When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Hebrews 10:12-14 (ESV)
Welcome to a new week. A fresh start on your life, which is good news for many of us. Maybe even all of us. We’ve all got stuff we want to hit the reset button on, right?
I generally start my week by looking over my schedule, the year’s goals, and projects I’m currently tackling in my various roles. It’s a helpful practice. But there’s one truth that’s often overlooked when we’re setting goals and intentions for the week (or month, year, or life…): we will always be who we believe we are. We will live according to your nature.
If you believe you’re lazy no matter how many resolutions you make to get up early and work hard you’ll stay in bed. If you’re sure you’re an anxious person you will continue to struggle with anxiety. If you’re confident about the fact that you’re unable to say no because you’re a people-pleaser, you’ll continue to have an overwhelmingly full schedule.
What we believe significantly shapes our experience of reality. This isn’t some mere new age “mindset” mumbo-jumbo. The Apostle Paul himself points to the importance of our belief and focus when he says that we need to “set our minds on things above” in order to fight sin. Where your mind is set matters. Immensely.
This is particularly true if you’ve put your faith in Jesus. Scripture says that those who have believed in Christ have been “born again” and are “new creations.” But far too frequently we don’t actually believe that we are new. We don’t understand who we are in Christ or who Christ is in us. As a result we continue to believe that we are who we have been, shaped primarily by what we’ve done and what’s been done to us.
But the author of Hebrews won’t allow us to settle for believing that we are defined by our past actions or experiences. He writes,
When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Hebrews 10:12-14 (ESV)
Think on that last sentence. The NLT puts it this way: by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.
Do you believe that about yourself? Do you believe that you are made perfect in Christ? Do you believe that you are holy? Or as Paul puts it in one of his epistles, that “you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus”?
A single offering
The book of Hebrews is all about how Jesus’ death on the cross was the absolutely sufficient solution to all human sin. Jesus is the “mediator of a new covenant” (9:15a) Christ’s death and resurrection solved the problem of sin. Nothing more is needed. As Jesus himself said on the cross as he died, “It is finished.” The single offering of the life of the son of God made you perfect and holy.
That means you don’t have any offerings to make to God. You don’t need to work to please him or to prove yourself. You owe God everything, but he has paid. Every attempt at self-improvement from a source other than faith inspired by love misses the point. In Christ you’re already perfected.
He has perfected for all time
What a massive statement this is! Do you hear what the author of Hebrews is saying? Read it: “he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Got that? You’ve been perfected! God’s work in Christ has made you perfect.
But don’t just take the word of the writer of Hebrews for it. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Or if Paul’s words aren’t enough for you, Jesus says something similar to his disciples in John: “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” (John 15:3)
Time and again throughout scripture it’s made clear that if you are in Christ you are complete, whole, and perfect. God has declared you to be so, therefore you are. What God speaks becomes reality.
This means that from God’s perspective you don’t need to improve yourself. You’ve already been made good and perfect and pleasing. The beautiful thing about that is, as we stated at the outset, we become who we are.
Those who are being sanctified
Oh, I know. It’s incredibly difficult to believe that you’re “perfected for all time” because you – like me and every other person reading this – you know intimately just how far from perfect you are. This is particularly true for those who have grown up in religious contexts and are intimately acquainted with the truth that, “all have fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 1)
But that’s why Hebrews makes it clear that from the eternal perfection that we are in Christ we are also increasingly being sanctified.
To be sanctified is to be made holy – to become something or someone who is in a state of preparedness for being in God’s presence. If you have been born again, if you are in Christ and Christ is in you, you have been perfected and are being sanctified. But note this well – being made perfect precedes the process of sanctification. If you can’t accept the fact that you are holy, righteous, and good because of what Jesus has done you won’t be able to progress in sanctification. Sanctification is an outcome, not an activity.
This week.
It’s a new week. A fresh start.
If you’re a follower of Jesus you get to live from who you are in Christ; a new creation made perfect and right in every way, increasingly being sanctified and made to be – here and now – what you actually are in God’s sight.
Quit trying so hard to become someone different. Instead, live from who you are. That’s the only way to grow.
Start with repeating the truth that you are made perfect by Christ’s sacrifice until it becomes so much a part of your thinking that you can’t escape it. As you do so you’ll discover that many of the things you’ve been trying to change about yourself simply resolve themselves.
Oh, there will be work for you do to. But the start of that work is to quit trying to become someone better and simply accept, by faith, that you are made right because of what Jesus has done. Then do what Paul told the Colossian believers to do and live from who (and where) you are,
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:1-3
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