While two visitors were visiting Annapolis, they noticed several students on their hands and knees assessing the courtyard with pencils and clipboards in hand. “What are they doing?” one of them asked their tour guide.

“Each year,” he replied with a grin, “The upperclassmen ask the freshmen how many bricks it took to finish paving this courtyard.”

“So what’s the answer?” one of the visitors asked the tour guide when they were out of earshot of the freshmen.

The guide replied, “One.”

That brings up an interesting theological question. How many sacrifices did it take to finish paying for our sins? The Jews would have needed lots of pencils and clipboards to make the calculation. “Let’s see, let’s take all the sin offerings, all the guilt offerings, the bulls, the goats, the lambs, the turtledoves . . .”

So what’s the answer? How many sacrifices did it take to finish paying for our sins? Only one.

“And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered the sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” (Heb. 10:11-12).