University Presbyterian Church, Las Cruces, NM USA

Hebrews 10:1-18

Rev. David H. Linden

University Presbyterian Church, Las Cruces, NM USA

(revised September, 2011)

The long didactic section of Hebrews ends in 10:18. There will be further teaching, but the chief doctrinal core of the book ends here. Unbroken exposition began with Melchizedek; only in 10:19 does the writer return to exhortation. Hebrews demonstrates that good preaching must supply truth to believe and then make an appeal for proper response.

Note the contrast: in 9:28 Christ was offered once, but other sacrifices are repeated (10:1). The repeated sacrifices the law required could not make the worshippers perfect, but what came in the new covenant did, with changed hearts and forgiveness. The new covenant makes the old one obsolete (8:13) and Jesus is the mediator/guarantor of the new one (7:22; 9:15). The teaching progresses from the accomplishment of Christ’s objective work to the new covenant benefits in the lives of His own. It would be a harmful oversimplification to say Hebrews turns now from Christ’s work on the cross to His work within us. Instead, it stresses the effects of His offering by joining His finished work to how His sacrifice affects those He is saving.

A variety of contrasts appear in Hebrews 7 – 10. Not all are repeated here, such as priests who die vs. One who lives forever, and what sanctuary they serve in, but many contrasts finish this passage:

§  the law’s requirements and the new covenant’s gifts

§  not being made perfect vs. being made perfect

§  continuing to feel guilty vs. having forgiveness

§  being reminded of sin rather than forgiveness

§  many sacrifices vs. one

§  sacrifices and offerings in which God did not delight, vs. His will that ordered the sacrifice of the body of Christ

§  priests who continue to offer vs. our Priest who offered once

§  priests who returned again and again, vs. the Priest who remained

§  priests who stood vs. the One who sat down

This passage draws from Scripture. It introduces Psalm 40, returns yet again to Psalm 110, and once more to Jeremiah 31. Certain things in Psalm 40 are fulfilled only in Christ, and Psalm 110 promises a Priest Who will sit down. Jeremiah’s promise of new covenant blessings can come only on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice. His Priesthood supercedes other priests and all they did.

Since all this is so, it would be a major rejection of all that God promised and has done in sending Christ for anyone to reject Him by putting hope in a sacrifice that cannot remove sin. Hebrews has laid a careful foundation for the personal application of these truths in the section to follow. There is no other sacrifice (10:26), and thus no other gospel.

10:1-4 Hebrews again presents shadows in contrast to realities (see 8:5). This is not a distinction of true versus false, but of real things that compare as complete and incomplete. The two have a connection but must not be confused. The shadow of a tree is real because the tree is real, but only one is real when it comes to chopping it down for firewood. A shadow of a tree is entirely inadequate for burning. The sacrifices the law required were real sacrifices; they were even made in connection with forgiveness, but they were only shadows of the one sacrifice that could take away sin and did.

Three contrary to fact statements:

7:11 If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood … but it could not.

8:7 If there was nothing wrong with the first covenant … but there was.

10:1,2 If those sacrifices could have made perfect those who draw near … but they could not.

The chief argument given here is that they were repeated endlessly. Anything that must be repeated over and over, like washing our hands, shows that a one-time event of that kind is inadequate. An OT sacrifice did not remove some sins and then a later one removed more. No, none of them removed any sin because all of them were shadows unable to take away sin. A bull or goat losing its life did not truly correspond to the seriousness of a man disobeying God. If it had to be repeated, it never accomplished the perfection of the sinner drawing near to God. If goat blood were adequate to the need, it would have stopped being offered. The law itself never commanded any sacrifice to be offered only once. All were repeated, because all were only shadows. If the law had given any sacrifice offered only once, it would have been an unreliable shadow, a sacrifice that drew attention to itself and its uniqueness rather than pointing to our need of Christ by its repetition.

