THE SANCTIFIED, PERFECTED FOREVER.
Hebrews 10: 14 For by one offering He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified.
Continuing with the EIGHTH SECTION
Hebrews 10: 1-18
The New Way into the Holiest
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY
This verse is in reality the conclusion of the doctrinal part of the Epistle. The four following verses are simply the citation of the words of the New Covenant to confirm its teaching with the witness of the Holy Spirit. The writer having, in the context, expounded the nature of Christ's Sacrifice, as showing what the Way into the Holiest is, sums up his proof of its worth and efficacy in the words: By one offering He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified. We find here five of the most important words that occur in the Epistle.
Sanctified. That looks back to the great purpose of Christ's coming, as we had it in chapter 2. Sanctified is cleansed from sin, taken out of the sphere and power of the world and sin, and brought to live in the sphere of Authority and power of God's Holiness in the Holiest of All. It looks back, too, to verse 10: In which will we are Sanctified by the offering of the body of Christ.
He has Perfected them that are Sanctified. It not only says that He has finished and completed for them all they need. The word points back to what was said of His own being made perfect (Matthew 3: 13-17). All He became was for us. In His one sacrifice He was not only perfected Himself, but He perfected us; He took us into the fellowship of His own perfectness, implanted His own perfect Life in us, and gave His perfected human nature to us what we were to put on, and to live in.
Forever. He has perfected us once for all and forever. His perfection is ours; our whole life is prepared for us, to be received out of His hand.
By sacrifice. The death, the Blood, the Sacrifice of Christ, is the power by which we have been alike Sanctified and Perfected. It is the Way which He Opened up, in which He leads us with Himself into what He is and does as the One who is perfected forevermore, and the Holiest of All.
By one sacrifice. One because there is none other needed, either by others or Himself; one Divine, and therefore sufficient and forever.
The chief thought of the passage is: He has forever Perfected them that are being Sanctified. The words in verse 10, In which Will (God's Will, verse 9) we have been Sanctified, speaks of our Sanctification as an accomplished fact: we are saints, holy in Christ, in virtue of our real (reconjoined ) union with Him, and His Holy Life planted in the center of our being. Here we are spoken of as being Sanctified. There is a process by which our New Life in Christ has to Master and to Perfect Holiness through our whole outer being. But the progressive sanctification has its rest and its assurance in the ONCE and FOREVER of Christ's work. He has Perfected forever them that are being Sanctified. (This is known as the working out of our Salvation....as we await His receiving of His mystical Body into the Heavens as it does not see the wrath that is to come on all rebelliousness, lawlessness, and wickedness of man. In other words those who choose not to believe or accept His revelation. emphasis added)
In chapters, 9: 9 and 10: 1 we read that the sacrifices could never, as touching the conscience, make the worshiper perfect, never make perfect them that draw near, so that they have no more conscience of sins. Our conscience is that which defines what our consciousness of ourselves before God should be: Christ makes the worshiper Perfect, as touching the conscience, so that there is no more consciousness of sins. He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified. At the close of the chapter on Christ's Priesthood we read of Himself ( 7: 28): He is a High Priest, a Son, Perfected forevermore. Here at the close of the unfolding of His work, it is said of His saints: He has Perfected them forever. The Perfection in both cases is one and the same. As the Son of Man, as the Second Adam, who lives in all who are His, He Perfected Himself for them, and them in Himself. His Perfection and theirs are one.
And wherein His perfection consists we know too. (See in 2: 10 and 5: 9.) A Leader in the Way of Glory, God made Him Perfect through suffering; Perfected in Him that humility and meekness and patience which mark Him as the Lamb, which are what God asks of man, and are man's only fitness for dwelling with God. Having offered up prayer, and having been heard for His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by what He suffered, and was made Perfect. His godly fear, His waiting on God in the absolute surrender of His Will, His submitting to learn obedience, His spirit of self-sacrifice, even unto death,--- it was by this that as man He was Perfected, it was in this He Perfects human nature, and Perfects His people too. In His death He accomplished a threefold work. He Perfected Himself, His own human nature and character. He Perfected our Redemption, perfectly putting away sin from the place it had in Heaven ( 9: 23; Psalm 97: 2; Isaiah 44: 22; Lamentations 3: 44 ), and in our hearts (Genesis 3: 4-12, 6: 5, 8: 21). He Perfects us, taking us up into His own Perfection, and making us partakers of that perfect human nature, which in suffering and obedience, in the body prepared for Him (Genesis 3: 15 ), and the Will of God that was accomplished in it, He had wrought out for us. Christ Himself is our Perfection; in Him it is complete; abiding in Him continually is Perfection.
Let us press on to perfection, was the call with which we were led into the higher-life teaching of the Epistle. Here is our goal. Christ, by one offering, has Perfected us Forever. We know Him as the Priest forever, the Minister of the New Sanctuary, and the Mediator of the New Covenant, who by His Blood entered into the Holiest; there He Lives forever, in the Authority and power of an Endless Life, to impart to us and maintain within us His Perfect Life. It is the walk in this path of Perfection, which as our Leader He Opened up in doing the Will of God, which is the New and Living Way into the Holiest.
1. The work of Christ Is a perfect and perfected work. Everything is finished and complete forever. And we have just by faith to behold and enter In, and seek and rejoice, and receive out of His fulness Grace for Grace. Let every difficulty you feel in understanding or claiming the different Blessings set before you, or in connecting with them, find its solution in the one thought--- Christ has perfected us forever; trust Him, cling to Him, He will do all, as He fills us all in All.
2. One sacrifice forever. We perfected forever. And HE who did it all, HE forever is seated on the Throne. Our Blessed Priest-King, He Lives to make it all ours. In the Authority and power of an Endless Life, in which He offered Himself to God, in which He entered the Holiest, He now Lives to give and be in our hearts all He has accomplished. What more can we need ? Wherefore, Holy brethren! Partakers of a Heavenly calling, consider Jesus.
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