How far are you willing to go to get better?
Even though I’ve seen all the original Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers a million times, I’m a sucker to watch any of them again. And again. I’ve memorized all the movies. Every scene is neatly saved in my memory, ready to be pulled out at any time. And with almost all the dialogue memorized, I happily say it along with the actors.
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In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Inspector Jacques Clouseau just can’t help himself. Every time he tries to help poor Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, something happens. It always goes from bad to worse. Eventually, Dreyfus falls into a pond and slowly pulls himself out while repeating the words of his therapist[1].
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I’m fine. I’m perfect. Every day, and in every way, I’m getting better and better.
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Evolution was one of the first ideas to really convince everyone that things were getting better and better. After all, it was the strong who ate the weak. Natural Selection choose what was better. And it kept making things better and better.
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This is also the message of today. Things are getting better and better. We’re moving from strength to strength. Things made today are superior to the old and weak things made years ago. Society and people are smarter, better, and more advanced than people from yesteryears.
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Technology, the modern savior, is the example and evidence that everyone looks to as proof. After all, every part of life is being made better and better. Food is cheaper and more abundant because of genetic engineering and modern farming equipment. Cell phones have shrunk from 4.4 pounds to about 7 ounces.
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But when it comes to sacrifices for sin, it’s something altogether different. While there’s no better and better, there is a better. There are basically only two ways to do it. The old way and the new way. The first way and the final way.
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As an example, the writer turns back the hands of time and looks at the historical story of Able. Since he was the first guy to try the first way of sacrifice, he’s the best person to compare. So, what is this first way of sacrificing for sin?
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Basically, the first way is where we bring a sacrifice to God for our own sins. We, people just like you and me, offer something to God as payment for our sins. Our words, thoughts, actions, and attitudes were against who God is and all he’s done for us. This means that we owe God something to make up for what we did. What we didn’t do.
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Look all throughout the Bible and all the sacrifices in the Old Testament, and they follow this way. When Moses set up the sacrificial system used by Israel in the Tabernacle, they all were trying to pay back God for something we’d done. They all had one purpose, to bring us back to God through something we did.
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But this idea went beyond just what Israel did. All the nations of the world were doing the same thing. They might have used different payments, said different words, but they were all trying to repay God for all our screwups. Sins put people in debt to God and sacrifices were the way of repaying.
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To bring this up to date, and I say this with all respect, but this is exactly how all the sacrifices look for all other religions around the world today. It’s all about our falling short to what God wants and then we do something to make up for it. To pay for our faults, we make sacrifices over and over again. Or to use religious words, to atone for our sins.
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Which brings us to the second way of paying for our sins. Or, and the writer to the Hebrews calls it, the better way. This is where God himself pays for our sins. Instead of us trying and failing, God takes over and makes the sacrifice himself.
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But it gets better. When we’re trying to pay for our sins, we have to keep doing it over and over. Why? Because our sins are just that awful and our sacrifices just can’t get it done. So, when God sacrifices for our sins, he can do it once and for all time. All our sins are taken care with one sacrifice.
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Just think about how great and revolutionary this is. Instead of all the pressure being on us to make sacrifices over and over, God does it once and for all. Instead of us worrying whether or not we did it the right way, God himself steps in and makes the perfect sacrifice for us.
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This is how Jesus puts himself in between sinful people and a holy God. We’re the sinful. We’re the ones who can’t get it right. We don’t have the skill or strength to live the life we should. The kind of life that rightly responds to how much God loves us and has given to us.
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With Jesus on the cross, God takes care of all sin once-and-for-all. No more need for sacrifices. It’s done. It’s finished. The final sacrifice has been made. So, there’s nothing more for us to do. We can’t earn it. Our only response is to accept it. To receive all God’s done in Jesus. He is the better way that can’t be made any better.
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