Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle: 365 Sermons
A Saviour such as you need
‘And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.’ Hebrews 10:17–18
Suggested Further Reading: Hebrews 9:23–28
There is no more sacrifice for sin, because Christ supplies all that is needed. Just see what a broom this doctrine is to sweep this country from popery, and to sweep all nations of it. Think of what is called ‘the unbloody sacrifice of the mass, for quick and dead.’ What becomes of that? The apostle says, ‘Where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.’ Where, then, did the mass come from, and of what avail is it? The Lord’s Supper was intended to be the remembrancer to us of our Lord’s sufferings; instead of which it has been prostituted by the church of Rome into the blasphemy of a pretended continual offering up of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, a continual sacrifice. According to the Romish doctrine the offering upon Calvary is not enough; the atonement for sin is not finished; it has to be performed every day, and many times a day, in the divers churches of Christendom, by certain appointed persons, so that that sacrifice is always being offered. Do you notice how strongly the apostle speaks in this matter? He says Christ offered a sacrifice for sin once. He declares that while other priests stood ministering at the altar, this man, the Lord Jesus, offered a sacrifice once only, and has by that one offering perfected for ever his set apart ones. Brethren, the mass is a mass of abominations, a mass of hell’s own concocting, a crying insult against the Lord of glory. It is not to be spoken of in any terms but those of horror and detestation. Whenever I think of another sacrifice for sin being offered, by whoever it may be presented, I can only regard it as an infamous insult to the perfection of the Saviour’s work.
For meditation: The Lord’s Supper was not the first picture of salvation through faith in Christ crucified (Numbers 21:8–9; John 3:14–15), nor was it the first to be abused in false worship (2 Kings 18:4). Satan cannot damage Christ’s work, but he does vandalise pictures of it.
Sermon no. 714
7 October (1866)