Perfection is a term for all of God’s requirements having been met so fully by Christ that God finds the sinner fully acceptable in Him. Perfection is expressed also as being cleansed, not outwardly but in the conscience, and not repeatedly but once. Perfection equals the once-for-all-cleansing of salvation. The sinner, who by faith has Christ as His sacrifice, has in that purging blood what has already satisfied God concerning his sin. Nothing in all of life is needed more and is more valuable, yet in the gospel it is freely given to us without any role on our part in removing our guilt. When the believer knows this truth and rests in this Savior, he enjoys the peace attained by Christ (Romans 5:1), the total cleansing from all his sin that has been provided for him. Therefore he has a conscience that knows nothing more is needed than Christ. This motivates him to a life of active repentance. (See “Cleansing the Conscience” in the notes at 9:14, and Appendix I “The Present Perfection of Imperfect People” below.)

Sacrifices that had to be repeated did not bring peace to the conscience. On the Day of Atonement the people had this annual reminder that sins were not removed by the offerings of the previous year. They knew that the offerings of the following year would repeat the same message about the offerings being made that day.

Provisional Things A provisional government is one that functions for a time until the real one can take its place. I have a provisional airmiles card, a piece of paper with a real number on it – to serve until the plastic card comes in the mail. Provisional things serve a good purpose but are not intended to last. The priesthood of Levi was provisional, serving until the permanent priesthood arrived (7:24). A provisional covenant was in place till replaced by a superior covenant (8:6). And so it is with multiple sacrifices forever replaced by just one (10:9), and a tabernacle that is now gone as a place where God dwelt on earth (9:8-10; John 4:19-26).

To hold to anything God presented as provisional after the ultimate has arrived, is to reject the purpose of the One Who set up the temporary arrangement and then set it aside when that role was finished. Such a sin is aggravated even more if, during the provisional period, the Lord revealed that a replacement was coming. This is precisely what has happened in Scripture. The Lord with an oath announced a Priest of a different order who would serve forever (Psalm 110:4). God also promised a new covenant; and gave a detailed explicit prophesy of the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ is the wise Servant of the Lord, Who, one day, one time would bear sins in one offering (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). God indicated in His Word that the provisional would yield to a single event and a single Person, the sacrifice of Christ. The Holy Spirit showed that Psalm 40 should be understood this way as well.

The Value of Shadows

Why would God require sacrifices if they are only shadows? Shadows cannot exist on their own; there are other things that cause them. The shadow of a passing airplane happens only because an airplane flew overhead. A shadow is a witness to a greater reality. Had Christ come and died for sinners with no sacrifices in advance, even though they never removed sin, we would have lost a vital witness to the gospel. No one would have understood as clearly the issues of sin, wrath, substitution, propitiation, reconciliation, forgiveness, and purification from sin. The words themselves are abstract; the knife above an innocent victim and blood dripping on the ground was not. It caught their attention and taught a lesson too; it prepared God’s people for Christ. To hold only to the shadow is to miss the Savior, but to be without a shadow would be a loss of what God had wisely given over centuries to make people wince at their sin and long for the coming of the effective sacrifice.

The readers of Hebrews needed convincing that their hope for all eternity needed an offering of substance, not mere shadow. They needed a sacrifice so effective God will oppose every thought of it being repeated in any way. In the message of Christ they had a great salvation. They needed to pay careful attention that they not drift from it (2:1-4), for to drift from Christ is to face God without a sacrifice.

10:5-7 The Words of Christ in Psalm 40 Psalm 40 was written by David. When it says, “My sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see” in v.12, such words cannot refer to Christ. We might approach such Psalms with a rule that the Psalmist must speak of himself or Christ, and never words common to both. If so, we apply a rule the Scripture does not use. Christ is the Son of David, and when David spoke as king, he spoke of a throne that really belonged to Christ. He and his sinful sons were each temporary and unworthy occupants of the throne of Christ. The true king of Israel was always the Lord Himself (1 Samuel 8); every other human king in some way showed himself unworthy of that role. The Holy Spirit had David say words of truth about sacrifices and obedience, words probably unknown to him, which fit the mouth of Christ far better than his.

