Christ came as High Priest. … With his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:11.12.
About 4,000 years ago God-fearing Job asked the question: “How can a man be righteous before God?” (ch.9:v.2). In this respect he was ahead of many people who either refuse to believe in God or do not realize that, as they are, they have no standing before God.
Some 2,000 years later the apostle Paul expressed a similar thought: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Nobody will ever fulfill the demands of God’s glory through his own efforts. We have sinned and cannot redeem ourselves from our guilt. By contrast to Job, however, this was not an unsolved problem for Paul, for he continued, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith” (Romans 22-25).
When Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans, Christ’s work of redemption at the cross had already been accomplished. Other than with the Old Testament offerings, Christ sacrificed His own life and thus perfectly fulfilled God’s holy requirements. This is what the expression “with his own blood” signifies. In this way Christ became the “Lamb of God”. Whoever claims this means of atonement for himself by faith receives the forgiveness of sins and is justified before God, i.e. pronounced free of all guilt. This is God’s answer to Job’s question.
Image: By Gerard Seghers – Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here. 2006-08-17 (original upload date), http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/h/holbein/hans_y/1525/03deadch.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1822721