Hebrews 10:1

Here the apostle, by the direction of the Spirit of God, sets himself to lay low the Levitical dispensation; for though it was of divine appointment, and very excellent and useful in its time and place, yet, when it was set up in competition with Christ, to whom it was only designed to lead the people, it was very proper and necessary to show the weakness and imperfection of it, which the apostle does effectually, from several arguments. As,

I. That the law had a shadow, and but a shadow, of good things to come; and who would dote upon a shadow, though of good things, especially when the substance has come? Observe, 1. The things of Christ and the gospel are good things; they are the best things; they are best in themselves, and the best for us: they are realities of an excellent nature. 2. These good things were, under the Old Testament, good things to come, not clearly discovered, nor fully enjoyed. 3. That the Jews then had but the shadow of the good things of Christ, some adumbrations of them; we under the gospel have the substance.

II. That the law was not the very image of the good things to come. An image is an exact draught of the thing represented thereby. The law did not go so far, but was only a shadow, as the image of a person in a looking-glass is a much more perfect representation than his shadow upon the wall. The law was a very rough draught of the great design of divine grace, and therefore not to be so much doted on.

III. The legal sacrifices, being offered year by year, could never make the comers thereunto perfect; for then there would have been an end of offering them, Heb 10:1, Heb 10:2. Could they have satisfied the demands of justice, and made reconciliation for iniquity, - could they have purified and pacified conscience, - then they had ceased, as being no further necessary, since the offerers would have had no more sin lying upon their consciences. But this was not the case; after one day of atonement was over, the sinner would fall again into one fault or another, and so there would be need of another day of atonement, and of one every year, besides the daily ministrations. Whereas now, under the gospel, the atonement is perfect, and not to be repeated; and the sinner, once pardoned, is ever pardoned as to his state, and only needs to renew his repentance and faith, that he may have a comfortable sense of a continued pardon.

IV. As the legal sacrifices did not of themselves take away sin, so it was impossible they should, Heb 10:4. There was an essential defect in them. 1. They were not of the same nature with us who sinned. 2. They were not of sufficient value to make satisfaction for the affronts offered to the justice and government of God. They were not of the same nature that offended, and so could not be suitable. Much less were they of the same nature that was offended; and nothing less than the nature that was offended could make the sacrifice a full satisfaction for the offence. 3. The beasts offered up under the law could not consent to put themselves in the sinner's room and place. The atoning sacrifice must be one capable of consenting, and must voluntarily substitute himself in the sinner's stead: Christ did so.

V. There was a time fixed and foretold by the great God, and that time had now come, when these legal sacrifices would be no longer accepted by him nor useful to men. God never did desire them for themselves, and now he abrogated them; and therefore to adhere to them now would be resisting God and rejecting him. This time of the repeal of the Levitical laws was foretold by David (Psa 40:6, Psa 40:7), and is recited here as now come. Thus industriously does the apostle lay low the Mosaical dispensation.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

For: this for is connecting this to the foregoing discourse, and is a further improvement of the argument laid down, Heb 9, proving the necessity and excellency of the one sacrifice offered by Christ for sinners unto God, from the weakness of all the legal ones. For if all the multitude of them were not able to take away sins, and Christ’s one offering is mighty to abolish them, and to perfect all who use it, then not these legal ones, but his is necessary to be valued by the Hebrews, and preferred to that end; the demonstration of which takes up from Heb 10:1-18 of this chapter.

The law; the whole Mosaical economy given from God to Israel by him in the wilderness of Sinai; priesthood, covenant, sacrifices, and services, which that did contain.

Having a shadow of good things to come: see Heb 8:5. A shadow is lower than an image, and of another kind from the reality or substance; a dark, obscure representation sentation of what was to fulfil them, viz. of Christ, with all his ministry and privileges attending his covenant, both for time and eternity; this the Mosaical law-real comprehended, but all in shadow-work.

And not the very image of the things; they are not the very essence and substance themselves of these things, the pattern, or real sampler, but a shadowy representation; they lead their users to Christ and his matters, which they represented, but were not the substantial good things themselves. So image is read, 1Co 15:49, we have borne the image of the earthy Adam, that is, his nature.

Can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect: the legal sacrifices are not only impotent in respect of their constitution, but of their very nature, being only shadows, so as they cannot render a soul complete, either in respect of justification or sanctification; they could not free any either from the guilt or punishment of sin at present, much less eternally: with all the renovation of them either on the day of atonement yearly, or those daily offered by them, though they should continue to be offered for ever, yet could they not perfect either the priests ministering, or those for whom they ministered, who were externally humbling themselves on the expiation day; they being designed only to point the people to this better sacrifice of Christ, which was to perfect them, that work being so noble, and above, the power of shadows to perform.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Heb_10:1-2

The Law having a shadow of good things to come

The Law had only a shadow:

He is careful not to say that the Law was itself but a shadow.

On the contrary, the very promise includes that God will put His laws in the heart and write them upon the mind. This was one of the good things to come. The Law was holy, righteous, and good; but the manifestation of its nature in sacrifices was unreal, like the dark outline of an object that breaks the stream of light. Nothing more substantial, as a revelation of Gods moral character, was befitting or possible in that stage of human development, when the purposes of His grace also not seldom found expression in dreams of the night and apparitions of the day. To prove the unreal nature of these ever-recurring sacrifices, the writer argues that otherwise they would have ceased to he offered, inasmuch as the worshippers, if they had been once really cleansed from their guilt, would have had no more conscience of sins. The reasoning is very remarkable. It is not that God would have ceased to require sacrifices, but that the worshipper would have ceased to offer them. It implies that, when a sufficient atonement for sin has been offered to God, the sinner knows it is sufficient, and, as the result, has peace of conscience. The possibility of a pardoned sinner still fearing and doubting does not seem to have occurred to the apostle. To men who cannot leave off introspection and forget themselves in the joy of a new faith the apostles argument will have little force and perhaps less meaning. If the sacrifices were unreal, why, we naturally inquire, were they continually repeated? The answer is that there were two sides to the sacrificial rites of the Old Covenant. On the one hand, they were, like the heathen gods, nothings; on the other, their empty shadowiness itself fitted them to be a divinely appointed means to call sins to remembrance. They represented on the one side the invincible, though always baffled, effort of natural conscience; for conscience was endeavouring to purify itself from a sense of guilt. But God also had a purpose in awakening and disciplining conscience. The worshipper sought to appease conscience through sacrifice, and God, by the same sacrifice, proclaimed that reconciliation had not been effected. In allusion to this idea, that the sacrifices were instituted by God in order to renew the remembrance of sins every year, Christ said, Do this in remembrance of Me--of Him who hath put away sins by the sacrifice of Himself. Such, then, was the shadow, at once unreal and dark. In contrast to it, the apostle designates the substance as the very image of the objects. Instead of repeating the indefinite expression good things to come, he speaks of them as objects, individually distinct, substantial, true. The image of a thing is the full manifestation of its inmost essence, in the same sense in which St. Paul says that the Son of Gods love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins, is the image of the invisible God. The gracious purpose of God is to forgive sin, and this was accomplished by the infinite humiliation of the infinite Son. Gods will was to sanctify us; that is, to remove our guilt. We have actually been thus sanctified through the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ. The sacrifices of the Law are taken out of the way in order to establish the sacrifice of the Son. It will be observed that the apostle is not contrasting sacrifice and obedience. The dominant thoughts of the passage are the greatness of the Person who obeyed and the greatness of the sacrifice from which His obedience did not shrink. The Son is here represented as existing and acting apart from His human nature. He comes into the world, and is not originated in the world. The purpose of the Sons doming is already formed. He comes to offer His body, and we have been taught in a previous chapter that He did this with an eternal spirit. For the will of God means our sanctification in the meaning attached to the word sanctification in this Epistle--the removal of guilt, the forgiveness of sins. But the fulfilment of this gracious will of God demands a sacrifice, even a sacrificial death, and that not the death of beasts, but the infinite self-sacrifice and obedience unto death of the Son of God. This is implied in the expression the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. The superstructure of argument has been raised. Christ as High Priest has been proved to be superior to the high priests of the former covenant. It remains only to lay the top-stone in its place. Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest, is for ever King; for the priests under the Law stand while they perform the duties of their ministry. They stand because they are only priests. But Christ has taken His seat, as King, on the right hand of God. They offer the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, and wait, and wait, but in vain. Christ also waits, but not to renew an ineffectual sacrifice. He waits eagerly to receive from God the reward of His effective sacrifice in the subjugation of His enemies. The priests under the Law had no enemies. Their persons were sacred. They incurred no hatred, inspired no love. Our High Priest goes out to war, the most hated, the most loved, of all captains of men. The foundation of this kingly power is in two things: first, He has perfected men for ever by His one offering; second, He has put the law of God into the hearts of His people. The final conclusion is that the sacrifices of the Law have passed away, because they are no longer needed. For where there is forgiveness, there is no more an offering for sin. (T. C. Edwards, D. D.)

The Old Testament and the New:

In the Old Testament the New Testament lies hid; in the New Testament the Old Testament lies open. (Augustine.)

Judaism and Christianity:

Christianity lay in Judaism as leaves and fruits do in the seed, though certainly it needed the Divine sun to bring them forth. (De Wette.)

The Old Testament and the New:

To pass from the doctrine of the Old Testament to that of the New is to enter a changed world. It is as if we had lived through an Arctic winter, our long night occasionally lit as by an aurora, or by stars the apparent revolutions of which made the mobility of our own minds the more conspicuous, and had suddenly chanced upon a warm and glorious summer with its unsetting sun and nightless day. The age of symbols is no more. Faint administrations of heavenly truths under material forms have given place to the loud proclamation of the same truths under those less material forms of speech and life. (Principal Cave, D. D.)

The two dispensations

The former constitution was not abolished, but exchanged, and by that change perfected; and in this manner did Jesus say that He came not to abolish, but to complete or accomplish: secondly, that the former was a type, and merged into its reality, not so much dying as passing into a second existence, where a true sacrifice covered a typical oblation, where redemption given passed before redemption expected, where uncertainty had ripened into knowledge, and hope yielded its kingdom to faith. To illustrate the noble by the base, the former state was as that living but creeping sheath wherein lie infolded for a time the corresponding parts of a more splendid and gorgeous insect, which in due time takes upon itself the vital functions till then by the other exercised, and rises towards heaven--the same, yet different--a transmigration rather than an offspring. (Cardinal Wiseman.)

No more conscience of sins

Conscience and forgiveness:

Conscience naturally knows nothing of forgiveness; yea, it is against its very trust, work, and office to hear anything of it. If a man of courage and honesty be entrusted to keep a garrison against an enemy, let one come and tell him that there is peace between those whom he serves and their enemies, so that he may leave his guard, and set open the gates, and cease his watchfulness; how worthy will he be, lest, under this pretence, he be betrayed! No, saith he, I will keep my hold until I have express orders from my superiors. Conscience is entrusted with the power of God in the soul of a sinner, with command to keep all in subjection, with reference to the judgment to come; it will not betray its trust in believing every report of peace. No; but this it says, and it speaks in the name of God, Guilt and punishment are inseparable twins. If the soul sin, God will judge. What tell you me of forgiveness.? I know not what my commission is, and that I will abide by. You shall not bring in a superior commander, a cross principle, into my trust; for if this be so, it seems I must let go my throne--another lord must come in--not knowing as yet how this whole business is compounded in the blood of Christ. Now, whom should a man believe if not his own conscience? which, as it will not flatter him, so it intends not to affright him, but to speak the truth as the matter requireth. Conscience hath two works in reference to sin--one to condemn the acts of sin, another to judge the person of the sinner; both with reference to the judgment of God. When forgiveness comes, it would sever and part these employments, and take one of them out of the hand of conscience; it would divide the spoil with this strong one. It shall condemn the fact, or every sin; but it shall no more condemn the sinner, the person of the sinner, that shall be freed from its sentence. Here conscience labours with all its might to keep its whole dominion, and to keep out the power of forgiveness from being enthroned in the soul. It will allow men to talk of forgiveness, to hear it preached, though they abuse it every day; but to receive it in its power, that stands up in direct opposition to its dominion. In the kingdom, saith conscience, I will be greater than thou; and in many--in the most--it keeps its possession, and will not be deposed. Nor, indeed, is it an easy work so to deal with it. The apostle tells us that all the sacrifices of the Law could not do it (Heb_10:2); they could not bring a man into that estate wherein he could have no more conscience of sin--thief is, conscience condemning the person; for conscience, in a sense of sin, and condemnation of it, is never to be taken away. And this can be no otherwise done but by the blood of Christ, as the apostle at large there declares. (J. Owen, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 10:1. The apostle, in order to display Christ’s dignity as a High-Priest, having illustrated what he affirmed, (Heb 8:7,) namely, that the Levitical priests worshipped God in the tabernacle with the representations of the services to be performed by Christ in heaven; also having contrasted the ineffectual services performed by these priests in the tabernacle on earth, with the effectual services performed by Christ in heaven; and the covenant of which they were the mediators, with the covenant of which Christ is the Mediator; and the blessings procured by the services of the Levitical priests in the earthly tabernacle, with the blessings procured by the services performed by Christ in heaven; he, in the beginning of this chapter, as the necessary consequence of these things, infers, that since the law contained nothing but a shadow, or emblematical representation, of the blessings to come, through the services of the greater and more perfect heavenly tabernacle, and not these blessings themselves, it never could, with the same emblematical sacrifices which were offered annually by the high-priest on the day of atonement, make those who came to these sacrifices perfect in respect of pardon. Thus, For, &c. — As if he had said, From all that has been advanced, it appears that the law — The Mosaic dispensation; being a bare unsubstantial shadow of good things to come — Of gospel blessings and gospel worship; and not the very image — The substantial, solid representation, or complete delineation; of the things, can never, with the same kind of sacrifices — Though continually repeated; make the comers thereunto perfect. In the terms shadow and image, there seems to be an allusion, as Doddridge observes, “to the different state of a painting, when the first sketch only is drawn, and when the picture is finished; or to the first sketch of a painting, when compared with what is yet more expressive than even the completest picture, and exact image:” or between the shadow of a man, made by his body’s intercepting the sun’s rays, and a good portrait or statue of him, or the reflection of his person in a mirror. The good things of which the law contained only a shadow, were, 1st, The cleansing of the mind of believers from evil dispositions, by the doctrines of the gospel, and by the influences of the Spirit of God. Of this the washings and purifications of the bodies of the Israelites, enjoined in the law, were a shadow. 2d, That real atonement for sin, which was made by the offering of the body of Christ once for all, Heb 10:10. Of this the Levitical atonements, made by the offering of beasts, were a shadow. 3d, The eternal pardon of sin, procured for believers by the atonements which Christ made. Of this the political pardon, obtained for the Israelites by the sacrifice of beasts which the priests offered, was a shadow. 4th, Access to worship God on earth through the blood of Christ with the hope of acceptance. Of this the drawing nigh of the Israelites to worship in the court of the tabernacle, through the blood of the Levitical sacrifices, was a shadow. 5th, The eternal possession of heaven, through believing and obeying the gospel. Of this the continued possession of Canaan, secured to the Israelites by their obedience to the law, was a shadow. Now since the good things which Christ hath obtained for believers through his ministrations in the heavenly tabernacle, were not procured, but only typified, by the ministrations of the high-priests in the tabernacle on earth, it was fit that those shadows should be done away after the things of which they were shadows were accomplished.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Sacrifice Complete in the Fulfilment of God's Will. The Open Way to God

Recapitulation and close of the argument. The sacrifices of the Law were ineffective to cleanse the conscience, as shown by their continual repetition (Heb_10:1-4). In the mind of God they were temporary. But the offering of Christ is a sacrifice that accomplishes the will of God and consecrates us as the people of a new covenant (Heb_10:5-10). That it is efficacious and final is also proved by the session of Christ at God's right hand. Unlike the Levitical priests, who continually stand to offer sacrifices, Christ having made one perfect sacrifice is now set down, waiting the final triumph over all His foes (Heb_10:11-14). The finality of His sacrifice is also confirmed by the prophecy which foretells that under the new covenant God will remember the people's sins no more, implying that sin has been dealt with finally and for ever (Heb_10:15-18).

1. The shadow is unsubstantial, lacking all the qualities of the original except perhaps outlined form; the very image is an exact reproduction of the original. Continually] is perhaps best taken with the preceding verb, 'offered.' Comers thereunto] see on Heb_7:25.

2. Conscience of sin] i.e. consciousness of sin, sense of guilt: cp. Heb_9:9.

3. The continual repetition of the sacrifices served only to remind the worshippers of the continuity of the need of cleansing.

5. The quotation is from Psa_40:6-8, according to the LXX, which reads, 'a body thou hast prepared for me,' where the Hebrew has, 'mine ears thou hast opened,' meaning that God has opened the ears of His servant to hear and obey His will. The LXX may be due to an early corruption of the text, or it may be a free reproduction of the sense. As used here the words refer to the Incarnation, and are taken to indicate the superiority of Christ's sacrifice over the animal sacrifices of the Law in respect that His offering was voluntary and moral. It was a sacrifice of obedience (Heb_10:7), the voluntary and glad (cp. Heb_12:2) surrender of His own life to God.

9. He taketh away] i.e. Christ supersedes the legal and ineffectual mode of reconciliation by His own sacrifice, in accordance with God's will.

10. Sanctified] i.e. cleansed from the defilement of sin and enabled to draw near to God.

11-14. Further proof of the finality of Christ's sacrifice: see analysis at the beginning of this chapter. The ineffectiveness of the legal ordinances is brought out forcibly by the accumulation of the words, standeth daily.. oftentimes.. the same sacrifices. There is no cessation, no 'sitting down,' as in the case of Christ.

13, 14. His people are finally sanctified; His enemies are the only class remaining to be dealt with.

15-18. See analysis above.

19-25. Practical exhortation to hold fast the superior benefits and privileges of the new covenant.

19. Boldness to enter into the holiest] a privilege denied to the worshipper under the old covenant.

20. The way is new, i.e. lately opened up, and it is living, either because it is effective (cp. Heb_4:12), or because Christ is living: cp. Joh_14:6, where Christ says that He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Through the veil] During His earthly life His flesh stood between Him and the entrance into the heavenly sanctuary. By the rending of that veil, i.e. His death. He has entered in, opening the way for His people.

22. The First Exhortation. Draw near] i.e. in worship and service: see on Heb_7:25.

Bodies washed] There may be here a reference to baptism, but the two clauses together denote the purification of the whole man, within and without: see Exo_19:10; Exo_29:4, and cp. Eph_6:5, Eph_6:6.

23. The Second Exhortation, to 'hold fast the confession of our hope' (so RV): cp. Heb_3:6, Heb_3:14.

24. The Third Exhortation, to 'encourage each other to love and good works.'

Provoke] The word is used in the good sense equivalent to stimulate.

25. Assembling of ourselves] i.e. the meeting of Christians which gives the opportunity to exercise the love and good works already recommended, and also to make the confession of the Christian faith and hope which is to be held fast. The day] is the Day of the Lord, the Day of His Second Coming: cp. on Heb_9:26.

26-31. A warning against unbelief and apostasy, suggested by the thought that the Day of the Lord which is approaching will be a day of judgment to some, especially to those who, after having been enlightened, have fallen away: cp. the warning in Heb_6:1-8.

26. Sin wilfully] The participial form of this condition expresses not a single act, but a deliberate and persistent state. The Levitical Law made no provision for the atonement of sins done with a high hand: see on Heb_5:2. No more sacrifice] Christ's sacrifice is final: see on Heb_10:13, Heb_10:14.

28-30. For the form of the argument cp. Heb_2:1-4.

28. Under] RV 'at the word of': see Deu_17:2-7.

32-39. An exhortation to exhibit the same steadfastness under the present trials as they had shown in a previous time of affliction: cp. the similar change from a tone of warning to one of hope of better things in Heb_6:9.

32. Were illuminated] RV 'enlightened,' i.e. became Christians: cp. Heb_6:4. Fight of a afflictions] see Intro. § 3, 'Recipients and Probable Date.'

33. Companions] i.e, voluntary partners and sympathisers with those who suffered: cp. Heb_6:10.

34. RV 'had compassion on them that were in bonds.' This is the better attested reading, though the other has good support. In yourselves] It is possible to render, 'Knowing that ye have your own selves for a better possession,' a similar thought to that in Luk_9:25; Luk_21:19 RV, and in Heb_10:39.

35. Recompence of reward] cp. the other aspect of 'just recompence' in Heb_2:2.

37. A quotation from Hab_2:3-4, with the addition of the introductory clause 'yet a little while,' reminiscent of Isa_26:20. In Habakkuk the idea is that steadfast adherence to God is needed by the righteous man in view of the perplexing anomalies visible at present in God's method of providence. Here the idea is much the same; the Coming of the Lord being regarded as the chief ground why Christians should not draw back, and so fail to enter upon the promised inheritance.

38. The just] RV 'my righteous one.' The Speaker is God.

39. But we] The writer is unwilling to believe that his readers will abandon their faith: cp. Heb_6:9. The saving] lit. 'gaining,' or 'winning': see on Heb_10:34.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. Our high priesthood is all-sufficient—animal blood being intrinsically worthless for pardon of sin—is antitypical, and is replaced by the all-sufficient self-offered blood, Heb_10:1-18.

a. As animal blood is intrinsically worthless for our justification, Heb_10:1-4.

This worthlessness of the animal sacrifices does not imply that pardon was not granted by God, and peace of conscience produced by them for the offerer. It is simply meant that those blessings did not ensue from any real value in the things themselves; that their nature had no availing power; and that they could have been enjoined by God only as indexes to a sacrifice of such transcendent intrinsic value as to be true basis of such results.

1. For—Referring to the repeated declarations reigning through Heb_9:24-28, that Christ has made a decisive, perfecting atonement, once for all.

Shadow—A dim representation.

Good things to come—That is, to come in this our Messianic dispensation. See notes on Heb_2:5; Heb_6:5; Heb_9:11.

Image of the things—That is, image, consisting of the things; the form filled with the substance. For though the good things of the present dispensation look forward to a higher completion hereafter, yet in Christ and his atonement it possesses the shape and substance of that future glory.

Year by year—The yearly offering on the great day of atonement.

Continually—Without interruption of the annual rite.

Perfect—Pure from the guilt and power of sin; right before God; fit for heaven.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHRIST’S ONE SACRIFICE IS ALTOGETHER SUFFICIENT

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

THE first eighteen verses of this chapter are in the nature of a summary of what has already been presented, with some further unfoldings of the argument. One point is made especially prominent; it is that the repetition of the olden sacrifices testified to their inadequacy, while Christ’s one offering is perpetually availing to complete the purification of those who are affected by it. The main thesis of the writer should be kept well before the mind. He argues that the Jewish sacrifices availed for nothing more than external or ceremonial purifications, but the one offering of the obedient will of Christ purifies the soul or mind (συνείδησιν) from the uncleanness of sin, and renders it capable of offering acceptable service to the living God.

Heb_10:1. The law.—Used here for the Mosaic system or dispensation. The term is used in the New Testament with other meanings, such as the Ten Commandments, the general law relations of God with man. See St. Paul’s use of the word in Romans and Galatians. Shadow.—Imperfect sketch. Very image.—Full representation. The words σκιάν and εἰκών are related, as the Latin umbra and effigies are. See Heb_1:3. Stuart gives the point of the sentence thus: “The law did not go so far as to exhibit a full image of future blessings, but only a slight adumbration.” Farrar quotes the following sentence from St. Ambrose: “The Law had the Shadow; the Gospel the Image; the Reality itself is in Heaven.” Good things to come.—See Heb_9:11. The spiritual things of the new dispensation. Christ is the very image of God. Christ’s work is the very image of heavenly realities. Only it is the image, not the reality. Can never.—This vital imperfection lay in those older sacrifices. Perfect.—Much importance attaches to the writer’s use of this word. Compare Heb_9:9-10. It is used here in the sense of fully meeting the whole circle of our spiritual need. The ineffectiveness of the sacrifices is shown in the fact that the sense of sin which they are supposed to remove recurs again, so that fresh sacrifices are found necessary.

