PART TWO
PART TWO
Some of my favorite movies are those that have a twist at the end—something I never saw coming. As soon as I recover from the initial shock, there’s always something I want to do immediately: watch the movie again. Why? Because I want to see the clues and indications that I missed. It is only after I know the ending that I can go back and identify them for what they are.
The Bible kind of works that way. Having seen the remarkable way God brings redemption through Jesus, we can go back and read the Old Testament again with fresh eyes. And we will see things that we never saw before. We can see how things were always pointing to Jesus, even when we didn’t catch them the first time.
In Hebrews 10:1-18 our author takes a similar approach. He has spent a lot of time showing the limitations of the old-covenant system of worship. But now he is going to argue that this message is really nothing new. The idea that animal sacrifices are provisional and that God is not fully pleased by them is not found just in the New Testament; it is found in the Old Testament too! Abandoning those sacrifices and turning to Jesus was God’s plan for us from the start.
In short, the author wants us to go back and read the Old Testament afresh. When we do, we will see clues about the limitations of animal sacrifices everywhere.
This would have been a very powerful argument for the recipients of this letter. Remember, they were largely Jewish Christians who were thinking about returning to the old sacrificial system. But the writer wants to show them that, if they look back through the Old Testament, they will see that God’s plan for a new and better system was always there. Doing away with the old sacrificial system was not a left turn out of the blue. The Jews could—maybe even should—have seen it coming.
Reasons Not to Go Back
The old covenant was not false or wrong. But it was provisional and partial. “The law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (v 1).
For a while when my wife and I were dating, I was in California and she was in North Carolina. That’s nearly 3,000 miles apart. There was no internet back then, so we wrote letters to one another. These days, when people date long distance, they keep in touch via video calls. They can at least see the person they are dating. That is much better than letters; but it is still not as good as being together in person—when you can hold hands and talk face to face.
The difference between an online relationship and an in-person relationship is kind of like the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. One does not contradict the other. But one is clearly “better” than the other!
This is what our author means when he calls the old covenant order a “shadow of the good things to come.” A shadow is not contradictory to the person that makes it; and it can provide a vague, general outline of what that person is like. But no one prefers the shadow if they can have the real thing.
Because these sacrifices were only shadows—only provisional—they could “never … make perfect those who draw near.”
Our author appeals to basic logic to prove that this is true. If the old-covenant sacrifices had worked, “would they not have ceased to be offered?” (v 2). In other words, the repetitive nature of animal sacrifices should have been a clue that they could not be the final thing you trust in.
Moreover, if the old-covenant sacrifices had been effective, then the worshiper “would no longer have [had] any consciousness of sins.” This is not a reference merely to a person’s awareness of their own sinfulness—that is something that we continue to experience even after trusting Christ. No, it refers to an assurance that the worshiper no longer stands guilty under the wrath of God (see verse 22). That is what the old sacrificial system, in and of itself, could never provide.
At this point, one might wonder why the old-covenant order was instituted at all. What was it really accomplishing? One thing is that these sacrifices were “a reminder of sin every year” (v 3). In that sense, they were not a waste of time. They may not have been able to save you from your sins, but they did remind you of your need for a Savior.
The truth is that the old-covenant system was gospel-oriented. Nowhere did anyone say, You’re fine as you are and if you work hard enough, you can get to heaven. No, the message of the sacrifices was repeatedly, You’re not okay. You are a sinner. Blood needs to be shed on your behalf.
The purity laws in Leviticus also reveal this. If you touched a corpse, if you didn’t wash in a certain way, if you didn’t avoid certain foods, then you were unclean. The message couldn’t be missed; you always needed cleansing.
But the blood of animals couldn’t provide that cleansing. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (v 4).
Impossible. No matter how many bulls or goats you offer, how impressive they are, or how frequently you offer them, the blood of animals cannot take away sin.
So, the sacrificial system also shows you that no effort you make, no matter how well-intended, could ever be enough to save you from your sins.
But there is glorious good news. God promised he would send a sacrifice that does save. Our author now gives us three reasons to trust in the sacrifice of Christ for us.
Christ Offers His Body
The first reason we can trust in Christ is because he offered his own body—a physical human body—as a sacrifice for us (v 5). To prove his point, the author invites his audience to look back at Psalm 40 and see that God always said that this would happen. This would have been a powerful argument for the original Jewish Christian audience who took the Old Testament seriously.
It is noteworthy that our author cites Psalm 40:6-8 as the words of Jesus. “When Christ came into the world, he said…” How can that be so, since David was the writer of Psalm 40? Because he wrote it under the influence of the Holy Spirit. With hindsight, we can see that these words are about Jesus—and it was actually Jesus speaking through David’s mouth.
The citation of Psalm 40 begins with the speaker (who we now know is Jesus) observing that the normal sacrificial system is not enough: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired” (Hebrews 10:5). He repeats the idea again in verse 6: “In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.” We see here that the Old Testament itself acknowledged the limitations in the sacrificial system.
But then the speaker in Psalm 40 declares that God has something better than these sacrifices: “A body have you prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5). This is an anticipation of the incarnation. Christ’s priesthood would not be about offering animal sacrifices but about offering his own body.
“Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,” continues Jesus (v 7). His job was to do what the Father told him to do. He willingly, consciously, and intentionally gave his body for his people. This is another contrast with animal sacrifices. A lamb does not wake up in the morning and think to itself, “I’d like to die for sinners today.” Christ, unlike a lamb, did not die because he was forced into it; he went forward willingly.
That is the picture of love. He was not just given for you; he gave himself for you. The sacrificial system was impersonal, distant, external—it was easy for it to become just a matter of performing the rites. But Jesus offered himself out of love. It was personal.
