Pastor John R. Wiuff
God had Christ, who was sinless, take our sin so that we might receive God's approval through him.
2Co 5:21
If you search the world for opinions about Jesus being sinless you will quickly discover that most people won’t argue about the high moral standing of Jesus Christ. We may argue over his divinity, his resurrection and even his existence but most leave his purity from sin alone.
That doesn’t tell us what we think about Jesus being without sin, it’s just a topic we avoid and make many assumptions. To talk about whether Jesus sinned begs the question whether sin even exists. If you are inclined to believe that there is a right and wrong set by God you are not likely to accuse His one and only son of breaking those rules.
Yet secretly, in our hearts we find it hard to believe that Jesus Christ could take on the form of a human being, live among sinful men and all this world’s temptations and not sin in some small way. For the incarnate Christ to be sinless would seem unnatural and inhuman.
Would it surprise you to know 42% of adults believe that Jesus committed sins while on earth? Even among people who are identified as being “born again” about a third believed that Christ did sin while on earth, the same percentage as the population as a whole. (“Barna Survey Examines Changes in Worldview Among Christians over the Past 13 Years” March 6, 2009, www.barna.org).
This Biblical teaching that Christ without sin is absolutely critical to the Christian faith. Jesus could not die for our sins if He died as a consequence of His own. If Jesus sinned then we are all lost in our sins and can not escape the judgment of Hell.
If you belong to more liberal congregations you are more likely to believe that Jesus was a sinner, but a nice guy who had some great ideas. Here are a few groups in 2001 and the percentage of members who believed in a sinless Christ:
Presbyterian: 45%
Catholics: 33%
Lutheran: 33%
Methodist: 33%
Episcopal: 28%
When we compare these results with people who don’t attend any church we find a more Biblical response. In 2004, a Barna Research survey of the "unchurched" and found that 49% believe that Jesus was sinless while on earth which is higher than five of the liberal denominations listed above.
This series is our time to check the foundations of our faith to make sure they are solidly on a Biblical understanding. What frightens me as a pastor is that in some congregations you are better off not attending if you want a Biblical faith in Jesus Christ.
So let’s check again with God’s word and make sure we are on solid footing when it comes to Christ’s sinless nature, and His ability to pay for our forgiveness on the cross.
11. But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. 12. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. 13. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
15. For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Hebrews 9:11-28
If you scratch your head when reading this section of the Bible, I don’t blame you because Paul is talking about Jewish rituals to Jewish people who understand the customs. Most of us are foreigners to this world and we can easily get lost in all this talk about sacrifice, high priest, and tabernacles.
There are a few key truths that God is revealing to us in this passage about who we are in relationship to the perfect sinless Christ.
You already know that everyone has a sense of right and wrong. We call that our conscience. That’s the inner part of our being that warns us when we are making morally wrong choices and urges us to act when it is the right thing to do. The trouble with our conscience is that we are told from early on in our life not to listen to it, but to set it aside as outdated notions of previous generations.
Yet no matter what we do the conscience remains and convicts us that we are guilty of disobeying God and His will for our lives. A troubling conscience has bothered humanity since Adam and Eve hid the bushes from God and yet God found them anyways and asked what they were feeling so guilty about.
We are still hiding from God. So many people tell me that they want to hear from God and actually make contact but that is really hard to do when we are hiding in the bushed with Adam and Eve. What we hope will happen if God were to show up is that He will say we are very special and everything is going to work out.
The reality is that God has been seeking each one of us and beating the bushes trying to get us to stop hiding from Him. What that means is that there is only one way to make first contact with God and that is by being honest with our conscience. We must face what God is saying to us about and admit that we are guilty of rebelling against Him and His will for our life. Until we are ready to do this we will not really meet God. We will only call out from the bushes and ask if He could come back later when we have a better set of clothes.
The better clothes, for the people prior to Christ were the sacrifice of animals. In other words we looked for “scapegoats” for someone else or something else to take the blame for what we have done.
Since then we have looked for other creative ways to dress up for God and hide our sins from Him. We have tried rationalization, denial and religion of all kinds but no matter what we do we know it won’t work. We may feel alright for awhile but the feeling of guilt always comes back. We can never have a totally clean conscience by trying to ignore it or cover it up.
That is why Christ came to pay the price for our sins. His death does not just cover our sins, but actually cleans our conscience of all guilty when it is applied. Having your conscience washed clean by Christ through the Holy Spirit can not be duplicated or matched by any other guilt hiding method.
It is time for us to come out of the bushes, feel the weight of our sin and let Christ wash away the guilt of our sin. That is how we are going to finally connect with God, the only way.
16. In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17. because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19. When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20. He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” 21. In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Hebrews 9:11-28
When God heard the confession of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He knew that anything they made to cover up would not really hide their guilt before Him. He warned them that death was the consequence of their sin and to prevent justice from taking their physical lives that judgment was forced on the scapegoat. He killed an animal and clothed them in the skins of that animal. This was a temporary fix and foreshadowing of what was to come.