Heb_10:2. Not have ceased.—The Mosaic ritual might have been retained if it had proved efficient. The precise thought here is, however, rather this—“If the offerings could have perfected those who presented them, would not the offerings have ceased?” It might be answered, “They would have ceased so far as concerned the offerers once purged, but they would have had to be constantly renewed for the sake of other worshippers.” Conscience.—συνείδησιν; apprehension of the consequences of sin; consciousness of guilt. Pardon does not remove the fact of our guilt, nor destroy the memory of it, but it does remove the fear of penalty, and bring a sense of freedom.

Heb_10:3. Remembrance.—By the repetition of the same sacrifice for the same person. The writer dwells on his point so fully, because this view of the essential imperfection of Judaism would be exceedingly distasteful to his Jewish readers. But the inefficiency would not be apparent to those who lived under the Mosaic dispensation. It came to view only when the higher and spiritual dispensation was introduced. In the light of Christianity the weakness of Judaism appears. Farrar’s note on this verse is specially suggestive: “This view of sacrifices—that they are ‘a calling to mind of sins yearly’—is very remarkable. It seems to be derived from Num_5:15, where ‘the offering of jealousy’ is called ‘an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance.’ Philo also speaks of sacrifices as providing, ‘not an oblivion of sins, but a reminder of them.’ But if the sacrifices thus called sins to remembrance, they also daily symbolised the means of their removal, so that when offered obediently with repentance and faith they became valid symbols.”

Heb_10:4.—“This verse explains those which precede. No inconsistency really belonged to these sacrifices and this ceremonial, though so often repeated; for it was impossible that any such sacrifice should really remove sin. The offering was necessary, and it answered its purpose; but it could not remove the necessity for another and a better offering” (Moulton). Not possible.—Compare 1Sa_15:22; Isa_1:11-17; Jer_6:20; Jer_7:21-23; Amo_5:21-24; Mic_6:6-8; Hos_6:6; Psa_40:6-8, etc. “Sins” and “blood of animals” have no necessary relation to each other; none save that which, for teaching purposes, God pleases to fix to them. Sins can only be taken away by spritual influences exerted on spiritual conditions. All physical, material sacrifices are symbols of spiritual things. So is Christ’s bodily sacrifice. (See Outline Homily on Heb_9:22.) Sins.—Properly and precisely speaking, sin is not a particular act which is done, but the wilful condition of the mind, for which the act only finds expression. In this verse not penalties are dealt with, but sins. All sacrifices had their value, not in themselves, but in the spiritual condition of the worshippers, as is clearly seen in the cases of Cain and Abel, the first sacrificers.

Heb_10:5. When He cometh.—As antitype; spiritual realisation. See Psa_40:7. Sacrifice and offering.—The two classes of sacrifice that Judaism demanded. Victims sacrificed; slaughtered beasts; and unbloody offerings expressing gratitude and dependence. Wouldest not.—See Heb_10:7. No desire for any more such; desire now is for the reality that was symbolised in them. A body hast Thou prepared Me.—The Hebrew seems to mean, “Mine ears hast Thou opened,” or “ears hast Thou dug, or hollowed out, for Me.” The Hebrews speak of “opening the ears,” and of “uncovering the ears,” in order to designate the idea of prompt obedience, of attentive listening to the commands of any one. The idea, “Mine ears hast Thou bored through in token of My servitude,” does not appear at all suitable here. Better read, “Thou hast given Me the power of hearing, so as to obey. A channel of communication has been opened, through which the knowledge of God’s true will can reach the heart, and excite the desire to obey.” The obedience (sacrifice) of Christ was the full surrender of His will to the will of God: but to be a human obedience, bearing relation to us, it must have a body sphere. This explains the physical phase of the great sacrifice.

Heb_10:6. Burnt-offerings.—Should be “whole burnt-offerings.” These represented the full surrender of himself by the offerer, when they were made really spiritual sacrifices. Usually they were regarded but as ceremonials. The idea of corrupt Judaism is, that God is pleased with burnt-offerings as offerings, and for their own sake.

Heb_10:7. In the volume of the book.—Besides the reference to Psalms 40, the writer intimates that this is the general burden of the Messianic allusions in the Old Testament Scriptures. Come to do Thy will.—Clearly stating wherein consists the true spiritual sacrifice, even in the full surrender of Christ’s whole self in obedience to God, through life and death. Perfect human obedience in human spheres God required. He who rendered it made the “great sacrifice.”

Heb_10:10. By the which will.—Or by the yielding to the will, in obedience unto death. Or by the voluntary self-sacrifice of Christ. We are sanctified.—Set right and made right. Observe how entirely this is conceived by the writer in a spiritual sense. The antitypical sacrifice is the offering of the will of Jesus, in obedience to the Divine will. But our wills can only act, and gain expression, through our bodies and our bodily relations, and therefore our Lord’s sublime self-surrender took a bodily form.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_10:1-10

The Shadow and Image of Sacrifice.—The law of all effective teaching is, “Simplify and repeat.” This writer does not hesitate to repeat, endeavouring to fix on attention the points which he regards as of supreme importance. In the first portion of this chapter there is a summary of previous teachings. He had previously spoken of the “law,” or ceremonial and sacrificial system of Judaism, as a copy, or shadow, of heavenly or spiritual things (Heb_8:5). He does not deny the value of the shadow, but it is a value which strictly belongs to it as a shadow, and we must never get to value it for its own sake, only for the sake of the reality, whose existence, and whose presence, it indicates. “Shadow” is an imperfect sketch, a mere outline, a slight representation or resemblance. “Image” is a picture filled out or completed, and made, in all its minuter parts, to resemble the original. Illustration may be found by contrasting the black outline portraits, which were the fashion fifty years ago—mere shadows of our friends—and the modern photographs, which give us their very image. But we need not be so strictly limited to the exact meaning of the terms which this writer uses. And this explanation hardly seems to catch his point of distinction. A shadow is not an independent thing. It is thrown by something. Something real, substantial, exists, which casts the shadow, and which the shadow, in some imperfect way, represents. To this writer the spiritual relations of men with God, as secured by the spiritual sacrifice of the spiritual High Priest, form the reality, the thing itself, the “image”; and the material, outward, ceremonial system of Judaism was the shadow which it flung on earth beforehand, to give men some outline idea of it, and prepare them for realising it fully by-and-by. Taking this view, we inquire—

I. What the “shadow” was.—A system of rules, rites, sacrifices; involving a material tabernacle, articles of furniture, and an order of priesthood. All Divinely arranged, and bearing Divine authority. In no sense to be thought of as an independent system, or an independent revelation. It was the shadow that belonged to something, and told of what it belonged to. No man ever saw it aright without saying, “What can that be which has caused this shadow?”

II. What the “shadow” could do.—Meet the needs of the hour, which were not purely spiritual needs. Religious education was then in no sense complete. It was in its pictorial stage. The nation of Israel was then in its formative period. It was getting all its civil, social, and governmental relations put into order. All its interest was in outward things, and its religion had to be in harmony, and to be concerned also with outward things. So the “shadow” religious system was occupied with arranging religious affairs, and rectifying them when they became disturbed.

III. What the “shadow” could not do.—Satisfy spiritual needs. Deal with the personal, the soul, relations of men with God, who bore on them the conscience of sin. The shadow could take away ceremonial penalties: it could not take away sin. It could not “make the comers thereunto perfect.” It might help the spiritually-minded to enter into that spiritual reality, that eternal meaning of things, which its outline could only suggest.

IV. What the “Image” was.—A spiritual High Priest, abiding ever in the presence of God mediating for man. The spiritual and infinitely acceptable sacrifice of the High Priest Himself. The offering of a spotless life of obedience, tested and proved by the strain of an awful death. That sacrifice ever in God’s view, because the Priest is always before Him. And a spiritual covenant which pledges, not the mere shaping of conduct, but the renewal of men’s hearts and wills; the implanting of a love which will make obedience both easy and acceptable.

V. What the “Image” could not do.—Fit to the age that was past; or to those who persisted in keeping the attitude, and limited capacity, that properly belonged to the past. The times were changed; men’s spiritual instincts were awakened; and the system that was called for could do nothing for those who kept down on the materialistic, symbolical, and ceremonial levels. Farrar illustrates the awakened spiritual feeling of the times in which the epistle to the Hebrews was written when he says: “Philo, in one of his finest passages, shows how deeply he had realised that sacrifices were valueless, apart from holiness, and that no mere external acts can cleanse the soul from moral guilt. He adds that God accepts the innocent even when they offer no sacrifices, and delights in unkindled altars if the virtues dance around them. The heathen had learnt the same high truths.”

VI. What the “Image” could do.—Remove sins—the spiritual penalties that necessarily follow sins: the conscience of sins which always burdens when the spiritual nature of sin is apprehended. It effected the purging, or cleansing away, of sinfulness, which in its essence is child-wilfulness; and this goes when into the child-heart is put again, through the sacrifice, mediation, and grace of Christ, the spirit of child-obedience. The dispensation which is the very image and reality can make men and women once again, and once for ever, “sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.”[1]

[1] An image is an exact draft of the thing represented thereby. The law did not go so far, but was only a shadow, as the image of a person in a looking-glass is a much more perfect representation than his shadow upon the wall. The law was a very rough draft of the great design of Divine grace, and therefore not to be so much doted on.—Matthew Henry.

The relativity of a religion of shadows.—The efficiency of a religion of shadows lies in its relativity to a particular age, and a particular people. The Syrian Version gives the first sentence of Heb_10:1 thus: “The law—not having the reality of the things.” The Greek word for “image” means, not a resemblance or likeness, but the essential form of a thing. It stands as the representative of σῶμα, the body or substance.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

Heb_10:1. The Imperfect Efficiency of the Jewish Sacrifices.—“They can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh” (R.V.). Dr. J. Harris says: “What is the Jewish economy, if we desire to reach its interior truths, but a vast, profound, elaborated enigma—to which the gospel, indeed, brings us the key, but the opening and exploration of which is yet incomplete?” The legal sacrifices, being offered year by year, could never make the comers thereunto perfect, for then there would have been an end of offering them. Could they have satisfied the demands of justice, and made reconciliation for iniquity—could they have purified and pacified conscience—then they had ceased, as being no further necessary, since the offerers would have had no more sin lying upon their consciences. But this was not the case; after one day of atonement was over, the sinner would fall again into one fault or another, and so there would be need of another day of atonement, and of one every year, besides the daily ministrations. Whereas now, under the gospel, the atonement is perfect, and not to be repeated, and the sinner, once pardoned, is ever pardoned as to his state, and only needs to renew his repentance and faith, that he may have a comfortable sense of a continued pardon. As the legal sacrifices did not of themselves take away sin, so it was impossible they should (Heb_10:4). There was an essential defect in them.

1. They were not of the same nature with those who sinned.

2. They were not of sufficient value to make satisfaction for the affronts offered to the justice and government of God. They were not of the same nature that offended, and so could not be suitable. Much less were they of the same nature that was offended, and nothing less than the nature that was offended could make the sacrifice a full satisfaction for the offence.

3. The beasts offered up under the law could not consent to put themselves in the sinner’s room and place. The atoning sacrifice must be one capable of consenting, and must voluntarily substitute himself in the sinner’s stead: Christ did so.—Matthew Henry.

Heb_10:2. The Bad Consciousness taken away.—The reading is, not “conscience of no more sins,” as if the sins were stopped, but “no more conscience of sins,” as if the conscience of sins already past were somehow extirpated, or else the sins taken quite away from it, and for ever extirpated themselves, as facts, or factors of the life. How is it, or how is it to be imagined, that Christ, by His sacrifice, takes away the condemning conscience, or the felt dishonour of transgression?

I. The supposed answers that are not sufficient.—When it is conceived that Christ has borne our punishment, that, if it were true, might take away our fear of punishment; but fear is one thing, and mortified honour, self-condemning guilt, self-chastising remorse, another and very different thing. Neither will it bring any relief to show that the justice of God is satisfied. Be it so; the transgressor is none the better satisfied with himself. Is it conceived that what has satisfied the justice of God has also atoned the guilty conscience? Will it then make the guilty conscience less guilty, or say sweeter things of itself, that it sees innocence, purity, goodness Divine, put to suffering for it? Is it then brought forward to quell the guilt of the conscience that Christ has evened our account legally by His sacrifice, and that we are even justified of God for Christ’s sake? But if God calls us just, do we any the less certainly disapprove ourselves? Forgiveness, taken as a mere release of claim, or a negative letting go of right against transgression, brings, if possible, even less help to the conscience. Christ had forgiven His crucifiers in His dying prayer, but it was the very crime of the cross, nevertheless, that pricked so many hundred hearts on the Day of Pentecost. But Christ renews the soul itself, it will be said, and makes it just within, when, of course, it will be justified. That does not follow. But the fatherhood of God—the disciple of another school will take refuge under that, and say that here, at least, there is truly no more conscience of sin. Conscience, in man, is God’s throne of judgment in the man. If God, in His fatherhood, were a being dealing in laxities and fond accommodations, having no care for His rectoral honour, as the defender of right and order, we certainly are not such to ourselves.

II. The answer that is given by the Scriptures of God.—Is it possible, and how far possible, to change the consciousness of a soul, without any breach of its identity? In this manner, we shall find, the gospel undertakes to remove, and assumes the fact of the removal of, the dishonour and self-condemnation of sin. See first certain analogies. A thoroughly venal, low-principled man, elected President of the United States, will undergo, not unlikely, an inward lifting of sentiment and impulse, corresponding with the immense lift of his position. He wants to deserve the place, and begins to act in character in it. How many thousand soldiers, who before were living in the low, mean vices, lost to character and self-respect, have been raised, in like manner, in our armies, to quite another grade of being! The same is true, in a different way, of all the gifted ones in art and speech and poetry when they are taken by the inspirations of genius. When such a soul, that was down upon the level of uses, torturing itself into production for applause, begins to behold God’s signature upon His works, then he becomes to himself quite another creature. In such examples we are made familiar with the possibility of remarkable liftings in the consciousness of men, such as make them really other to themselves, and set them in a higher range of being; and we are prepared for that more wonderful ascent above ourselves which is accomplished in Christ, when He takes us away from the conscience of sins. He does it by so communicating God, or Himself as the express Image of God, that He changes, in fact, the plane of our existence. The very thing that Christianity proposes is to bring us up into another level, where the consciousness shall take in other matter, and have a higher range. But you will not conceive how very essential this idea of a raising of the consciousness may be, if you do not bring up distinctly the immense fall of our moral consciousness in the precipitation of our sin. In their true normal condition, as originally created, human souls are inherently related to God, made permeable and inspirable by Him, intended to move in His Divine impulse for ever. A sponge in the sea is not more truly made to be filled and permeated by the water in which it grows, than a soul to be permeated and possessed by the infinite Life. It is so made that, over and above the little tiny consciousness it has of itself, it may have a grand, all-inclusive consciousness of God. In that consciousness it was to be, and be lifted and blessed evermore. But this higher consciousness, the consciousness of God, is exactly what was lost in transgression, and nothing was left of course but the little defiled consciousness of ourselves, in which we are all contriving how to get some particles of good, or pleasure, or pride, or passion, that will comfort us. The true normal footing or plane of our humanity was thus let down, and it is exactly this which Christ undertakes to restore. As soon as the soul is opened to God, by the faith of Jesus Christ, and is truly born of God, it begins to be the higher creature God meant it to be—the same yet another. The disciple, raised thus in his plane, has the same consciousness, and remembers the same sins, and is the very same person that he was before; but the consciousness of God, now restored, makes him so nearly another being to himself, that the old torment of his sin will scarcely so much as ripple the flow of his peace. If Christ is purging thus men’s consciences, by lifting them above themselves, into a higher range of life, the conception will appear and reappear, in many distinct forms, and weave itself in so many varieties, into the whole texture of Christianity. Three of the forms may be noticed:

1. Justification by faith. Gospel justification turns on no such mere objective matter as the squaring of an account, nor on any such subjective matter as our being made inherently righteous; but it turns on the fact of our being so invested with God, and closeted in His righteous impulse, that He becomes a felt righteousness upon us. Inherently speaking, we are not righteous; our store is in God, not in ourselves; but we have the supply traductively from Him, just as we have the supply of light from the sun. But the new Divine consciousness in which we live is continually conforming us, more and more deeply, and will settle us at last, in its own pure habit. It is “the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.” It is a higher consciousness which God generates and feeds, and as long as He does it there is no more conscience of sins.

2. The same truth of a raising of our plane appears in what is called the witness of the Spirit. Being spirit, we are permeable by the Divine Spirit, and He has a way of working in our working, so as to be consciously known as a better presence in our hearts.

3. It is also presented in what is said of the conscious inhabitation of Christ. “Until Christ be formed in you.” “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” It is as if Paul’s being itself were taken well-nigh out of its identity by Christ revealed in it. The old sin he does not think of. The conscience of sins—it may be that he has it in a sense; for, being an eternal fact, he must eternally know it; but the Christ-consciousness in him ranges so high above the self-consciousness, that he lives in a summit of exaltation, which the infinitesimal disturbances of his human wrong and shame cannot reach. When once you have conceived the possibility of raising a soul into a higher grade and order, where the consciousness shall take in more than the mere self, the body of God’s own righteousness and love and peace, the problem is solved, and that in a way so plain, yet so easily ennobling to our state of shame, that it proves itself by its own self-supporting evidence.—Horace Bushnell, D.D.

Conscience of Sins after Ceremonies.—“Should have had no more conscience of sins.” Ritual religions can never deal with any more than the legal penalties attending on sin, and the outward relations into which men are brought by sin. There may be a personal and spiritual religion within the ritual, and finding expression through it, or there may not. The spiritual religion within is by no means essential to the efficiency of the ritual religion, so far as it goes. But it is evident that no ritual religion can alone suffice to meet the necessities of man as a spiritual being, standing in spiritual relations; afflicted in conscience, as well as disturbed in relations, by sin. No ritual ever yet cleansed a conscience of its sense of sin, or lifted from a soul its burden of guilt. This may be effectively illustrated by the religion represented by the book of Psalms. Such psalms as the thirty-second and fifty-first bring before us men who have, or who have had, the conscience of sin. But they do not seek their soul-relief from Levitical sacrifices, from any routine ceremonies. They evidently feel instinctively that these cannot meet their case. They go direct to God Himself, past all ceremonies and symbols, seeking personal relations, and immediate forgiveness.

Heb_10:4. Everything to its Sphere.—Everything that exists by nature, and everything that takes shape “by art and man’s device,” has its proper sphere, its adaptation to that sphere, and its efficiency within that sphere. Nothing can be its real, best self, nothing can be really efficient, outside of or transcending its proper sphere. It does not fit. It is too large, or too small, or otherwise. Blood of bulls and goats has a sphere, strictly limited to the removal of ceremonial uncleanness. It is efficient there. It is helpless in the sphere of soul-sin and burdened conscience.

Heb_10:5. A Living Sacrifice.—These words, as used of Christ, unfold the mystery of His redeeming work: as used by the psalmist, they show us what is the spirit of the redeemed life. Christ did not come to offer a sacrifice in Jewish mode, or to offer Himself in the mode in which a Jewish sacrifice was offered; but to do that which the sacrifices of Judaism typified, to offer the obedience of a life, and that obedience in a human body.

1. God does not ask of any man first what he has. He asks first for the man himself—what he is.

2. If any man is willing to give God what he is, then that man will find that God is willing to accept what he has.

3. But how far may the distinction between what a man has, and what a man is, be carried? In life we have to do with some persons who want what we have; but we have to do with others—altogether dearer ones—who can be satisfied with nothing less than ourselves—what we are; just our love is their wealth. It is somewhat thus with God. The design of God in giving us what we have, is that by means of it we may carry ourselves to Him. What a man is includes his body. Man is not a spirit only; he is a spirit in a certain particular body, which has certain particular relations. So we never can give ourselves to God until we give Him soul and body together. Show how much larger an idea of the “living sacrifice” this is than is generally conceived. To make any gift acceptable to any one—and certainly to God—a man must put himself into the gift. Our bodies must carry us to God, as the body of Jesus (and indeed of the psalmist) carried Him.

The Atonement.—Why is the doctrine of the Atonement called an immoral doctrine? It is based, it is said, on injustice. The point on which the objector has fixed is the substitution of one man for another to suffer for sin. But he does not take the doctrine of substitution as represented and interpreted by Christian teachers, but barely and nakedly, simply as the principle of vicarious punishment. So stated, the notion is certainly a barbarous one. But God cannot regard punishment apart from the person to whom it is due. He cannot be appeased by pain as such, without reference to the bearer of it. He cannot be contented, so long as the punishment is suffered, that another than the criminal should be the sufferer. Such a bald notion of atonement does not require that the sacrifice should be voluntary. Punishment, vicarious or other, does not require a voluntary sufferer—only a sufferer. A striking illustration of an atonement was found in the state religion of Mexico. The gospel is, that love is of the very essence of sacrifice, and that there cannot be sacrifice without will. In the case of Christ there was no earthly altar, no expiatory form, no visible priest. Nobody could have told, either from His life or from His death, that He was a victim. He died by the natural course of events, as the effect of a holy and courageous life operating upon the intense jealousy of a class; He died by civil punishment; and yet in heaven that death pleaded as the sacrifice that taketh away the sin of the world. But that sacrifice was a willing self-offered sacrifice; and this takes away all question of injustice to the victim. In common life no wrong is done to one who volunteers to take a painful office. The existence of pain and evil being supposed, there arises a special morality upon this fact, and in connection with it. It is the morality of sacrifice. Sacrifice then becomes, in the person who makes it, the most remarkable kind of manifestation of virtue, which ennobles the sufferer, and which it is no wrong-doing in the universe to accept. What is the effect of such an atonement on the sinner? The willingness of the sacrifice changes the mode of the operation of the sacrifice, so that it acts on a totally different principle and law from that upon which a sacrifice, if a mere substitution, acts. When a man substitutes himself for another, he really means to soften the heart of the judge, to stimulate the element of mercy in the judge. The gospel puts the doctrine of Atonement in this light. The mercy of God the Father is called out toward man by our Lord’s generous sacrifice of Himself in behalf of men. Neither in natural mediation nor in supernatural does the act of suffering love, in producing that change of regard to which it tends, dispense with the moral change of the criminal. We cannot, of course, because a good man suffers for a criminal, alter our regards to him, if he obstinately remains a criminal. And if the gospel taught any such thing in the doctrine of the Atonement, it would certainly expose itself to the charge of immorality. Undoubtedly there must be this change, but even with this past crime is not yet pardoned. There is room for a mediator—room for some source of pardon which does not take its rise in a man’s self, although it must act with conditions. But viewed as acting upon this mediatorial principle, the doctrine of the Atonement rises altogether to another level; it parts company with the gross and irrational conception of mere naked material substitution of one person for another in punishment, and it takes its stand upon the power of love, and points to the actual effect of the intervention of suffering love in nature, and to a parallel case of mediation as a pardoning power in nature. The doctrine of Scripture, so far from being the doctrine of mere substitution, is a protest against that doctrine; it makes accurate provision for moral claims; it enforces conditions on the subject of the sacrifice; it attributes a reasonable and rational ground of influence and mode of operation to the sacrifice. There is, however, undoubtedly, contained in the Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement, a kind, and a true kind, of fulfilment of justice. It is a fulfilment in the sense of appeasing and satisfying justice. And so, also, there is a kind of substitution involved in the Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement, and a true kind; it is not a literal, but a moral substitution. The doctrine of the Atonement is the doctrine which most of all comes into collision with, and declares most unextinguishable war with, materialistic ideas of the Deity.… So rooted is the great principle of mediation in nature, that the mediatorship of Christ cannot be revealed to us without reminding us of a whole world of analogous action, and of representation of action. How natural thus does the idea of a mediator turn out to be! Yet this is exactly the point at which many stumble: pardon they approve of; reconciliation they approve of; but reconciliation by means of mediation is what they cannot understand. Why not dispense with a superfluity? they say; and why not let these relieve us from what they consider the incumbrance of a mediator? It has, however, appeared to the great mass of Christians infinitely more natural to be saved with a Mediator than without one.—J. B. Mozley, D.D.

