The Great Sacrifice continues. Heb. 23-28 (100)
Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others” (v. 25). Ex. 30:10. Le. 16:2–34. The absolute perfection of the one offering of Christ, no repetition in any kind.
- This absolute perfection of the one offering of Christ arises from, first, the dignity of His person: Acts 20:28. It was the God-man who obeyed, suffered and died: nothing superior, nothing equal, could again be offered. Second, from the nature of the sacrifice itself. In the internal gracious workings of Christ, grace and obedience could never be more glorified than they had been by Jesus Christ. So too, in the punishment He underwent: He suffered to the full, the whole curse of the law; hence, any further offering would be highly blasphemous. Third, the Father’s delight in Him. In His one offering God was well pleased, and in it He rests. Hence the impossibility of any repetition”—condensed from John Owen. “Nor yet that He should offer Himself often.” Any other pretended offering is blasphemous practice’ such as the Papists, who in their daily “mass” pretend to sacrifice Christ afresh, and by their “priests” present Him as an offering to God, claiming that the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the real flesh and blood of Christ. They are guilty of the unspeakably dreadful sin of crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh, and putting Him to an open shame Heb. 6:6, for by their pretended “real sacrifice of Christ” they, through their daily repetition of it, deny its sufficiency and finality Heb. 10:2, degrading it below that of the annual atonement of Israel, which was made by the blood of beasts. “From the frequent repetition of the legal sacrifices. This showed the imperfection of that law; but it is the honour and perfection of Christ’s sacrifice that, being once offered, it was sufficient to all the ends of it; and indeed the contrary would have been absurd, for then he must have been still dying and rising again, and ascending and then again descending and dying; and the great work had been always in fieri—always doing, and always to do, but never finished, which would be as contrary to reason as it is to revelation, and to the dignity of his person: But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. The gospel is the last dispensation of the grace of God to men.” M. Henry
- “For then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (v. 26). This verse consists of two parts. First, a reason is given confirming the assertion made in v. 25 had Christ been obliged to “offer Himself often” to God, then must He have “suffered” afresh “from the foundation of the world,” that is, died afresh in each generation of human history. Second, a confirmation of that reason taken from the appointment of God: only once, and that in the fullness of time, did Christ come to earth to be a sacrifice for the sins of His people. First, that the “offering” (v. 25:) and “suffering” (v. 26:) of Christ are inseparable. It was in and by His suffering that the Lord Jesus offered Himself unto God, and that because He was Himself both the Priest and the Sacrifice. Aaron “offered” repeatedly, yet he never once “suffered,” for he was not the sacrifice itself. It was the bullock, which was slain, that suffered. The very especial nature of Christ’s offering or sacrifice, which was by the shedding of His blood in death, precluded a repetition thereof. Second, there was a necessity for the expiation of the sin of all that were to be saved from the foundation of the world. Sin entered the world immediately after it was founded, by the apostasy of our first parents. Notwithstanding, numbers of sinners, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and the spiritual remnant in Israel had their sins pardoned and were eternally saved; yet no sacrifice which they offered could remit moral guilt or redeem their souls. No; their salvation was also effected by virtue of the sacrifice of Christ. Hence it follows unavoidably that unless the merits of His own one offering their sins were abolished, then either He must have suffered often, or they perish. Contrariwise, seeing that elect sinners were saved through Christ “from the foundation of the world,” much more will the virtues of the Great Sacrifice extend unto the end of the world.” Pink. Arthur W.
