(Friends: I can count on less than one hand the times we have sent out more than one devotional during these twenty years. However, today is the 41st anniversary of the Lord calling me into the ministry, and I ask for your indulgence in allowing me to send the following. I wrote this in 2012, and it remains one of my favorites because it addresses the glorious salvation provided to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the motivation that results when we remember and affirm the perfection of our Lord's atoning work on our behalf. Thanks, Glen.)
The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"One Sacrifice… No More Sacrifice!"
The writer of Hebrews declares, "This man (the Lord Jesus Christ) offered one sacrifice for sins forever." And because He did… "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:12; 26).
"It is finished!" declared the Lord Jesus of His atoning work on the cross of Calvary (John 19:30). Having died so completely and effectually for our sins, and having fully borne the wrath of God for our sakes, "One sacrifice!" and "No more sacrifice!" sound and resound as exultant cries of the born again believer. The Son who so pleased His Heavenly Father in life also perfectly satisfied Him in death, the death that redeems all who come to God through the person, work and merits of the risen Lord Jesus.
"Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:25-26).
Few truths of the New Testament more establish our feet on the path of righteousness. Believers do not live for salvation, but from salvation. Redemption in Christ so justifies us that God "will not impute sin" to us (Romans 4:6). He deals with us as loving Father rather than punitive judge, chastening us in love as necessary, but never passing sentence and retribution on those deemed as forever acquitted through Christ. "God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you... He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 4:32; 1:6).
The increasing knowledge of such sublime redemption stokes the hearth of the believer's heart whereupon burns the very love of the Lord Jesus Himself. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5). Rather than serving God from merely a sense of servile fear, the remembrance of "One sacrifice!" and "No more sacrifice!" elicits genuine and holy devotion within the very depths of our being. We thereby offer "the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His Name" (Hebrews 13:15). We trust and obey God with the one motivation that satisfies both Him and ourselves, namely, the remembrance of His love and our desire to love Him in holy and devoted response (I Corinthians 13).
Believers live self sacrificial lives as the fruit of the Holy Spirit's working in us. "To do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Hebrews 13:16). We also present our bodies as "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God" (Romans 12:1). Never, however, do view the need for any sacrifice for sin other than our Lord's "one sacrifice for sins forever." The work is done. The sacrifice was made. The gift is given. The saving grace of the Lord Jesus provides the sole basis of our eternal redemption and the assurance that we may "come boldly to the throne of grace" as we make our approach with the joyous cries of "One sacrifice!" and "No more sacrifice!" (Hebrews 4:16).
"Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."
(Hebrews 9:26).
Weekly Memory Verse
God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.
(Galatians 4:6)
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