Jesus Really Paid It All

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If you’ll turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10, We’re going to continue on with our study that we began last week on eternal security. And again, like I said last week, not so much for the purpose of loading up your doctrine guns so you can go out and blow your friends and neighbors away when they disagree with eternal security, but more in the words of Brother Gary Devine to brag on Jesus. Eternal security matters not because it’s my opinion or because it works better for what I need to believe, but it matters because it’s what God’s word says and because it shows us the power of what Christ was able to accomplish.

Eternal security is a wonderful, excuse me, a wonderful fringe benefit for us. The knowledge that once we truly are in Christ, we are secure in Christ. But folks, there’s also, we should not, and we must not forget the element of thinking about, You know, Christ wasn’t able just to save us until the next time we messed up. He was able, as Hebrews chapter 7 says, to save to the uttermost those who come to Him.

So we’re going to look at Hebrews chapter 10 today. We talked last week about what eternal security doesn’t mean. I think one of the reasons people attack this idea of eternal security is because they have misconceptions about what it means.

And you know what? If it meant what some people say it means, I wouldn’t believe it either. But it’s not.

Thank goodness it’s not licensed to just do whatever you want, live however you want. It’s not fire insurance, which is what we talked about last week. If you can come to Christ, if you can make a profession of faith, as we saw in the Scriptures last week, if you can make a profession of faith and nothing in your life changes, you might need to go back and look at that profession and see if it’s genuine.

Because the Bible makes it clear in 1 John 5 that a believer will not, cannot continue on in the same lifestyle. We want to be careful about how we interpret that passage where it says the believer sins not. I’m paraphrasing a little bit.

It doesn’t mean we will never sin. It’s talking about a continuous lifestyle action. We will not go on unchanged as a believer.

We can’t do it. And so if we are using eternal security as a license to sin, it’s a good indication we may not have any kind of security in the first place. You know, it’s also not wishful thinking.

It’s something that’s borne out right there in Scripture. 1 John 5 says that this confidence is given to us by God. We talked about all the things that eternal security is not last week.

Today I want to talk to you about how we get it, about where it comes from. And it really does come from somebody paying the price for it. There’s no cost to us.

I was thinking about this on the way down here this morning. I love free things. If I can get it for free, I will.

Now, I’m not going to swindle anybody, but if you’re offering something for free or you’re offering something cheap, oh, this is on sale over here. Well, they’ve got this free over here. I’m going to go take that one.

My kids may end up putting on my tombstone someday that free is better than cheap because I say that a lot. I like free things. Most people like free things, but there’s a misconception in our society that things can really be free.

There’s not much in this world that really is free. I was trying to think if there is anything. There’s the air.

That doesn’t really cost anything. There’s sunshine. That doesn’t really cost anything.

Beyond that, I can’t think of many things that are free. And we live in a society where we want everything for free. We want our school for free.

We want our food for free. We want everything for free. That’s just human nature.

But when you think about it, there’s not much for free. Somebody had to pay for that. Now, I went to OU for four years.

I graduated from there I got scholarships didn’t cost me a dime to go to OU but somebody gave money for that to happen that wasn’t free I mean born didn’t wave a magic wand and suddenly school was free for me somebody paid for that my mother’s side of the family we all went to the Illinois River last week but we went went out there and did fishing and swimming and all sorts of things and we’re out there for the week we were going to go into town on Thursday night and have dinner and my cousin’s husband said, you know, instead of getting all the kids cleaned up and ready and all of that irritation and fuss and then trying to find some place that could fit all 50 dozen of us, let’s just grill hamburgers. And he said, I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for the whole thing if that’s what you want to do.

And he grilled them. There was a big spread, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled corn on the cob, all kinds of fixings. Didn’t cost me a thing, which I love that.

Didn’t cost me a thing. it was free to me. Somebody still had to pay for it.

There’s no such thing as free. Maybe free to us, but whatever it is, whatever good or service it is, is not actually free. Somebody had to pay for it.

