Daily Manna · Day 159 · June 8
Sanctified Once for All
“By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Some mornings you are out of bed and already paying God back for yesterday. Extra prayer, extra effort, a quieter voice, as though the account were still open and you had fallen behind on it.
The letter exists to close that account, and it makes the argument with a piece of furniture. In the tabernacle, the writer points out, every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. He stands because there is nowhere to sit. The room contains no chair, since the work is never finished. Then: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God. The seated priest is the whole argument. Once for all is a single word in the Greek, and it carries the sense of a thing done in a way that excludes repetition.
Which is why sanctified here is not a process you are climbing. It is a status conferred by God's will and Christ's body, already done to you.
The warning is what this same chapter says next, and it is severe enough that it should not be quoted quietly. The writer who says once for all also says that if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. He is not reopening the account. He is saying there is no second one. A person who treats a finished work as a licence has not misunderstood a detail; he has walked away from the only offering there is. The priest sat down. That is not an invitation for you to lie down.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 159 is Weep Not (Revelation 5:5).