Loved For All Time

Hebrews 10:15-18 ESV

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

I have felt deeply humbled and undeservedly blessed as God has graciously moved me to both write and preach the messages in this series. I mean, I myself have learned so much, have felt the Holy Spirit’s presence to an alarming degree in the construction and presentation of this series, that I almost wish we could start over. And so, I hope that all of you, beloved of the Lord, have benefited as well.

But as we end this series of messages from Hebrews, chapter 10, verses 1-18 this morning, we now come to examine the last four verses of this passage, verses 15-18.

And these four verses that we end on this morning are probably my favorite verses in the entire passage because these verses speak of the covenant of grace that God has made with His elect people, and not just the covenant of grace itself, but the heart language of the covenant of grace. And when I say the “heart language”, I mean the way that the covenant of grace when applied to God’s elect, literally changes our hearts.

So, let’s go ahead and jump in.

Go ahead and take a look at the very beginning of verse 15 from our reading today, when the author says:

Hebrews 10:15a ESV

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us;

Now, this may seem like a somewhat random thing for us to start off our exposition with here this morning, but when kept in context with the rest of the passage that comes before it, we see that this singular statement is critical.

The author had been stressing the fact that animal sacrifices were in place only as a shadow of the greater Sacrifice that was to come. They worked to remind the one who sacrificed of their own guilt before God. And they certainly could not, in any way, remove sin.

But thus far the author has proven this from more of a logical or philosophical approach, now he seeks to prove it from the viewpoint of Scripture itself.

This, I believe is always the best approach when proving a doctrinal point, to start by coming from a point of logic and intellect, then going to the Scriptures and reinforcing your point. Every time that I have ever practiced that, logic reinforced by Scripture, the doctrinal point that I am trying to get across always becomes much more profound to both myself and to the one who I am speaking with.

Thus, after using logic and intellect to prove his point, the author now reinforces his argument with Scripture. He says, “the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us…”

It is the Holy Spirit Who inspired the sacred Scriptures, they are God-breathed as it was, as Peter says, the Holy Spirit Who carried along the writers of the Scriptures as they spoke from God.

Therefore, the author declares that the sacred writings which were written by men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit also testify to and agree with his own inspired position.

And the author then reveals to us where in the inspired Scriptures does his argument find legitimacy when he says in the last part of verse 15 and all of verse 16:

Hebrews 10:15b-16 ESV

15b for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”

So, the author starts out here by saying, “for after saying…” and we will get back to this after we look at what he quotes from the Scriptures.

The portion of Scripture that the author quotes here and then in verse 17 is found in Jeremiah, chapter 31, verses 33 and 34.

And in this portion of Scripture, the Lord declares then that there would come a time when He would make a new covenant with His saved people.

The original covenant that God had made with His people, as we have been saying, involved animal sacrifices that never removed the sins of those who sacrificed.

But the Lord said, hundreds of years before Christ even was born, that He would establish a new covenant with His saved people, and that this covenant would not include animal sacrifices of any kind, rather, it would include the once for all-time sacrifice of Christ Jesus on behalf of those who have been chosen to salvation.

And while there those who offered their sacrifices in a legalistic manner, keeping the letter of the law indeed, but not loving the Lord of the law, the Lord says here that His saved people would be much different.

Concerning them, He says, “I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds” this signifies that for those who are saved, we do indeed strive to keep the letter of the law, but we do it not just because it’s the law, but rather, we strive to do it because we love the One Who gave the law.

As I said, the difference between the legalist and the legitimately saved child of God is that the legalist views the law as a list of boxes to check off, while the saved child of God loves the God Who gave the law, and so to them it isn’t just a list of boxes to check off, it’s a lifestyle of love towards God.

For the saved child of God, salvation is not just praying at the altar and muttering a few words, rather, it is something that they feel. It is an act of God powerfully overshadowing His elect and coming into their hearts and minds and changing them to such a degree that now their chief desire in life is to glorify God and worship His majesty.

