MONDAY October 2nd
1 Peter 3:18
‘For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit . . .’
After bringing up the subject of suffering, Peter reminds us that Christ also has suffered, and the reason being for our sin. The way Peter has written this is important, he says ‘suffered once for sins’, this is an important reminder that Christ’s suffering or sacrifice for sins was a once for all time sacrifice, a never to be repeated sacrifice. What Christ accomplished at Calvary was sufficient for all time, and the only sacrifice that God has and will accept for all time.
The Hebrew writer has also established this in his letter where he writes in chapter 9:24-26 ‘For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.’
And what a sacrifice it was! For as a result you and I are able to come to the Lord Jesus Christ as sinners and know what it is to be forgiven, cleansed and to be made saints, and brought into the family of God as his sons and daughters.
The suffered once, which also means for all time, verifies what Jesus himself had said that he was the only way, the truth and the life and that no one can come to the Father except through him. It is only through Christ and the way that he has suffered for us that any man or woman can have access into the presence of God, there is no other way, there will never be another sacrifice. It is only by or through the shed blood of Jesus that we can be saved.
In suffering once, he took our sins and our sorrows and he made them his very own, he bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone.
How marvellous, how wonderful, our song shall ever be.