Hebrews 10:12

Hebrews 10:12

I. There is an exceeding grandeur approaching to awe about everything which can be done only once. This is a great part of the grandeur of death, and of the judgment in their nature, they can be only once. And the atonement is the more grand because it is of the same character. The cross is magnificently fearful in its perfect isolation. Everything in religious truth, which went before it in ages past, looked on to it. Everything in religious truth which has ever followed, and in ages yet to come, looks back to it. It is the bud of all, the beginning of all, the sum of all.

I. We make sacrifices, and what are they? If we think, in any sense whatever, to offer up anything in the slightest degree propitiatory for sin, we plainly violate the whole Bible. We offer three things: our praises, our duties, and ourselves. These are our only sacrifices. And what makes these things sacrifices? The Christ that is in them. So that still, be we of the Jewish or the Christian dispensation, the same thing is true there is "one sacrifice for sins for ever."

II. Remember, that marvellous as is the region of the thought in which we are walking when we treat of the atonement, it is all in accordance with the most perfect sense of our understanding, and all lies within the strictest limit of perfect justice; nay, its foundation is justice, and it commends itself to every man's judgment as soon as he sees it. But such a view as a prospective forgiveness of future sin would violate every principle of common sense. Holiness is the great end of the cross. Pardon, peace, salvation, happiness, are only means means to holiness; holiness, which is the image of God, which is the glory of God. Beware of any approach to any view of Christ which does not directly tend to personal holiness. For He perfects whom? Them that are sanctified.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 5th series, p. 138.

References: Hebrews 10:12 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 230. Hebrews 10:12 , Hebrews 10:13 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 91.