I will never forget when I had first experienced this for myself. The doctrines of the previous church that I had served in were very legalistic, and thus, it ingrained a legalistic nature within me.

But then I began to study more and more Reformed theology, the theology that we in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church adhere to. And as I studied this theology more and more I realized that I can never be more saved than I am right now, I can never be less saved than I am right now, and that I will never lose or forfeit my salvation, it is kept safe for me in heaven.

The freedom that I felt at learning this and believing this is indescribable. And that freedom that I felt was then transferred over to a love for God that I knew in my heart of hearts did not originate within myself.

No longer was service to God a begrudged chore that I thought that I had to do to please Him and stay saved. Rather, service to God sprang from love for God that originated in what Christ done for me on my behalf, when He, as our reading says, put His law on my heart and wrote it on my mind.

This is the effect that true, full salvation has on its beneficiaries, a changed heart. Legalistic, works-based salvation, which is no real salvation at all, never has this kind of effect. This effect can only come from the once for all-time sacrifice of Jesus being efficaciously applied to us.

So now, in speaking of this salvation being applied to us through what Jesus has done for us on the cross on our behalf, the author declares that after this is declared, the Holy Spirit speaking through Jeremiah the prophet says in verse 17 of our reading:

Hebrews 10:17 ESV

17 …“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

So, let’s review all of this. Those who claim to be saved but who are in all actuality legalists, possess no real love for God. And because they possess no real love for God, their supposed acts of service towards God gain them no real salvation, but instead remind them of their guilt before God due to their sins.

But for the one who has truly been graciously saved by God, not through works, but because it was God’s loving pleasure to save them, for these, salvation has truly been wrought.

And the proof that for these, salvation has truly been wrought is that their hearts have been changed by God. As was said before, for these ones whom God has legitimately saved, their chief desire is now to love God, to glorify God, to worship God in spirit and in truth.

So, if that is the proof, the author then says that for those who bear this proof of salvation, there is nothing else to look for. No new savior, no new sacrifice, no new work that might take away their sin, because for these, their sin has been taken away forever!

The Lord says here in our reading that for those whom He has graciously saved, He will no longer remember their sins and lawless deeds, He will no longer hold them against them, for they are now a new creation. The sacrifice of the Lord Jesus has legitimately removed their sins from them.

So, taking all of this in, the author concludes his argument in verse 18 of our reading, when he says:

Hebrews 10:18 ESV

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

The sacrifice of Christ Jesus had done exactly what it promised to do, it removed the sins of God’s people, and gave them forgiveness in return.

It is for these sins, that is, every sin that every last one of God’s saved people ever committed or ever will commit that Christ died for. It was our sins that counted us as guilty and worthy of spending eternity in hell. But now, these have been forgiven for God’s people.

They have been forgiven for those who have been saved, those who are currently saved, and those who will be saved. And because of this, as the author says, there is no further offering sin that must be made or that can be made.

There is no greater offering than the Lord Jesus on behalf of His chosen people, thus, to suggest that Jesus started our salvation with His offering, but now it is left to us to perfect, to secure our own salvation is near blasphemous!

No, what Christ has done for us on our behalf is everything that we need to be righteous in the sight of the Lord, not just until we mess up again, but for all time, and for all eternity.

Beloved Christians, as we finish out on this series of messages, I want all of us to focus on what I just called you, beloved Christians…

Do you know why I address you so often as beloved? Because if you are a Christian, that is exactly what you are: beloved by God. And because we are beloved by God, we can rest, be confident, and rejoice that that love that He has for us whom He has saved will never cease to be.

No matter what you have done, no matter how far you have gone, if you are truly saved by Him, He will draw you back in and like the prodigal, He will receive us with joy, reminding us that even though we strayed, we never stopped being His child!

Beloved, that is the God we serve. That is the God Who saved us. That is the God Who loves us. Let us worship and be in awe of that God.

Amen?