Verses 8-9 provide a sort of commentary on Psalm 40. In verse 8, our author refers again to verses 5 and 6 above, to say that God has “neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings.” He further clarifies that this portion of Psalm 40 is referring to the ordinary animal sacrifices “offered according to the law.”
Moreover, in Hebrews 10:9 our author affirms that these old sacrifices have been superseded by what Christ has done by giving his body. Christ “abolishes the first in order to establish the second.” In other words, our author interprets Psalm 40 as Jesus doing away with the old system of animal sacrifices in favor of establishing a new system focused on the one-time giving of his body.
To be clear, when Psalm 40 says that God did not delight in the old-covenant sacrifices, this is not to suggest that the old covenant was in error, or that these sacrifices were offered contrary to his will. It simply means that these sacrifices were not satisfactory to him as a way to really take away sins. Something more would be needed.
The gift of Jesus’ body leads to a wonderful result: “We have been sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10). The word “sanctified” here is in the perfect tense in Greek. This speaks to a completed action with ongoing implications or effects in the present. Thus, this verse is unlikely to refer to progressive sanctification—in which we become more Christ-like over time by the power of the Spirit. Rather, it probably refers to positional sanctification: namely, that we have been cleansed by Christ and set apart, once for all, for his service. We are in a new position, having moved from the realm of darkness into the realm of the light.
Christ Sat Down
Verses 11-14 add a second reason to trust in Christ’s sacrifice. We know that it was successful because he sat down.
Here is the logic. There was no chair in the tabernacle. The priests would never rest because their work was never done. They kept standing, “offering repeatedly” ineffectual sacrifices (v 11).
But Christ offered a single sacrifice and then “sat down at the right hand of God” (v 12). Unlike the priest, Jesus has finished his work and has sat down. (We previously saw this in Hebrews 1:3, and it was also hinted at in 8:1.)
In 10:13 we are told what Jesus does next from that position at the right hand of God. He is waiting “until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.” For Jesus to sit at the right hand of the Father means that someday all his enemies will be destroyed.
This is an allusion to Psalm 110:1, the same psalm that mentioned Melchizedek. Our author has also quoted and alluded to this particular verse before, in Hebrews 1:13 and 2:8. “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.’” Essentially, the point is that Jesus is in a position of power. Sitting at the right hand of God means that he rules the world and will judge the world. “Everything [is] in subjection to him” (2:8).
Although the picture of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb may tempt us to think of him as meek and mild, we must not forget that he is also a lion who will tear his enemies to pieces. He will reign supreme and defeat all his foes. Jesus is the lion and the lamb. He is multidimensional.
It is not just that Jesus’ enemies will be defeated. Think about that footstool image. Jesus will put his feet over the top of his enemies and squash them down. They will be totally subjected to him. Satan himself will be crushed by Jesus’ feet (Genesis 3:15; Romans 16:20).
Like the prior section (Hebrews 10:5-10), the final verse of this section also ends with a statement about the benefits of Christ’s work: “He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (v 14). The idea of “perfection” has dominated these last few chapters (7:11; 7:19; 9:9; 10:1), but each time it has been mentioned to show what the old sacrificial system was unable to do. The law could not really cleanse our sins and make us presentable to the holy God.
Now, however, it is used positively. What the old covenant could not accomplish in many offerings, Christ accomplished “by a single offering” (v 14). Even more than that, this perfection won’t ever end—it is “for all time.”
The term “sanctified” also pops up again here in verse 14, but this time our author uses the present participle (“being sanctified”). It’s possible, therefore, that he has progressive sanctification in mind, referring to the ongoing work of the Spirit in making us holier over time. On the other hand, we may not want to press the present tense too hard given that other passages use sanctification language in a more positional sense (10:10; 10:29; 13:12). Regardless, this sanctification is still rooted in the cleansing work of Christ, which makes us “perfect.” Because we are truly forgiven, we are now empowered to live more and more for Christ.
The Spirit Assures Us
The third and final reason to trust in Christ’s sacrifice is found in 10:15-18, where the author quotes again from Jeremiah 31.
He introduces this quotation by saying that “the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us” (Hebrews 10:15). Our author sees the words of Jeremiah as the words of the Holy Spirit—the words of God. This is another wonderful example of how our author demonstrates the way we should approach the Old Testament. It is authoritative because it has been inspired by the Holy Spirit. And it is all about Jesus.
How do these words of the Spirit help us trust in the new-covenant sacrifice of Christ? First, we are reminded that God promised this new covenant long ago (v 16). The idea that the old covenant would pass away, and that a new sacrificial system would come, was always part of God’s plan.
And this time things would be different. With a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, this new message of redemption would be received and internalized: “I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds.”
Second, God promises that this time the cleansing of sin will really happen. The sacrifice will be fully effectual. Thus, God can say, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more” (v 17).
With these truths in mind, our author is able to make a final declaration about the old covenant system. He can now declare, “there is no longer any offering for sin” (v 18). What he means is that we no longer need animal sacrifices according to the old-covenant order. Why? Because “there is forgiveness” in what Christ has done.
What a beautiful truth on which to end this section. All of redemptive history, all of the work of Christ, all of the plans of the Father, have been aimed at this solitary goal: that sins might be forgiven.
Our world needs that message now. Indeed, our churches need that message now. It seems that people want to make Christianity first and foremost about all sorts of other things: being a good person, helping others, fighting for social change, and so on. But we can’t forget the core message. Christianity is a message about sin and how we can be forgiven for it.
Paul would agree: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).