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THROUGH HIS OWN BLOOD: HEBREWS 9: 11-12

THROUGH HIS OWN BLOOD: HEBREWS 9: 11-12

By Roger Salter
www.virtueonline.org
April 16, 2024

The soul-saving sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ is brought home to our hearts with great poignancy by these impactful words from the highly emblematic letter to the Hebrew followers of Messiah who've encountered huge issues of faith since they stepped out of Judaism.

Their native faith, by its strong tradition and familiarity, weighs heavily upon them, and moving on from the Old Testament environment of expectation to the era of fulfillment poses a profound change of mind. How has Jesus [the Promise] fulfilled the rationale, ritual and realization of the hope of Israel?

The author of Hebrews evinces amazing skill in relating the gospel power and potential in the prophetic and temple tradition to Jesus Christ the God pledged Redeemer of all who look to him in trust. The features of the former covenant are the insignia of the Coming One and the apostolic teaching and preaching will match symbol to reality.

Centuries of type, token and teaching would accumulate until its clear revelation in the authority, truth and loveliness of the God-man. As is well recognized the Word made flesh is the self-expression of God. All truth and sound knowledge consists in Christ. Nothing is lacking or omitted. Whatever is certain is certainly imparted by him.

The mystery of the divine salvation is enthrallingly disclosed in Hebrews, a Jewish testimony to floundering Jews who needed urgent support in their new-found faith. Christ's comprehensive reflection of all the God-ordained elements in Israel's faith that are pointers to the future salvation is the massive glory of his wondrous Person.

He is seen with hindsight supremely in the sacrificial system of substitution, and that awareness that shed blood is essential for pardon of sin. The sacrifices for sin were the insignia of his office as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The extraordinary fact is the Christ Jesus is so committed to his Father's will to retrieve, restore, reconcile vile sinners to himself, and to secure their eternal bliss, that Jesus goes so far as to achieve our recovery to God and his everlasting companionship and care "through his own blood". The blood shed for our salvation is Jesus' blood; his life actually laid down, like an unblemished lamb, for our deliverance: this is divine wisdom, divine procurement of the elect, sanctification, divine provision and divine protection and preservation; the purchase of eternal redemption.

Because his blood, in some sense, may be counted as divine the transaction of the cross can never be nullified or reversed. The price of redemption is inestimably high. This a redemption that cannot fail. Christ in the utmost personal way secured it and infallibly guards it.

How strong; how sweet Messiah happens to be. Direct, immediate, intimate in his act of mercy.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things having come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, that is, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all time, having obtained eternal redemption.

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