You see their sin and our sin meant that God would have to decide between us dying physically and spiritually, or He would somehow have to pay that price for us without giving up His holy nature and justice. To embrace and love us after we sin meant that He would pay a terrible price. The amazing character of God is that He did not hesitate in the Garden of Eden or in the Garden of Gethsemane. He does not hesitate today and is willing to pay the price to restore us back into His arms again.
We have jumped from conscience to the principle of inheritance. Verse 16 tells us that the price Jesus paid on the cross was not just to wash our conscience clean but to make it possible for us to inherit a kingdom that we do not deserve.
The blood of Christ then accomplished to very important acts in our lives, it takes away our guilt and makes us blood brothers of Christ, inheritors of the Kingdom of God as children of God. That is why this verse reminds us that everything in our lives must be under the blood of Christ. He sacrificed everything for us so we could surrender everything to Him. Jesus freely gave up all that was precious to Him so we would freely give up all that is precious to us in exchange for His forgiveness and love.
Now here is the thing. In our day we think of blood as a contamination. If there is a blood spill at a Red Cross clinic it’s a big deal and everything has to be sanitized. If you are a medical person, or emergency response personnel you are taught to protect yourself from being contaminated by the blood of other people.
When people address our sin it is often with gloves and masks to protect themselves from cross contamination. We know that sin can spread and infect us all just like a biological pathogen. So when we hear that God uses the blood of Christ to wash us clean and make us blood brothers with Christ we might be disgusted with that image.
True enough, if the blood of Christ was contaminated. But this is the good news. The blood of Christ is pure and without sin or virus. He does not infect us like everyone else, but washes us clean. His blood in us is like an infusion of anti-bodies and powerful white blood cells that attack and clean us from the inside out. He detoxifies us and every part of our lives when we exposed it to His blood.
Not only is the guilt gone, but the very nature of sin can be scrubbed from our veins but only when we inject the blood of Christ into every part of our lives.
Now understand this, that “blood” is a powerful symbol that represents the life, the soul, and the spirit of a living being. The blood of Jesus Christ is literally the Holy Spirit in our life. This gift of the Holy Spirit is what marks us inheritors of eternal life. Ephesians chapter one tells us that when we hear the gospel and believe upon it that we receive forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit on that day and hour. The word tells us that this Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our eternal inheritance.
There you have it: blood, spirit and inheritance all tied together as one important event in our lives if we will come out of the bush and confess our sins to God who is calling us.
Now think about this. If Christ had sinned then His blood would have been contaminated like ours. We wouldn’t want to be exposed to it and contract and even deadlier disease from Him. But because the blood or spirit of Christ was without sin we can take it into our own soul and watch it begin to fight back the infection in our own lives.
Only the pure and healthy blood of Christ, the pure and powerful Holy Spirit of Christ could accomplish this in anyone’s life. All other religious figures were flawed and infectious.
23. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28. so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Hebrews 9:11-28
This passage may have you scratching your head again because we have gone from guilty conscience, to inheritance, and now we are talking about heaven and what waits for us there. We‘ve found out that Christ being without sin makes it possible for us to have our conscience washed clean and to be declared a child of God right now.
But this is not the final chapter or the end. Although we are guaranteed to inherit the Kingdom of God through the Holy Spirit we are not home yet. Look around you the next time you watch the news and see how things are falling apart. This broken down world is not your inheritance. You are not going to receive a “fixer upper.” When we come out of the bush and come clean with Christ we become fellow heir’s with Him of the Kingdom of God that is yet to come. We don’t get Eden, a garden away from God, we get to move in with God and live there as part of the family of God. We have been living in the bushes of his back yard and He wants to invite us to get cleaned up and move into the Mansion with Him.
This is a very special privilege but not just anyone will be allowed in side the Mansion of God. You can’t just run to heaven at the last moment from the bushes where you are hiding. You must come when He calls you, and He is calling you today.
You see, what you see around you are copies of the real thing. In fact this place, this church or sanctuary is a building that is copy of heaven. This place is just a shadow of what is to come. In heaven there will be a door where those who have been washed clean can come through and enter the Kingdom and those who have not been washed clean will be turned away. We have steel and glass doors, but the Bible tells us that the Door is Christ Himself.
We also have a place to worship God and a raised stage on which we can lift up God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. But in the courts of heaven Father God will be raised up above us all and Jesus Christ His Son will stand on His right hand.
We sing songs and offer our prayers to God here in this place of worship but this is but a shadow to the songs that will be raised in heaven and the shouts of praise to the visible glory of God.
Now hear me on this next point. Even though this is but a copy of heaven and a shadow of things to come there are things we can know, do and experience right now that you will not be able to do in the glory to come. Here is the shadows of glory we have the chance to experience the conviction of sins and the sting of guilt. Here in but a copy of heaven we can repent of our sins and ask Jesus Christ to apply the blood he spilt on the cross to our conscience and every part of our life. In this place, in the midst of a fallen world, we can receive the Holy Spirit and become heirs with Jesus Christ for the Kingdom to come.
We can do none of that in that glory to come; we must do it now or miss the glory to come. We must do this before we die. “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,…” (v.27). Jesus is worthy of being our Redeemer because He is a sinless Redeemer. Let Him be yours today and for eternity or miss out forever. In the shadows of Glory, in this place is your only opportunity.
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