Hebrews 9:27Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Having proved that He ought not to die many times, the Apostle now shows why He died once. “It is appointed for men,” he says, “to die once.” Therefore He died once for all men. What then? Do we no longer die the former death? We die, but we do not remain in it, and this is not properly death. The dominion of death, and true death, is when the dead man has no possibility of returning to life. But if after death he comes to life, and to a better life, this is not death, but sleep. Death could have held all men in its power. Therefore Christ died in order to free us.

He now states the reason why Christ died once. He says it is because He appeared as redemption from the one death. For it is appointed for men to die once. Therefore He too died once for all.

What then? Do we not die now? We do die, but we are not subject to death as before. We are not subject to it because of the hope of resurrection, whose source is Christ, who died for us. Such death is not death, but falling asleep.

Therefore, since death held dominion over us all, He also died in order to free us.

Or the Apostle now wishes to show something else. He is not saying that Christ paid for us by the death to which we were liable as punishment. Rather, since Christ, being God, was also truly man, then as men die once and afterward comes judgment, so He too died once.

Listen to what follows.

As it is appointed for each man to die once, and the one who has reached the limit of mortality sins no longer, but awaits the result of all he has done in life, so the Master Christ. Having once offered Himself for us and taken our sins upon Himself, will appear to us again when sin no longer reigns, that is, when sin no longer has any place among men. For Christ Himself, while still having a mortal body, “committed no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Pet 2:22). It should also be noted that the Apostle said, “to bear the sins of many,” not of all, for not all believed. Therefore Christ loosed the sins only of those who believed.

For this reason, says the Apostle, He died once, because men die once. Since He Himself became man in the most perfect manner, He “was offered once,” that is, He became a sacrifice, “to bear the sins of many.”

The word “many” is used to show that not all believed in Him, although on His part He died for all.

He bore sins to the Father by recalling them before the Father, in order to obtain His condescension toward them. For priests too, when making offerings, bear the sins for which those offerings are made.

They say, “Whether they have sinned knowingly or unknowingly, forgive them, Master.” Thus the bearing of sins means the priests’ remembrance of them before God, and their request that those who have sinned may receive remission.

The Apostle says that the Father sent Him to bear the sins of many upon the Cross, in order to destroy them by enduring the punishment for human sins, making Him now a sacrifice for sin (2 Cor 5:21). For Christ truly was a sinner, because He took upon Himself and appropriated the sins of the whole world. But after enduring on the Cross the fitting punishment, and the one certainly due to sinners, He will appear with the Father’s glory, no longer as a sinner and no longer numbered with transgressors (Is 53:12; Lk 22:37).

How do these words of the Apostle relate to the preceding thoughts? In them the Apostle presents a new consideration concerning the once-for-all character of the Savior’s sacrifice on the Cross.

Immediately before this, he derived this once-for-all character from the infinite value of Christ’s sacrifice. Such value, even when the sacrifice is offered once, is fully sufficient for all times. The yearly singularity of the Old Testament sacrifice on the Day of Atonement prefigured this.

Here the Apostle derives the once-for-all character of Christ’s sacrifice from the unnaturalness and incongruity of its supposed repetition. Christ, he says, would have had to suffer and die many times from the foundation of the world.

After offering Himself once in sacrifice, nothing remains for Christ except to appear a second time in order to bless those who await Him with faith.

Explaining this, the Apostle says that, as with death everything earthly ceases to have significance for man, and in the future only judgment remains, so also Christ was once offered by God as a sacrifice (cf. Rom 8:32).

He was offered in order to bear in Himself alone the punishment for the sins of many, or better, of all men (cf. Rom 5:15ff.).

He will appear a second time on earth for salvation, or for the salvation of believers. He will be free from the burden of human sins and will have no need to offer Himself again as a sacrifice.

The term κρίοις, without the article, determines neither the time nor the quality of the judgment.