It was hardly an ideal Sunday afternoon for an 18 year old but I thought I’d better show some willing, lend a little bit of support.  My dad was mid-flow in his studies for the Ministry and that time of year had come round when Christ College held a Sunday afternoon retreat to which all students in the faculty and their families were cordially invited.  So I went.  Not exactly under protest but I can’t say I was too enthusiastic. 

The afternoon began with the gathering being split up into small groups and everybody being asked to write on a piece of paper what they knew about Jesus, or more specifically what they knew about Jesus from their own experience, not what they had been told or had read, but what they knew for themselves – personal experience.

I sat with a blank piece of paper!  Many others did too, but one person wrote, "I know that Jesus saves me." That led onto all kinds of discussion along the lines of: saves you from something? Or for something? How does Jesus save you? What does "Jesus saves me" actually mean? As I recall, nobody in our small group had much idea what the words meant, but it was one of those phrases, which were in the fashion at the time.  Just like that other popular phrase at the time “ Jesus is the answer” only nobody knew the question.

For me, the saving aspect of Jesus has always been a problem.  I've often heard it said that because Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, God was able to forgive human beings.  But how does that work?

If God is God, why couldn't God forgive human beings any time he wanted?  Mere human beings do as much for those they love, so forgiveness shouldn't be beyond God's capabilities.  Besides, according to the Old Testament Psalms in particular, God has always forgiven human sins.  What difference could Jesus dying in agony on a cross possibly make to God's forgiveness?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has tied in this idea of forgiveness with the idea of sacrifice.  Developing his argument that Jesus is the High Priest above all others, he now says that unlike the Jewish High Priests of the Old Testament, Jesus has no need to offer sacrifices for sins - his own or other people's - because he offered himself as the final sacrifice.

The law, says the writer, could only appoint a high priests with human limitations, but the fulfilment of God's promise regarding the priesthood of Melchizedek required something a little special (The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." Psalm 110:4) makes Jesus the perfect priest forever.

The Old Testament system of sacrifices was complex and is difficult for us to understand today terms.  Not all sacrifice was to atone for sin, but all sacrifice was designed to help human beings return to God's presence.  So some sacrifice might be because people were ritually "unclean".  They hadn't done anything to provoke God's displeasure, but sometimes the normal course of everyday life rendered them unfit for God's presence. 

This can be understood if we think in terms of how we might dress to visit the Queen at Buckingham Palace.  Everyone would wear the best clothes and be sparkling clean.  Nobody would enter her presence with unwashed hands, especially if they had a job, which involved working with dirty materials.  It follows, then, that everyone would want to be properly "dressed" in the presence of God.  Jesus himself developed this idea when he spoke of life after death as a banquet where everyone was welcome, but any who weren't properly dressed would be turned away (Matthew 22:1-14).

Sin was that which came between God and human beings ands so needed to be cleaned away before human beings could enter God's presence.  Basically, sin was thought of as somehow disrupting God's perfect order in the world.  In today's terms, it was perhaps a sort of pollution.  This pollution or contamination needed to be sorted so that God's world would again be in perfect order and harmony.  The way the Israelites achieved cleansing and restoration was to remove the offence by sacrifice.  Perhaps the easiest sacrifice for us to understand was that of the scapegoat, whereby sins were symbolically placed upon the goat which was then expelled from the community into the desert. 

The sacrificial system was not so much a system of punishment or the need to appease an angry God, but more the means by which those who for some reason weren't fit to be in God's presence, could be restored to God.  So we arrive at the point where we understand sacrifice to be more a symbol of God's generosity and grace than a symbol of his anger and retribution.

The writer of Hebrews sees the crucifixion of Jesus as the final and ultimate sacrifice.  Rather than being a final attempt to appease an angry God or the final punishment for the sins of humanity, it is the end to the need for sacrifices.  Through Jesus death on the cross, God has come even closer to his people.  The crucifixion being not so much a sign of God’s anger or punishment but a sign of his Grace and generosity in restoring the relationship between Him and us.

Although this thinking is familiar to us, it was a very new thought for the Jews of the first century.  Their only access to God was through their religious leaders, who acted on their behalf and mediated between them and God.  Jesus was the first to regard God intimately enough to call God "Abba" Father - Daddy, and through his death on the cross Jesus enabled that closeness to God to continue for us for all time.