Well, this idea of eternal security is much easier to understand when we think about who paid for it. Because I could see if we said, well, if you’re just eternally secure because you’re that good, or you did this or you prayed a prayer, something that’s dependent on me. If my salvation was dependent on me paying for it or earning it either to get it or to keep it, I would be in bad shape.

But when you consider the truth of the hymn that Jesus paid it all, that Jesus really did pay it all, then eternal security is not such a hard pill to swallow after all. It’s not really that hard to understand. Jesus could afford a whole lot more payment than you or I could.

And so we look at this passage where it talks about how mankind, even following God’s law, had tried to atone for his sins, had tried to pay for his sins, and had had limited success because all of our human efforts could not pay, could not really atone for our sins. You know, they would make the sacrifices and God would say, I’ll accept that for a year. But the blood of bulls and goats, God said, that really doesn’t make a payment for sin.

The only reason that was effective is because of the faith behind it looking forward to the sacrifice that God would make at Calvary some years later. That’s the only reason why the sacrifices were effective at all. But all their efforts, we look at this and we’re going to go through some verses here.

We look at this and see how effective all of this human effort, all of this expense, all of this time, all of this trouble was at paying for our sins. And what the single act by Jesus Christ was able to accomplish, that he was able in one act to accomplish what all of mankind could not do for 4,000 years. We’re going to start in chapter 10, verse 1, and we’re really going to focus in starting in closer toward verse 7.

But it says, For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year, continually make the comers thereunto perfect. And what he’s saying here is that the law, the sacrifices, the rituals, these were just a shadow. They were just a forerunner of the things to come.

They were just to prepare the people to understand the idea of blood sacrifice. If Jesus had just come and died on the cross in a vacuum, what I mean by that was no preparation, no idea of blood sacrifice ingrained into the Jewish culture, nobody would have understood what he did. In my Bible classes at school, one of the hardest things to explain to them was why Jesus had to die on the cross, why it mattered that he shed his blood, because we in our culture don’t have a history of understanding the importance of blood sacrifice and the innocent dying for the guilty.

That’s part of the reason I took them back to Genesis chapter 1 and then starting in Genesis chapter 3, the idea that the innocent die for the sins of the guilty, to try to bring them forward to the point of the cross and get them to understand that all of this was in preparation because the innocent have to pay for the sins of the guilty. And so he says here that the law, All of these things were just a shadow of things to come. And they were not effective.

Even with sacrifices year after year after year after year, they could not continually make those who participated in the sacrifices perfect. Or that word often in the Bible, perfect, means complete. Could not make them complete or whole before God.

For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged would have had no more conscience of sins. If they were really that effective, would they have stopped offering them? or would they have kept going?

Or if they were really that effective, wouldn’t they have just offered something once and then they would have had no sins on their conscience any longer? But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. You know what?

Because the sacrifice was ineffective and the sin was still laid to their account. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. It’s not possible.

And again, we could look at that and say, then what was the point of all of it? What was it all for? Why did God tell them to do that?

It was preparation for the cross. It was preparation so that some of them would understand when he came to the cross what he was actually doing. He wasn’t just getting himself killed because the authorities didn’t like him.

He was there to pay for sins. He was there, as he said in Luke 19. 10, to seek and to save that which was lost. Verse 5 says, Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice an offering thou wouldst not, but a body thou has prepared me.

This is the son speaking to the father and saying, those sacrifices did not satisfy you, and so you have prepared a body for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast had no pleasure. This is not new and radical teaching.

Even in the Old Testament, God made it clear he preferred obedience and not sacrifice. God didn’t desire that there need to be sacrifices at all. Just do what you’re supposed to do.

but we couldn’t handle that even with one simple rule. Don’t eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man in his own heart and his own lofty wisdom said I’m going to do what I want to do regardless of what God says and then the sacrifices were required.

Then said I verse 7, then said I, lo I come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will, O God. Take out those parentheses not take them out but just take them out of the thought for a second. Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.

Okay, Jesus is saying, I have come to do the will of my Father. Did he not say that in the Gospels? It was recorded, I’ve come to do the will of my Father.

