Not a Transaction, a One-Way Gift – Hebrews 10:4-10

A text – Hebrews 10:4-10

10:4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
10:5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me;
10:6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
10:7 Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”
10:8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law),
10:9 then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.
10:10 And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

A reflection:

We may have read or heard the story about Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple and driving out the animals there for sacrifice. It’s a kind of wild and violent story. In those days and earlier, the Jews had a tradition of ritual transactions to fulfill all righteousness under the law. In those days, whenever you would come to this or that life milestone, you would need to sacrifice this thing. When you had done something wrong and you wanted to atone for that wrongdoing, you sacrificed that thing in the Temple. But the writer of Hebrews is saying here what Jesus was saying when he drove out the animals for sacrifice: in effect, Jesus was saying that these rituals of sacrificing animals make the temple a marketplace, but what God wants is a relationship of love with us, not a series of transactions.

Doing God’s will, listening for God’s voice – these are signs of an active relationship of love and respect. Our being willing to do God’s will is what God asks of us. Jesus has already made all the sacrifice anybody needs. This sacrifice of Jesus’s has brought human beings back into right relationship with God in our hearts.

Nothing we can do could have gotten us there. It was God’s openness to having us as God’s children and Jesus’s giving his life that did it. We are merely the lucky beneficiaries of this enormous love.

A prayer:

Gracious God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for wanting to be in relationship to us, and thank you for Jesus’s great gift to reconcile us to you. Help us to remember this gift and this wonderful status every day.   Amen.