The Body of Christ Sacrificed

The writer of Hebrews describes the logical outcome of God's will being delighted in by Christ, and His fulfilling of it.

Hebrews has already described how Christ's blood purges the consciences of His people. The redemption of our transgressions is by means of His death, so that we receive the promised everlasting life.

Christ has appeared in heaven itself to present before God His Own blood, by which sacrifice He has put away our sin once for all.

But now Hebrews carefully explains how Christ's delight to do God's will brings this about: Christ takes away what God does not delight in – animal sacrifices – and establishes God's will, which He does delight in.

It is in Christ's very body, acting as our high priest forever, that this crucial work is accomplished.

Note well, that in order for God's will to be established, it is imperative that animal sacrifices be taken away.

It is not simply that the animal sacrifices are powerless and ineffective to save us or take away our sin.

No, they must be taken away, to establish God's will for our salvation!

No doubt this is true, because so long as animal sacrifices are still observed, so long as the Jewish believers thought that animal offerings had any relevance to Gospel redemption, they could never fully trust in Jesus only!

Indeed, soon after Hebrews was written, God literally took away animal sacrifices, by using the wicked Roman army to destroy Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D.

There have been no Jewish animal sacrifices for sin since that day!

There is an irony in all this, that the Romans were also used by God in their evil and malignity to offer up Christ once for all on Calvary's tree.