He knew what business he was about. Above when he said, sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings, an offering for sin thou wouldst not, neither hadst pleasure therein which are offered by the law. God commanded them to make the sacrifices as a picture of what Christ was going to do, But he had no pleasure in those things because they were a reminder of sin.

And yet they were a reminder of sin without satisfying the demands of justice. Then said he, verse 9, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.

Jesus came and by his sacrifice, he took away the first, which was the demands of the law, and replaced it with the second, which is grace. He traded one out for the other. Didn’t mean that he abolished the law, but he meant that he fulfilled all the demands of the law so that we are no longer under the law in the sense of gaining our salvation that way.

I’ll tell you, that doesn’t mean we throw God’s law out. Now, there are some things, civil ceremonial laws that were meant just for Israel. There are some things that were meant as part of their religious rituals.

But you know what? There’s a lot of wisdom still. It’s still God’s word, and there’s a lot of wisdom in there when it comes to the moral law.

We don’t throw it out. We don’t earn our salvation by following. There’s still some wisdom for how to live contained in that law.

But we don’t approach God saying, this is how I make peace with you. This is how I’m reconciled. This is how I earn forgiveness by the law.

Jesus accomplished that for us and put us under grace. He brought in the second. Verse 10 says, By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

He says by the which will, that means the will of God. It has been the will of God from before the foundation of the world that Christ would be slain as a sacrifice for our sins and that all those who trust in Christ for their salvation would be reconciled to God through that sacrifice that was made once for all. God was not caught off guard in the Garden of Eden.

It didn’t take God 4,000 years to figure out how He was going to deal with the problem of sin. He knew before He created us that we were going to sin and that He was going to have to send His Son to purchase our forgiveness. Christ was not plan B.

He was plan A all along. And then in due time, the Bible says, Christ came. It was by the will of God that we are sanctified.

Sanctified means declared holy, set apart. Said that we belong to Him. God says you’re mine.

That’s what sanctification is. We don’t use that word a lot anymore, but it’s a great word. But at the moment of conversion, God says, they’re mine.

And whether they’re still dealing with sin or not, whether I’m still working on them, shaving off the rough edges and all that, they’re mine. They’re holy. They’re set apart.

You belong to me. Any of you who have children should be able to understand this. In all that mass of people at the river this week, after dinner, I was ready to go fishing.

And my kids liked it. They’re too young. I didn’t let them have hooks because I like both my eyes.

We had weights on the end of their line, let them go out and cast in the river. They usually ended up just throwing rocks and scaring away the fish from me. But I’d holler at them, if your name is Byrns, if your last name is Byrns, come on, we’re going to the river.

And they knew who that label applied to because they’re mine. That label applies to them. It’s the same principle.

This idea of sanctification is where God puts his stamp, his label on us and says, you’re mine. If your name is child of mine, come with me. And then God sanctifies us in the other sense of changing our heart and changing our behavior.

By the witch will, verse 10, by his will we are sanctified. How is that possible? How does that take place?

Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. This makes it abundantly clear. You know what?

You don’t have to go and sacrifice Christ all over again every time you sin. Makes it abundantly clear. Christ doesn’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the Mass every Sunday for your sins to be forgiven.

It says that Jesus Christ was offered once for all. Once for all men, once for all time, He was offered once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down on the right hand of God. He says those priests, we could look at it in their context, the Jewish priests, we could look at it today, the Catholic priests offering what they consider to be the literal body of Christ on the altar of the Mass every week. Whatever priest it is, thinking that Christ needs to be sacrificed again, or thinking that some kind of sacrifice, you know, expand it beyond the Christian realm, or the Judeo-Christian realm.

Are there not priests making sacrifices to all sorts of gods in all sorts of temples and altars today? All the priests, all the people offering all their religious rituals, trying to placate their gods, cannot accomplish what was accomplished in one single act by Jesus Christ. All their offerings and all their ministerings could never take away sins, but this man, not indicating that he was only a man, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice of himself, one sacrifice of sins, for sins, excuse me, forever, sat down on the right hand of God. He was finished.

