The Daily Word

 

Having established the credentials, as it were, of Jesus as part of the omnipotent Godhead, the writer to the Hebrews now comes to the contrasting work He was called to do and the reason ‘God spoke to us by His Son’, “When He had, by Himself, purged our sins……”!!!!!

This phrase takes us so far from the glory of creation and sustaining the order in the universe, that it comes as total mental and spiritual shock. It uses such a strong word in the word ‘purged’. In today’s language it could be described as a ‘deep clean’ with the absolute removal of any remnant of contamination. And because it introduces the contaminant as ‘sin’, it takes back into the Old Testament where God laid down the eternal law, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin”. That in turn takes us to the cross at Calvary, where the purging of sin was achieved.

But the other key issue in that verse is “by Himself”. There was no other person or agency involved, even God the Father could not look upon His Son as He bore our sins in His body to the tree. It was He alone and only Jesus that could do this and He did this, shedding His own blood as the final solution to the sin problem and we are so thankful for the resurrection, which signalled the truth that sin’s awful stain had been removed and the punishment had been borne by the only One who could do it, Jesus the eternal Son of God.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church