A Sacrifice in the Living of a Human Life.—“A body hast Thou prepared Me.” A human body is the medium through which a soul—a spiritual being—is enabled to live a human life on the earth—a life of various earthly relations. What is here affirmed appears to be this—that God was pleased to find a material, human body, in which His Son, the spiritual being Jesus, could live out a human life, as a human son, perfecting an obedience to the will of God, which should be a representative obedience for humanity. And it seems to be distinctly declared that the real spiritual sacrifice which Jesus offered to God on behalf of humanity was that life of obedience and submission and service which He lived through—under a strain and stress which reached its climax in the cross—in that human body which God had prepared for Him, in which He could, fully and representatively, do and bear God’s will for humanity.

The Sacrifice of the Body.—This sentence is a quotation from one of the Psalms, but it is not quoted with strict accuracy. In the psalm there is a figure; in the quotation the figure is not repeated, it is translated, and its meaning is suggested. In Psa_40:6 the words are, “Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; Mine ears hast Thou opened.” But the Hebrew would be more precisely rendered, “Ears hast Thou digged or pierced for Me.” Two explanations of this figure have been offered. There was a curious ancient custom, which some think may be referred to here. When a Hebrew voluntarily resolved to be the life-long servant or slave of another person, that person accepted the surrender by boring through the ear of the would-be slave with an awl. The law regulating this matter is given in Exo_21:5-6 : “And if the servant [who could claim his freedom] shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him to the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.” If this could be received as the basis of the figure in the psalm, the sentence would then mean, “I am, through life, thy voluntary servant.” But if that had been the reference, a certain technical word would have been used; and even the English reader can see that in the psalm both ears are mentioned, and the Hebrew boring was done only to one ear. The better explanation is that opening the ears, digging out the ears, hollowing the ears, uncovering the ears, suggested to the Hebrews the idea of prompt obedience, of attentive listening to the commands of any one. We may understand the figure to mean, “Thou hast made me obedient,” or “I am entirely devoted to thy service.” What God desires is not sacrifice, but hearing ears, and consequently the submission of the person himself in willing obedience. Where the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews gained his translation of the figure into “a body hast Thou prepared Me” does not clearly appear. Some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint Version have this rendering, and the writer may have met with one of these; but some think he purposely made the alteration so as to make the Messianic reference of the psalm more distinct. Ears are given so that we may hear and heed. A body is given so that we may obey and serve in the earthly spheres. And Messiah is represented as saying, “Lo, I come [in the body which Thou hast given me] to do Thy will, O God.” The text is part of an argument. The writer is urging that the animal sacrifices of Judaism availed only for external or ceremonial purification. They vitally and eternally saved nobody. They represented the true sacrifice, which God then accepted, and still accepts—the sacrifice of an obedient will, and of a consecrated life. He has provided for us bodies; He has uncovered for us ears; we too can do His will. Our text then embodies a great principle which I want to state, to illustrate, and to enforce. It was true for the psalmist; it was true for our Lord Jesus Christ; and it is true also for us. The principle is this—God never asks of any man first of all what he has. God asks of every man first of all, himself, what he is. If any man is willing to give himself to God, then God will lovingly accept also what he has.

I. God never asks of any man first of all what he has.—“Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein.” Sacrifice and offering both represent man’s gifts to God. They are things which a man has; they are things belonging to man. The distinction between them is a Jewish one. Sacrifice is a gift to God of that which has life—life which can be surrendered. Offering is a gift to God of something which has no life, but which can be used in God’s service. The man who brought a bullock, or a lamb, or a dove made his gift to God; and the man who brought his shekel, or his flower, or his jewel, or his robe also made his gift to God. He brought of his property—of the things that he had. And if that was all he brought, God never asked for it, and never wanted it. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me, saith the Lord; I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. Bring no more vain oblations.” The prophet Isaiah gives these searching words as the utterance of God’s Spirit through him; but the earlier psalmist had quite as clear a vision of the truth that God never has cared for mere things. “I will take no bullock out of thine house, nor he-goats out of the folds, for every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof.” “Sacrifice and offering”! They are only things of which man claims possession, and which, as his own, he consents to give. Cattle from his folds, corn and fruit from his fields, gold and jewels from his treasuries. In what sense they are his does not readily appear, since man has nothing to possess, but everything lent him just for use during his brief spell of life. When good men give to God, they reverently say, “Of Thine own have we given Thee.” In the sight of God there is a most valid and practical distinction between what a man has, and what a man is. In our sight that distinction is most strangely confused. We are constantly valuing men according to the measure of what they call their wealth. God reckons a man’s possessions at nothing, save as it deepens the man’s responsibility for the faithful use of his trusts. The man himself is of priceless worth. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” We need to learn how to distinguish between the essentials and the accidents of the man; between the man and the clothes which, at a given time, he may happen to wear; between the man and the material circumstances with which he may be surrounded. Job expresses the distinction very vigorously when all his things that he had were gone from his grasp, seized by the invader, or whirled away in the storms. “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” Things were gone; but he was what he was. A man carries his entire self into the next world. Death cannot rob him of that. Death cannot touch or injure that. But man cannot carry into the next world a single one of the things that he only has. Death has its power on them, and plucks them all away—plucks away the monarch’s crown, and the nobleman’s estate, and the lady’s gay apparel and costly jewels. Death stands before the dying man, and compels him to surrender absolutely everything that he has. Death will not let the man take even his grave-clothes with him. The wild Indian will have his bow and arrows put into the grave with him, that they may be ready for use in the happy hunting-grounds he is anticipating. But it is a vain delusion. They only rot in the dampness of the grave. When a late Queen of Madagascar died, they arrayed her in her most gorgeous dresses, ornamented her with her jewels, and so laid her in the tomb. But they only wasted what might have been of use to somebody, and put temptation in the way of thieves. No dresses nor jewels deck her majesty in the other life. She is just herself, and a poor miserable self she must be. Moses and Elijah reappeared from the glory, but they were the very men they were, just the men, even the earth-form and dress was but a seeming. Realise the distinction between the essentials of a man and the accidents of a man, and then you will understand what I mean when I say, that God never has, and never will, ask first of all for the accidents of a man.

1. Because whatsoever a man may seem to have, it is not really his. It is only a loan to him, only a trust to him. It all belongs to God; and to give it to God is only to give God His own. He needs nothing from us. “In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it; and His hands formed the dry land.” “What have we that we have not received?”

2. And because nothing that man has could reach up to satisfy the claims of God. Know God as the infinite moral Being, the Source of all moral being, as the eternal Father of mankind, and at once it comes to mind that His claim must be for love, for trust, for obedience, for service. No mere material things can ever satisfy parent hearts. Fathers and mothers stand in soul-relations, and they can never be satisfied with other gifts from their children instead of soul-gifts. So thoroughly is God represented as despising mere things that have no soul in them, that when men failed to give themselves in and with their gifts, God actually dealt severely with their gifts. Cain brought an offering only of things. He was not himself in his gift. And “unto Cain, and to his offering, the Lord had not respect.” Pleading with a people who had become wholly formal in their religious gifts, God says, “Incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.” “To what purpose cometh there to Me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto Me.” “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer Me burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols” (Amo_5:21-23). This truth is indeed set forth so plainly, and so impressively, that it is passing strange to find men still deluded by the notion that God can be pleased with gifts. Heathen people still say, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Christian people still give goods, or prayers, or emotions. And still the apostolic words may be used, and we may say, God seeks “not yours, but you.”

II. God asks of every man the gift of himself, of what he is.—If we separate a man from his possessions, from the things that he only has, what is gathered up in the man? There is body, mind, affections, character, soul. For this earth-sphere a man is not a simple spirit, but a spirit with a certain particular environment. And it is this whole self which God asks. “Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are His.” “I beseech you therefore, brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” We find our model gift in the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave His whole bodily and spiritual manhood in one life-long devotion to God. There is a sense in which men may properly be regarded as not already God’s. Something which can only be called independence has been given to us. Though it is placed under strict limitations, our free-will does make us separate persons, and give us some sort of right in ourselves. And we well know how self-will exaggerates the independence, and throws off God, saying, “Who is the Lord, that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto Him?” In whatsoever sense man is himself, he can give that self to God. The truth is, that the only thing which any man has that he can give to God is himself. This every man, poor or rich, wise or ignorant, can give; and this is every man’s grandest and noblest gift.

“Lord, in the strength of grace, with a glad heart and free,

Myself, my residue of days, I consecrate to Thee.

Thy ransomed servant, I restore to Thee Thine own;

And from this moment live or die, to serve my God alone.”

A man can give his will to God, voluntarily choosing Him, and acceptting His service, saying with the noble Joshua, “Whatsover others do, we will serve the Lord.” A man may give his love to God; and of such a man God will surely say, “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him.” A man may give his penitence to God, going to Him and saying, “Father, I have sinned, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.” And such a man ever finds the Father waiting and watching for his return, and hears the sweetest sounds of home-welcome, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” A man may give to God his obedience. It is this which comes fully into view in our text: “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God.” This is what God asks of you and me, asks of every one: “Be Mine. I am Father. Be thou My son indeed.” All the revelations that God makes to men, read in the light of their deepest meanings, are just persuasions to making full surrender of themselves to Him. The type of them all is to be found in the vision given to Jacob at Bethel. He felt like a homeless wanderer. He was bearing the burden of his own wrong-doing. Yet God was mindful of him, caring for him, watching him, tending him all night through with loving angel ministries. That vision was God calling upon Jacob to give Him himself; and Jacob did it. “And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: and this stone, which I set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all which Thou, O God, shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.”

III. When a man gives to God what he is, God graciously accepts, with him, what he has.—How very different is the value we put on the various gifts that we receive! Some are mere gifts. They say nothing; they mean nothing. We take them. But we wish we had not to take them. We put them aside, after a cold thanksgiving. And we do not much care if we never see the thing any more. We are like God in this—that we are very indifferent to mere things as gifts. But the very same gifts, and even inferior gifts, may become priceless. They are if they carry to us a heart’s love—if the gift is the person, expressed only in the thing that is offered. Then the gifts are treasured. Then they find conspicuous place. Then they are looked at again and again, and always seem to freshen the love-gift of which they remind. It is thus with God. At one time sacrifice and offering will seem to Him altogether worthless. It is only sacrifice and offering. At another time they will seem to Him of priceless value, because they express love, and trust, and obedience, full heart-surrender. When we can say, “Lo, I come to do Thy will,” when we can give to God ourselves, then everything we bring with us will be acceptable unto Him. Passing by the receipt of custom, our Lord found Matthew seated, busily engaged with his work. Our Lord called him. But Matthew did not respond by giving his money, Christ cared nothing for that. Matthew responded by giving to Christ himself, and that gift carried with it his money, his abilities, everything that Matthew had. Some time ago I took part in a scene of peculiar interest and suggestiveness. Well-nigh two thousand persons were assembled in the largest chapel in Liverpool, to bid God-speed to a band of missionaries who were about to leave home and friends, and devote themselves to Christ’s service in heathen lands. Twenty-three men and women faced that great audience as they sat together upon the platform. As I watched them I thought what a variety of powers and talents they represented—what various riches they had. But they were not giving to Christ their abilities, their doctoring skill, their teaching efficiencies, their power to draw or to preach. Those men and women were giving to Christ themselves—themselves as spiritual beings. The company on that platform was a company of consecrated men and women; their manhood and their womanhood lay on the altar of Christ. They gave “their own selves to the Lord.” But they gave themselves in their bodies, with their bodies. The gift of themselves carried with it all they had; and the God who so graciously accepted them, as graciously accepted theirs with them. And so they represented a whole devotement—what they were, and what they had. There they sat, the realisation of the whole burnt-offering unto the Lord. That truth fills our thoughts and hearts—God wants us first, then ours. Have we been making the fatal mistake, and bringing, as offerings to God, our things? Have we imagined that God’s claim could be satisfied with gifts of our money, of anything that we only have? See this truth once again. God wants you. Yes, first you. He will receive nothing from you until you give Him yourself. And when you give yourself, you cannot help giving all you have. This is God’s order; you cannot alter it—first you, then yours. This is the Lord’s sacrifice—yourself in the body prepared for you.

Heb_10:7. Submission and Obedience.—The “will of God” is a present, living reality. It is not something shut up in a book. It is a living revelation to us, made by the indwelling, presiding Spirit. We may know the “will of God” now as truly as our fathers did when the will came to them in an audible voice, or by an angel-messenger. We may even conceive the time when the written word will cease to be the medium of the will, because spiritual relations will be perfected. This text presents one form in which we have to accept the Divine will, and it suggests the other; for there are two forms in which the will of God has to be met:

(1) By submission—bearing; and

(2) by obedience—doing. Prominence is here given to obedience. In Gethsemane prominence is given to submission. Too often it is urged that submission is the only attitude for us to take in relation to the will. This may, indeed, be fittingly commended to the sick, the suffering, and the dying, but it is not the attitude most wisely commended to the healthy, the active, and the enterprising. It is the glory of our nature that we are not mere things to be acted upon, but persons, agents, by and through whom ends are to be reached, and purposes accomplished. Therefore, while it is a great and blessed thing to submit to the will of God, it is, for active man, an even greater and more blessed thing to do the will.

I. Submission.—God sometimes deals with us as if He would convince us that He is the Creator, and we but the creatures of His power. He sweeps over our life in a majesty of wild storm-wind, and there is nothing for us to do but to submit. But usually God deals with us in such ways of mingled severity and tenderness, that He seems to be asking us to yield, even making it easy for us to yield. And there is nothing essentially Christian about our submission until it becomes both voluntary and cheerful. Our submission is never possible by knowing what God is doing with us; it is only possible by knowing God Himself better, and so gaining an all-conquering faith (trust) in Him.

II. Obedience.—Illustrate this phase by patriarchal times. Abraham obeyed God: also by the human life and devoted service of the Lord Jesus. Our common life can be looked at in two ways:

(1) As the scene in which we are doing and accomplishing something for ourselves; or

(2) as the scene in which, as servants, we are doing and accomplishing the will of God. It is freely granted that the former way of viewing life will seem the most attractive to us as men; but the latter may be commended as the altogether noble, and the more satisfying way. In what spheres can the will of God be discerned? We are to bring our thought, our speech, and our relationships into the obedience of Christ. Then in these spheres we can know the will. And besides the more general disclosures to us of the Divine mind, the open heart will be always able to discern special calls to particular forms of duty. The ideal Christian life is a full, free, constant, loving response to the Divine will, in a holy blending of submission and obedience.

The Sacrifice of an Obedient Will.—This is a quotation from the fortieth Psalm, and it is helpful to understand precisely what thought and feeling the psalmist expressed by it. Dean Perowne says: “The psalmist declares what had been the great lesson of his affliction—how he had learnt that there was a better sacrifice than that of bulls and goats, even the sacrifice of an obedient will. It is as if he had said, ‘Once I should have thought sacrifices and offerings a proper and sufficient acknowledgment. Now I feel how inadequate these are, for Thou hast taught me the truth; my deaf, unwilling ears hast Thou opened, that I might understand that a willing heart was the best offering I could render. Then, being thus taught by Thee, I said, Lo, I come! Presenting myself before Thee, not with a dead and formal service, but with myself as a living sacrifice.’ ”

The Religion of Divine Humility.—To preach Christ is to preach the doctrine of surrender to the will of God. The religion of Christ has been well called “The Religion of Divine Humility.” This is Christianity: love to God, and love to man; that surrender of self-will through life and death which marks the whole existence of the Redeemer.—F. W. Robertson.

Christ’s Own References to the Will He obeyed.—It is some disadvantage to our apprehension of the will of God for humanity, and so the will of God for Jesus, the representative man, that in this chapter it is so closely associated with altar-forms. Our Lord’s own references to the will which He fulfilled are free from this association. As He regards it, it is a moral obedience, a heart obedience, finding expression in doing, bearing, and suffering whatever may be recognised as the will of God in a human life. In Gethsemane it was seen by the Lord Jesus that the will of God immediately before Him was a time of overwhelming shame and suffering, and the agony of a violent and dishonourable death; and He would wholly lift Himself up to an entire, unquestioning, and uncomplaining obedience.

Heb_10:7; Heb_10:9. The Will of God which Christ came to do.—He was to do the will of God in several ways. “Not only as a prophet to reveal the will of God; not only as a king to give forth Divine laws; but as a priest to satisfy the demands of justice, and to fulfil all righteousness. Christ came to do the will of God in two instances:

1. In taking away the first priesthood, which God had no pleasure in; not only taking away the curse of the covenant of works, and cancelling the sentence denounced against us as sinners, but taking away the insufficient typical priesthood, and blotting out the handwriting of ceremonial ordinances, and nailing it to His cross.

2. In establishing the second, that is, his own priesthood and the everlasting gospel, the most pure and perfect dispensation of the covenant of grace: this is the great design upon which the heart of God was set from all eternity. The will of God centres and terminates in it; and it is not more agreeable to the will of God than it is advantageous to the souls of men; for it is by this will that we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”—Matthew Henry.

Heb_10:10. Christ’s Antitypical Sacrifice.—This epistle being directly addressed to Jewish Christians, it is of first importance that we should endeavour to understand their views. They were men who had been lifted from the material to the moral. That was the work that had been done for the Jewish nation by the later prophets. They were men that had been lifted from the ritual to the spiritual. That was the work which had been done for them by the Lord Jesus Christ. But these Jewish Christians found it very difficult to keep up to the higher level they had attained. There were certain forms in which temptations to revert to their old standpoint came to them.

1. Persecution by the bigoted and extreme Jewish section—represented by Saul of Tarsus.

2. An exaggeration of the claims of Judaism as an unquestionable revelation from God—specially honourable as having been ministered by angels.

3. The spiritualising of Philo and the Alexandrian School, which worked for a reform of Judaism, and shook confidence in Christ. The writer of this epistle has to counteract these three evil influences. But such temptations are better met by persuasions than by arguments: only the persuasions must be based upon arguments precisely adapted. One great point is made by the writer: “First that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” The material is pictorial—it is the picture-teaching of truth, which is necessary for all child-stages of the individual, the nation, or the world. The moral is the reality which is pictured in the material, and it is the proper thing for the man-stage. We teach children arithmetic by showing them, and by working, balls on a frame; by-and-by they come to apprehend the principles and relations of numbers. But what has such comparison to do with us, who have no association with material bodily sacrifices as the Jewish Christians had? Is it possible that there may be a material, pictorial setting of the sacrificial work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which may be limiting us somewhat as the ritual of Moses limited the Jews? These Christian Jews evidently had not spiritual views of Christ’s work, and Christians now may keep in the pictorial range for babes when they ought to be in the spiritual range for men. They do when they see Christ’s offering of Himself to be a ritual, not a spiritual sacrifice.

I. The surrendered will is the sanctifying sacrifice.—Trace the argument. Those old Jewish sacrifices had no value in themselves. The prophets—especially Isaiah and Hosea—made that quite plain. Their value lay solely in their being a means by which the will of a man was offered to God. When this is taught so as to be fully apprehended, formal sacrifice may cease. It has done its work. The final lesson is the Divine acceptance of the offering of Himself which came to Jesus. Christ’s whole life was His sacrifice. The sacrifice that God wants is the man, not something a man gives. The offering of a man himself is the offering of a life—that alone is the man. This makes Christ’s death the final act, the seal, the perfecting of His sacrifice; because that death completes, rounds off, the life. No life is complete until death seals it. Christ’s death is the great act of surrendered will under the most severe testing-conditions. Dead—human life ended—there is a whole man offered unto God.

II. That sacrifice—the spiritual sacrifice of the surrendered will—was offered through the body.—Things can have no influence on us that do not come within our range, do not lie in our plane. Moral forces are compelled to use material agencies because we are in material limitations. The surrender of the will of an angel is nothing to us. The surrender of the will of a human being like ourselves is everything to us. Christ became man that He might be able to offer a human sacrifice, because that is precisely what we ought to offer. An angel could not offer our sacrifice: the Son of God, as only Son of God, could not. Christ became representative man that He might offer His sacrifice of Himself in our name, as standing for and pledging us.

III. That offering satisfies once for all.—Picture-teaching needs repetition, “line upon line, precept upon precept.” The teaching of principles is done once for all. Christ’s sacrifice need not be repeated, because it effected its end—

1. With God. Did this representative offering of the surrendered will meet God’s requirement from us His creatures? The answer is the Resurrection.

2. With men. Was that devotion of Christ to our interests, which led Him to suffer so much in order to secure an acceptable sacrifice for us, such a devotion as could be really persuasive on us? The answer is our experience. The sacrifice of Christ must not be repeated, even in symbol. To repeat the sacrifice is to remove Christ from His present work of applying the gains of His sacrifice. What then have we to keep in mind? Is it only the medium, the bodily agency of the great sacrifice? Every incident of the Passion is intensely interesting to us. But there is a mystery within it. There is a real spiritual sacrifice. It is a man’s surrendered will. We cannot offer a material sacrifice with Christ. We can offer a spiritual sacrifice with Him. That we will offer it He pledges in our name. But our sacrifice, like His, must be made through our bodies. Our lives, lived unto God, are our sacrifice (see Rom_12:1).

The First and Second Sacrifices.—That which is temporarily efficient may, and indeed must, in time become inefficient, because the conditions which it once met undergo change. Whatever concerns the accidents of things must be changed. Whatever concerns the essentials of things is of necessity unchangeable. The first sacrifices, those of Judaism, dealt with accidental conditions of men. The second sacrifice deals with the essential states and relations of men. The first sacrifices could not last; and it was significant of their fading away that the Shekinah-glory left the Temple, that even the ark was lost, and the tables of the covenant. In Pompey’s time the Temple was but an empty shell with the kernel gone; for when he forced his way into the Holy of Holies, he found only an empty chamber. The very heart and life of the old sacrifices was already gone, wholly gone.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

V

The perpetually repeated expiations of the old covenant attest their impotence for any real taking away of sin

Heb_10:1-4

1For the law having a shadow of [the] good things to come, and [om. and] not the very image of the things, Song of Solomon 1 never with those [the same] sacrifices, which2 they offered [offer, προσφέρουσιν] year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not3 have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged4 [having once for all been cleansed] should [would] have had no more conscience [or consciousness] of sins. 3But in those sacrifices [in them] there is a remembrance 4again made [om. made] of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin.

