For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 1 Peter 3:18 (NASB)

How important is the phrase “once for all”? I believe it would be safe to say that everything pertaining to our salvation hinges upon it.

Does that surprise you? If it does, you have not properly understood the nature of the work which Christ accomplished through His death and resurrection.

In a very real sense, the sin in the garden was a “once for all” sin. Adam’s and Eve’s failure to obey God was a one-time event that negatively impacted all of us. What some call the “original sin” resulted in the transmission of a fallen “sin nature” to every human being who would ever be born the natural way. (Jesus is excluded from this list by reason of the virgin birth.) It set in motion a horrendous sequence of events that is still whirling seemingly out of control today. (However, God is still sovereign over his creation.) The evil we see around us, that sometimes seems to strike the most “innocent” at random, is nothing more or less than the result of that original sin reinforced by the additional sins that each of us have added to the mix and which has been augmented by the malevolent interference of the Devil. Since salvation is God’s means of overcoming the power and effects of sin, it stands to reason that what God would eventually do to rescue mankind would also be a “once for all” event.

God is “Other”. By that I mean that He is very different from you and me, even though we are created in His image. Time is part of his creation,  but he is not bound by it as we now are in many ways. He sees the end from the beginning and “calls those things which be not as though they were”. (Romans 4:17) He exists outside of time but interjects himself into our historical timeline. God merges the eternal with the temporal in a way that confounds our minds. The following verse is an example of this.

And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life, which belongs to the Lamb who was killed before the world was made. Revelation 13:8 (NLT) 

If you are a believer, not only did God choose you before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), but His Son was put to death before history ever began as well.

There is an eternal reality to things before they ever show up in what we call “history”. History is the playing out of God’s wonderful plan.

That which is eternal is what is truly important. It might be said that what we do here in the present (the working out of history) is the outworking of the eternal. What happens on our timeline is also part of determining our eternity. God is sovereign and we are responsible agents. Please do not make the mistake of insisting that both of these things cannot be simultaneously true. In God they are. That which from God’s perspective was accomplished before the foundation of the earth had to take place at a given point in history as well. In the “fullness of time” (God’s appointed time), Jesus was born, lived, was crucified, and rose again.

When Jesus hung upon the cross, some eternal things were taking place that we must acknowledge and believe if we are to fully appreciate and benefit from what God did. Romans says that when Jesus died, we died. When He rose, we rose. We were placed “in Christ” so that what He experienced and accomplished is now ours. We were and are identified with Christ.

Identification is one of the most important salvation concepts in the Bible.

We were not given salvation as much as we were given a Savior. We did not receive grace so much as the Gracious One now lives inside us. We have not so much been given life as we are filled with the One who identified himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).

All the blessings of God are in a Person, and His name is Jesus. We experience all this via the indwelling Holy Spirit, God’s most amazing gift.

When Jesus died on that cross, for the believer He took care of every sin that had ever been committed or would ever be committed. Does this sound too good to be true? Think about it: when the crucifixion took place, the sins of every person who would ever live and come to believe the gospel were still in the future. How could those sins be included in what Jesus did on the cross? God, in His eternal wisdom, placed every future sin of His people on His Son. Jesus carried that heavy burden to His death. He substituted for us by taking our punishment for us. Substitution is another big concept.

Jesus was our Substitute by paying the price for our sin, but we are identified with Him in that we too died. God accomplished two things on the cross. Jesus died for us, and we died with Him.

His death for us released us from guilt and condemnation. (Romans 8:1) Our death with him released us from the power of sin and the Law. (Romans 7:4) When He rose again, we rose with Him, which empowered us to live a new life in the Spirit.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV) 

But let’s get back to our main topic for today, the once for all nature of what Jesus did. The Greek language has more verb forms than English. The past tense can be expressed as the imperfect, which is used for repeated past actions, and the aorist, which is used to communicate a one-time occurrence. An example of this would be: “Johnny practiced (imperfect) his driving skills every day with his instructor. Eventually he got (aorist) his license.” What Jesus accomplished on the cross is always expressed in the aorist tense. It was done only once, never to be reenacted. (This is one reason why the Catholic doctrine of the reenactment of Christ’s death in the Mass is so unbiblical.) Here is how the author of Hebrews put it.

Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the earthly high priest who enters the Most Holy Place year after year to offer the blood of an animal. 26 If that had been necessary, he would have had to die again and again, ever since the world began. But no! He came once for all time, at the end of the age, to remove the power of sin forever by his sacrificial death for us. Hebrews 9:25-26 (NLT) 

In other words, what Jesus did was permanent and eternal. When we confess our sins and ask forgiveness from God, we tap into that once for all past work of grace on the cross. I hope you can see the significance of this important truth.

Since His death was “once for all” and it took care of the power of sin “forever”, then our salvation is also “once for all”.

Once for all time he took blood into that Most Holy Place, but not the blood of goats and calves. He took his own blood, and with it he secured our salvation forever. Hebrews 9:12 (NLT) 

God permanently transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness into his kingdom of light and life. (Colossians 1:13-14) He caused us to pass from death to life with the result being we will never come under condemnation again.

“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life. John 5:24 (NLT)

Christ removed us from the treadmill of needing to “earn” our salvation or maintain a right standing with God through our performance and placed us “in Christ,” where the work is finished.

The New Covenant was inaugurated with the death of the substitute “covenant breaker,” our Lord Jesus, who upfront paid the penalty for our failures. He actually “became” our sins, and, when he rose again, we became the righteousness of God in him.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)

When he rose again, all forgiven former covenant breakers entered a right relationship with God, passed from death to life and from darkness to light. We participated in his death through identification and in his resurrection, too. It is impossible for us to go back into death and unbecome a born-again child of God.

Christ’s death and resurrection were “once for all” and so is the resultant new birth and justification.

We are now “one spirit” with God. (1 Corinthians 6:17) He lives his life in and through us. (Galatians 2:20) Now God is working in us both to “will and to do” his good pleasure as we cooperate with his grace. (Philippians 2:12-13) This ought to make us shout for joy!

Questions for Further Study and Discussion

• Why is it important that we understand that Christ’s sacrifice for sins was “once for all”?
• Why does the Bible tell us to confess our sins, if the provision for them was in the past?
• In your own words, explain the difference between identification and substitution.

Click here to see the other articles in this series.