Born to Die (Part 1)

It is one of the more profound and staggering Christmas texts that you will find, but when you read Hebrews 10:1-10 you'll discover the essence of Christmas and Christian faith. In our final two posts for this advent season, I want us to capture the heart of this scripture and allow it to wash over us with all its stunning grace and truth.

The text begins with statements about the futility of Old Testament sacrifices for the taking away of sin (Hebrews 10:1-4). In olden times, animal sacrifices were offered daily for sin. But that these sacrifices were futile was evident in two facts. First, they were animal sacrifices. How can the blood of bulls and goats take away human sin? Humans are the sinners; not animals. Animals are actually more morally innocent than humans are! Look at a wart-hog and look at a human: at a moral level the first is not guilty, the second is. So from the outset, it is clear that even though God commanded animal sacrifices for human sin, those sacrifices could not actually take away that sin. Since humans sin, eventually a Human would have to pay the price.

Second, they were repeated sacrifices (Hebrews 10:1, 2). The fact that these animal offerings had to be offered continually reveals that they simply were not adequate. They were inadequate because they were animals only and because they simply were not of suffcient worth fully to pay the price for human sin. In contrast, a True Sacrifice of sufficient worth would have to be made only once.

Tomorrow we'll see what (or rather Who) that sacrifice would have to be. But for today please notice this about yourself and your sin: it needs a sacrifice! We humans tend to think that we're just not that bad, and God is just not that mad, as to require payment for sin. But our text tells us otherwise. It tells us that sin requires atonement. And it tells us that our sins require an atonement of incomprehensible worth. If the blood of various valuable animals numbering in the hundreds of thousands offered for thousands of years was not enough to pay the price for our sins, how bad must those sins be, and how mad must they make God!

Now don't despair: God has made a way. But do ponder: that way had to be made. I am that bad and God was that mad. Honest self-awareness tells us that we are very bad sinners deserving of the wrath of the Almighty. The gospel tells us that God's anger has been removed. Tomorrow's reading will tell us how.

Tim Shorey