August 25: THE WORK OF RECONCILIATION
To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy. Daniel 9:24b.
Christ came into our fallen world not only for the blotting out of sin. He came to reconcile fallen man to His heavenly Father. His coming made it possible to impart His righteousness directly into the life of the repentant sinner. Sorrow for sin and the knowledge that Christ chose to suffer and die a substitutionary death to pay sin’s penalty is intended to bring each of us to the point of acceptance of His sacrificial death. When a person accepts Him, that person is covered—or robed—in Christ’s own robe of righteousness. This covering represents a death and burial (symbolized in baptism by immersion) to the old, ungodly ways of living. It is a fresh, clean start! The one whose sin is now covered can stand before the heavenly Father as though he or she had never sinned! God’s love for repentant, believing souls is the same as His love for His Son—and for His Son’s sake, the Father accepts and adopts them into His family. Joining the family of God brings spiritual growth, much learning, and a steady increase of understanding; in short, sanctification. This is the ongoing divine work of God’s Spirit within each of us, requiring the willingness and cooperation of the saved sinner. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments… (Revelation 16:15).
To seal up vision and prophecy… pointing to the ratification and confirmation of that which is to come. Daniel’s vision of future events was given in surety, in order for humans to grasp the fact of divine foreknowledge. Today we have the added advantage of hindsight regarding the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Messiah’s first coming. Yet we are still greatly in need of the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit to understand fulfillment of predictions beyond the scope of our limited sight. Belief in God’s unchanging character serves to bridge any distance between fulfilled prophecies that we can see and those we cannot…
And to anoint the Most Holy. So, according to the prophecy, the “most holy” was to be anointed. The Hebrew words used for the Most Holy are freely and frequently used in Levitical writings to characterize things and places. It is used in Old Testament Hebrew and its Greek equivalent in the New Testament to distinguish the room of the sanctuary that contains the Ark of the Covenant from the room where the seven-branch candlestick, the table of showbread, and the altar of incense are located. In the sense of the initial anointing of things or places for service, the term was applied to the tabernacle itself and to all of its furnishings and vessels (Exodus 30: 26-29). In today’s verse, the prophecy specifies an anointing of the heavenly sanctuary for service. This brings into view the unseen (from earth) event that accompanies the inauguration of the high priestly ministry of the risen Christ (described in Revelation 4&5). This is the antitypical fulfillment of the type provided in Exodus 40:9-10.
The power and purpose of the work of Christ as our great High Priest cannot be overestimated. This is the completion of the gospel message—the everlasting gospel (Revelation 14:6)—a truth has been long suppressed. Therefore, the role of Christ as High Priest may come as news to many. Accept it, beloved!
For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Hebrews 9:24 (see also 1:3; 4:14-15; 6:20)