HEB. x. 12. “One sacrifice for sins for ever.”
THE efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice can never cease, it can
never be repeated, it can never wear out, it is for eternity.
There is an exceeding grandeur about everything which
can be done only “once.” Death and judgment and the
atonement are of this character. They can only be
“once.”
The cross is magnificently fearful in its perfect isolation.
It is the one manifestation of the eternal Father. All
grace and glory revolve about it as their common centre.
I. The Sacrifice. It was the Son of God. All nature,
the angels, the saints, sinners, His own lips, the very
centurion, confessed to that truth, the Son of God. And if
it was the Son of God, then it outweighs the universe.
One drop of the blood of the Son of God is more than
equivalent in God’s sight to the crime of the universe.
Nothing created, nothing finite, can be any common mea-
sure with Deity. “One sacrifice for sins for ever.” Look
at the unity and completeness of the sacrifice. The Lord
Jesus is at once the Priest, the Saviour, the Altar and the
Victim. All that we have to do with “sacrifice” now is
to present the sacrificed One upon our faith to God.
II. Observe the word “for ever.”
It would be a false and presumptuous interpretation to
say that it meant that present pardon covers future sin.
God forbid that any should so abuse God’s mercy as to
think that God does not see sin in His own people, or that
because we are in a state of justification therefore we may
do what we like, the debt being paid, and guilt cancelled.
Holiness is the great end of the cross. Pardon, peace,
salvation, happiness, are only means to holiness. But this
fountain for sin and uncleanness is always flowing and
always open. It is “one,” but it is all, and for all, through
all ages, “one sacrifice for sins for ever.”
James Vaughan, M.A.