Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Finality of The Cross P35 (10-26-21)
All This Is From God; Come Alive in Christ Jesus; Stop Doubting and Believe; Take God at His Word; Set Aside the Teachings and Traditions of Men
Have you understood the totality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection? If you do, you cannot help but marvel and be overwhelmed with God’s great love for you, and respond with astounding gratitude and worship. You would be so in love with the Lord, who did all this for you! That is our only response to all this is from God.
2 Corinthians 5:17-19
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
He is the one who reconciled us to Himself, who provided the final sacrifice for our sins, who said that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sins (Hebrews 9:22). If there was any further sacrifice to be executed on our behalf, we would have to die again. He is not coming to die again. He is not coming to deal with sin but to bring salvation to those waiting for Him.
Hebrews 9:28
28 Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
It is all of him. He was raised from the dead. He said it is good for you I am going to be raised from the dead for when I do I am going to send my Spirit into any man, woman, boy or girl on the face of the earth who will turn to me by faith, believing and trusting what I did.
John 16:7-11
7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
Jesus is the only one who could pull it off. He is God Himself (John 1:1-14). He is the only one born on this earth alive spiritually (Colossians 1:15). Therefore, He is the only one who can lay down His life for you and me. He is the only one who had a life to lay down.
John 10:18
18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
It is not the fact of being dogmatic but a fact of reality. He is the only one who could do it. Christ Jesus came to this earth taking upon our humanity. He walked on this earth for 33 years, living a perfect life in perfect love, fulfilling the law. Fulfilling the law qualified him to the death He died. The death He died is what paid the price for you and me, who could not fulfill the law. The price for our sins was paid once and for all at that cross, so that raised from the dead, He would be able to raise us from the dead and to give us life, His life living in us, which is our only hope of glory.
Colossians 1:26-27
26 He has kept this secret for centuries and generations past, but now at last it has pleased him to tell it to those who love him and live for him, and the riches and glory of his plan are for you Gentiles, too. 27 And this is the secret: Christ in your hearts is your only hope of glory.
He did all of that. He did not consult with us. He did not ask if it was okay. He just did it for us. Our role is to believe it. Be reconciled. I reconciled you unto myself so be reconciled. Then he told us why.
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
2 Corinthians 5:20-21
20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Yet, because of false teaching, many have failed to comprehend God’s marvelous plan of salvation. Hebrews 10:26 has been so abused in interpretation that the Christian world has been deceived even into thinking they can lose salvation.
Hebrews 10:26-31
26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[Deuteronomy 32:35] and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”[Deuteronomy 32:36; Psalm 135:14] 31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The verse is talking to people who are teaching that kind of garbage, that if you keep holding onto that unbelief, you have nothing to look forward to except hell. You are spitting in the face of Jesus saying, “it is not finished” when it is finished.
John 19:30
30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Hebrews 10:16-18
16 “This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”[Jeremiah 31:33]17 Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”[Jeremiah 31:34]18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
When people are sinning against the knowledge of the truth, they are sinning against the totality of the cross, that it is finished and there is no more sacrifice for sins, and the reality of the resurrection, that Christ is alive and to be reconciled to God, to come alive in Christ Jesus, His Spirit Spirit to be placed in you forever.
Hebrews 10:12-14
12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are sanctified.
Jesus is sitting down now at the right hand of God because His work is finished. There are no more sacrifices for sin. If He was a priest of the old order, like that of the Old Testament priests, bulls and goats were continually required to be sacrificed for sin, and that just to cover sin, and not to take them away. If that were so, Jesus would still be standing again and again, sacrificing for sin, for His work would not be finished. But He is a different priest, one who is eternal, without sin, the firstborn with the Spirit of God in Him, and one who has risen from the dead, so that He can always intercede on our behalf. The Old Testament priests had sin of their own and died and could not continue in office. And, when this priest, Christ Jesus, God Himself, completed His work of sacrificing Himself, one time on a cross, only to rise again from the grave, He has made perfect forever those who are sanctified, or set apart, by belief in Him. How are you set apart? You are set apart by new birth, a spiritual birth, where God places all of Himself in you by His Spirit when you place your complete trust in his death, burial and resurrection for you.
2 Corinthians 5:18-21
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So let go of your sacrificial systems, your shedding the blood of bulls and goats, or your going to a confessional booth or going direct to God with your 1 John 1:9 to get your sins forgiven, or whatever else you do to make yourself right before God or what you think you have to do to cleanse yourself from sin or what you do to establish your righteousness or to make yourself holy before God. It is all of God and none of you.
Change your mind about what you can do to be made perfect, or complete, before God, and come to the conclusion that only Christ Jesus could and did do it all for you. It is impossible for you to make yourself right before God or to even maintain holiness that you never had, assuming you could even get holiness to begin with by what you do. Stop keeping records of your wrongs before God, as if you have to count your sins and confess them to get forgiveness. God is not counting sins today. Jesus took all the sins of the world upon Himself. There is none left for you. God did not forget one sin when He died on a cross for you. God became sin for you, so that by putting your faith in His resurrected life, He can impute to you His righteousness. All that is of Christ has been given to you as a gift the moment you put your faith in Him.
Colossians 2:13-14
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Either you believe God forgave all your sins or you don’t. There is no distinction between positional and relational sins or venial and mortal sins or the outward sins, such as adultery and murder, and those inward sins, such as lust and anger. The root of all sin is unbelief in Jesus. That is what Jesus meant when He said He came to prove the world wrong about sin. The world’s sin is unbelief in me (John 16:9 TLB). Jesus died for all sins. He nailed all the sins of the world on the cross, paying the price of death required for sin for us (Romans 6:23). Have you recognized that the sins you committed were a symptom of a deeper problem, that you are born spiritually dead, without the Spirit of God living in you? Recognize your condition of death that can only be solved by life, and the only life available to you is the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. Recognize your condition of death so you might seek a Savior in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:19). That is the reason He was sent, to do something for you that you could never do for yourself. Allow God to make you alive, to put His Spirit in you.
Hebrews 10:17-18
17 Then he adds:“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”[Jeremiah 31:34]18 And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
So God ushered in a New Covenant with man. Jesus is the guarantee of that New Covenant (2 Corinthians 5:5, Ephesians 1:14), for He took take away the sins of the entire world (1 John 2:2 NASB) and lives forevermore to intercede for us (Hebrews 7:25). He guarantees eternal life, an indestructible life, to you and me, a life that that can never be taken away by sin because He already provided propitiation for sin, and always lives in us. He has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), to always live to intercede for us (Hebrews 7:25), who will complete the work He began in us (Philippians 1:6), which includes a glorious new immortal body like His (Philippians 3:21), the day we should leave this earth by rapture or physical death (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).