[Heb_10:1—Σκιὰν γὰρ ἔχων, for a shadow the law having, etc. The emphasis of the Greek order of words can hardly be reached in English.—κατ’ ἐνιαυτόν, annually, year by year, is difficult as to position. Ebr., Hofm., Del., Alf. connect with οὐδέποτε δύναται; Calv., Bl. De W., etc., with προσφέρουσιν. The former seems the easier, and, though harsh in construction, very forcible, “year by year with the same sacrifices, etc., can never.” But see below.—ἂς προσφέρουσιν, which they offer, not as Eng. ver. offered, the figure of the present time having been kept up from the preceding chapter, and especially as the old covenant sacrifices did undoubtedly still continue. Still, that the writer’s mind is mainly on the past, is shown by the Aor. ἐπαύσαντο, for which, if he had distinct reference to the present time, the Imperf. ἐπαύοντο should be used.

Heb_10:2.—ἐπεί, since, viz: in that case, Rom_3:6; 1Co_15:29—συνείδησιν, consciousness=moral consciousness, conscience.—ἅπαξ κεκαθ., having been once for all cleansed.

Heb_10:3.—ἐν αὐταῖς, in them; the addition of the Eng. ver. is unnecessary.—ἀνάμνησις, a calling to mind, remembrance.—κατ’ ἐνιαυτόν, year by year.

Heb_10:4.—ἀδύνατον γάρ, for it is impossible, Heb_6:4.—K.].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Heb_10:1.—Image.—Εἰκών is not the essence itself (Peshito, Luth., Grot., Justiniani, etc.); nor the primitive form of the original (Stengel) which is then explained as the substantial essence of the things; nor merely the finished picture in contrast with the slight and shadowy outline (Chrys., Theodoret, etc.); but the living historical form, in which the invisible essence finds its representation.

Can never, etc.—The προσφέροντες are the priests, the προσερχόμενοι are the members of the congregation to whom the offering belongs. Κατ’ ἐνιαυτόν is connected by Ebr., Hofm., Del., Alf., with οὐδέποτε δύναται, by Calv., Bl., De W., etc., with ἂς προσφέρ. by most intpp. with ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις=the same year by year, or annual offerings. Hofm. also connects, with Paulus and Lachm., εἰς τὸ διηνεκές with τελειῶσαι, and further makes the προσερχόμενοι the subject of προσφέρ. We should thus have the statement that the individual members of the congregation, by the fact of their continuing throughout the year to bring offerings for themselves, and these of the same kind as those brought by the high-priests, viz.: animal offerings, furnished a practical proof of the insufficiency of the law, and of the expiatory offerings ordained by the law, and annually offered by the high-priest in behalf of the whole congregation, to produce any real and permanent perfection. In favor of this we may indeed be pointed to the like connection, τελειοῦν εἰς τὸ διηνεκές Heb_10:14, and to the sharp contrast of this idea “perfecting in perpetuum” with the οὐδέποτε; but, on the other hand, we may urge with Bleek, and others the tameness of the relative clause, ἃς προσφέρουσιν when standing without εἰς τὸ διην., and the forcible suggestion of Tholuck, that the very combination κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν τανς αὐταῖς θυσίαις εἰς τὸ διηνηκές, in connection with the οὐδέποτε, presents, as in a vivid picture, an endlessly recurring round of painful and unavailing ceremonies (as at Heb_10:11). The individual expressions will not aid in solving the problem. Εἰς τὸ διηνεκ́ς (an Ionic form for the Attic διανεκές, which found its way into familiar use) harmonizes well with the idea that the offering of sacrifices, under the dominion and in accordance with the purposes of the law, continues on indefinitely and endlessly into the future—a point unsuccessfully combated by Hofmann. Nor again does the word λατρεύειν, Heb_10:2, necessitate our adoption of Hofmann’s view; for though we grant, indeed, that the term here denotes no priestly function, (as Este., etc.), but refers to the service of the private members of the congregation; yet this service again does not here as at Heb_9:9, refer to the offering of gifts and sacrifices, but to the general religious worship of the congregation who, by means of priestly offerings, were drawing near to God. On the other hand, we must concede (comp. Heb_11:4; Heb_11:17, with Sept., at Num_31:50) that the statement of Del., that προσφέρειν, in our Epistle, denotes exclusively an official and priestly offering, must be accepted with limitation. The decision then of the question turns upon this. The author is assigning the ground for the declaration, made but a little before, of Christ’s having entered, once for all, with His high-priestly offering of Himself into the heavenly holy of holies. He finds this ground in the utter inefficacy of the annually recurring expiatory sacrifices of the Levitical high-priest, which were ordained by the law, and which were of ever unvarying quality, and which had, therefore, but one significance in their bearing on the establishment of the New Covenant, which was at once promised and typified in the old. The law, in consequence of its peculiar nature—a nature inseparable from its purpose and destination—has not the power, by its annually recurring and prescribed expiatory offerings, to secure for the congregation perfection, i.e., that substantial and abiding purification which brings them into relationship with God. Could such have been the effect of these offerings on the congregation, the annual sin-offerings, and with these the Old Covenant itself would have ceased, and been done away; there would have been such a removal and doing away of the sense of guilt, as could take place only on the basis of completely satisfactory, and hence final and unrepeated sacrifice. This view of Hofm. thus becomes, in every way, improbable. It is discountenanced alike by the fact that even in the New Covenant the individual members of the church may not cease to seek, on the basis of the expiation once for all accomplished by Christ, individual reconciliation and continued forgiveness of their sins, and also that even in the Old Covenant the continued service and offerings of individuals were no less studiously and explicitly enjoined than the annual sin-offering of the high-priest.

Heb_10:2.—For otherwise would they not have ceased, etc.—If we omit the οὐκ, the sentence must be taken as an affirmation; the better reading with οὐκ makes it interrogative. The construction of παύεσθαι, with the Particip., is entirely classical. Hofm. refers ἀλλά to the main negative statement of Heb_10:1, and translates, by “sondern,” making it simply the counterpart of that negative statement (viz: cannot make perfect, but, instead of that, there is a remembrance). But it is more natural to refer it to Heb_10:2 as=on the contrary. Ἀνάμνησις might mean (with Vulg., Calov, and others) commemoration, or (as Schlicht. Grot., Beng., etc.) commemoratio publica, in allusion to the three penitential acknowledgments of the high-priest on the day of atonement. But the common signification in memoriam revocatio is to be preferred as the more comprehensive. Del. has given in full the three penitential prayers in his history of Heb. poesy, p. 186 ff. Συνείδησις ἁμαρτ. is not the consciousness of sin in general, but that which brings back upon the man the personal criminality, responsibility, and punishableness involved in his sins. Com. Güder. (Stud. und Krit., 1857 II. 279 ff. Inquiry into the Scriptural Doctrine of Conscience).

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The heavenly good things are even to Christians still in the future; but because, and from the time when, Christ appeared as high-priest of those good things (Heb_9:11), we are brought into actual fellowship with them, and we have, as already tasting (Heb_6:5) the powers of the world to come, the pledge and the assurance that we shall yet, as children of God entitled to their inheritance, enter into their full possession. The Gospel renders possible not merely a clear and sharp expression of them, but also the formation of heavenly relations upon earth; the introduction and setting forth, the use and enjoyment of the heavenly good things even in the world, of which the law was able to furnish only an unsubstantial and shadowy image. “Christ stands, as it were, in the meridian light of the great day of time, and casts His shadow backwards over the whole Old Covenant. But as the shadow is seen only in the light, and comes out all the more clearly and sharply in proportion to the brightness of the light, so it is only in the light of the New Covenant that we recognize clearly the typical character of the old.” (Bisping).

2. With the certainty of an atonement actually accomplished, and truly acknowledged of God, comes a completed transformation of the moral and religious conscience and consciousness of man. No longer is this consciousness filled with sin and with the fear of righteous punishment, under the sense of unremoved guilt; but it enjoys reconciliation in consequence of the forgiveness of sin wrought through grace, and by virtue of an atonement. The subjects of this reconciliation, inasmuch as they are not yet brought to a state of perfection, need, it is true, the continuous appropriation of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and of its influences; but inasmuch as they have been, once for all, brought into the new relation of salvation and peace with God, they have no need of the successive repetitions of that sacrifice. In fact, the repetition of the sin-offering shows, that it does not accomplish that which it signifies; that it is thus not the true sin-offering, as the animal sacrifices in pagan religions show indeed the need of an atonement, but are inadequate to the satisfaction of that need.

3. The idea of the sacrifice in the mass, as a bloodless repetition of the bloody sacrifice on the cross, is entirely irreconcilable with this passage of Scripture, which lays its emphasis upon the fact that the repetition of the atoning sacrifice points back to its objective insufficiency, which would thus only strengthen and deepen our longing after that perfect and effectual expiatory system which the old economy only prefigured and paved the way for.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The actual deliverance of the conscience from the stain and burden of sin, is accomplished neither through human services, nor through legal sacrifices, but only through the blood of Jesus Christ.—The connection between the service of God, approach to God, and human perfection.—The pain and the blessing of a remembrance of sin.—The means for the purification of the conscience in our religious services.

Starke:—All religious service must tend to this end, viz., the perfection of man.—The forgiveness of sin takes away all guilt and punishment, but not the root and entire stain of sin.—Conscience accuses and bears testimony that we are ever, repeatedly, sinning and needing forgiveness.—Alike the days of feasting, of fasting and of prayer, ordained by Christianity, serve for a memorial of the Divine benefits and of our sins.

Rieger:—Even the shadowy outline given by the law, is to be regarded as a great benefaction on the part of God.—The purification of the conscience is an inestimable good.

Menken:—So long as man does not possess the offering itself, but only a shadow of it, so long he must fail of true reconciliation. A shadow can never give that which lies only in the substance.

Heubner:—How great was the veneration of the Jews for the shadow! Do Christians hold in equal veneration the truth and reality?—What the blood of animals could not, the blood of Christ could effect.

Footnotes:

[1]Heb_10:1.—The meaningless Plur. δύνανται in Sin. A. C. D**. and many minusc. is to be regarded as a clerical error. In order to explain it Lachm. put a point after πραγμάτων, and omitted in his small ed. the relative before προσφέρ. with A., 2, 7*, 17, 47, while A*. 31, Philox. introduce αἵ before οὐδέποτε. The Sing. is found in D*. D***. E. K. L. and many minusc., also Vulg. Itala. Copt.

[2]Heb_10:1.—Instead of ἅς Bl., Tisch., Alf., read (after Sin. D*. L. (?) N. Lat. ver. before D. and E., also minusc. 73,173) αἴς, which, however, might have easily sprung from the endings of the three immediately preceding words.

[3]Heb_10:2.—For ἐπεὶ ἄν all authorities require the reading ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἄν.

[4]Heb_10:2.—The reading κεκαθαρισμένους deserves the preference, as is also indicated by the reading κεκαθερισμένους in A. and C., (whether this orthography be a mere blunder in copying, or more probably, a conformity of the spelling to a careless pronunciation.)

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 10

1. The all-sufficiency of the one offering (Heb 10:1-18)

2. Exhortations (Heb 10:19-25)

3. Warning (Heb 10:26-31)

4. Encouragements (Heb 10:32-39)

Heb 10:1-18

The precious truth the apostle has unfolded in the preceding chapters concerning Christ, His one offering He made, His own blood by which He entered once for all into the holy place the one all sufficient sacrifice, which has an eternal value and can never be repeated, is now still more practically applied. This one offering sanctifieth and it hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, so that the believer thus sanctified and perfected can enter into the holiest as worshipper. The sacrifices brought in the first covenant did not make the worshippers perfect. If such had been the case there would have been no need to repeat them year by year continually. The repetition of these sacrifices in the law dispensation was a memorial of sin. “in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again of sins every year.” The day of atonement was repeated every year and each time the high priest entered in the holiest with the blood of others. But the worshippers were not purged by it; the conscience as to sins remained, and those worshippers could not enter in themselves. For it was not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Yet the sins of Jewish believers before the cross were forgiven, not because the blood of an animal was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, but in anticipation of the one great offering, known to God in all its value and meaning.

(See Rom 3:25. The remission of sins that are past are the sins of Old Testament believers. The work of Christ on the cross declares God’s righteousness in having passed over the sins of those who believed the promise.)

All is now changed. The one offering has been brought; by His own blood He entered the heavenly sanctuary, and all who believe are purged, the conscience is cleansed, we draw nigh and enter the holiest, not by the blood of bulls and goats, but by the blood of Jesus.

Heb 10:5-9 are of deep interest. It reveals what passed between God the Father and God the Son. When about to enter the world these words were spoken by Him to the Father; “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me; in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then I said Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God. (What a testimony the Son of God bears as to the character of the Old Testament Scriptures! As He said on earth “they testify of Me.”) it is a startling revelation, the Spirit of God acquainting us with what transpired between the Father and the Son. He comes into the world to do God’s eternal will.

“He is the Son of God from all eternity, and in that mysterious eternity before the creation of the world, in His pre-mundane glory, this mind was in the Son, that He would humble Himself, and take upon Himself the form of a servant, and obey the whole counsel of God concerning the redemption of fallen man. His whole life on earth, embracing His obedience and His death, His substitution for sinners, was His own voluntary resolve and act.

True, the Father sent Him; but such is the unity and harmony of the blessed Trinity, that it is equally true to say, the Son came. The love of the Lord Jesus, the sacrifice of Himself in our stead, the unspeakable humiliation of the Son of God, have their origin not in time but in eternity, in the infinite, self-subsistent, co-equal Son of the Father. He took on Him our nature. By His own will He was made flesh. From all eternity He offered Himself to accomplish the divine will concerning our salvation, He must needs be God, to have the power of freely offering Himself; He must needs take upon Him our nature to fulfil that sacrifice. Only the Son of God could undertake the work of our redemption; only as man could He accomplish it” (A. Saphir).

He speaks of “a body hast Thou prepared Me.” This means His virgin-birth. The body the Son of God took on was a prepared body, called into existence by a creative act of the Holy Spirit (Luk 1:35).

The sentence, “A body hast Thou prepared Me,” is the Septuagint translation, or paraphrase, of the Hebrew, “ears hast Thou digged for Me” (Psa 40:6). This reading, or interpretation, is here fully sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. The ear is for learning, and the opened ear stands for obedience (Isa 50:5). In taking on the human body He took the form of a servant. See also Exo 21:1-36. And thus He offered Himself, as One who had the power to do so, out of love for the glory of God, to do His will. He undertook of His own free will the accomplishment of all the will of God and He took on the prepared body in incarnation in order to accomplish the eternal will of God. In this prepared body He lived that blessed life of obedience, suffering from man for God, and then He gave that body, according to the will of God, in His death, when He suffered from God for man, in being made sin for us.

“God’s rights as the Lawgiver have been fully satisfied by the unsullied and complete obedience of the Lord Jesus. He magnified the law which man had taken and dishonored. Having fulfilled it in His life, He gave Himself to death, that He might silence forever its demand on the believing sinner’s life. By man and for man the will of God has been fulfilled. In the life and death of the Lord Jesus the active measure of both grace and truth has been attained. God’s will was the redemption of His people. But that His grace might triumph, His holiness must first be satisfied. The cross of Christ has effected this. God’s will, when finished, is thus found to be atonement. Blood has been shed, in obedience to His commandment, which is of virtue to remove all sin. It pleased Him to bruise His Son for sinners. He has laid upon Him the iniquity of all His people. By making Him an offering for sin, He has finished His intention of salvation. He has established grace in perfect righteousness” (A. Pridham). And thus “He taketh away the first (the ordinances of the law, the burnt-offerings and sacrifices) and established the second (the will of God perfectly done). “By the which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

This is a great and most blessed truth. His people, those who believe in Christ, are according to the will of God, to be sanctified, that is set apart to God. And this sanctification of all who believe is accomplished by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The will of man has no part in this; the work by which believers are sanctified is absolutely and wholly of God. It was done once for all when Christ died on the Cross; before we were in existence it was all done. In this faith rests, knowing that He hath sanctified us, that His work, not ours, nor our experience, has accomplished our sanctification. Believers belong to God for ever according to the efficacy of the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And this setting aside abides; it is as settled and permanent as the peace which was made, the peace with God, the abiding possession, of all who are justified by faith. There is also for those who are sanctified in Christ, a practical sanctification which is wrought by the Spirit of God in the believer (Heb 12:14).

Once more a contrast is made between Him and the levitical priests. The priests stood ministering, always bringing the same sacrifices over and over again. And they could never take away sins. But He having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down forever at the right hand of God. (it is not “eternal,” but continuously, without interruption; He is at rest, His work is finished.) The work is accepted and believers are accepted in Him. Those who are sanctified are perfected in perpetuity by what He has done. He is forever seated, we are forever perfected by virtue of His work. And there at the right hand of God He is also waiting in patience till it pleases God to make His enemies the footstool of His feet. That will be when He comes the second time. And the Holy Spirit bears witness to it. That witness is in the Word of God, there the Spirit of God speaks. “If we could have heard the counsel of eternity, the word of the Father to the Son, ere time began, we could have no greater certainty than now, when we listen to Scripture, the echo in time of the counsel in eternity.” We see here in this chapter up to Heb 10:15 the three persons of the Godhead in connection with redemption. The will of God is the source of the work of redemption; the Son of God accomplished it; the Holy Spirit bears witness of it. Here again is an allusion to the new covenant in Heb 10:16-17. (See 8:10-12.) Blessed assurance which all believers have “their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” This is the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Heb 10:19-25

And now the great truth is reached which the Holy Spirit wanted these Hebrew Christians to lay hold of and for which He so wonderfully prepared the way. He has shown that by the sacrifice of Christ the believers’ sins are put away; a perfect and everlasting cleansing has been made, remission assured and an eternal redemption obtained. By the will of God believers are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all; they are perfected and therefore in the eyes of a holy God, believers are without sin. This gives liberty to come into God’s presence. The veil is rent and we can enter in. There is no more barrier, we have a free and unfettered access. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus, a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.” And we do not go in alone but we find Him in the holiest who has done the work. He is there as a great high priest to welcome us and to minister in tenderness to our needs.

Upon this follow three exhortations. 1. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water (corresponding to the washing of the priests, Exo 29:4, and typical of regeneration).” We are then a holy priesthood fit and fitted in Christ to offer up spiritual sacrifices. 2. “Let us hold fast the confession of the hope without wavering for He is faithful who hath promised.” And we shall hold fast if we draw near and constantly realize our nearness, our blessings and privileges in Christ. 3. “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom is with some, but encouraging one another, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching.” It is the public confession of God’s people that they are one and belong together. And they saw the day approaching which is here not the day when His people will be gathered together unto Him, caught up in clouds to meet Him in the air, but the day of His appearing.

Heb 10:26-31

A solemn warning is now once more added. It warns against deliberate apostasy of those who have known the truth (though not regenerated). They are enemies, adversaries and for such wilful going astray there remaineth no longer any sacrifice for sins “but a certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” This was the great danger for these Hebrews who had professed faith in Christ, yet lingered around the levitical institutions as the temple with its worship was still standing. If they renounced the truth of Christianity by turning back to Judaism they trampled under foot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing; for such horrible, deliberate contempt there was no repentance and no remedy. They cannot escape judgment. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God-- He who hath said “Vengeance is mine, I will recompense.”

(“Observe here the way in which sanctification is attributed to the blood; and, also, that professors are treated as belonging to the people. The blood received by faith, consecrates the soul to God; but it is here viewed also as an outward means for setting apart the people as a people. Every individual who had owned Jesus to be the Messiah, and the blood to be the seal and foundation of an everlasting covenant available for eternal cleansing and redemption on the part of God, acknowledging himself to be set apart for God, by this means, as one of the people--every such individual would, if he renounced it, renounce it as such; and there was no other way of sanctifying him. The former system had evidently lost its power for him, and the true one he had abandoned. This is the reason why it is said, ‘having received the knowledge of the truth’” Synopsis of the Bible.)

Heb 10:32-39

Words of encouragement and comfort conclude this main section of the Epistle. They had suffered for Christ’s sake and he calls to their remembrance their former days. They had endured even with joy the spoiling of their goods, because they knew that they had in heaven a better and enduring substance. He exhorts them to be patient and not to cast away their confidence. The promise was sure. “For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come and will not tarry.” Hab 2:3-4 is quoted. He was sure that they are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe (literally: of faith) to the saving of the soul. The chapter which follows describes the action of this faith through the example of their forefathers who walked and lived according to the same principle.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 10:1-7

Lo, I come.

I. None but the Son of God could offer unto the Father a sacrifice to please Him, and to reconcile us unto Him in a perfect manner. The burnt-offerings and sin-offerings were ordained merely as shadows and temporary types of that one offering, the self-devotedness of the Son of God to accomplish all the will of God, the counsel of salvation. It is the Divine and eternal offering of Himself unto the Father in which the incarnation and death of the Lord Jesus are rooted; it is the voluntary character of His advent and passion, and it is the Divine dignity of the Mediator, which render His work unique, to which nothing can be compared, and a repetition of which is impossible.

II. Rise from the river to its source, from the rays of light and love to the eternal origin and fount. See in the life, the obedience, the agony of Jesus, the expression of that free surrender of Himself, and espousal of our cause, which was accomplished in eternity, in His own all-glorious and perfect divinity. Beware lest you see in Him only the faith and obedience, the sufferings and death of the Son of Man; see His eternal divinity shining through and sustaining all His humanity.

III. This truth is revealed to us, not merely to establish our hearts in peace, and to fill us with adoring gratitude and joy, but here, marvellous to say, is held out to us a model which we are to imitate, a principle of life which we are to adopt. So wondrously are high mysteries and deep doctrines intertwined with daily duties, and the transformation of our character, that the Apostle Paul, when exhorting the Philippians to avoid strife and vain-glory, and have brotherly love and helpfulness, ascends from our lowly earthly path into this highest region of the eternal covenant. As we owe all to Him, let us be not merely debtors, but followers of Him who came, not to do His own will, and to be ministered unto, who came to love and to serve, to give and to bless, to suffer and to die.

A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 167.

Reference: Heb 10:1-14.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 46.

Heb 10:5

The Body of Christ.

The mystical body of Christ is the whole fellowship of all who are united to Him by the Spirit, whether they be at rest in the world unseen, or here in warfare still on earth, differing only in this, that all His members who have been gathered out of this world are secure for ever; but in this world they who are still in trial may yet be taken away, and, as the fruitless and withered branch, cast forth for the burning. There are three manners, three miracles of Divine omnipotence, by which Christ’s one body has been, is, and present: the first, as mortal and natural; the second, supernatural, real, and substantial; the third, mystical, by our incorporation. Surely these great realities ought to teach us many high and practical truths.

I. As, for instance, with how much of loving reverence we ought to regard every baptised person. He is a member of Christ; what more can be spoken or conceived? He is united by the Spirit of Christ to the mystical body, of which the Lord made flesh is the supernatural Head. He has in Him a life and an element which is above this world; even "the powers of the world to come." We partake of Him—of His very flesh, of His mind, of His will, and of His Spirit.

II. This is the great reality which has restored to the world two great laws of love, the unity and the equality of man. All the members of Christ are one in Him, and equal, because He is in all. The highest and most endowed is but as the poorest and the lowest. Christ’s kingdom is full of heavenly paradoxes. Even the poor working man, with his hard palms, sits at the marriage supper with the king and princes; it may be he sits higher than his earthly lord. There is a courtesy, and a mutual observance, which is the peculiar dignity and sweetness of a Christian; and the source of it is, that He sees the presence of His Lord in others, and reveres Him in himself. Only the true Christian can have real self-respect. From this springs purity of manners, language, conversation, and amusements in private and social life.

III. And one more thought we may take from this blessed mystery,—I mean, with what veneration and devotion we ought to behave ourselves towards the presence of Christ, in the Sacrament of His body and Blood.

H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 190.

The Atonement.

