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 barely out of bed and already trying to pay God back for yesterday, with extra prayer, extra effort and a quieter voice. You live as though the account were still open and you had fallen behind on your payments.
Hebrews was written to close that account, and it makes its case with a piece of furniture, or rather the lack of one. Under the old covenant, it says, "every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins." The priest stands because there is nowhere to sit. The tabernacle had no chair, because the work was never finished. Then Hebrews says of Jesus, "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God." That seated Priest is the whole argument. "Once for all" is a single word in the Greek, and it means something done in a way that never needs to be repeated.
That is why "sanctified" here does not describe a ladder you are climbing. It describes a standing God gave you by His will, through the offering of Christ's body, and that standing is already complete.
This same chapter also gives a warning, and it is serious enough that it should not be said quietly. It says that "if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." That warning leaves the account closed; it means there is no second account to open. A person who treats a finished work as permission to live however he likes has not misunderstood a small detail. He has walked away from the only offering there is. So rest on the work Jesus finished, and then get up and live as someone who belongs to Him. The Priest sat down because nothing is left to pay, and that is reason enough to follow Him gladly.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 159 is Weep Not (Revelation 5:5).