Sin cost. How do I know? I’m a slow-learner. The cost is unsettling in my soul. The disruption leads me to either run to find another sin to numb the anxiousness or causes me to fall on my knees with regret, because there is no worse feeling than that of being separated from God.
Atonement for sin is nothing new. Starting in Genesis, animal sacrifices were presented to God as a means of restitution. Atonement—satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury—to make amends. The cost was, and is, the same…bloodshed.
Hebrews Chapter 9 reminds us of how atonement was practiced in the Old Testament, then shares the provision of the New Testament. The temporary practice of animal sacrifices was to only lead to a permanent solution.
God loved us so much that He gave a sinless, perfect, and unblemished gift, Jesus. No longer would a perfect animal be needed to be our replacement. His only son would be more than sufficient for not only past sins but the ones yet to be committed. He took the place of all.
“But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven’s “tent”—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.” Hebrews 9:11-14 The Message translation.
Accept God’s greatest gift as His Son’s blood-transfusion brings life to your soul. There has been no sweeter gift to this world.