I. In Christ’s sacrifice there was no earthly altar, no expiatory form, no visible priest; nobody could have told, either from His life or from His death, that He was the victim; He died by the natural course of events, as the effect of a holy and courageous life operating upon the intense jealousy of a class; He died by civil punishment, and in heaven that death pleaded as the sacrifice that taketh away the sin of the world. But that sacrifice was a willing, a self-offered sacrifice. The circumstance, then, of the victim being self-offered, makes, in the first place, all the difference upon the question of injustice to the victim. He who is sent is one in being with Him who sends. His willing submission, therefore, is not the willing submission of a mere man to one who is in a human sense another; but it is the act of one who, by submitting to another, submits to himself. By virtue of His unity with the Father, the Son originates, carries on, and completes Himself the work of the Atonement. It is His own original will to do this, His own spontaneous undertaking.

II. Consider the effect of the act of the Atonement upon the sinner. It will be seen, then, that with respect to this effect, the willingness of a sacrifice changes the mode of the operation of a sacrifice, so that it acts on a totally different principle and law from that upon which a sacrifice of mere substitution rests. The Gospel puts before us the doctrine of the Atonement in this light, that the mercy of the Father is called out toward man by our Lord Jesus Christ’s generous sacrifice of Himself on behalf of man. The act of one produces this result in the mind of God towards another; the act of a suffering Mediator reconciles God to the guilty. But neither in natural mediation, nor in supernatural, does the act of suffering love, in producing that change of regard to which it tends, dispense with the moral change in the criminal. We cannot, of course, because a good man suffers for a criminal, alter our regards for him if he obstinately continues a criminal. And if the gospel taught any such thing in the doctrine of atonement, that would certainly expose itself to the charge of immorality. So rooted is the great principle of mediation in nature, that the mediator-ship of Christ cannot be revealed to us without reminding us of a whole world of analogous action, and a representation of action. It is this rooted idea of a mediator in the human heart which is so sublimely displayed in the sacred crowds of St. John’s Revelation. The multitude which no man can number are indeed there, all holy; all kings and priests are consecrated and elect. But the individual greatness of all is consummated in One who is in the centre of the whole, Him who is the need of the whole race, who heads it, who has saved it, its King and Representative, the First-born of the whole creation, and the Redeemer of it. Toward Him all faces are turned; and it is as when a vast army fixes its look upon a great commander in whom it glories, who on some festival day is placed conspicuously in the midst. The air of heaven is perfumed with the fragrance of an altar, and animated with the glory of a great conquest. The victory of the Mediator never ceases, and all triumph in Him.

J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 162.

References: Heb 10:5.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., pp. 275, 413. Heb 10:5-7.—G. Huntingdon, Sermons for Holy Seasons, p. 161; J. Thain Davidson, Sure to Succeed, p. 61.

Heb 10:5-18

Our Perfection.

I. Perfection is now given to all who believe God Himself is our salvation. Jehovah Himself is our righteousness. Christ’s inheritance is our inheritance. The source is eternal love, self-moved, infinite, ocean without shore; the channel is free, abounding grace; the gift is eternal life, even life by the Holy Ghost in oneness with Jesus. The foundation is the obedience of Christ, eternal in its origin, infinite in its value, and unspeakably God-pleasing in its character.

II. The word "perfected" falls with a strange sound on those who are experiencing daily their sad imperfections.. But the Christian is a strange paradox. You may be caught up into the third heaven, and yet the abundance of this revelation will not burn up the dross that is in you, or kill the old man, the flesh which warreth against the spirit. On the contrary, there is the danger, imminent and great, lest you be exalted above measure, and dream of victory and enjoyment while you are still on the battlefield. We have died once with Christ, and with Christ are accepted and perfect; but our old nature is not dead, the flesh in us is not annihilated; there is still within us that which has no pleasure in the will and ways of God. We sin, we fall, we carry about with us a mind resisting God’s will, criticising it, and rebelling, and we shall experience to the very last breath we draw on earth that there is a conflict, and that we must strive and suffer in order to be faithful unto death. So we confess daily our errors and our sins, and condemn ourselves whenever we appear before God; yet are we perfect in Christ Jesus. Deeper than all our grief is the melody of the heart, and always can we rejoice in God.

A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 187.

Heb 10:7

I. The life of our Lord Jesus Christ is the most beautiful life that has ever been lived in the world. All sorts of beauty were bright in Him. The beauty of virtue, the beauty of godliness, the beauty of love, the beauty of sympathy, the beauty of obedience, and this without crack or flaw; beauty which shone in the house, beauty which flamed in the temple, beauty which lighted up the cornfield and the wayside, beauty which graced alike the table of the publican and the Pharisee, beauty with smiles and tears, gifts and helps for men, women, and children as He found them. Ever radiant, ever beneficent. In the old pictures they used to paint Him with a gloriole or nimbus round His head, and had we seen Him anywhere, from cradle to cross, from tomb to cloud, in a trice we should have picked Him out from ail others for His very beauty.

II. One great reason why that beautiful life has been lived amongst us men is that we may make our lives beautiful by it. There is nothing in Christ that is foreign to us. He was a man amongst men. All His beauty is capable of translation into our lives. Nothing in Him was superfluous in us. Nothing that was in Him can we lack without leaving void or chasm in our being.

III. The secret of this most beautiful life of our Lord Jesus Christ is told us. The will of God was to Him an irresistible spell. By it He accepted all tasks, and achieved them; by it He faced all sufferings, and endured them. No other explanation of His life is needed. Its strength, its unity, its manifold beauty are all intelligible now. The great secret is out. He came to do the will of God.

IV. What a beautiful will the will of God must be if the beautiful life of Christ is simply its outcome. If we would make our life beautiful like that of Christ, we must daily study the will of God, and just be and do what that will ordains. This is the one grand law of time and eternity, of earth and heaven.

G. B. Johnson, The Beautiful Life of Christ, p. 1.

Reference: Heb 10:7.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 96.

Heb 10:7-10

I. The election of God is that ocean of love which surrounds our earthly Christian life as an island, and which we can never lose out of sight for any length of time. Is it not our ultimate refuge in our weakness, our afflictions, our trials? Thus we ascend to the eternal counsel of God, whether we consider the character of the Gospel dispensation in its relation to the law, or the Divine righteousness and life through faith in the crucified Saviour, or the work of grace in conversion, or the spiritual experience of the believer. Infinite love from all eternity purposed to clothe us with Divine and perfect righteousness, to endow us with an incorruptible inheritance, and this through the gift and the self-devotedness of the Son.

II. Of the eternal counsel of God, Jesus crucified is the centre and the manifestation. He came to offer unto God that which sacrifice and burnt-offering could only shadow forth. In the sin-offering, death, due to the offerer, was transferred to the sacrifice; in the burnt-offering one already accepted professed his will to offer himself wholly unto the will of God. How perfectly and above all finite conception was this twofold sacrifice fulfilled in Christ!

III. From all eternity God, according to His good pleasure, which He had purposed in Himself, chose us in Christ that we should be to the praise of His glory. Notice the expression "good pleasure." It is God’s eternal delight, this purpose of self-manifestation in grace; His counsel and election centre in the Son of His love, in the Only-begotten. It is according to this same good pleasure, to this same eternal, free, infinite delight, that God calls and converts souls through the foolishness of preaching; that He gives unto us the adoption of children, and the forgiveness of sins; it is the Father’s good pleasure to keep the little flock, and afterwards to give them the kingdom and the glory, together to Jesus.

A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 186.

Heb 10:8-9

Atonement.

If an innocent man should suffer, what is the common verdict of the world? It says, "There is a crime beneath the seeming innocence, or he would not suffer." The book of Job gives the Old Testament answer to this blind opinion. The complete answer is in the death and suffering of Jesus. It has been written there for all the world to read, that this stupid maxim is wrong; suffering does not prove God’s anger, nor prove the sufferer’s sin. If increase of love were possible, never did the Father so deeply love the Son of man as at the hour of the cross; if increase of righteousness were possible, never was Jesus more sinless than in that hour of human agony and apparent defeat.

I, Christ did not come to tell us that God needed to be reconciled to us, but that we needed to reconcile ourselves to Him. Christ did not come to die for us, the innocent for the guilty, that God’s justice might be satisfied, and because of this satisfaction be enabled to show mercy to us. He came to die that He might make us feel, through the intensity of His human love, how much God loved us, and make us understand that God’s justice, though it punished, was final mercy. Christ did not come to enable God to forgive us, He came to tell us that God had forgiven us.

II. The things which belong to the law of atonement are not theological dreams, woven out of the intellect, not parts of a scheme; they are developments of human powers natural to man, things possible to his nature, growing out of the common life of man; ideas, but practical ideas; the flower, according to law, of plants in the garden of human nature. Christ manifested these powers, showed that they were practical and possible, made us understand that we could blossom also into this perfection. And that was another way in which He brought salvation to us, took away our sins, and justly earned the title of Redeemer. His revelation reconciles us to God; reconciles man to man; reconciles man to suffering.

S. A. Brooke, The Unity of God and Man, p. 82.

References: Heb 10:9.—G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points, p. 73; Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 319; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 18. Heb 10:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1527; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 145. Heb 10:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1034.

Heb 10:12

The Lessons of the Cross.

Our Lord’s suffering is also

I. Our example. How powerful the force of that teaching has been; how deep it has sunk into human nature’s heart. Here is He who was man, and yet was God. As God He could not die, but He stooped to death in the inferior nature. There is no limit to the force of this example. He has burst the gap through the gloomy barrier that fenced in the human life; He has let in light where all was dark before. His footsteps shine before us on the way, and the more rugged and painful the ground, the more firmly are they printed, the more deeply traceable.

II. But, again, the death of Christ witnesses to truth. All prophecy and its fulfilment, all teaching and its verification in the life of man, is less convincing than the tale of the cross. It proves to us the truth in practice, that the will of God is the law and life to man. Life eternal is our object, and therefore suffering is our business.

III. The cross of Christ is our greatest lesson in moral teaching. It teaches us under this head, (1) the immense value of our souls, and (2) the heinousness of sin as the bane and scourge of those souls.

IV. And, lastly, it is our bond of union. He died to gather together in one the Church of God which is scattered abroad, to become the Good Shepherd of those far-off sheep, to bring them home to Him and to each other. The Church of God is the result, imperfect, scantily realised, and in idea so wide and so prominent, so historically grand, so socially vast, that its failure—so far as it has failed—is forced into prominence which meaner things could not reach. But the Church of God in its imperfections does but sum up and contain the total of the shortcomings of its members. They are Christ’s members still; He counts them as such, and we may count them as such.

H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons, p. 214.

Heb 10:12

I. There is an exceeding grandeur—approaching to awe—about everything which can be done only once. This is a great part of the grandeur of death, and of the judgment in their nature, they can be only once. And the atonement is the more grand because it is of the same character. The cross is magnificently fearful in its perfect isolation. Everything in religious truth, which went before it in ages past, looked on to it. Everything in religious truth which has ever followed, and in ages yet to come, looks back to it. It is the bud of all, the beginning of all, the sum of all.

I. We make sacrifices, and what are they? If we think, in any sense whatever, to offer up anything in the slightest degree propitiatory for sin, we plainly violate the whole Bible. We offer three things: our praises, our duties, and ourselves. These are our only sacrifices. And what makes these things sacrifices? The Christ that is in them. So that still, be we of the Jewish or the Christian dispensation, the same thing is true—there is "one sacrifice for sins for ever."

II. Remember, that marvellous as is the region of the thought in which we are walking when we treat of the atonement, it is all in accordance with the most perfect sense of our understanding, and all lies within the strictest limit of perfect justice; nay, its foundation is justice, and it commends itself to every man’s judgment as soon as he sees it. But such a view as a prospective forgiveness of future sin would violate every principle of common sense. Holiness is the great end of the cross. Pardon, peace, salvation, happiness, are only means—means to holiness; holiness, which is the image of God, which is the glory of God. Beware of any approach to any view of Christ which does not directly tend to personal holiness. For He perfects—whom? Them that are sanctified.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 5th series, p. 138.

References: Heb 10:12.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 230. Heb 10:12, Heb 10:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 91.

Heb 10:12-14

The Only Sacrifice.

There is, and there can be, only one atonement for the sin of the world—the sacrifice of the death of Christ. This alone is in itself meritorious, propitiatory, and of infinite price and power. And this is, in fact, the whole argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews. St. Paul is showing that the law of Moses was in itself without power; that it could make no propitiation, no true atonement in the eternal world; that the vileness of the sacrifices was enough to show their impotence, and much more their continual repetition.

I. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then, is one. There is no other like it, or second after it. It is not the highest of a kind, or the perfecting of any order of oblations; but, like His Person, a mystery sole and apart. In what does this unity consist? In the nature, the quality and the passion of Him who offered Himself. (1) It is one and unapproachable, because He was a Divine Person, both God and man. (2) In like manner the sacrifice is one and above all, in the quality of the person who, as God, was holy, as man was sinless. It was not the obedience only of man for man, but of man without sin; nor only a sinless man for sinners, but the obedience of God. (3) And, further, as the nature and the quality, so the passion of Christ gives to His sacrifice an unity of transcendent perfection. Righteous, holy, pure, perfect in love both to God and man, He offered Himself up as a sacrifice and atonement between God and man. This, then, is its unity.

II. But, further, the sacrifice is not only one, but continuous. As by its unity it abolished the multitude of oblations, so by its continuity it abolished the repetition of sacrifices. To add one more would be to deny its final atonement. The sacrifice of Christ is as everlasting as His Person. He was pierced on Calvary, but His passion is still before the mercy-seat. He was pierced eighteen hundred years ago, but His blood was shed four thousand years before, and His wounds are fresh and atoning until now. His sacrifice is eternal. Though every light in the firmament of heaven were a world, and every world dead in sin; and though time should multiply the generations of sinners for ever, yet that one sacrifice for sin would infinitely redeem all worlds.

H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 210.

Heb 10:14

Christ our Priest.

The Epistle to the Hebrews represents Christ as our High Priest, and His office as a priesthood; as a priesthood in the two great parts of the priestly character, sacrifice and intercession or mediation. And it declares, also, that this is the only priest, and the only priesthood which the gospel acknowledges.

I. Christ, then, by one offering, hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. By one offering, namely, the offering of Himself upon the cross, for the sins of the whole world. By this offering we are perfected, and without it we were lost. Undoubtedly these few words are the very sum and substance of the gospel. Every heart, however constituted, with all our manifold varieties of power and disposition, can yet find in Christ that which will better suit its peculiar nature than anything to be found elsewhere; all of us, if we could truly believe in Christ should assuredly find that our faith had saved us.

II. He has perfected us; that is, the work is complete, if we would but believe it; but till we do believe it, it is in us not completed. It is complete in us when our hearts are softened, and God and Christ and our own sin are fully before us; but as they pass away, so it becomes again undone. It becomes undone, because then we do not believe. Another belief is ruling in our hearts; the belief that we may follow our own ways, and live safely without God. But when we believe in God, the Father of Christ, we shall know and feel what is meant by infinite holiness and infinite love; and by the one offering of our High Priest once offered, we shall feel that we who were dead are made alive—that we are now for ever perfected.

T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 78.

References: Heb 10:14.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 232; Clergyman’s Magazine,-vol. iv.,p. 224; vol. vi.,p. 153. Heb 10:15-18.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 714; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 47. Heb 10:17.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1685. Heb 10:19.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 361. Heb 10:19, Heb 10:20.—Bishop Thorold, Church of England Pulpit, vol. i., p. 81; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 144. Heb 10:19-22.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 266; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 463.

Heb 10:19-25

Faith, Hope, and Love.

I. The Apostle’s great argument is concluded, and the result is placed before us in a very short summary. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way; and we have in the heavenly sanctuary a great Priest over the house of God. On this foundation rests a threefold exhortation. (1) Let us draw near with a true heart, in the full assurance of faith. (2) Let us hold fast the profession of hope without wavering. (3) Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. Faith, hope, and love—this is the threefold result of Christ’s entrance into heaven, spiritually discerned, and a believing, hoping, and loving attitude of heart corresponds to the new covenant relation of Divine grace.

II. In times of persecution or lukewarmness, Christian fellowship is specially important; it is likewise a test of our faithfulness. The Hebrews, it seems, needed this word of exhortation; and the Apostle confirms it by the solemn addition, "Forasmuch as ye see the day approaching." The Apostle refers, doubtless, to the approaching judgment of Jerusalem, connecting it, according to the law of prophetic vista, with the final crisis. Because the Lord is at hand we are to be patient, loving, gentle,—exercising forbearance towards our brother, while examining with strict care our own work.

III. The second advent of our Lord is the most powerful, as well as the most constraining motive. Called to eternal fellowship and love in joy and glory, let us fulfil the ministry of love in suffering and service, and let every day see some help and consolation given to our fellow-pilgrims. Christians see the day approaching, for they love Christ’s appearing; and to them the day of light is not far off. Jesus said, "I come quickly," and the long delay of centuries does not contradict this "quickly." Christ is looking forward unto His return and to nothing else.

A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 219.

Heb 10:22

Sins of Ignorance and Weakness.

Among the reasons which may be assigned for the observance of prayer at stated times, there is one which is very obvious, and yet perhaps is not so carefully remembered and acted upon as it should be. I mean the necessity of sinners cleansing themselves from time to time of the ever-accumulating guilt which loads their consciences. We cannot, by one act of faith, establish ourselves for ever after in the favour of God. The text is addressed to Christians, to the regenerate; yet so far from their regeneration having cleansed them once for all, they are bid ever to sprinkle the blood of Christ upon their consciences, and renew, as it were, their baptism, and so continuously appear before the presence of Almighty God.

I. First consider our present condition, as shown us in Scripture. Christ has not changed this, though He has died; it is as it was from the beginning—I mean our natural state as men. We are changed one by one; the race of man is what it ever was, guilty—what it was before Christ came. The taint of death is upon us, and surely we shall be stifled by the encompassing plague, unless God from day to day vouchsafes to make us clean.

II. Again, reflect on the habits of sin which we superadded to our evil nature before we turned to God. Here is another source of continual defilement. Through the sins of our youth, the power of the flesh is exerted against us, as a second creative principle of evil, aiding the malice of the devil.

III. Further, consider how many sins are involved in our obedience, I may say from the mere necessity of the case: that is, from not having that more clear-sighted and vigorous faith which would enable us accurately to discern, and closely to follow the way of life. We attempt great things with the necessity of failing, and yet the necessity of attempting; and so while we attempt, need continual forgiveness for the failure of the attempt. How inexpressibly needful to relieve ourselves of the evil that weighs upon the heart, by drawing near to God in full assurance of faith, and washing away our guilt by the expiation which He has appointed.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 83.

References: Heb 10:23.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1897. Heb 10:23, Heb 10:24.—J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 344. Heb 10:23-25.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 464.

Heb 10:24

I. "Works." Work is the condition of life in the world. The law of both kingdoms alike is, "If any man will not work, neither should he eat." Work has been made a necessity in the constitution of nature, and declared a duty in the positive precepts of Scripture. Idleness is both sin and misery. Every thing is working. A non-productive class is an anomaly in creation. Christ was a worker. He went about doing. The world is a field. It must be subdued and made the garden of the Lord.

II. Good works. It is not any work that will please God or be profitable to man. A bustling life will not make heaven sure. The works must be good in design and character. The motive must be pure, and the effect beneficent. Good works rendered by Christians to Christ, put forth upon a needy world, are not dangerous things. Christians should not be jealous, but zealous of good works. The Lord requires them; disciples render them; the world needs them.

III. Love and good works. Verily good works constitute a refreshing stream in the world wherever they are found flowing. It is a pity that they are too often like Oriental torrents, waters that fail in the time of need.

IV. Provoke unto love and good works. All the really effective machinery for doing good in the world depends for propulsion on the love that glows in human breasts; with all the revival of our own favoured times, the wheels, clogged with the thick clay of a predominating selfishness, move but slowly. Up with the impelling love into greater warmth, that it may put forth greater power.

V. "Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." It is the considerer, not the considered, who is provoked unto love. What attitude must we assume, and what preparation must we make, in order that love by the ministry of the Spirit may he kindled in our heart? Here is the prescription short and plain, "Consider one another."

W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 51.

Mutual Consideration.

I. Mutual consideration is to be a cultivated influence. By that I mean, that consideration is not necessarily natural to children, although it is to some. There is an inborn selfishness in most children; yet some little folks seem to be dowered with thoughtful faculties which they have inherited. Even children can be like Christ, living in others. Consideration is to be cultivated; and the child’s nature, through Christ’s renewing grace, will grow into carefulness about his neighbours, and about everybody.

II. Mutual consideration is to be a provocative influence. "Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." Why has the word "provoke" got to have an ugly meaning? Why, in the same way that the word "retaliation" has. Because men oftener retaliate injuries than benefits! If I were to announce a sermon on "Retaliation," most people would think that I meant to preach against the retaliation of injuries, forgetting the fact that a man can retaliate a benefit just as well as an injury! How can you provoke unto love? It cannot be done by speech, unless that speech is translated into deed. So the Apostle says, "Provoking one another." When you see the speech translated into the deed, then you have the provocative power. The attractive power of life is in character, not in word only; and be thankful, those of you who are engaged in mission work, that you do not know all the results, for the might of influence has provoked some people you have never seen. This is the grandest thought to take away with us; that something which occurred twenty years ago may be provoking another invitation today, for good deeds never die; they walk the earth when we are dead and gone.

III. Mutual consideration is to be a Church influence. Consideration is the element that is to change the world. The cross living in us, and transfiguring us, will take away all those elements in our life which make us Pharisaic towards sinners, proud of our virtues, selfish in our thoughts and aims, hard in our judgments, and vulgar in our manners.

W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 92.

References: Heb 10:24.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 135; T. G. Bonney, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 225. Heb 10:25.—C. P. Reichel, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 133; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 588; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 216; W. Scott, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 56; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 289. Heb 10:26.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 465.

Heb 10:26-39

Warning against Apostasy.

I. Note briefly some misconceptions which prevent some readers of Scripture from receiving in a meek and docile spirit solemn admonitions of the Holy Ghost, such as the present. (1) There is an undue and one-sided haste to be happy and in the enjoyment of comfort. (2) There is a one-sided and unscriptural forgetfulness of the true position of the believer, as a man who is still on the road, in the battle; who has still the responsibility of trading with the talent entrusted, and watching for the return of the Master. (3) We must remember that God, in the Gospel and in the outward Church, deals with mankind, and not merely with the elect known only unto Him. The warning is necessary, for the actual condition of the Church embraces false professors. It is necessary and salutary for all, for young and weak believers, as well as for the most experienced. It is, above all, true; for the gospel reveals to us the living and holy God, the earnestness and jealousy, as well as the tenderness of Divine love.

II. Mark the bearing of the passage on the mere professor of Christianity. If we follow our deceitful and sluggish hearts, we neither rejoice in God’s promises, nor tremble at His threatenings. The world knows not the sweetness of Divine love, nor does it stand in awe before God’s wrath. And professing Christians also may forget that our God is a consuming fire, and that we must either serve Him with all our heart, or depart from Him as evil-doers. God sends now the message of peace; but this message rests on the full manifestation, and not upon a change of his character. And hence the gospel brings to him who, in fear and trembling, and with faith, accepts it, salvation, blood-bought, and wrought into us by a total and central renewal of our hearts; whereas it brings to him who rejects it a fuller disclosure of God’s wrath, and a sterner announcement of everlasting perdition.

A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 237.

References: Heb 10:28, Heb 10:29.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 258. Heb 10:30.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 84.

Heb 10:31

The Judgments of God.

