Revisiting a very familiar phrase

There are many familiar phrases I might be thinking about with this blog post title but the one I’m thinking about today is “once for all.”

“Once for all.” What does that even mean? The context for this usage is 1 Peter 3:18 where Peter writes, “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God” (NRSV). I know what we think it means and I’m not saying that we’re wrong but rather we have let our current understanding of it limit our ability to grasp more of the implications of it. You probably need to listen to both of the sermons to get all that I had to say about this but what I was trying to think about was the singular and ultimate nature of this statement, indicated by “once” and the two usages of “all,” namely “all” of us (everyone) and “all” time.

Upon reviewing my last sentence I’m not sure it helps anything other than perhaps encouraging you to listen to both sermons, each of which are fairly short — 16:01 and 13:40 respectively — to figure out what I was trying to say 🙂

Knox Presbyterian What does “once for all” mean?

St. Mark’s Presbyterian What does “once for all” mean?

Blessings,