And he went and sat down at the right hand of God the Father after a job well done. That indicates to me he’s done everything that was necessary. Folks, he finally sat down on his throne at the right hand of God the Father because he was done.

He’d finished and he’d accomplished everything. From henceforth, it says, verse 13, from henceforth expecting until his enemies be made his footstool. Now that’s a reference back to, that’s referred to in the book of Acts, and that’s a reference back to the Psalms where David was talking about his Lord.

And God would make his enemies his footstool. the power, the majesty that He has and all that He’s accomplished. And one day all of those who stand opposed to Him, all the forces of darkness in this world will be made His footstool.

For by one offering, He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Again, there’s that word sanctification. He is by one offering perfected forever.

Let’s take that apart for a minute. By one offering, that was what He did on the cross. He has perfected.

Now that word perfected, we see perfect and perfected and all that. We see that in Scripture all the time. It doesn’t mean perfect the way we think of perfect today.

It doesn’t mean flawless, sinless. I wish it would. I’m tired of being sinful.

I don’t know if you ever feel that way. I feel that way. When I feel like I’ve let God down, I just hate it.

And I’m tired of it. It means complete. There’s a connection between the Greek word that’s translated as perfect here And what Jesus said on the cross when he said it was paid in full.

It is finished. What he’s talking about us, what he’s talking about, excuse me, is not us being sinlessly flawless. He’s talking about us being complete spiritually.

Being complete in our standing whole before God. So for by one offering, by what he did on the cross, he has made us complete and whole before God forever. For all those who are sanctified.

Who are those who are sanctified? we refer back to verse 10. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

All who have taken advantage of that sacrifice now stand complete before a holy God. I would shudder to think of what it would be like to stand before a holy God, not clothed in the righteousness of Christ. If I go to stand before God and all I have in hand is my own righteousness, it’s going to be a pretty sad little offering. I think I’ve told you before, read the book of Nahum.

Just chapter 1 if you can’t get through the whole thing. Read Nahum chapter 1. You’ll understand how God feels about sin.

I don’t want to stand in front of God with just my own righteousness in between us. I don’t want to just stand with the completion that I bring. Because I’m a sinner.

Did y’all know that? Some of you were really quick to shake your heads on that. I’m a sinner.

I know me, and I know what I deserve from God. You know what? I don’t know you.

I mean, I don’t know the innermost thoughts of your heart, but I know what you deserve from God. I don’t want to stand before Him just clothed in my own righteousness. But for those who take advantage of the sacrifice that Christ has done, He says He justifies, He saves to the uttermost all who come to Him.

For all of those who take advantage of the sacrifice, we stand before God complete. Not because of anything I’ve done, not because of anything you’ve done, not because of anything we have to boast about, but because Jesus Christ, by one act of sacrifice, has perfected forever, forever, all who are sanctified. Now for some people, forever doesn’t last as long as it used to.

But my Bible still says forever. My Bible does not have an expiration date on the promises of God. My Bible doesn’t have an expiration date on the sufficiency of His sacrifice.

it says by one act forever maybe god just didn’t know I was going to mess up again after that there are some scriptures that taken on their own sound as though you can lose your salvation but you let the very clear ones interpret the ones that are not so very clear and we realize that jesus by one act atoned paid for all of our sins my sins your sins yesterday’s sins tomorrow’s sins forever for those who are sanctified, those who are set apart, those who take advantage of the sacrifice. Three things, three things from this passage I want to share with you that I’ve already alluded to so I won’t take very long on any of them and then we will be dismissed from here. First of all, Jesus’ payment for sin accomplished what the law could not.

When I say what the law could not, we could throw in that whole category all the realm of human effort. That whether it’s by following God’s law, or as expressed in the Old Testament, I cannot get to heaven by keeping the rituals and the feasts and the festivals. The whole point of the law, according to Galatians, is to show us that we can’t keep the law.

It’s to show us what God already said was true, that we were fallen and sinful. And it’s to show us how wide the gulf is between us and a holy God. But it’s not just following the Old Testament law.

There are some today who are a law unto themselves. make up their own criteria. Say, well, if I’m just a nice person, I’ll get to heaven.