I. This is, of all the revelations of Scripture, the one which men can least bear. They would fain find something of hope, something of mitigation, even in the heaviest sentence of God’s anger. They would fain believe that all shall be well at the last. Most natural is it for flesh and blood so to wish; most natural that the strong wish should labour to become belief. But the declaration of God’s truth is in His own Scriptures clear and full; no man can mistake, no man can dispute its meaning. Can that be inconsistent with God’s mercy which is declared by Him who laid down His life for us?

II. The real Christian faith in Christ’s promises and Christ’s threatenings is what we all require daily. Where is the man of us, however earnestly he may love Christ’s words, who can pretend that he believes them with the same undoubting faith that he could do if he knew and loved Christ better? Conceive, if that were the case, how entire would be our confidence in all God’s words; how steadily should we look beyond the grave, and see the river’s further shore. For what makes death clear or dark to us is exactly our greater or less knowledge of God, a knowledge that if we are with Him we shall be safe and happy, whether it be in life or death. And it is a knowledge also of His terrors, that it is indeed a fearful thing to find ourselves in His hands for the first time when He comes with judgment. Here we knew Him not, and therefore carelessly offended Him; but there we must know Him, and shall find that the evil done or the good not done to one of the least of our brethren was a wrong or a neglect to Him.

T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 253.

References: Heb 10:31.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 682; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 241. Heb 10:32.—E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 72; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 200. Heb 10:34-37.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. 222. Heb 10:35.—H. F. Walker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 341; J. B. Brown, Ibid., vol. xxiii., p. 113. Heb 10:35, Heb 10:36.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 378; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 210. Heb 10:36.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., pp. 27, 68; H. P. Liddon, Ibid., vol. xxv., p. 136.

Heb 10:38

Transgressions and Infirmities.

Warnings such as these would not be contained in Scripture were there no danger of our drawing back, and thereby losing that life in God’s presence which faith secures to us. Faith is the tenure upon which the Divine life is continued to us: by faith the Christian lives, but if he draws backs he dies; his faith profits him nothing, or, rather, his drawing back to sin is a reversing of his faith, after which God has no pleasure in him. Faith keeps us from transgressions, and they who transgress, for that very reason, have not true and lively faith, and therefore it avails them nothing that faith, as Scripture says, is imputed to Christians for righteousness, for they have not faith. Instead of faith blotting out transgressions, transgressions blot out faith. Faith, if it be true and lively, both precludes transgressions, and gradually triumphs over infirmities; and, while infirmities continue, it regards them with so perfect an hatred, as avails for their forgiveness, and is taken for that righteousness which it is gradually becoming.

I. There are sins which forfeit a state of grace. (1) All habits of vice are such. (2) It is fearful to think that covetousness is mentioned in connection with sins of the flesh, as incurring forfeiture of grace equally with them. (3) All violent breaches of the law of charity are inconsistent with a state of grace; and, in like manner, all profaneness, heresy, and false worship, and, further, hardness of heart or going against light.

II. That there are sins of infirmity, or such as do not throw the soul out of a state of salvation, is evident directly it is granted that there are sins which do; for no one will pretend to say that all sins exclude from grace, else no one can be saved, for there is no one who is sinless.

III. These sins of infirmity tend to those which are greater, and forfeit grace. Never suffer sin to remain upon you; let it not grow old in you; wipe it off while it is fresh, else it will stain; let it not get ingrained; let it not eat its way in and rust in you; come continually to the Fount of cleansing for cleansing. It is thus that the Church of God, it is thus that each individual member of it, becomes all glorious within and full of grace.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. v., p. 195.

References: Heb 10:38.—W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 248; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xvii., p. 164; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 567. Heb 10:38, Heb 10:39.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 132.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10:1 The old system under the law of Moses (literally The law), like the Tabernacle itself (8:5), was only a shadow, a dim preview of a greater reality—namely, the good things that Christ inaugurated in the new covenant. Under the old covenant, sacrifices had to be repeated again and again because they were not able to cleanse worshipers permanently or in such a way that they could come into the presence of God perpetually.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Heb 10:1. Σκιὰν, shadow) The antithesis is εἰκόνα, image.—αὐτὴν την εἰκόα, the very image) the archetype, the original and solid image, ch. Heb 9:24, note. The shadow,[56] although it was the prelude of future events, did not however precede, as in a picture, but followed a little after. See by all means ch. Heb 8:5.—κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν, yearly) This refers to the whole sentence to the end of the verse.—ταῖς αὐταῖς, with the same) the same, not in the number, but in the kind of sacrifices.—ἃς προσφέρουσιν εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς, which they offer continually) offer, viz. those who offer, who draw near and perform the service. They offer for ever; that is, they do not cease to offer, nor will they cease, unless they be compelled.—οὐδέποτε δύναται, never can) So. Heb 10:11.

[56] Used here of the first outline or sketch drawn, preparatory to a painting.—ED.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb_10:1. Establishment of the ἅπαξ προσενεχθεὶς εἰς τὸ πολλῶν ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας, Heb_9:28, as being the main thought lying in Heb_9:25-28, by making good the opposite state of the case in the province of the O. T. theocracy: For since the law contains only a shadow of the future good things, not the actual likeness of the things, it is not able by means of the same sacrifices every year, which are unceasingly offered, ever to make perfect them that draw nigh. The emphasis of the proposition rests partly upon the characterization of the law as σκιὰν ἔχων κ.τ.λ., partly upon κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, ἃς προσφέρουσιν εἰς τὸ διηνεκές. The author, however, cannot thereby mean, as the words at first hearing might seem to imply, that the law, in case its contents were no mere σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν, would in reality effect the τελείωσις by means of its ever-repeated expiatory sacrifices. For, as is shown by Heb_10:2-3, the author already bases upon the very fact of the yearly repetition of the Mosaic expiatory sacrifices the proof for their inadequacy. We must therefore suppose that two independent particulars of thought have been blended together into a single statement. One can resolve the matter either in such wise that οὐδέποτε δύναται τελειῶσαι is looked upon as the common predicate for both particulars: the law is incapable of leading to τελείωσις, because it contains a mere σκιά κ.τ.λ.; and certainly it is incapable, by means of its ever-repeated sacrifices, of leading to τελείωσις. Or in such wise that the second particular is thought of originally as an inference from the first, from which the οὐδέποτε δύναται κ.τ.λ. is then progressively derived: because the law contains a mere σκιὰ τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν, there is found in its domain an unceasing repetition of the same expiatory sacrifices; by this unceasing repetition, however, it is never able to lead to perfection. The latter analysis is to be preferred, because by means of it the opposition, required by the course of the argument, between the once offered and the ofttimes repeated expiatory sacrifice, comes out clearly and definitely in all its severity; while the characterization of the νόμος, on the other hand, as σκιὰν ἔχων κ.τ.λ., is made only that which here, in harmony with the context, it alone can be, i.e. a mere subsidiary factor in the argument.

σκιάν] a shadow, which is unsubstantiated, melts away into obscurity, and only enables us to recognise the external outlines. Opposite to this is the εἰκών, the image or impress, which sets before us the figure itself, sharply and clearly stamped forth. See on Heb_8:5. Freely, but not incorrectly, does Luther translate: the very substance of the good things.

τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν] see at Heb_9:11.

τῶν πραγμάτων] different from τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν only as respects the more general form of expression.

κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν] belongs neither to οὐδέποτε δύναται (Ebrard, Delitzsch, Hofmann, Schrifibew. II. 1, 2 Aufl. p. 446; Alford) nor to ἃς προσφέρουσιν (Calvin, Er. Schmid, Wolf, Heinrichs, Bleek, de Wette, Bloomfield, and others), in which latter case the words would have to be resolved by ταῖς θυσίαις, ἃς κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν τὰς αὐτὰς προσφέρουσιν, or something similar. But κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν is rather to be taken in intimate combination with ταῖς αὐταῖς: with the same sacrifices every year. The author forebore writing ταῖς αὐταῖς κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν θυσίαις, in order that he might accentuate each notion equally strongly. As, moreover, with κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν in this place, so also elsewhere with adverbs which in point of meaning may be compared with it, such as ἀεί, πολλάκις, etc., a transposing is nothing rare. Comp. Winer, Gramm., 7 Aufl. p. 514 f.

ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις] Those meant are, as is required by κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν (comp. also Heb_10:4), only the sacrifices on the great day of atonement, not also the daily sacrifices of propitiation (Heb_10:11), as Böhme, Stein, and others suppose.

προσφέρουσιν] sc. the Levitical high priests. Wrongly Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. 1, 2 Aufl. p. 446), who in general has entirely failed in his interpretation of the statement:[96] the προσερχόμενοι.

εἰς τὸ διηνεκές] Note of time to προσφέρουσιν. If we should seek, with Paulus, Lachmann, and Hofmann, l.c., to conjoin εἰς τὸ διηνεκές with that which follows, the relative clause ἃς προσφέρουσιν would be deprived of all signification.

τοὺς προσερχομένους] those who approach God through the medium of the Levitical priests, thus identical with τοὺς λατρεύοντας, Heb_10:2; Heb_9:9.

[96] Namely, in that he brings out as the sense of the same, the propitiatory sacrifice, which is, as it were, offered by the law itself, because offered at its direction and by the high priest for the congregation, is here convinced of its manifest incapacity for effecting real and abiding purity of conscience for the individuals. This conviction is wrought by the fact that, notwithstanding this sacrifice has been offered every year for the whole congregation, the individuals still continue throughout the year to offer sacrifices for themselves!

Heb_10:1-4. Presentation in a clearer light of the necessity for Christs offering Himself only once for the expiation of sins (Heb_9:25-28), by pointing to the ineffectiveness of the expiatory sacrifices continually repeated within the domain of Judaism. This constant repetition attests that sins are still ever present, as indeed a cancelling of sin by the blood of bullocks and of goats is impossible.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 10:1-18 . Finality of Christ’s one sacrifice . The law merely presents a shadow of the essential spiritual blessings and does not perfect those who seek God through it. Its sacrifices therefore must be continually repeated and the consciousness of sins is annually revived, for animal blood cannot take sins away. Accordingly, when Christ comes into the world He says, “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, I am come to do Thy will”. He proclaims the uselessness of O.T. sacrifices, that He may clear the ground for “the offering of the body of Christ”. This is the great distinction between Christ and all other priests. They stand daily ministering, He by one offering has perfected those who approach God through Him.

Heb 10:1-4 . The sacrifices of the law inadequate.

Heb 10:1 . Σκιὰν γὰρ ἔχων … The γὰρ intimates that we have here a further explanation of the finality of Christ’s one sacrifice (Heb 9:28 ) and therefore of its superiority to the sacrifices of the law. The explanation consists in this that the law had only “a shadow of the good things that were to be, not the very image of the things”. Σκιὰν is in the emphatic place, as that characteristic of the law which determines its inadequacy. “A shadow” suggests indefiniteness and unsubstantially; a mere indication that a reality exists. εἰκών suggests what is in itself substantial and also gives a true representation of that which it images. “The εἰκών brings before us under the conditions of space, as we can understand it, that which is spiritual” (Westcott). So Kübel, etc. The contrast is between a bare intimation that good things were to be given, and an actual presentation of these good things in an apprehensible form. It is implied that this latter is given in Christ; but what is asserted is, that the law did not present the coming realities in a form which brought them within the comprehension of the people. [Bleek cites from Cicero, De Off. , iii. 17, 69, “nos veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam effigiem nullam tenemus, umbra et imaginibus utimur”.]

That the law possessed no more than a shadow of the coming good was exhibited in its constantly renewed sacrifices. κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν belongs to ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις , “with the same annually repeated sacrifices,” further explained and emphasised by the relative clause, ἃς προσφέρουσιν εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς , “which they perpetually offer”. οὐδέποτε δύναται … the law can never with these perpetually renewed offerings perfect the worshippers”. “No repetition of the shadow can amount to the substance” (Davidson). The proof is given in the following words, Heb 10:2 : ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἂν ἐπαύσαντο προσφερόμεναι . The constant renewal of the yearly round of sacrifices proves that they were inefficacious, for had the worshippers once been cleansed they would have had no longer any consciousness of sins and would therefore have sought no renewal of sacrifice. ἐπαὶ , “since,” if the O.T. sacrifices had perfected those who used them. προσφερόμεναι corresponding to προσφέρουσιν , and τοὺς λατρεύοντας to τοὺς προσερχομένους of previous verse. ἅπαξ κεκαθ ., that is, once delivered from a sense of guilt, cf. Heb 9:14 , where συνείδησις is also used in same sense as here, the consciousness of sin as barring approach to God. The sinner once cleansed may, no doubt, be again defiled and experience a renewed consciousness of guilt. But in the writer’s view this consciousness is at once absorbed in the consciousness of his original cleansing. Cf. Joh 13:10 . ἀλλʼ ἐν αὐταῖς .… So far from these O.T. sacrifices once for all cleansing the conscience and thus perfecting the worshippers, “by and in them there is a yearly remembrance of sins,” that is, of sins not yet sufficiently atoned for by any past sacrifice. Cf. Num 5:15 . θυσία μνημοσύνου ἀναμιμνήσκουσα ἁμαρτίαν , and Philo, De Plantat. , 25, αἱ θυσίαι ὑπομιμνήσκουσαι τὰς ἑκάστων ἀγνοίας , κ . τ . λ . This remembrance of sins is κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν , which is most naturally referred to the annual confession of the whole people on the day of Atonement. The remembrance was not of sins previously atoned for but of sins committed since the previous sacrifice; there was no perception that any previous atonement was sufficient for all sin. The underlying ground of this inadequacy being expressed in Heb 10:4 . ἀδύνατον γὰρ .… “For it is impossible that the blood of oxen and goats should take away sins”. This obvious truth needs no proof. There is no relation between the physical blood of animals and man’s moral offence. Cf. the Choephori of Æschylus, 70, “all waters, joining together to cleanse from blood the polluted hand, may strive in vain”. ἀφαιρεῖν ἁμαρτίας , “to take away sins,” in the sense of removing their guilt as in Num 14:18 , Lev 10:17 , Rom 11:27 .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chap.

10:1-18.] Solemn conclusion of the argument: 1. Christ’s voluntary self-offering, as contrasted with the yearly offerings of victims under the law, is the carrying out of God’s real will (vv. 1-10): 2. Christ’s priestly service, in contrast to the daily repeated service of the priests of the law, is for ever perfected by one High-priestly act, which has issued in His Kingly exaltation and waiting till His foes be subdued under Him (vv. 11-14): 3. Christ’s finished work is the inauguration of that new covenant before referred to, in which, the law being written on the heart, and sin put away and forgotten, there is no more need for sin-offering (vv. 15-18). And so, as Delitzsch observes, in this passage the leading thoughts of the whole argument are brought together in one grand finale, just as in the finale of a piece of music all the hitherto scattered elements are united in an effective whole.

1-10.] See above.

1.] For (γάρ connects with the whole passage ch. 9:24-28: hitherto has been shewn the impossibility of Christ’s offering being repeated as were those of the law: now is to be shewn its absolute perfection as compared with those of the law) the law, having (as it has; the participle has a ratiocinative force, which passes on upon what follows) a shadow (or, ‘the shadow,’ which in sense would be much the same. The putting forward of the word to the beginning of the sentence would render it anarthrous. I prefer, however, ‘a shadow,’ because of the meaning of σκιάν, presently to be treated of: see below) of the good things to come (viz. the same good things of which, in ch. 9:11, Christ is said to be the High Priest,—which belong to the μέλλων αἰών of ch. 6:5, whose δυνάμεις are working in the present dispensation,—and to the completion of the οἰκουμένη μέλλουσα of ch. 2:5: the good things which are still future to us as they were to those under the law, but are now made sure to us in and by Christ), not the very image of the things (every representation of μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν must be an εἰκών, whether it be in words, or in types, or in any other method of representation. The full description and entire revelation of the things thus designated will be αὐτὴ ἡ εἰκὼν τῶν πραγμάτων: which we possess in the gospel covenant: the very setting forth and form of the heavenly realities themselves. So that the gen. πραγμάτων is the ‘genitivus substantiæ,’ as in Col 3:10, τὸν ἀνακαινούμενον … κατʼ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν, and Rom 8:29, συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ,—ὁ κτίσας in the one and ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ in the other, being and furnishing the εἰκών. But the law had no such εἰκών constructed out of the heavenly realities themselves, “ipsas res, certa sua forma et effigie præditas,” as Stier: it had merely σκιάν, merely a rough sketch or outline: so Chrys., not however to my mind entirely apprehending the identity of the εἰκών with the πράγματα which furnish it,—σκιὰν … τουτέστιν οὐκ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ἕως μὲν γὰρ ἂν ὡς ἐν γραφῇ περιάγῃ τις τὰ χρώματα, σκιά τις ἐστίν· ὅταν δὲ τὸ ἄνθος ἐπαλείψῃ τις καὶ ἐπιχρίσῃ τὰ χρώματα, τότε εἰκὼν γίνεται. See also Thdrt. and Œc.), year by year with the same sacrifices (most Commentators assume some inversion of arrangement in constructing the words κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν: some (Calvin, Erasm. Schmid, Wolf, Heinrichs, Bleek, De Wette, Stuart, al.) joining them with αἷς προσφέρουσιν, others (Lünem., al.) with ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, others (Carpzov, al.) with τοὺς προσερχομένους. But there is no need to disturb the plain order of the sentence, in which κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν belongs to all that follows, viz. to the verb, οὐδέποτε δύναται, with its instrumental clause, ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις αἷς κ.τ.λ. And so Ebrard, Hofmann, and Delitzsch. “This,” says Del., “is more accordant with the sense of the Writer: for he does not say, that the law by means of the offerings which were always the same year by year never was able to perfect, &c.,—but that the law, year by year, by the repetition of the same offerings, testified its inability to perfect, &c., viz. on the day of atonement, on which the same expiatory offerings were always repeated, being necessary, not withstanding the many offerings brought throughout the year, and after which the same round of offerings again began anew.” It will be evident that ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις must refer, not to the daily offering, but to those of propitiation on the great day of atonement) which they (the ministering priests, not οἱ προσερχόμενοι, as Hofmann ii. 1. 314, which would be against all the terminology of the Epistle, in which προσφέρειν is without exception confined to priests. We have the same distinction as regards the προσερχόμενοι in ch. 7:25) offer continually (Hofmann would join this with what follows, alleging that εἰς τὸ διηνεκές does not mean continually but continuously. And so Lachmann punctuates. But against such a construction I conceive it to be decisive, that thus αἷς προσφέρουσιν would be in the last degree flat and unmeaning, and that the verb δύναται would have two qualifying adverbial predicates, εἰς τὸ διηνεκές and οὐδέποτε. I do not imagine that any one accustomed to the style of our Epistle would tolerate such a sentence. And with regard to εἰς τὸ διηνεκές, granting the meaning to be continuously, why may not that meaning be applicable here? Hofmann says that it is not applicable to a continually repeated act, but only to a continuously enduring agency. But why should not the offering of these sacrifices be looked upon as continuous, being unbroken from year to year? When I say, ‘The celebration of the day of atonement continued unbroken till the destruction of Jerusalem,’ I use the same method of expression, and might express my meaning in Greek by διηνεκὴς ἦν, ἕως) never (not even at any time) is able to perfect (see on ref., where I have entered into the meanings of τελειοῦν in our Epistle) those who draw near (to God, by means of them. Tholuck well remarks that this threefold κατʼ ἐνιαυτόν, ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, εἰς τὸ διηνεκές, graphically sets forth the ever recurring cycle of the yearly sacrifices for sin).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He preventeth a privy objection. Why then were those sacrifices offered? The Apostle answereth first touching that yearly sacrifice which was the solemnest of all, wherein (saith he) there was made every year a remembrance again of all former sins. Therefore that sacrifice had no power to sanctify: for to what purpose should those sins which are purged be repeated again, and wherefore should new sins come to be repeated every year, if those sacrifices did abolish sin?

Of things which are everlasting, which were promised to the Fathers, and exhibited in Christ.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

CHAPTER X.

The insufficiency of the legal sacrifices to take away sin,

1-4.

The purpose and will of God, as declared by the Psalmist,

relative to the salvation of the world by the incarnation of

Christ; and our sanctification through that will, 5-10.

Comparison between the priesthood of Christ and that of the

Jews, 11-14.

The new covenant which God promised to make, and the blessings

of it, 15-17.

The access which genuine believers have to the holiest by the

blood of Jesus, 18-20.

Having a High Priest over the Church of God, we should have

faith, walk uprightly, hold fast our profession, exhort and help

each other, and maintain Christian communion, 21-25.

The danger and awful consequences of final apostasy, 26-31.

In order to our perseverance, we should often reflect on past

mercies, and the support afforded us in temptations and

afflictions; and not cast away our confidence, for we shall

receive the promise if we patiently fulfil the will of God,

32-37.

The just by faith shall live; but the soul that draws back shall

die, 38.

The apostle's confidence in the believing Hebrews, 39.

NOTES ON CHAP. X.

Verse 1. The law, having a shadow of good things to come] A shadow, σκια, signifies,

1. Literally, the shade cast from a body of any kind, interposed between the place on which the shadow is projected, and the sun or light; the rays of the light not shining on that place, because intercepted by the opacity of the body, through which they cannot pass.

2. It signifies, technically, a sketch, rude plan, or imperfect draught of a building, landscape, man, beast, c.

3. It signifies, metaphorically, any faint adumbration, symbolical expression, imperfect or obscure image of a thing and is opposed to σωμα, body, or the thing intended to be thereby defined.

4. It is used catachrestically among the Greek writers, as umbra is among the Latins, to signify any thing vain, empty, light, not solid; thus Philostratus, Vit. Soph., lib. i. cap. 20: Ὁτι σκια και ονειρατα αἱ ἡδοναι πασαι· All pleasures are but SHADOWS and dreams. And Cicero, in Pison., cap. 24: Omnes umbras falsae gloriae consectari. "All pursue the SHADOWS of FALSE GLORY." And again, De Offic., lib. iii. cap. 17: Nos veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et itnaginibus utimur. "We have no solid and express effigy of true law and genuine justice, but we employ shadows and images to represent them."

And not the very image] εικων, image, signifies,

1. A simple representation, from εικω, I am like.

2. The form or particular fashion of a thing.

3. The model according to which any thing is formed.

4. The perfect image of a thing as opposed to a faint representation.

5. Metaphorically, a similitude, agreement, or conformity.

The law, with all its ceremonies and sacrifices, was only a shadow of spiritual and eternal good. The Gospel is the image or thing itself, as including every spiritual and eternal good.

We may note three things here:

1. The shadow or general outline, limiting the size and proportions of the thing to be represented.

2. The image or likeness completed from this shadow or general outline, whether represented on paper, canvass, or in statuary,

3. The person or thing thus represented in its actual, natural state of existence; or what is called here the very image of the things, αυτην την εικονα των πραγματων.

Such is the Gospel, when compared with the law; such is Christ, when compared with Aaron; such is his sacrifice, when compared with the Levitical offerings; such is the Gospel remission of sins and purification, when compared with those afforded by the law; such is the Holy Ghost, ministered by the Gospel, when compared with its types and shadows in the Levitical service; such the heavenly rest, when compared with the earthly Canaan. Well, therefore, might the apostle say, The law was only the shadow of good things to come.

Can never - make the comers thereunto perfect.] Cannot remove guilt from the conscience, or impurity from the heart. I leave preachers to improve these points.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. For the Law having a shadow, etc. He has borrowed this similitude from the pictorial art; for a shadow here is in a sense different from what it has in Colossians 2:17; where he calls the ancient rites or ceremonies shadows, because they did not possess the real substance of what they represented. But he now says that they were like rude lineaments, which shadow forth the perfect picture; for painters, before they introduce the living colors by the pencil, are wont to mark out the outlines of what they intend to represent. This indistinct representation is called by the Greeks σκιαγραφία, which you might call in Latin, “umbratilem“, shadowy. The Greeks had also the εἰκὼν, the full likeness. Hence also “eiconia” are called images (imagines) in Latin, which represent to the life the form of men or of animals or of places.

