Friday 2nd December
Read Hebrews 10:5-10
“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, “Here I am – it is written about me in the scroll –
I have come to do your will, my God.”’
8 First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’– though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (NIVUK)
How did the pastor who wrote Hebrews understand the incarnation? Why did Christ come into the world? Rather than perceiving it as a conflict between the presence of a holy God amongst an unholy people he saw it as the means by which the unholy were made holy.
Perhaps the law, with its sacrifices and offerings, was a way to limit the damage that a holy God would unleash amongst an unholy people? The law protected the people from the wrath that would necessarily consume them. The law was a ‘stop-gap’, so to speak, until the One of whom it was written about in the scroll (v7), the One for whom a body had been prepared (v5), would come and do God’s will (v7). The obedience of the Christ to the Father’s will, presenting His body as a living sacrifice to provide a covering of holiness for His people, would restore all things. Make them whole and complete and pure, just as it was in Eden, before Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s will.
The incarnation was the solution to the problem of God’s unholy people. Which explains why Jesus wandered amongst sinners with impunity – not becoming unclean by their touch but rather making them clean and whole and pure. He would ultimately be the offering that would satisfy the wrath of God through His perfect obedience. Do we have the right view of the incarnation? Do we know why Christ came?
