Jesus Came To Take Away Sin

(Hebrews 9:24-28 – Jesus Came To Take Away Sin)

What was the number one reason why Jesus came to the earth? It was to reverse the problem of sin caused by the fall of Adam and Eve. He came to bring people back into balance with God. His primary role was to reconcile us back to God. And the number one issue that stands between man and God is sin.

That is why Jesus came. Jesus came to take away sin. Jesus took away sin so that you and I and the rest of this world could be saved and the eternal life with God could once again be reinstated. We must remember that when God created Adam and Eve, they could have lived into eternity. If they had not sinned, they would still be alive today. They were given only one law, which was not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were told if they did, then they would die. Not because of the fruit, but because they had rejected the word of God and therefore sinned.

Their sin threw the creation out of balance. But Jesus came to take away sin and so restore the balance of the Creation. In Jesus Christ, God reconciled man back to Himself so that we could live together with God into eternity as He originally planned. That is why Jesus came to take away sin. And this truth is known in the churches, but not often correctly practiced. Many churches want to hold people under sin. They want to hold them under condemnation even though they know that Jesus came to take away sin. This is why these verses today in Hebrews 9 are so important to understand correctly.

Jesus came to take away sin

It is clear from many scriptures in the Bible that Jesus came to take away sin. At the very beginning of His ministry when He had been baptised by John the Baptist, John spoke these words:

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

John the Baptist had a ministry to prepare the way for the Lord. He knew that his work was to get people ready for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and telling the people to believe in the one who would come after John. In these few words John declared that Jesus was the One, the sacrificial lamb who was to be slain, and the one who would take away the sins of the world.

It was from that time forward that the ministry of John declined and Jesus’ ministry took off. But in the words of John we gain the insight why Jesus came to the world. Jesus came to take away sin. This is emphasised again in many places, including these scriptures today.

What the scriptures today say

These are the words of the scriptures in Hebrews 9 we are considering today, and it is important to learn and understand what they say. These words point directly to the words of John the Baptist when he spoke of Jesus in the verse above.

24 For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgement, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:24-28)

Let us now unpack and break down what these words are saying.

The sacrifice of Jesus

When Jesus came, He came to die. It was always the plan of God that Jesus would live a perfect life and without the blemish of sin, so that He could be the perfect sacrifice for sin.

Under the laws of sacrifice in the Old Covenant, the lambs that were sacrificed had to be perfect, unblemished animals. They could not have any spot, disease, or blemish on their bodies. They had to be the best of the best because they were being offered to God as a sacrifice for sin.

Likewise, Jesus had to be perfect and unblemished in any way. He had to be completely sinless and obedient to God to become the perfect sacrifice for sin. The law pointed the way for what was to come in order that through His sacrifice, God could rectify the error of Adam and Eve. Jesus came to take away sin through His sacrifice to rectify that error.

But unlike the priests of Judaism, Jesus did not take His blood into the earthly Temple in Jerusalem. Instead, He entered the presence of God in the heavenly Temple and took His blood to present as the perfect sacrifice for sin.

His sacrifice was much more powerful than the sacrifice of an animal. Animals have no consciousness of right or wrong. They do not fall under sin like people. Their death occurs because the Creation was thrown out of balance by the sin of Adam and Eve, but it was not their fault. The fault of sin lies with man who listened to the devil rather than to God. So, the perfect sacrifice also had to be a perfect man who would die without the blemish of sin to redeem us from the curse of our forefathers.

Jesus came to take away sin…Once

There is an interesting point that is not readily understood in much of the church today. When Jesus came to take away sin, He only did so once. He did not come to die repeatedly, again and again, to take away sins.

Under the Old Covenant, the sacrifices for the sins of the people occurred every year. There were many sacrifices and offerings that were made throughout the year, and then an annual sin offering for all of the people on the Day of Atonement. In all of these different sacrifices, animals were killed and offered on the altar for different sins, as well as other offerings to God.

But Jesus’ blood was more precious and more powerful than the blood of all of these animals. He was not to be offered continually like those animal sin offerings. He came to die once and once only, as the sacrifice for all the sins of all mankind for all time.

However, often in the churches we hear people using the blood of Jesus as if it were the blood of the animals. When people come into temptation, condemnation, or they do the wrong thing, you may hear them say, “I cover myself with the blood of Jesus.” When they do this they are effectively offering the blood of Jesus over, and over again as if it were like the blood of those animals under the Old Covenant. They do this because they do not understand how we are to take the blood of Jesus to take away our sin.

Jesus Came To Take Away Sin through Baptism

The way that we are set free from sin is through the process of water baptism. Jesus took His blood to the Father and offered it so that we could enter into His sacrifice.

Under the law, the people would enter into the sacrifices by eating the flesh of the animals that were sacrificed. Paul points this out in this following verse:

Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? (1 Corinthians 10:18)

When the people ate of the flesh of the animals that were sacrificed on the altar, they became partners in the sacrifice. They became one with the offering so that they received the benefit of the sacrifice, and by that process received the forgiveness of sin that the sacrifice was meant to achieve.

In the same way we enter into the sacrifice by becoming “partners” with Jesus through taking on His death as if it were our own. We die with Him in water baptism, and are also raised with Him in His resurrection to a new life. As we go down into the water we symbolically die with Him. As we are raised up out of the water we are symbolically raised from the dead with Him. Paul writes about this and explains it in these words:

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For he who has died is freed from sin. (Romans 6:1-7)

How Jesus Came to Take Away Sin

In these words we see how baptism takes away our sins. Baptism is a death. In it, we die with Christ. We die to sin, and we die to this world. Through taking on the death of Jesus Christ through baptism, we die with Him. And we have to believe that we have died with Him, because death is the payment all people have to make for the debt of sin incurred in this life.

