Sacrifice

Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people (Hebrews 9:28).

You don’t hear much about sacrifices any more. Maybe you’ve seen King Kong, where villagers capture an American girl and offer her to the huge gorilla that they fear. What they were doing was offering a sacrifice; they were offering something precious—a human life—in order to keep the angry monster happy so he would leave them alone.

For thousands of years, people have offered sacrifices. The world can be a scary place to live in—you never know when violent weather will destroy your home, drought will take the harvest, or disease will thin the herd. Until recently, childbirth was dangerous for both mother and baby, and infant mortality rates were high—many kids never reached adulthood. People did not have hospitals or insurance plans to help them get through a crisis. So they turned to any number of different religions—they prayed to the sun in the sky for light, they asked the water spirits for rain, they pleaded with the goddess of fertility for many healthy children. They needed divine help desperately, so they wanted to keep these powerful beings happy. As a result, they offered sacrifices. The first cuttings of the harvest were burned on an altar as a gift to the goddess of the fields. And the first born child of a married couple might be burned on an altar as a gift to the being who controlled life and death. People gave up something precious, hoping that in return good spirits would bless them and evil spirits would leave them alone.

Of course, there is only one God—the God who created Adam and Eve and promised them a Savior who would come to free us from sin, defend us from Satan, and raise us from death. All those sacrifices made to other gods and spirits were simply a waste that accomplished nothing at all. But the sacrifice made to our God is different.

When we break God’s laws, we incur a penalty—death, followed by punishment in hell. And we’re all guilty—Scripture says, all have sinned and fall short of God’s righteous standard (Romans 3:23). By sinning, we have earned God’s terrible punishment. Thankfully, He has arranged a way for us to dodge the bullet—we can escape the consequences of our bad behavior through a sacrifice. On the cross, God’s own Son endured the punishment incurred by our lawbreaking. He was a sacrifice of incalculable worth, so valuable that His suffering and death paid the penalty for every human sin. The death of Christ on Good Friday is the only sacrifice you’ll ever need to be sure of God’s love for you.