A Term Proportionate to the Offense

He has a figure. He would be embarrassed for anybody to know that he has a figure, and he has one, and it is seven years.

The estate was not complicated and that is what makes it worse. A house, a small account, three of them, and a will that was clear about the intention even where it was loose about the mechanism. And his father, who had asked him to handle it because he was the eldest and the careful one, had said one thing to him in a hospital bed: do it straight, and keep the three of you together.

He told God he would. That is the promise. Not a large one, not made in a corridor at four in the morning, said in daylight, in a chair, while his father was still awake to hear it.

He did not do it straight.

He is not going to itemize it and I am not going to make him, because an inventory is a courtroom with the chairs rearranged, and this site does not run one. It is enough to say that there was a decision about the timing of a sale, and a piece of information he did not pass on, and that his sister is worse off than she should be and does not know it, and that his brother suspects and has never said.

That was five years ago.

And this is what he has done since, and it is the tidiest thing about him. He worked out, privately and with some care, how long a man ought to be kept outside for that. He arrived at seven years. He did not choose it lightly; he weighed it. And he has been serving it with real exactness ever since: he does not take the bread, he does not pray at the table, he does not ask God for anything for himself, and he has two more years to go.

He would not call it penance. He would call it decency.

You may have calculated one. A period. A distance. Something you decided was proportionate, and you may be most of the way through it, and you may be the only person in the world who knows the term or the crime.

What one offering did

Now let me be a teacher for a moment, because you are a man who respects an argument, and there is a real argument here.

The writer to the Hebrews is comparing two systems. In the first, sacrifices are offered over and over, daily and yearly, and he makes a point about the repetition: the fact that it happens again means the last one did not finish the matter. Repetition is evidence of incompleteness.

And then he says this about the other one.

For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.Hebrews 10:14

You are perfected for ever by one offering, and that phrase leaves no calendar for anybody to serve. Hebrews 10:14 is written in the perfect tense on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has held that finished thing over you through five years of exactness.

One, and for ever

Three words carry the whole thing, and each one closes a door.

One. Not the first of a series. Not a large payment against a running account.

Perfected. Completed, brought to its proper end, finished as a matter.

For ever. Which is a statement about duration, and specifically about the fact that no further time needs to be served against it.

Now put your seven years next to that sentence.

A term is a thing served against an outstanding debt. That is what a term is for; it exists to satisfy something. And this verse says that the matter has been perfected for ever by one offering, which means there is nothing outstanding for your seven years to be served against.

You are serving a term against an account that has already been closed by somebody else's payment. Hebrews 10:14 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of an argument about the old sacrifices and stands it beside a man who has worked out a figure.

And I want to press on the word decency, because you chose it carefully and it is doing work.

Decency is a real virtue and you have more of it than most men. But look at what your term actually accomplishes. It does not restore your sister, who is still worse off. It does not tell your brother anything. It costs you real things and it delivers nothing to anybody who was harmed, which is the precise definition of a payment made to no creditor.

You have been paying into an account that has no holder. Scripture puts the perfecting in one offering and says for ever, and the Spirit of God has been with you through every year of a sentence nobody passed.

Nothing goes back on

Now let me be exact, because this is where a preacher does damage by tidiness.

I am not taking seven years off you and giving you two. I am not saying you have served enough. I am not going to say that the real requirement is that you tell your sister, or make it good, or confess to your brother, and then you may come in. Every one of those is a new term with a different unit, and a man of your habits would begin computing it before the end of the day.

The condition comes off. Nothing goes on.

You stand inside on His terms tonight, and His terms were satisfied in one offering and are not accepting further payments. His word says it and does not soften it, and that is the plain sense of perfected for ever, and His Spirit has been holding that true through five years of your exactness.

And your sister? Something should probably happen there, and I suspect you know roughly what, and I suspect it is more ordinary and more possible than the version you have imagined. But that gets done by a man who is inside, sleeping, taking the bread, praying at his own table. It is not the toll on the road in.