Thought for Thursday
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Hebrews 9:12
I had some interesting discussions with a young man I worked with many years ago, about his denomination. It was a charismatic group that had ideas radically different from what I had been taught. One day as I passed through his work area, I asked him if he believed in the eternal security of the believer. His answer was, ‘Of the believer, yes.’ His answer sounded a bit odd, so I went back to him later to get him to explain. It turned out that his church believes that a person who believes has eternal security as long as they keep believing. If they stop believing, they are lost again. I doubt whether they read today’s text very often at that church. A salvation that depends on anything of ourselves is not an eternal redemption.
As Christians, we love to call ourselves redeemed. And we love to quote 1 Peter 1:18-19: ‘Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot’. And we appreciate those who were singing a new song to the Lamb in Revelation 5:9: ‘Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’. These verses make it plain what was the price paid to obtain eternal redemption. We could not redeem ourselves; we were morally and spiritually bankrupt. Our blood was contaminated by sin, and God required blood: ‘Without shedding of blood is no remission’ (Hebrews 9:22). But God Himself provided the redemption price, the blood that would be acceptable, by offering His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. And we receive the same guarantee that the Israelites received on the night of the Passover, when they were delivered from Egypt: ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you (Exodus 12:13)’.
What secures our redemption? The precious blood of Christ! Is that enough to obtain eternal redemption? Oh yes! Consider the words of Isaiah 53:11 concerning God’s acceptance of the work of Christ on the cross: ‘He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied’. So if God is satisfied, we have eternal redemption. – Jim MacIntosh