He Made Us Holy
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, *** making peace by the blood of his cross.***
When it comes to a fight, they say it takes two to tango. You can see it on the playground. As soon as one boy quits punching and walks away, the other kid loses interest. When your teenager has the last “FINE!” and you don’t answer back you can go on with whatever you were doing before you started yelling “FINE!” back and forth.
So God, wanting to make peace with us, did it Himself first.
When God made a covenant with Abraham, He put Abraham into a sleep and then Abraham had a vision. He described it as a fire pot and a torch walking between the sacrificed animals that he had put out before the Lord. That covenant was God saying that He would fulfill His promise to Abraham or else He’d become like those cut up animals.
At the time of the Passover, every family that was able was supposed to keep a sheep at their house for a week. One Rabbi suggested that keeping a sheep would help people really feel the hurt of loss and heaviness of salvation when they had to kill their pet sheep at the end of the week. That is true. They kept the sheep and then killed it and ate it on Passover. This was a reminder that God had rescued them and that judgment and death had Passed-Over their families.
God also established from the beginning that sin always resulted in some kind of death. Adam and Eve sinned and died spiritually, then some animals died for the sake of their clothing. Many laws in Leviticus for cleansing, worship, and family events all required sacrifices ranging from little birds up to entire bulls.
So God, keeping in line with the rest of His laws, made peace when Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Jesus was doing what God wanted to do. It was perfect obedience within the One True God of the Trinity. A perfectly sinless man, the only birthed Son of God, was obedient to die on the cross so that He Himself would be our sacrifice for sins.
Because He took on all of our humanity and all of our sinfulness, God turned His face from Jesus as Jesus died. God cannot look upon sin and no sin can be in God’s presence, so for the first time ever, Jesus was abandoned and rejected from the presence of God.
That perfectly obedient sacrifice would take away all of the sins of everyone that lay their sin upon Him. Just like a dad would put his hand on a bull as it was sacrificed for his family’s sins, all who put their faith on Christ transfer their sins to Him and receive God’s righteousness.
That’s how God made peace. Once and for all
‘For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.’ Hebrews 10:14 NLT
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