Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus…

Verses 11=18 read like this in ‘The Message’:

Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process. The Holy Spirit confirms this:

This new plan I’m making with Israel
    isn’t going to be written on paper,
    isn’t going to be chiseled in stone;
This time “I’m writing out the plan in them,
    carving it on the lining of their hearts.”

He concludes,

I’ll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins.

Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.

We now come into a section in which the practical implications of Christ’s ‘once for all’ sacrifice are drawn out. Here is the first in verse 19. Under the Old Covenant, only the high priest could enter ”the Most Holy Place” once a year. As we have seen, He had to first offer sacrifice for his own sins and then for the people. But no one else could enter that sacred place. If they tried, they would die. So let’s not lose sight of how revolutionary the truth of this nineteenth verse is. It’s not even that we can now all visit God once a year. It is rather that we have constant access to God’s presence. Furthermore, we can draw near to Him with ”confidence”.

‘The Message’ puts it like this:

So, friends, we can now—without hesitation—walk right up to God, into “the Holy Place.” Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God. 

PRAYER: Lord God, I thank you that Jesus died for me. Help me to never take for granted the gracious privilege you have given that I can approach you, walk with you, have intimacy with you through Jesus’ precious blood.