The reason we die is to pay for the debt f sin. But once we die, it is too late to be saved from sin. That is why Jesus came and died for us, so that we could enter into His death and “die in advance.” God established the means by which we could die and pay the debt of sin, but without actually dying. We are permitted to take the death of Jesus, to become partners in His sacrifice, so that we can take on His death as if it were our own.

Baptism is the mechanism for this, but it is by faith in God who sent Jesus to die and be raised again that makes us into the new creations. As we are raised from the dead with Christ in our baptism, we are raised as new creations. We are born anew, dead to this world, but alive to God. Through baptism and by faith we become the children of God, so that we are now citizens of the kingdom of God. We are no longer the citizens of this world, but have entered the spiritual realm by faith to be the children of God in His kingdom.

This is how Jesus came to take away sin. It is the reason He died and was raised from the dead so that we could have this new life in Him. And it was why He had to be the perfect sacrifice for sin.

The Power of Faith through Baptism

When we go through baptism, we have to believe that we have indeed died. If we are dad to this world, then the rules and laws of the world no longer apply to us. By that I mean the laws of Moses under the New Covenant, I don’t mean the rules of the governments. We still have to live in the world in the flesh, but in the spirit we live in the kingdom of God.

The scripture tells us that we must believe we have died with Christ and are dead to sin.

8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. 9 For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8-11)

Note those last words. You must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. By faith, this is how you must think of yourself. You are no longer a sinner and all of your past sins are gone. They are not merely forgiven, but they have been “taken away,” as it said in John 1:29. Your sins are gone and you are no longer a sinner.

Now this next piece may be even harder to understand than what is written above. Jesus came to take away ALL of your sins, past, present and future. You are not under the laws that apply to the people of this world since you believe you are now a child of God in the kingdom of God.

How does Jesus’ death and baptism take away future sins? The scripture in Hebrews that we are looking at says that He has dealt with sin once and for all. So, there must be a way that He has dealt with future sin too. Otherwise, after being baptised, if we then go and do wrong, we would again be sinners.

We need to understand what sin is, and what it is not. It is not an expression of a negative emotion or a passion of the flesh rising up in us. If for instance we get angry, envious, jealous, or feel greed, these are not sins. They can lead to sin if acted upon, but the passions of the flesh are not sin. The following scripture tells us what sin is.

4 Every one who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. (1 John 3:4-6)

These are very insightful words. They explain what sin is and the fact that Jesus came to take away sin.

Sin is lawlessness. That means that sin is the breaking of the law. When people break God’s laws, they commit sin. So, if you want to remove future sin, one way to do that is to remove the law. And that is what God has done in the death and resurrection of Christ.

We die with Christ in baptism. Remember that as you read this next scripture.

1 Do you not know, brethren–for I am speaking to those who know the law–that the law is binding on a person only during his life? 2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit. (Romans 7:1-6)

Paul uses the analogy of marriage to describe how we are set free from the law. Just as a woman is set free from the law of marriage through the death of her husband, so too we are set free from God’s law through entering the death of Christ.

Verse 1 says that the law is binding on a person only while they are alive. When they are dead, they are no longer under the law.

We have died with Christ and entered into His death through baptism. Thus we have died to the law, since we are now spiritually with Christ in the kingdom of God. The law no longer binds us as it does every other person on earth who has not been baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ. And if we are not under the law, we cannot break it. And if we do not break the law, we no longer sin.

That doesn’t mean we are perfect. But God has taken away both our old sins and set us in a place where our mistakes in the future are not counted against us.

But wait, there is more

This process of being set free from the law and how through baptism Jesus came to take away sin, is just the beginning. This is the starting place for all Christians, or at least it ought to be. When we look at the Great Commission, we see that Jesus told the disciples to:

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

He said for them to do three things.

1. Make disciples
2. Baptise them
3. Teach them all the words of Jesus

Jesus showed how important it was to baptise the disciples. And this happened in every case in the New Testament as soon as the disciples came to Christ. It was done this way for the purpose of releasing people from their sins in order to prepare them for the next step.

The next step is to deal with the passions, lusts, and desires of the flesh that lead to committing sin. It is when our passions and desires are aroused by temptations, often incited by the devil, that we can fall into sinful ways.

But God has provided the way out for those who come to Him. He gives us the indwelling Holy Spirit whose primary work is to transform us into the image of Christ and give us the victory over our passions, lusts, and desires. But that is a topic for another time. If you want to know more, check out my free eBook that covers all of these things (The Six Foundations of Christianity).

All of these things were established by God when Jesus came to take away sin. It was for the purpose of bringing mankind back to Himself and overcoming the sin of Adam and Eve.

You might also like:

The Sons Are Free
The Great Commission Part 2
The Great Commission Part 3
Rise And Walk
Jesus Fulfilled Law
Its Not About The Law
Grace And Truth Came Through Jesus Christ
Are You A Sinner
The Truth Will Make You Free
Why Jesus Died
It Is Not The Hearers Of The Law Who Are Righteous
Free Gift From God
Why You Are Freed From Law
You Are Not A Sinner
You Are Not Under Law
Obedient Slaves
The Law Ends At Death
How Freedom From Law Works
Faith Is The Key
The Sting Of Death
Christian Freedom