The Last Sacrifice Ever Needed

(a letter, from Hebrews 9:11-28)

Dear ones,

I am writing to people who are tired.

Tired the way you feel when you have said sorry, and said it again, and a small worried voice still whispers: it isn't enough. You didn't do enough. You never quite do.

You know that nagging voice. It is the one that says the door to God's house is not really open to someone like you.

So I am putting the truth down in ink, where you can read it as many times as you need to.

For a long, long time, God's people brought lambs. Year after year, they walked to the temple with an animal, and a priest carried the blood inside, behind a thick curtain, into the holy place where God's nearness rested. It was a beautiful thing to watch, and a sad thing too, because when the year came round again the whole thing had to begin all over. The lambs could not reach all the way down into a heart and wash the worry clean. So the people kept coming back, arms full, the same old ache walking beside them.

But here is what I have been longing to write to you.

Every one of those lambs was a little arrow.

Each one pointed forward, like a finger in the dark, to Someone who was still coming. The altars were saying it. The blood was saying it. Wait. The real one is on his way.

And then he came.

Jesus did not walk into a temple made of stone. He walked all the way up into the true holy place, the real one, God's own heart. And he did not carry a lamb. He came as the Lamb. He gave his own self, his own life, his own blood, poured out one time only, not once every year forever, but once for all of you and for always.

It is finished. The arrow has landed. There is no more coming back with worried arms, and no lamb left to bring, because the very best Lamb has already been given, and a gift like that is never given twice.

So when that small voice whispers you didn't do enough, you can answer it now. You can say: I was never the one who had to be enough. He was. And he is.

The curtain is open, little one. The door to the Father's house is flung wide, and your name is already spoken inside it. You do not knock and hope. You belong.

This is why he endured everything. There was a joy set before him, and the joy was you, gathered in, safe at his table at last.

So you can set the worry down. The work that makes you right with God is already done, and it was never yours to carry.

He is coming back one more day, not to deal with sin all over again, but to bring his whole family the rest of the way home. And he will not arrive missing a single one of you.

So watch the road, dear ones. Keep a place ready at the table. I am watching that same road, and I mean to be standing beside you when he comes over the hill.