The book of Hebrews uses the phrase “once for all” five times in referring to Jesus’ sacrifice for the sins of the world. The phrase has a dual meaning, it means that Jesus’ sacrifice was “once for all” meaning that it was the final sacrifice, never needing to be repeated or renewed and it also means that it was the one sacrifice that was made for everyone. Jesus didn’t and doesn’t die for you and for me, He died for us, for all of us, “once for all”. His death is applied to each one of us but I believe that we have to be very aware of the corporate nature of His sacrifice or else we forget that the same price that was paid for me is the price that was paid for the person that has not yet yielded his heart to Christ. I believe that part of our struggle with true evangelism, living with a longing to see others saved no matter their condition or struggle comes from making salvation personal before we understand that it is first corporate. If Jesus didn’t die for all sin, meaning in turn all sinners then I can’t ever have assurance of salvation, I have to hope that I’m one of the ones that has benefited. The fact that He died “once for all” gives us hope and humility; the hope is that it means I can’t ever be too far for grace to bring me back and the humility is that He loves me greatly but I’m not saved because of my special qualities, I’m saved because He wills that none would perish and so He died once for all. Sorry to start the lesson on a tangent but the Scriptures don’t say that Jesus died for my sins, it says that “He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God”. Jesus didn’t die for my sins, He became sin, all sin, every sin from the past the present and the future so that everyone had the same, equally loved opportunity, to become the righteousness of God. This means that Jesus died for my sin and Hitler’s sin all the same, for my sin and ISIS’ sin all the same, for my sin and any other person’s sin that we would like to list. We are all equal in our sin, equal in God’s love and equal at the cross. “Once for all” is an incredibly important but often overlooked phrase. It means that while we have a personal relationship with Jesus that is built by intimacy and love, He died a corporate death because His desire is to build a relationship of love and intimacy with all men.
So what does all of that have to do with Mark 14? Tonight we see the final Passover eaten before the “once for all” Passover Lamb was slain. There is a reason Jesus died at Passover, why what we call the Lord’s Supper was served for the first time at Passover, why blood had to be applied to the doors of the Israelites and why it is in Jesus’ blood that we have forgiveness of sins and redemption. Passover, as we have talked about before, was not merely a celebration of coming out of Egypt it is a celebration of being rescued, saved and protected from sure death. It is a remembrance that when death came God spared us and that He spared us so that He could lead us out of our places of bondage and into His places of promise. The Passion of Christ happened at Passover because Passover had always pointed us to the Passion of Christ. Tonight we will walk through that final Passover meal that Jesus would eat with His disciples and then as the meal came to its conclusion we will see that it’s not the end of Passover but rather it is Passover becoming the meal of the new covenant. That Passover didn’t end, you see Passover always pointed to the Messiah coming and paying our price, but it continues to point to the Messiah returning and ushering us into His Promised Land, the Passover won’t be complete until the last soul is saved as Jesus literally returns, thwarts His enemies, establishes His kingdom and every knee bows and every tongue confesses that He is Lord. Until then the Passover and the Lord’s Supper remind us of what has been done and point us toward what is yet to come. Our role is to eat, to drink, to remember, to declare and I believe to live lives that cry out as Count Zinzendorf and the Moravian missionaries once did, “May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering.”