And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; Hebrews 5:9

Precious things are worth fighting for. And what can be more important or essential in life than something that is endless, things that transcend both time and space?

What are such things? Two things are God’s word (Mat 24:35) and your soul (I Joh 2:25; I Joh 5:11, Rev 20:12-14 & Rev 22:1-5). God’s word and your soul are eternal. And the salvation God planned before the world’s creation was designed foolproof and for everybody. Let’s take a look.

Better Than God’s Good – God’s Best

God does not operate in the cheap, convenient or shallow. And his salvation is no different. When you get a glimpse of what God sees when he looks at your soul made in His image and destined for eternity, you will see something both spectacular and shocking at the same time. You will see a cross on a hill in Israel named Golgotha. And you will see a perfect, pure, precious and sinless Lamb crucified on that cross. That’s what God sees when He sees the value and significance of a soul destined for eternity.

What is the purpose of all this? The purpose of God becoming flesh and embarking the journey we know as the ‘human experience’ was to show Heaven something about Himself they had never seen up to this point. Angels never glimpsed it. Fallen angels and the principalities and powers in heavenly places never saw it. Even earth’s inhabitants had never laid eyes on what God was about to reveal.

Before we embark down this path of thought, there is something about creation that needs mention. And that is this – creation is speaking. The heavens and expansive galaxies in faraway places in space are saying something:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,” Psalm 19:1-4

What are they saying? Or in general, what is life saying? Life is saying one thing: “We are made with God’s best and we demand God’s best to exist”. If Jesus had never existed to bring to this earth love. hope, promise, light and purposeful life, it would have been necessary for us to imagine him or at the least fabricate something to mimic and substitute what he has to give. Why?

First, nothing or no one else can solve the profound puzzles and mysteries of life like the arrival on earth of a Savior who made bold proclamations such as: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Joh 14:6). “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. (Mat 11:28) “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. (Luk 23:43). And: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life”. Joh 6:47-48

Jesus’ words produce in the soul an attraction to things beyond the gravitational pull of earth’s “weak and beggarly elements” to things otherworldly, grandiose and everlasting.

Secondly, there is something that grates and abrades within our soul that cries and screams for things grand, majestic and wonderful. Our soul has an innate propensity to engage with the eternal. Just as the above scriptures in Psalm 19, creation speaks in wonderment of God’s majestic and creative power. And so does our soul. Our soul screams out: “Where is my Creator, where and what are the deep things of God, what is my purpose in the scheme of things and the reason for my existence?”

And God answered, and today He still answers these questions.

Now going back to our thought thread. What is it that God was yet to reveal? He allowed humankind to wait 6,000 years to reveal one thing. He waited to reveal ………………

Himself.

God slipped on the outer human garb we know as skin and entered this earthly stage. It was Him. The remedy was not a semi-god, a demi-deity, a Jesus. Jr. or a virtual revelation of himself.

Why did God do it this way? Because the lostness and depravity of the human soul both demands and commands its deliverance from something unlike anything ever created. Our miserable, broken human condition beckons and screams for things supranatural and supernatural because of the God-given sphere of eternity nestled within our human heart (Ecc 3:11) (the Hebrew word “world” is translated: continuous existence, perpetual, everlasting, indefinite, unending future, and eternity – Strongs).

The eternal soul’s dilemmas demand an eternal solution. The soul craves the connection of eternity lost when Adam sinned, which through the passage of time propagated the curse and all the emotional and mental burdens of being alienated from God.

In its quest to be healed, the soul’s lost condition demands the best God can offer. And what is God’s best?

God’s best is Himself. God came himself to give himself. This is what true love demands. Everything. Nothing short would suffice. Nothing else would do what needed to be done to secure for us an eternal salvation.

Reconciliation & The Power of the Blood

And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat: Leviticus 16:20

Leviticus chapter 16 records the sanctification of the Tabernacle’s Holy Place and Most Holy Place by the high priest on the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament. It is interesting to note in this scripture the expanse of what the sacrifice’s blood reconciles. The animal’s blood reconciles or absolves sin’s affect from the outer court (location of the altar), through the tabernacle, and all the way to the most Holy Place. The blood was complete in reconciling the sins of those at the door of the outer court all the way to the High Priest who entered the presence of Almighty God in the heavenly realm.

As it was under the law of the Old Testament, today the precious blood of Jesus is sufficient to cover the sins of anyone who asks for forgiveness at an altar of repentance (the OT altar), all the way to those “in the church” who commune with God in the Spirit (tabernacle of the congregation and the holy place in OT terms), in the Holy Ghost, the eternal Spirit of Jesus Christ (Rom 8:11).

If the blood of bulls and goats could move the sins of Israel forward one year, how much more can the precious blood of Jesus cover our sins today?

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:14

When Jesus, the supreme High Priest without beginning or end (Eternal, after the order of Melchezedick Heb 7:1-3) applied his blood to Heaven’s mercy seat, our salvation was forever sealed for eternity. As the earthly high priest applied the blood of animals to appease God’s wrath upon sin for one year, Jesus shed his sinless blood for all mankind – for all time. And unlike the earthly high priests who rehearsed this ritual annually, Jesus once and for all offered his blood for the remission of sins never again to be repeated:

“By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;” Hebrews 10:10-12

In Conclusion

Whether one finds themselves under the weight of unrepentant sin as a new believer (at the altar) or “in the church” tainted by sin (from the altar to the most Holy place), the blood, and only the blood of Jesus will reconcile us to the God who inhabits eternity.

The mark of true love is true and total forgiveness. Jesus’ primary mission was to give the gift of forgiveness to the unforgivable. You are no more like Jesus then when you unconditionally forgive. A minister once said: “To give is to be like God. To forgive is to be more like God”.

May we be “more like God” on this Good Friday, and every good day. And in doing, secure an eternal salvation.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Isaiah 51:6