Are You Trying to Earn What Jesus Already Paid For? – RealFaith

“Who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”—2 Corinthians 3:6

The arrival of Jesus marked the end of an era. For ages, God’s people were locked into a cycle of ritual—priests, sacrifices, temple worship—always repeating, never complete. Then came the cross. What had been a long line of temporary fixes was suddenly fulfilled in one final act. Jesus didn’t add to the old way—He ended it and introduced something entirely new: a covenant built on grace, not rituals.

For generations, God’s people kept making the annual sacrifices a centerpiece of their worship. Since we are all creatures of habit, it had to be strange for believers to suddenly be told that they no longer had to go to the Temple, offer a sacrifice, or need a priest because those were all fulfilled in the finished work of Jesus Christ through the cross and empty tomb. Once Jesus died for sin and rose to save, Hebrews 10:9-10 says, “He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” A Bible commentary says,

“The inadequacy of the Old Testament sacrificial system is seen by the fact that Christ replaced it. He took away the “first” (10:9, the Old Testament system) to establish the “second” (Christ’s atonement and new covenant). Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament types and provided the actual forgiveness that the animal sacrifices could only symbolize.” (1)

Jesus didn’t come to patch up the old covenant—He came to fulfill it and bring something brand new. Hebrews 10:9-10 makes it clear: the first system is gone, and the second is here to stay. Through His one perfect sacrifice, you’ve been made clean, set apart, and fully accepted by God.

What’s stopping you from trusting Jesus and walking in the freedom He already paid for?

(1) Robert B. Hughes and J. Carl Laney, Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, The Tyndale Reference Library (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 670.

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