By one offering He hath "perfected"us, the Christian people of this generation, the Christian people yet to be born into the world, the men that have not yet learned that they belong to Him, but who will learn it some day. Were they all perfected' eighteen centuries ago? In what sense can that perfecting be said to be a past act? Suppose you take some purifying agent, and throw it in at the headwaters of a river, and it goes down the stream, down and down and down, and by degrees purifies it all. If you like to use long-winded words, you can say that potentially' the river was purified when the precipitating agent was flung into it, though its waves were still foul with impurity. Or you can put it into plainer English and say that the past act has its abiding consequences, for there has been thrown into the centre of human history, as it were, that which is amply adequate to the perfecting' and the sanctifying' of every soul of the race. And that is what the writer of this Epistle means when he says He hath perfected,' because that sacrifice, like the precipitating agent that I have spoken about, has been flung into the stream of the world's history, and has power to make pure as the dew-drop, or as the water that flows from melting ice, every foul-smelling, darkly dyed drop of the filthy stream.
By one offering.' Now the word that the writer employs there is a very unusual one in Scripture. He has just been using it in a previous verse, where he speaks about the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.' Did you ever notice that remarkable expression the offering of the body; not as we usually read, the blood.' What does that mean? I think it means this, that the writer is contemplating not only the culminating sacrifice of Calvary, but Christ's offering of Himself all through His earthly life; and knitting together in one the life and the death, the totality of His work, as that by which He has perfected for ever all them that are being sanctified.' And that, I think, is made quite certain, because he has just been speaking, and the words of my text refer back to the declaration in one of the psalms Lo! I come to do Thy will, O God,' as expressing the whole meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That saying of the psalmist was fulfilled not only on the Cross but in all His daily life.
Jesus Christ, then, in His whole manifestation, in His life, but not only in His life; and in His death, but not only in His death, has offered Himself unto God, the Lamb without blemish, and without spot.' And in that offering culminating in the death upon the Cross, but not confined thereto, there does lie the power which is triumphantly more than adequate to deal with all the foulnesses and sins of the world, and to perfect for ever any man that attaches himself to it. It deals with our guilt as nothing else can. It speaks to our consciences as nothing else can. It takes away all the agony and the pain, or all the dogged deadness, of a seared conscience. It deals with character. In that great offering, considered as including Christ's life as well as His death, and considered as including Christ's death as well as His life, you have folded up in indissoluble unity the pattern, the motive, and the power for all righteousness of character; and he reaches the end for which God created him, who, laying his hand on the head of that offering, not only transfers his sins to it, but receives its righteousness into him. By one offering that dealt with guilt, and wiped it all out, and that deals with the tyranny of evil, and emancipates us from it, and that communicates to us a new life formed in righteousness after the image of Him that created us, we are delivered from the burden of our sins and perfected, in so far as we lay hold of the power that is meant to cleanse us.
There is no other way of being perfected. You will never reach the point which it is possible for you to attain, and you will never fulfil the purpose for which God made you, unless you have joined yourself by faith to Jesus Christ, and are receiving into your life, and developing in your character, the power which He has lodged in the heart of humanity for redemption and purifying.