A number of prophets spoke against offerings made with disobedient hearts (Isaiah 1:10-17; Amos 5:21-27; plus Hosea 6:6, which was quoted by Christ twice). The OT did not set sacrifice against obedience; it insisted that they be joined. David repented with a contrite heart in Psalm 51:17 and then spoke of animal offerings on God’s altar (in v.19). It was God Who required them, so it would be a great evil to disregard His appointed shadows! Yet His special delight was in one offering that would be the epitome of sacrifice, the one to end all others, and the epitome of obedience, the perfect doing of His will by the one offering of Christ.

In Psalm 40, David wrote as a man whose heart had been moved to obey; he spoke words beyond himself. Ten centuries later the Holy Spirit would take David’s words in Psalm 40 and show how well they fit the entire mission of Christ. The words express perfectly Christ’s attitude and assignment from His Father, as well as the fullness of time when all the other offerings would cease. The old system was not God’s delight; He would set it aside when He brought in its fitting replacement. The incarnation of Christ is stated here as God preparing a human body for His Son, a body to be offered, a body that would replace the offering of all animal bodies. It would be used in a sacrifice that would delight, please, and satisfy God forever. This could be said of no other offering of any kind in all of history.

The body to be offered is only part of the picture. With Christ, unlike the offerings the OT protested, we do not have the evil of a correct sacrifice presented to God by an incorrect heart. Psalm 40 anticipated a better offering made by a fully obedient Man; i.e., by Christ doing God’s will.

At this point two strands meet: the obedience of Christ to come here on His Messianic mission, and His obedience as a man born under the law. Just as Jesus is both the Priest Who offers and the offering He made, He is the One obedient to God by assuming the body prepared for Him, and further, living obediently as a man. He was the unblemished sacrifice. Obedience from both angles was essential. He obeyed by coming, and when here He was perfected in human obedience in order to be the source of salvation (5:9).

Ear or Body? Why does the OT say in Psalm 40:6, “… my ears you have opened” when 10:5 refers to a body? The OT was translated into Greek more than 150 years before the birth of Christ. One scholar suggests that the translators took the original ears as the part for the whole. If God has our ear, He has us. This fits so well the words of Christ in Isaiah 50:5, where the opened ear is the language of obedient listening. All translators moving from one language to another, face hard choices on how to say that thought in this language. For some reason the LXX chose to say body rather than ear, to convey the meaning of the Hebrew. Similarly, the NIV replaces “bowels” in Philemon 12 with the more understood metaphor “heart”. A devoted body is also a way to express obedience. Since Psalm 40 and Hebrews 10 emphasize doing God’s will, the obedience may be indicated either way. Scripture elsewhere uses the imagery of both ear and body for obedience (Romans 12:1 and Isaiah 50:5).

10:8-10 The replacement that pleases God is already here. For this reason He sets aside the first to establish the second. The first is the entire system of blood sacrifices required in the law, plus the men who offer them. The second is the once-for-all-time, pleasing sacrifice of the body of Christ by Christ, the only Man in history to do God’s will. The second brings holiness the first could not produce. When God has set aside the first order, we should not seek to reestablish it. This was one error tempting some of the readers. To reverse God’s ‘first’ and ‘second’ is to gain blood but not cleansing when we have been given cleansing with no further need for blood.

10:11-14 Except for the Ark of the Covenant as the Lord’s throne (Psalm 80:1), the tabernacle had no chair. Priests stood during the daily incense offerings in the Holy Place. They did not sit; there was no seat for them. The tabernacle was built according to God’s design (8:5) with the deliberate absence of a place to sit. Priests stood to serve and left. This is a deliberate contrast to Christ entering God’s Presence and remaining. That Jesus sat began in 1:3; Hebrews waited till chapter 10 to mention that other priests stood.