The difference then which the Apostle makes between the Law and the Gospel is this, — that under the Law was shadowed forth only in rude and imperfect lines what is under the Gospel set forth in living colors and graphically distinct. He thus confirms again what he had previously said, that the Law was not useless, nor its ceremonies unprofitable. For though there was not in them the image of heavenly things, finished, as they say, by the last touch of the artist; yet the representation, such as it was, was of no small benefit to the fathers; but still our condition is much more favorable. We must however observe, that the things which were shown to them at a distance are the same with those which are now set before our eyes. Hence to both the same Christ is exhibited, the same righteousness, sanctification, and salvation; and the difference only is in the manner of painting or setting them forth.

Of good things to come, etc. These, I think, are eternal things. I indeed allow that the kingdom of Christ, which is now present with us, was formerly announced as future; but the Apostle’s words mean that we have a lively image of future blessings. He then understands that spiritual pattern, the full fruition of which is deferred to the resurrection and the future world. At the same time I confess again that these good things began to be revealed at the beginning of the kingdom of Christ; but what he now treats of is this, that they are not only future blessings as to the Old Testament, but also with respect to us, who still hope for them.

Which they offered year by year, etc. He speaks especially of the yearly sacrifice, mentioned in Leviticus 16, though all the sacrifices are here included under one kind. Now he reasons thus: When there is no longer any consciousness of sin, there is then no need of sacrifice; but under the Law the offering of the same sacrifice was often repeated; then no satisfaction was given to God, nor was guilt removed nor were consciences appeased; were it otherwise there would have been made an end of sacrificing. We must further carefully observe, that he calls those the same sacrifices which were appointed for a similar purpose; for a better notion may be formed of them by the design for which God instituted them, than by the different beasts which were offered.

And this one thing is abundantly sufficient to confute and expose the subtlety of the Papists, by which they seem to themselves ingeniously to evade an absurdity in defending the sacrifice of the mass; for when it is objected to them that the repetition of the sacrifice is superfluous, since the virtue of that sacrifice which Christ offered is perpetual, they immediately reply that the sacrifice in the mass is not different but the same. This is their answer. But what, on the contrary, does the Apostle say? He expressly denies that the sacrifice which is repeatedly offered, though the same, is efficacious or capable of making an atonement. Now, though the Papists should cry out a thousand times that the sacrifice which Christ once offered is the same with, and not different from what they make daily, I shall still always contend, according to the express words of the Apostle, that since the offerings of Christ availed to pacify God, not only an end was put to former sacrifices, but that it is also impious to repeat the sacrifice. It is hence quite evident that the offering of Christ in the mass is sacrilegious.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(1) A Shadow of good things to come.—These words have already come before us; the “shadow” in Heb_8:5, and “the good things to come” in the ordinary reading of Heb_9:11.

Not the very image.—The antithesis is hardly what we should have expected. The word “image” is indeed consistent with the very closest and most perfect likeness; but why is the contrast to “shadow” expressed by a word which cannot denote more than likeness, and not by a reference to the things themselves? The answer would seem to be that, from the very nature of the “good things to come,” the law could not be conceived of as having the things themselves; but had it possessed “the very image” of them, a representation so perfect might have been found to bring with it equal efficacy.

Can never with those sacrifices.—It is difficult to ascertain the exact Greek text in the latter half of this verse. With the ordinary reading the general construction of the sentence is that which the Authorised version represents, “For the law . . . can never . . . make perfect.” The better MSS., however, read “they can,” a change which introduces some irregularity of construction: the pronoun “they” must probably in this case be understood of the priests. The order of the Greek is also very peculiar. Two translations of the verse (with the changed reading) may be given: (1) “They can never with the same sacrifices year by year which they offer continually make them that draw nigh perfect.” (2) “They can never year by year, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually, make them that draw nigh perfect.” The difference between the two renderings will be easily seen. The former makes the whole sentence to relate to the annual sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, and gives to “continually” almost the same meaning as “year by year.” The meaning of the latter is that by the annual sacrifices, which are the same as those which the priests are offering for the people day by day (for the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement did not in itself differ from the ordinary sin offering), they cannot make the worshippers perfect. The latter translation agrees best with the original, and conveys a very striking thought. It is open, however, to a very serious objection—that it separates the verse into two incongruous parts. That annual sacrifices not different in kind from the sin offerings which were presented day by day (and which the very institution of the Day of Atonement declared to be imperfect) could not bring to the worshippers what they needed, is an important argument; but it has no connection with the first words of the verse. Hence, though the Greek does not very readily yield the former translation, it is probably to be preferred. With the expression “them that draw nigh” or “approach” (to God) comp. Heb_7:26, where the same word is used. On “make perfect” see Heb_7:11; Heb_9:9.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–14. The one Sacrifice and the many Sacrifices

1. of good things to come] Of the good things which Christ had now brought into the world (Heb_9:11).

not the very image of the things] “The Law,” says St Ambrose, “had the shadow; the Gospel the image; the Reality itself is in Heaven.” By the word image is meant the true historic form. The Gospel was as much closer a resemblance of the Reality as a statue is a closer resemblance than a pencilled outline.

can never] This may be the right reading, though the plural “they are never able,” is found in some mss. If this latter be the true reading the sentence begins with an unfinished construction (anakoluthon).

with those sacrifices …] Rather, “with the same sacrifices, year by year, which they offer continuously, make perfect them that draw nigh,” i.e. the Priests can never with their sacrifices, which are the same year by year, perfect the worshippers. Some have given a fuller sense to the words “the same,” as though it meant that even the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement cannot make any one perfect, being as they are, after all, the same sacrifices in their inmost nature as those which are offered every morning and evening.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the law having a shadow of good things to come,.... By which is meant not the moral law, for that is not a shadow of future blessings, but a system of precepts; the things it commands are not figuratively, but really good and honest; and are not obscure, but plain and easy to be understood; nor are they fleeting and passing away, as a shadow, but lasting and durable: but the ceremonial law is intended; this was a "shadow", a figure, a representation of something true, real, and substantial; was dark and obscure, yet had in it, and gave, some glimmering light; and was like a shadow, fleeting and transitory: and it was a shadow of good things; of Christ himself, who is the body, the sum and substance of it, and of the good things to come by him; as the expiation of sin, peace and reconciliation, a justifying righteousness, pardon of sin, and eternal life; these are said to be "to come", as they were under the former dispensation, while the ceremonial law was in force, and that shadow was in being, and the substance not as yet.

And not the very image of the things; as it had not neither the things themselves, nor Christ, the substance of them, so it did not give a clear revelation of them, as is made in the Gospel, nor exhibit a distinct delineation of them, such as an image expresses; it only gave some short and dark hints of future good things, but did not exactly describe them: and therefore

can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually: namely, the sacrifices of bullocks and goats, which were offered on the day of atonement, year after year, in successive generations, from the first appointment of that day, to the writing of this epistle: sacrifices of such a kind, and so often repeated, could never

make the comers thereunto perfect; either the people that came to the temple, and brought them to the priests to offer them for them, or the priests that offered them; so the Syriac and Ethiopic versions render it, "perfect them that offer"; and if not one, then not the other: legal sacrifices could not make perfect expiation of sin; there is no proportion between them and sin: nor did they extend to all sin, and at most only typically expiated; nor could they justify and cleanse from sin. Contrary to this, the Jews (p) say,

"when Israel was in the holy land, there was no iniquity found in them, for the sacrifices which they offered every day stoned for them;''

but spiritual sacrificers and worshippers were expiated, justified, and cleansed another way, even by the blood of Christ, slain from the foundation of the world in purpose, promise, and type, and to which their faith had respect in every sacrifice.

(p) Zohar in Gen. fol. 107. 1.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

Ver. 1. A Shadow of good things, &c.] That is, of Christ, saith one. When the sun is behind, the shadow is before; when the sun is before, the shadow is behind. So was it in Christ to them of old. This Sun was behind, and therefore the law or shadow was before; to us under grace the Sun is before, and so now the ceremonies of the law, these shadows, are behind, yea, vanished away.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the law having a shadow - That is, the whole of the Mosaic economy was a shadow; for so the word “Law” is often used. The word “shadow” here refers to a rough outline of anything, a mere sketch, such as a carpenter draws with a piece of chalk, or such as an artist delineates when he is about to make a picture. He sketches an outline of the object which he designs to draw, which has “some” resemblance to it, but is not the “very image;” for it is not yet complete. The words rendered “the very image” refer to a painting or statue which is finished, where every part is an exact copy of the original. The “good things to come” here refer to the future blessings which would be conferred on man by the gospel. The idea is, that under the ancient sacrifices there was an imperfect representation; a dim outline of the blessings which the gospel would impart to people. They were a typical representation; they were not such that it could be pretended that they would answer the purpose of the things themselves which they were to represent, and would make those who offered them perfect. Such a rude outline; such a mere sketch, or imperfect delineation, could no more answer the purpose of saving the soul than the rough sketch which an architect makes would answer the purpose of a house, or than the first outline which a painter draws would answer the purpose of a perfect and finished portrait. All that could be done by either would be to convey some distant and obscure idea of what the house or the picture might be, and this was all that was done by the Law of Moses.

Can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually - The sacrifices here particularly referred to were those which were offered on the great day of atonement. These were regarded as the most sacred and efficacious of all, and yet the apostle says that the very fact that they were offered every year showed that there must be some deficiency about them, or they would have ceased to be offered.

Make the comers thereunto perfect - They could not free them from the stains of guilt; they could not give ease to a troubled conscience; there was in them no efficacy by which sin could be put away; compare the notes on Heb 7:11; Heb 9:9.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The law having a shadow [1] of the good things to come. The apostle continues till the 19th verse to shew the insufficiency of the former law, as to the redemption and salvation of mankind. By the good things to come, some understand heaven itself, and the happiness of the elect there, of which the law was but a shadow, whereas we have a much more perfect image and knowledge of heaven in the new law, than they who were under the former law. Others by good things to come, understand the blessings of interior graces, with a remission of our sins in the sight of God, and true sanctification, of which all the sacrifices and sacraments of the old law, without faith in Christ, were but a shadow: and now in the new law we have an express image of them, i.e. we have these blessings themselves. (Witham)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Umbram,...non ipsam imaginem rerum, Greek: skian, ouk auten ten eikona. It seems hard to take Greek: eikona for the things themselves represented; but only to signify, expressam imaginem.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Vers. 1-19. CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT WITH RESPECT TO CHRIST"S ETERNAL PRIESTHOOD.

For the Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. The Law is said here to exhibit a shadow (skian) of the good things to come (twn mellontwn agaywn), viz. of the "good things" of which Christ is come as "High Priest", (Heb_9:11) belonging to the mellwn aiwn , (Heb_6:5) mellousa oikoumenh , (Heb_2:5) which is still, in its full realization, future to us, though already inaugurated by Christ, and though we have already tasted the powers of it. (Heb_6:5) Similarly (Heb_8:5) the priests under the Law are said to have served a copy and shadow of the heavenly things; i.e. of the heavenly realities to be revealed in the "coming age." To "shadow" is opposed "very image" (eikona), which means, not a representation apart from the things (as a statue or portrait may be called an image), but (as emphasized by authn) the actual presentment of the things themselves; which were, in fact, archetypal and prior to the shadows of the Law, though their manifestation was reserved to the future age. Such is the sense of eikwn in Col_3:10, kat eikona tou ktisantov auton : and Rom_8:29, summorfouv thv eikonov tou uiou . (Cf. Col_1:15, where Christ is called eikwtou : cf. also Col_2:17, where skia is opposed to swma shadow to body. ) In the latter part of the verse, "they," who "offer," are the priests of the Law; "the comers thereunto" (oi prosercomenoi) are the people who resort to the rites. "Make perfect" (teleiwsai) means full accomplishment for them of what is aimed at; in this case, remission of sin, and acceptance after complete atonement. The verb teleioun , though variously applied, signifies always full completion of the purpose in view. (cf. Heb_7:19, ouden gawsen o nomov) (For its application to Christ himself, see under Heb_2:10 Heb_5:9)

Vers. 1-18. Close of the argument.

This concluding passage presents little more than a re-statement of some points which have been already marked in the discussion which occupies the three preceding chapters. The kernel-thought of the paragraph is expressed in ver. 9: "He taketh away the first" (the Jewish sacrifices), "that he may establish the second" (redemption by the sacrifice of himself).

I THE INHERENT WORTHLESSNESS OF THE LEVITICAL SACRIFICES, (Vers. 1-4.) Although these availed to remove ceremonial uncleanness, and were the appointed types of the offering of Christ, they were literally useless in relation to the highest ends of sacrifice. The apostle notes three points.

1. The Levitical offerings were inadequate even as representations of the true Sacrifice. (Ver. 1.) The entire Jewish ceremonial-tabernacle, priest, victim was "a shadow" of the coming blessings of the gospel dispensation. But it was "not the very image of the things;" it presented only a rude and incomplete sketch of the great facts and doctrines of Christianity. Take one point as an example. The victims under the Law were dragged unwillingly to the altar; how inaccurate this feature as compared with the loving obedience and the voluntary self-sacrifice of the Lord Jesus!

2. They were of no use whatever for the removal of guilt. The necessity constantly to repeat them showed this (vers. 1, 2). And so did the nature of the sacrifices themselves. Our reason readily assents to the declaration (ver. 4) that the blood of beasts can never expiate the sins of men. Brute nature is incapable of spiritual suffering. Animal sacrifices could not adequately reflect God"s hatred of sin. They could not vindicate his justice, or recompense his Law. Such blood has no virtue to pacify the conscience, or to purify the soul.

3. Their influence went to perpetuate the remembrance of sins. (Ver. 3.) The divinely appointed repetition of the Levitical sacrifices showed that God could not accept them as a real atonement, and therefore could not forget the offences of the worshippers. It was intended also to press home upon the consciences of the people the thought of the accumulated arrears of unexpiated sin.

II THE INHERENT VALUE OF THE SATISFACTION OF CHRIST. (Vers. 5-18.) Throughout these verses two passages are cited from the Old Testament, to illustrate the contrast between the legal offerings and the atonement of the Lord Jesus. The infinite merit of his sacrifice is conspicuous, whatever the aspect in which it is viewed.

1. Christ"s satisfaction has shown that obedience is the true sacrifice. (Vers. 5-9.) To illustrate this point the writer quotes from a Messianic. (Psa_40:6-8) God "delights not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats." The legal sacrifices were useful only as types of the sacrifice of Christ, and his blood is the symbol of his own perfect obedience as our Substitute. His sacrifice of himself was the offering of an obedient will. He was obedient unto death." The" cars" which God had pierced for (Psa_40:6) were ever swift to hear the Divine commands, and the "body" which he had prepared for him (Heb_10:5) readily submitted itself to the Divine will. In coming to the world, and in dying for man"s redemption, Jesus was "doing the will" of his Father. His voluntary "obedience unto death" has swept away for ever the Levitical sin offerings, and his people can now serve God acceptably only by sprinkling themselves with his blood, and then "presenting their bodies a living sacrifice.

2. Christ"s satisfaction has accomplished the removal of guilt. (Vers. 10-14.) His people are "sanctified," i.e. cleansed from guilt, through the offering of his body once for all." The Aaronical priests always stood at their work; they never sat down in the tabernacle. Indeed, no seats were provided for them there. Their constant standing was suggestive of the fact that the ever-repeated sacrifices were of no avail for the pardon of transgression. But our high Priest, after his one offering of himself as a sacrificial Victim, sat down in the most honorable place of the heavenly holy of holies, and still continues to sit there. His very attitude shows that he has fully accomplished the end contemplated by his sacrifice. His completed atonement, besides being the purchase of his mediatorial royalty and the pledge of his final victory over his enemies, has also "perfected" his people "forever" as regards their justification.

3. Christ"s satisfaction takes away the remembrance of sin. (Vers. 15-18.) The Prophet Jeremiah, in his oracle about the new covenant, had predicted. (Jer_31:34) After the sacrifice of Calvary, there would be no more need for the annual expiatory rite on the Day of Atonement a ceremony which, in fact, had only served to bring sins to remembrance. Now that the great redemption has been accomplished, the iniquities of the believer are really swept away and put an end to. God blots them out. He casts them behind his back. He makes them as though they had never been. And this obliteration evinces the absolute perfection of the atonement, and certifies the abolition of the Hebrew sacrifices.

HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG. Ver. 1. The Law, its service and its limits.

I THE AIM OF GOD. To make men perfect. All God"s revelations and the powers belonging to them have this for their end, to take imperfect men (men in whom there are all sorts of imperfections, physical, intellectual, spiritual, men who have mixed with their nature a corrupt and debasing clement) and make them perfect. And this is to be done according to a Divine standard of perfection, not a human one. Indeed, that human excellence should attain a Divine standard is as necessary for the satisfaction of man as it is for the glory of God. All that is instrumental and ministerial about human life is to be measured as it serves towards the perfecting of the individual man in true godliness and Christian character. And we must ever remember this in the midst of all the infirmities and lapses of our present life. We are, indeed, strangely blind to the marvelous possibilities that lie hid in every human being. We often have to say of men that their purposes are broken off, but forget all the time that God"s purposes for men may all be fulfilled if only they are willing to be coworkers together with him.

II THE SERVICE OF THE LAW. The Law, taken in its most comprehensive sense, including commandments as to conduct on the out hand, and ceremonies on the other, was of immediate service in two ways.

It made men dissatisfied with their present selves, and intensely anxious to be better. If it did not give a standard of life positively, it was something that it gave one negatively. One of the great merits of Psalm 119. is in showing what the Law could do by way of stirring up spiritual aspirations, and filling men with a sublime discontent. For what the writer of this psalm expresses, thousands must have felt. Like Paul, they wanted to do good, yet evil was present with them. And always, to many, the Law must have been indeed a shadow of good things to come, a proof that there was abiding substance which would one day be manifested.

III THE LIMITS OF THE LAW. The Law was good as indicating where perfection lay; but there was in it nothing dynamic, nothing to advance men one stage nearer perfection. Indeed, the Law, apart from its proper sequel in Christ, would have done harm rather than good, inasmuch as it would have driven men to despair. Perfection would have been seen across an impassable abyss. It has always been a curse of fallen human nature that what God gives for one purpose man uses for another. In the course of ages the Jew had reduced a Law meant to rouse the heart, a Law that in the very essence of it was spiritual, to a mere collection of external ceremonies. The Law was reckoned as something that could be obeyed with the hands and lips. And because men had lost the main part of the Law, the Law itself must have fallen into disrepute with many. Outwardly they saw a profession of religion; inwardly they saw a sordid and uncharitable life. And even the gospel may be misused as much as the Law. There may be an outward semblance of connection with Christ, while he has no power over the heart. Men did come to the Law seeking perfection; all Pharisees were not bad men at heart; their consciences were misled by traditional teaching as to the importance of ceremonies. In their own strength they did their very best to obey. What is wanted is that we should really come to Christ, that our hearts should be brought fully under the regenerating power of his Spirit. Then shall we know something of steady and joyous approach "to perfection; for while perfection itself may only come by slow degrees, yet Christ surely means us to have the satisfaction of knowing constantly that we are in the right way. Y.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

From all that has been said it appears, that the law, the Mosaic dispensation, being a bare, unsubstantial shadow of good things to come, of the gospel blessings, and not the substantial, solid image of them, can never with the same kind of sacrifices, though continually repeated, make the comers thereunto perfect, either as to justification or sanctification. How is it possible, that any who consider this should suppose the attainments of David, or any who were under that dispensation, to be the proper measure of gospel holiness; and that Christian experience is to rise no higher than Jewish?

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

perfect

(See Scofield "Mat 5:48").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Insufficiency of the Old Testament Sacrifices Compared with the One Perfect Offering of Christ.

The insufficiency of the Old Testament offerings:

v. 1. for the Law, having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

v. 2. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because that the worshipers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins.

v. 3. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every. year.

v. 4. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

The fact which has stood out in the entire discussion till now, namely, that all the acts of worship in the Old Testament cult were only figurative, symbolical, typical, is here restated in order to stress the finality of Christ’s one sacrifice: For the Law, having merely a shadow of the good things to come, not the actual figure of the things, can never make perfect, with the same sacrifices which they offer year by year perpetually, those that draw near. The Law with all its rites, ceremonies, sacrifices was but a shadow of the really good things to come in and with Christ; what it offered was inadequate, unsubstantial. With the appearing of Christ the better covenant was ushered in, for He brought the reality, in Him salvation was realized. In the Old Testament, indeed, the coming of the great spiritual blessings was intimated and prophesied, and the believers placed their hope of salvation in the Messiah that was to be manifested. But they were still obliged, year after year and generation after generation, to bring the same sacrifices, to renew their offerings, to expiate their sins by symbolical acts, to reconcile the God of the covenant through the blood of bullocks and goats, all of which, in itself, could not make the worshipers perfect, just as no repetition of the shadow can amount to the substance.

To emphasize this truth, the writer asks: Otherwise they would surely have ceased to be offered;—because of the no longer having a consciousness of sins the worshipers that were once cleansed. If the worship, the sacrifices, the offerings of the Old Testament had succeeded in making the people that partook in them perfect, if they had actually been cleansed from their sins and of the consciousness of guilt, then they certainly would not have sought a renewal of the sacrifices year after year. It was because the entire cult of the Jews had power only in so far as it foreshadowed the perfect sacrifice of Christ that it was of any benefit at all. Being, however, only a type, the annual repetition of the sacrifices of atonement became necessary.

It remains true, then, as the author concludes: But in them there is a remembrance again of sins every year, for it is impossible that the blood of bullocks and of goats should take away sins. The sacrifices being unable in themselves to work perfection in the worshipers, their annual repetition became really an annual reminder of sins. The writer seems to have in mind especially the great Day of Atonement, on the tenth day of the seventh month in the Jewish year. On that day, in the most solemn and impressive Temple service in the entire year, the trespasses of the entire people were confessed before the assembled multitude, their sins were ever again recalled to their mind. The sacrifices of the day mere able to symbolize, to point forward to, the one perfect Sacrifice which took away the sins of the world; but they themselves were not able to produce this glorious effect. They were insufficient, inadequate; they could not remove the guilt that burdened man’s conscience. The Old Testament believer that wanted to be sure of his salvation could reach this happy state only by trusting in the coming Messiah.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In the former part of this chapter, the apostle proves the impotency and imperfection of the Levitical sacrifices by sundry arguments; namely, first from the nature of them, they were but shadows; from the plurality of them, they were many; from the repetition of them, they were often; and from the efficaciousness of them, they could not take away sin.

The former of these is taken notice of, in this first verse, The law having a shadow of good things to come. An allusion probably to the art of painting, wherein a shadow is first drawn; and afterwards the very image itself: or a metaphor taken from the shadow of a body in the light of the sun. As a shadow is the representation of a body; a just and true representation of a body; the life, vigour, and spirit of a body, cannot be represented by it:

Thus was it between the sacrifices of the law, and the sacrifice of Christ; the blood of those sacrifices were representations of Christ: They were a just representation of Christ: He was the idea in the mind of God, whan Moses was charged to make all things according to the pattern showed him in the mount; and they were but an obscure and dark representation of him; the glory and efficacy of these good things appeared not visible in them.

