienated from God before we take our first breath. No amount of “good deeds” which are tainted because of our sinful, selfish natures, can wipe out our record of failure.

But Jesus met every requirement as a son which He gives to us freely when we receive His gift of forgiveness. We are already perfect in God’s sight. Perfect? Yes, perfect, because His death paid for all people, for all sin, for all time. He can never again hold sin against us because sin has been removed and we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

But, at the same time, as long as we are in this life, we are to keep walking the path of trust and obedience because we are moving towards a predetermined destination – likeness to Jesus. God puts us through our paces as we live each day in our everyday circumstances. He allows us to face all kinds of challenges to test and strengthen our trust in Him, and to bring to the surface those faults and flaws in our nature which hinder the process of being made holy.

The situations that bring out the worst in us are not attacks from the devil to be resisted. They are God’s way of revealing what is still in us that needs to change. Instead of blaming others or dodging responsibility for our sinful reactions, He wants us to own our ungodly attitudes and reactions, and turn to Him for grace to overcome. Little by little, situation by situation, test by test, as we submit to His correction, we are being set apart from sin to God.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified (Rom. 8: 28-30).

Again, it’s a done deal.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Look for my new book “Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart” (copyright 2105 – published by Partfridge Publishing) on www.amazon.com