Winning Life Coached by the Holy Spirit: Touchdown!
The Eternity Winning Play
The Owner planned for both a new Quarterback and the winning play. From the beginning, the playbook required the shedding of blood to end sin.
This is first implied in Genesis 3:21: The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. God had to kill the animal, shedding its blood, to cover Adam and Eve’s shame.
Throughout Genesis, all the patriarchs built sacrificial altars at key life events. The biggest sacrifice preceded Passover in Exodus 12:1–30, with focus especially on verses 21–23:
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning. When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.
The blood of a spotless lamb applied to the doorposts of their homes protected the Israelite children. This foreshadows the Quarterback’s ultimate, game-winning play:
The Quarterback came as one of us, but He did not sin. He laid down His life in exchange for ours. If we apply His Blood to the doorposts of our heart, on Judgment Day, His Father the Owner will see only the Quarterback, overlook our confessed sins, and accept us into His Presence. We will be passed over for the Second Death and eternal damnation.
Our Quarterback would also rise again. Through resurrection, the Quarterback proved His power equal to the Owner’s, that He had the same power over Life and Death that the Owner did. He broke the ultimate curse of sin and death forever.
Why the Play Was Necessary
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s instructions, they proved that they could misuse free choice to break their daily huddle with the Owner. God knew that if they chose to eat from the Tree of Life in that state, their disobedience to Him and lack of fellowship with Him would be eternal. They would always live in the Lake of Fire and would never have the opportunity of an eternity in the New Jerusalem. He loved them and did not want that for them.
However, as a just God, He could not accept them in that state. Nor can He accept any of us in that state.
Before Christ, forgiveness for sins required the shedding of blood. Per Hebrews 9:22: In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Verse 24 of the same chapter indicates once was never enough. The people sinned repeatedly. The High Priest entered annually, risking his own life to cleanse the people.
We needed Someone Who could be both High Priest and spotless Lamb. Only our Quarterback, God the Owner’s Own Son, could do that. Hebrews 9–10:18 fully discusses how the Old Testament Covenant were foreshadowing the future. For now, our focus is Hebrews 10:1–18:
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, my God.’”
First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” — though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
“This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”
And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
What Our Response Should Be
To accept the Quarterback’s game winning play, we have to accept that Jesus is the Messiah prophesied throughout the Old Testament in passages like Isaiah 9:6–7:
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Additionally, we accept the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 53, particularly the key verses in 4–6:
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Our answer to the question “Who do you say that I am” must mirror Peter’s — You are Christ, the Messiah, God’s Anointed One. Like Peter, we must also confess that we are sinful and don’t deserve friendship with God.
We must closely examine our lives and partner with our Coach the Holy Spirit to determine what this means for us.
We must accept that the Kingdom of God is a reality, a reality that we are called to cooperate with and invoke into being in our midst. If we need an example, Christ’s mother Mary is a solid witness. Her entire life was one ongoing yes to the will of God.
Consider her character qualities — thinking and meditating on comments and circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth and Presentation in the temple, persistence in advocating for needs of others as demonstrated at the wedding in Cana, humbly accepting the consequences of an apparent no-win situation as she followed Christ to Calvary.
To witness as Mary witnessed, we need to devoutly follow the precepts in God’s Word. We cannot just say we believe. We need to act like we believe.