Or if the good outweighs the bad, I’ll get into heaven. Or if I’m kind to animals, I’ll get into heaven. Believe me, you will find all sorts of answers.

I used to go out with a group from First Southern Baptist in Dell City to do evangelism explosion. We’d ask people questions. Do you know where you would go if you would die tonight?

Would you go to heaven or hell? The second question is, if you were to stand before God and He should ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say? some of the answers, oh goodness, I could write a book on some of the answers.

You name it. Somebody believes it. That that’s how they’re going to get into heaven.

But the Bible makes it clear no amount of human effort. There’s this clear contrast that God draws here. He talks about all the priests with their offerings and their ministerings.

He puts the whole realm of human effort here on one side of the picture, on one side of the equation. And He puts the singular act of Jesus Christ on the other side of the equation and says they will never, ever be equal. All the good you could ever do according to the Old Testament law. All the good you could ever do according to your own conscience or what you heard on Oprah.

Sorry, I know I bring her up a lot. None of it will ever accomplish what the one act of Jesus Christ on the cross did. He paid for things that human effort could not conceive of paying for.

Second of all, Jesus’ payment for sin covered all sin, past, present, and future. Again, he compares all the effort of all the priests throughout time. And yet he says that Jesus was offered once for all.

Once for all. He doesn’t need to be sacrificed again every time we mess up. As a matter of fact, Hebrews chapter 6 talks about that.

Presents a hypothetical that if you could, and we’ll probably talk about this in the next couple weeks, but if you could lose your salvation, then you couldn’t be saved again because then you’d have to crucify Christ again. You’d have to put the Son of God to an open shame. You know what?

He doesn’t have to be offered every time we lose our salvation. He doesn’t have to be offered continuously to keep us in good stead with God. He paid for all sin once for all time.

God wasn’t caught off guard when they sinned in the garden, and He wasn’t caught off guard when I yelled at somebody in traffic the other day. God looks down through the corridors of eternity and sees it as clearly as I see you all before me now. And He knew the sins that He was paying for.

Christ knew the sins that He was paying for before all of this ever started.

and third of all Jesus payment for sin completed our salvation it completed our salvation his sacrifice on the cross completed our salvation now I tell you on a routine basis that there are three things involved in salvation because especially when we when we have new people here when we have visitors I want to clarify some of these church words that we we throw out and we know what we mean we think but the rest of the world hears it we’re speaking Greek salvation means salvation means that our sins are forgiven that we have a relationship with god the father and that we have the promise of eternal life in heaven those three things are involved in salvation that’s what that word means jesus christ completed all of that he purchased all of that folks he didn’t just purchase the forgiveness of sins he also makes it possible for us to stand whole and complete before a holy god he purchased that relationship romans chapter 5 says that we have peace with god through Jesus Christ. The implication there is that we were enemies of God.

I hate that thought, but it’s true. It’s what the Bible teaches. We were the enemies of God.

To be friendship with the world is enmity with God. He purchased our peace with God. He purchased there our eternal life in heaven.

He did all of it. It’s not just the forgiveness part. He purchased all of it.

All of our salvation was completed in that singular act. He perfected or completed forever all those who are sanctified. And now because of what he did, God works on us and he works in us and he changes our hearts.

Sometimes there’s a great leap and sometimes it’s a more gradual process, but he changes us and conforms us as the scriptures say, conforms us to the image of his son. Because of what Christ did, God continues to sanctify us and make us more like Jesus, where we grow as a result out of that salvation. Folks, it’s not because of any of my effort or any of your effort that we have this salvation, that we get this salvation or that we keep this salvation.

One act at one point in time that is solely responsible for the salvation that everyone before and after enjoys today. It’s when Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfect sinless life so that he could be a perfect sacrifice. Not paying for his own sins, but paying for mine and yours because he was sinless.

And he went to the cross and the Bible says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. He took upon Himself our sins, mine and yours. You name them, He took it on Himself and He was punished in our place.

He shed His blood and He died on the cross so that we could be forgiven.