August 16
“When He came into the world, He said: ‘Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come – in the volume of the Book it is written of Me – to do Your will, O God.”’ Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” Hebrews 10:5-10.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is quoting Psalm 40:6-8. Psalm 40 is another Messianic psalm, a psalm foretelling the coming of the Messiah and Savior, whom God promised to send after sin entered into the world by our first parents, Adam and Eve.
After Jesus had come into the world, He quotes the psalm stating that the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings are no longer desired by God: “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.” The Old Testament offerings and sacrifices did not remove the sins of anyone. They were symbols of the body of Jesus that would be offered and sacrificed on Calvary’s cross to cleanse and wash away the sins of all people. John wrote, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin,” 1 John 1:7.
Christ came as had been written and foretold in the volume of the Book – that is, in the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus applied the psalmist’s words to Himself: “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” Repeatedly during His public ministry on earth Jesus said that He had come to do the Father’s will. He said, “I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me,” John 5:30. Remember how Jesus wrestled in prayer with His heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was taken captive. Three times, He knelt and prayed, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will,” Matthew 26:39.
Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament promises with reference to the coming Savior. “He takes away the first that He may establish the second.” The Old Testament offerings and sacrifices no longer serve any purpose other than to remind us that they symbolized the sacrifice of Jesus, which was the one all-sufficient sacrifice to cleanse us from our sins.
The author of Hebrews says, “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” By Jesus’ one willing sacrifice of His body, we have been sanctified, cleansed, and forgiven. The words, “once for all,” are so important. Jesus did it once; there is no more offering for sins, and His sacrifice was made for all people. The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all,” Romans 6:9-10. To the Corinthians, he wrote, “He died for all,” 2 Corinthians 5:15.
“A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth,
The guilt of all men bearing;
And laden with the sins of earth,
None else the burden sharing!
Goes patient on,
Grows weak and faint,
To slaughter led without complaint,
That spotless life to offer;
Bears shame and stripes
And wounds and death,
Anguish and mockery, and saith,
‘Willing, all this I suffer.’” Amen.