Learn hence, That whatever there may be in religious institutions, and the diligent observation of them, if they only shadow forth Jesus Christ, and do not actually exhibit him to the faith of believers, with the benefits of his mediation, they cannot make us perfect, nor give us acceptance with God.

Here we have a second argument to prove the impotency and weakness of the legal sacrifices; and it is drawn from the repetition and non-cessation of them.

Thus, "Those sacrifices which were often repeated, year by year, could not of themselves make satisfaction for sin, or purge the conscience of the sinner from guilt. Had justice been satisfied, and conscience quited, there had been no reason why those sacrifices should have been so often repeated. But the case was otherwise, for in their most solemn sacrifices there was a commemoration and confession made of their former sins by the High Priest every year; which was an intimation to them, that they needed a new and better sacrifice for the expiation of sin, namely, that of the Messiah, in and by which alone remission of sin was to be expected and obtained."

Learn hence, 1. That the repetition and reiteration of the same sacrifices, is an evident demonstration of their weakness and insufficiency. Accordingly the church of Rome, by affirming the sacrifice in the mass to be the very same with that which Christ offered on the cross, do prove an insufficiency in the sacrifice of Christ for the expiation of sin, if the apostle’s argument here be good: For he affirms, that all sacrifices that must be repeated are weak and insufficient.

Learn, 2. That although repeated sins have need of repeated confession, and renewed pardon, yet they have no need of a sacrifice; For he who is once purged has no more conscience of sin, that is, though he knows he has many sins, yet he has not a trembling, tormenting, accusing conscience, because he is purged, and his sins pardoned, through that one sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Learn, 3. That the discharge of conscience from the guilt of sin, by virtue of the sacrifice of Christ, is a full demonstration of the sufficiency of the virtue of that sacrifice: And that there needs no reiteration of it, but only fresh applications made unto it by repeated acts and exercises of faith.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

ARGUMENT 11

LAW AND GOSPEL.

1. “Law” here means the bloody ritual of Sinai, instituted to serve as a schoolmaster (Gal 3:24) to bring us to Christ. The innumerable bloody rites, which under the Gospel have been reduced to the simple eucharist, emblematized the work of Christ, while the vast and copious ablutions, typifying the work of the Spirit, have been simplified into the initiatory rite of water baptism. “For the Law having the shadow of good things to come and not the precise form of the things.” From this statement we see the folly of all sticklerism on Church ordinances. It is simple nonsense, since as we here see the precise form has not been revealed. The ordinance is the “shadow” of the great spiritual reality. A shadow is a very indefinite thing. It may be infinitely less or greater than the substance, owing to the position of the luminary, or it may have a very different shape, as there is nothing definite nor arbitrary about it. Hence we see the unscriptural folly of the vast dogmatism on water baptism, which has so long constituted the battlefield among the sects. In the first place, it is nothing but a “shadow” and utterly unsubstantial. In the second place, it is not definitely revealed as to form or quantity. This is divine wisdom, as specification would only augment the ecclesiastical tendency to idolatry, which has already wrecked millions of souls. Again, the “shadow” is no part of the substance and not at all essential to its existence. Hence the ordinances are no part of Christianity, nor at all essential to salvation.

They are only shadows representing spiritual realities. Multiplied millions of superficial professors have taken the “shadow” for the substance, starved to death, and made their bed in hell. No wonder, when they have so many preachers unconverted and utterly ignorant of spiritual, and at the same time egotistical and bombastic in collegiate learning, standing in the pulpit and doing their utmost to persuade the people that these empty shadows constitute the alpha and omega of the Christian religion. The Gospel is no ritualism, morality, philanthropy nor churchism. It is all spirituality. Paul, in Rom 1:16, gives a positive, lexical definition of Gospel, i.e., “The power [Greek, dynamite] of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” When the sinner believes convicting truth, then the dynamite of the Holy Ghost convicts him. When the penitent believes converting truth, then the dynamite of conversion strikes him. And when the Christian believes the great Bible truth of original sin surviving in the regenerate, then the dynamite of conviction for sanctification strikes in. When the consecrated Christian believes sanctifying truth then the dynamite of sanctification blows all the inbred sin out of his heart. It is sad to contemplate thousands in the pulpits and the pews utterly ignorant of the very definition of the Gospel they vainly think they preach and the religion they hypocritically profess. No wonder Jesus says the saved are few. The great popular churches, both papal and Protestant, have gone back into the fogs of Mosaic legalism. “Are not able to make the comers thereunto perfect.” Heaven is a perfect world. Hence all hope of heaven, founded on God’s word, utterly and eternally breaks down without perfection. The great trouble with all of this legalistic religion is that it is only a shadow, destitute of the substance, which is spiritual salvation.

2. “Since they would have ceased being offered because the worshipers, having been once purified, would have had no more conscience of sins.” It is a significant fact this day that no worshipers in all the world ever g rid of the “conscience of sins” except the “holiness people.” The simple truth of the matter is, they are groping along amid the shadows and burdens of the Law dispensation, seeking salvation not by the free, glorious, omnipotent grace of God in Christ, witnessed by the Holy Ghost, but by the works of the Law. It is wonderful with what rapidity the great Protestant churches are annually adding to their ecclesiastical codes more and more laws, thus burdening their necks with still more yokes, though they are unable to bear what they have. The effect of all this is to crowd God out, increase the reign of that legal bondage which is already intolerable, thus drifting farther from God and spirituality. The extent to which the intolerable legalism in the churches is multiplying infidels and alienating the multitudes from Christianity is simply fearful. They come and try the so-called Christian religion, find nothing in it but a yoke of bondage, give it up in disgust, turn infidels, make the most of this world and plunge into hell.

3, 4. If the Mosaic ritual, one hundred times so operose as the Gospel ritual, had no power to take away sins, away with the silly sophistry that simple church joining and water baptism will take away sin. It is nonsense in the extreme.

5-7. We learn from these verses that the body of Christ is the only ransom for the sins of the world. When Solomon dedicated the temple he sacrificed twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. All this immense sacrifice had no power to take away sins. It is only adumbratory of the great Antitype bleeding on the Cross of Calvary.

Water baptism and the eucharist are surviving symbolisms on the same line, the latter representing Christ and the former the Holy Ghost. How utterly silly, preposterous and nonsensical to impute salvation to these minified shadows! The imputation of saving efficacy to church ordinances is downright idolatry. Their utility is simply to teach us the work of Christ and the Holy Ghost, without which the soul is irretrievably lost.

9. “He taketh away the first that He may establish the second.” God has taken away the Law dispensation that He may establish that of the Gospel, i.e., the pure spirituality of salvation by grace. It is deplorable with this statement before our eyes to see the Church of the present day crowded full of legalisms, if possible eclipsing the Mosaic dispensation, competing with each other in the multiplication of institutions and laws, the fearful trend of which is to idolatry and infidelity. No wonder they fight the holiness movement, which is really the only advocate of pure, Bible, spiritual religion on the globe. While the Law has nothing but conviction, and is utterly destitute of salvation, the justified Christian is in a mixed experience. The new creation created in his heart by the Holy Ghost by regeneration is under grace, but the man of sin conquered and hound in regeneration is still under the law. Hence the crucifixion of Adam the first is the only full and final deliverance from legal bondage. When a child learns its alphabet it passes on to spelling and reading; forever leaving the alphabet as a study, though carrying it on, he still uses it as an instrument in spelling and reading. Likewise in sanctification, we pass on from the plain of justification up to the beautiful highlands of entire sanctification, above the line of fog, malaria and mosquitoes, where the Sun of Righteousness shines night and day, the flowers never fade and the fruits never fail, though we still hold the justification plain in our spiritual conquest. If defeated and forced to retreat, we could drop back, recuperate our shattered forces and give the devil another fight on the justification plain.

10. “By whose will we have been sanctified once by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, and have it yet better than ever.” In this verse Apollos and his comrades certainly give us a grand testimony to their sanctification. In my translation the latter clause is given by way of circumlocution in order to translate fully the Greek perfect tense. Like the English perfect it conveys an action complete in past time, developing a state which continues down to the present. But unlike the English which gives the emphasis to the past the Greek lays it on the present. Hence the necessity of adding the latter clause by circumlocution, i.e., have it yet better than ever. So when you want a clear and unequivocal inspired testimony to entire sanctification received instantaneously and retained with augmented brilliancy, unction and glory, read Apollos (Heb 10:10).

11. Here the Holy Ghost again affirms the frequently repeated declaration of the utter incompetency of the Mosaic ritual to take away sins. Since it was a thousand times so magnitudinous as the simple Gospel ritual, which is homogeneous with it and a simple survival of it, how ridiculously foolish to impute salvation to the latter, which is the damnable heresy of the present age. Millions of people in the churches are humbugged with the senseless sophistry that water baptism and other church rites take away their sins. Momentous will be the responsibility of the blind preachers who thus deceive them, when they all stand before the great white throne.

12, 13. “But Himself having offered up one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God, waiting till His enemies may finally be made His footstool.” Here the Holy Ghost, by His clear and unequivocal affirmation, forever settles the sin problem. The sacrifice of our Savior’s body is the only possible vicarious offering, to which all the world are invited to come and be saved. Not only did Jesus once for all settle the sin problem when He died on the cross, but He completely triumphed over the devil, who the last six thousand years has been doing his utmost to establish his diabolical claim to this world. Jesus not only bought and paid for all the human souls and bodies, from fallen Adam down to the remotest generation, but he bought and paid for this world itself, with its meteorological environments, all of which had been so polluted by sin as to absolutely necessitate their complete sanctification and renovation. Having bought and paid for this whole world, with its population and environments, the Father crowned Him Mediatorial King at His right hand, significant of His perfect satisfaction of the redemption which Jesus wrought on the cross. Pursuant to His acceptance of the Son’s perfect mediatorial work, the Father said to Him,

“Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Daniel 8.

and John in Rev 16:19, vividly describe the awful premilennial judgments, when the Father shall come down and verify this promise to His Son, shaking from His throne every usurper, political or ecclesiastical, and thus preparing the way for the Son to ride down on the millennial throne of His glory, to take possession of the world which He purchased by His blood, Satan being finally ejected and incarcerated in the dungeons of hell.

14. “For by one offering He forever perfected the sanctified.” The connection of this wonderful verse by the causative conjugation with the preceding promise ratifies the glowing anticipations of the crowns and kingdoms awaiting the sanctified members of the bridehood in the millennial triumphs. Oh, the unutterable gracious possibilities emanating from the one offering which Jesus made on the cross, i.e., full and complete justification, glorious and thorough sanctification and eternal promotion to thrones, crowns and scepters in the coming kingdom.

15. “And the Holy Spirit doth witness this to us.” Well does Richard Watson, the great Methodist theologian, testify that the Holy Spirit doth witness to the work of entire sanctification separate and distinct from justification, quite as clearly as He doth witness to our regeneration. At the present day we have great preachers proclaiming through the church papers that no one can have the witness of sanctification distinct from regeneration. I still prefer to keep company with the Bible and the old Methodists. The only conclusion deducible from such a statement is that the man who makes that statement has never been sanctified and, consequently, has no witness to the experience. This verse settles forever the testimony of the Holy Ghost witnessing to our sanctification.

16, 17. Here we have again the beautiful statement of the Holy Ghost, how God peculiarizes the sanctified by putting his laws in their hearts and writing them on their minds, so they have nothing to do but read God’s will in their minds and hearts each fleeting moment. Thus God not only reveals to them their whole duty every minute, but gives them all the grace they need to perform it. Roman Catholic priests and carnal preachers want the people to be dependent on them for leadership. Hence they fight sanctification with desperation, because it takes the people out of their hands and turns them over to God. The sanctified preacher does not want any popular following. He only wants the people to follow Jesus, himself happily disencumbered of burden and responsibility. This human following of the unsanctified has developed the sectarian ecclesiasticisms now belting the globe, and enthroned Satan the god of the world.

18. “Where there is removal of these there is no more offering for sin.”

The unsanctified are forever repeating their offering for sins like the priests and people of the old dispensation, because sin is always there; like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down. Hence they never get rid of the painful consciousness of its presence. Not so in the glorious experience of entire sanctification, when sin is utterly eradicated and forever exterminated. Therefore the worshiper, consciously and gloriously delivered from the sin principle, his conscience, though intensely acute and completely quickened by the Holy Spirit, is no longer contaminated by the slightest taint of sin, and he goes on singing, “They are all taken away!”

19-25. The unsanctified preachers and church members, staggering under the galling yoke of legal bondage, groping along in the dispensation of Moses three thousand years behind the age, are shocked and almost hysterical at the boldness of the sanctified. Here we are exhorted to exercise this boldness; meanwhile the most plausible reasons are given, i.e. (Heb 10:20), when Christ expired on the cross, God with His own hand rent the veil from top to bottom, forever opening the Holy of Holies to every Christian on the globe. The temple veil emblematized the body of Christ, which hid the Omnipotent Savior dwelling in that body from the eyes of the world. The divine presence abode in the sanctum sanctorum, hidden by the intervening veil from the worshipers in the temple. When the great Antitype was lacerated by the Roman spear God did rend the type from top to bottom; so there is nothing to do but push it aside with the hand of faith and walk into the Holy of Holies.

21. “Truly, having a great High Priest over the family of God.” “House” throughout the Bible generally means family. Every Christian belongs to the family of God. The poorest and the meanest of God’s children enjoy the intercessions of this great High Priest, who has actually swept every difficulty out of the way, leaving no possible defalcation nor conceivable reason why all of God’s children should not walk unhesitatingly into the sanctum sanctorum and there abide forever.

22. “Let us draw nigh with a true heart with full assurance, having been sprinkled as to our hearts from an evil conscience.” Here the Holy Spirit exhorts us to draw nigh. A “true heart” is a heart sincere and entirely consecrated to God. “In full assurance of faith,” i.e., faith in God’s promises, without the shadow of doubt. You can not be sanctified and have anything to do with the devil. Sin and doubt are Siamese twins, and belong to the devil. You must not only eternally abnegate all sin, but turn over to the devil every shadow of doubt, along with every vestige of sin. This done, the Holy Spirit instantly sprinkles the blood on your conscience, utterly expurgating all evil, and sanctifying you wholly.

22. “Having been washed as to our body with purifying water.” This is simple allusion to the Jewish custom of sprinkling the water purification on the subject of ceremonial defilement. Hence it means the sanctification of your body simultaneously with your soul. Of course, your body is completely turned over to God fully consecrated and sanctified to His service and occupancy forever. The efforts of certain sticklers on water theology to make an argument for immersion out of this are nonsensical in the extreme. The very fact here stated that the heart is sanctified by the sprinkling of the Savior’s blood, involves the conclusion that the body is purified by the affusion of water, in symbolic reference to the Jewish catharisms which were always performed by sprinkling.

24. “Let us know one another into a paroxysm of divine love and good works.” This is certainly exceedingly wholesome exhortation. The Holy Ghost importunes all Christians in this paragraph to get sanctified wholly soul and body, unhesitatingly, and then to compete with each other in actual earthquake shocks of pure Holy Ghost religion and good works, i.e., go ahead and do your best to excel all your comrades in the love of God coming in cataracts into your own heart and flowing out in good works in behalf of others.

25. Here the Spirit exhorts us never to give up going to meeting, since the Lord is coming soon. We should be on the constant outlook for our glorious King to ride down on a cloud. Blessed for me and for you if we are standing before the people preaching the glorious gospel when our King cometh!

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hebrews Chapter 10

In chapter 10 this principle is applied to the sacrifice. Its repetition proved that sin was there. That the sacrifice of Christ was only offered once, was the demonstration of its eternal efficacy. Had the Jewish sacrifices rendered the worshipers really perfect before God, they would have ceased to be offered. The apostle is speaking (although the principle is general) of the yearly sacrifice on the day of atonement. For if, through the efficacy of the sacrifice, they had been permanently made perfect, they would have had no more conscience of sins, and could not have had the thought of renewing the sacrifice.

Observe, here, that which is very important, that the conscience is cleansed, our sins being expiated, the worshiper drawing nigh by virtue of the sacrifice. The meaning of theJewish service was that guilt was still there; that of the Christian, that it is gone. As to the former, precious as the type is, the reason is evident: the blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin. Therefore those sacrifices have been abolished, and a work of another character (although still a sacrifice) has been accomplished-a work which excludes all other, and all the repetition of the same, because it consists of nothing less than the self devotedness of the Son of God to accomplish the will of God, and the completion of that to which He was devoted: an act impossible to be repeated, for all His will cannot be accomplished twice, and, were it possible, it would be a testimony of the inadequacy of the first, and so of both.

This is what the Son of God says in this most solemn passage (vers. 5-9), in which we are admitted to know, according to the grace of God, that which passed between God the Father and Himself when He undertook the fulfillment of the will of God-that which He said, and the eternal counsels of God which He carried into execution. He takes the place of submission and of obedience, of performing the will of another. God would no longer accept the sacrifices that were ordered under the law (the four classes of which are here pointed out), He had no pleasure in them. In their stead He had prepared a body for His Son; vast and important truth! for the place of man is obedience. Thus, in taking this place, the Son of God put Himself into the position to obey perfectly. In fact He undertakes the duty of fulfilling all the will of God, be it what it may-a will which is, ever “good, acceptable, and perfect.”

The psalm says in the Hebrew, “Thou hast digged [26] ears for me,” translated by the Septuagint,”Thou hast prepared me a body;” words which, as they give the true meaning, are used by the Holy Ghost. For “the ear” is always employed as a sign of the reception of commandments, and the principle of obligation to obey or the disposition to do so. “He hath opened mine ear morning by morning” (Isa 1:1-31), that is, has made me listen to His will, be obedient to His commands. The ear was bored or fastened with an awl to the door, in order to express that the Israelite was attached to the house as a slave, to obey, for ever. Now in taking a body, the Lord took the form of a servant. (Php 2:6-8.) Ears were digged for Him. That is to say, He placed Himself [27] in a position in which He had to obey all His Master’s will, whatever it might be. But it is the Lord Himself who speaks in the passage before us: “Thou,” He says, “hast prepared me a body.”

Entering more into detail, He specifies burnt offerings and offerings for sin, sacrifices which had less of the character of communion, and thus had a deeper meaning; but God had no pleasure in them. In a word the Jewish service was already declared by the Spirit to be unacceptable to God. It was all to cease, it was fruitless; no offering that formed part of it was acceptable. No; the counsels of God unfold themselves, but first of all in the heart of the Word, the Son of God, who offers Himself to accomplish the will of God. “Then said he, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God.” Nothing can be more solemn than thus to lift the veil from that which takes place in heaven between God and the Word who undertook to do His will. Observe that, before He was in the position of obedience, He offers Himself in order to accomplish the will of God, that is to say, of free love for the glory of God, of free will; as One who had the power, He offers Himself, He undertakes obedience, He undertakes to do whatsoever God wills. This is indeed to sacrifice all His own will, but freely and as the effect of His own purpose, although on the occasion of the will of His Father. He must needs be God in order to do this, and to undertake the fulfillment of all that God could will.

We have here the great mystery of this divine intercourse, which remains ever surrounded with its solemn majesty, although it is communicated to us that we may know it. And we ought to know it; for it is thus that we understand the infinite grace and the glory of this work. Before He became man, in the place where only divinity is known, and its, eternal counsels and thoughts are communicated between the divine Persons, the Word-as He has declared it to us, in time, by the prophetic Spirit- such being the will of God contained in the book of the eternal counsels, He who was able to do it, offered Himself freely to accomplish that will. Submissive to this counsel already arranged for Him, He yet offers Himself in perfect freedom to fulfill it. But in offering He submits, yet at the same time undertakes to do all that God, as God, willed. But also in undertaking to do the will of God, it was in the way of obedience, of submission, and of devotedness. For I might undertake to do the will of another, as free and competent, because I willed the thing; but if I say ‘“to do thy will,” this in itself is absolute and complete submission. And this it is which the Lord, the Word, did. He did it also, declaring that He came in order to do it. He took a position of obedience by accepting the body prepared for Him. He came to do the will of God.

That of which we have been speaking is continually manifested in the life of Jesus on earth. God shines through His position in the human body; for He was necessarily God in the act itself of His humiliation; and none but God could have undertaken and been found in it; yet He was always, and entirely and perfectly, obedient and dependent on God. That which revealed itself in His existence on earth was the expression of that which was accomplished in the eternal abode, in His own nature. That is to say (and of this Psa 40:1-17 speaks), that which He declares, and that which He was here below, are the same thing; the one in reality in heaven, the other bodily on earth. That which He was here below was but the expression, the living, real, bodily manifestation of what is contained in those divine communications which have been revealed to us, and which were the reality of the position that He assumed.

And it is very important to see these things in the free offer made by divine competency, and not only in their fulfillment in death. It gives quite a different character to the bodily work here below.

In reality, from chapter 1 of this epistle, the Holy Ghost always presents Christ in this way. But this revelation in the psalm was requisite to explain how He became a servant, what the Messiah really was; and to us it opens an immense view of the ways of God, a view, the depths of which-clearly as it is revealed, and through the very clearness of the revelation-display to us things so divine and glorious that we bow the head and veil our faces, as having had part as it were in such communications, on account of the majesty of the Persons whose acts and whose intimate relationships are revealed. It is not here the glory that dazzles us. But even in this poor world there is nothingto which we are greater strangers than the intimacy of those who are, in their modes of life, much above ourselves. What then, when it is that of God! Blessed be His name! there is grace that brings us into it, and that has drawn nigh to us in our weakness. We are then admitted to know this precious truth, that the Lord Jesus undertook of His own free will the accomplishment of all the will of God, and that He was pleased to take the body prepared for Him in order to accomplish it. The love, the devotedness to the glory of God, and the way in which He undertook to obey, are fully set forth. And this-the fruit of God’s eternal counsels -displaces (by its very nature) every provisional sign: and contains, in itself alone, the condition of all relationship with God, and the means by which He glorifies Himself.[28]

The Word then assumes a body, in order to offer Himself as a sacrifice. Besides the revelation of this devotedness of the Word to accomplish the will of God, the effect of His sacrifice according to the will of God is also set before us.

He came to do the will of Jehovah. Now faith understands that it is by this will of God (that is, by His will who, according to His eternal wisdom, prepared a body for His Son) that those whom He has called unto Himself for salvation are set apart to God, in other words, are sanctified. It is by the will of God that we are set apart for Him (not by our own will), and that by means of the sacrifice offered to God.

We shall observe that the epistle does not here speak of the communication of life, or of a practical sanctification wrought by the Holy Ghost:[29] the subject is the Person of Christ ascended on high, and the efficacy of His work. And this is important with regard to sanctification, because it shews that sanctification is a complete setting apart to God, as belonging to Him at the price of the offering of Jesus, a consecration to Him by means of that offering. God took the unclean Jews from among men and set them apart -consecrated them to Himself; so now the called ones, from that nation, and, thank God, ourselves also, by means of the offering of Jesus.

But there is another element, already pointed out in this offering, the force of which the epistle here applies to believers, namely, that the offering is “once for all.” It admits of no repetition. If we enjoy the effect of this offering, our sanctification is eternal in its nature. It does not fail. It is never repeated. We belong to God for ever according to the efficacy of this offering. Thus our sanctification, our being set apart to God has-with regard to the work that accomplished it-all the stability of the will of God and all the grace from which it sprang; it has, too, in its nature, the perfection of the work itself, by which it was accomplished, and the duration and the constant force of the efficacy of that work. But the effect of this offering is not limited to this setting apart for God. The point already treated contains our consecration by God Himself through the perfectly efficacious offering of Christ fulfilling His will. And now the position which Christ has taken, in consequence of His offering up of Himself, is employed in order clearly to demonstrate the state it has brought us into before God.

The priests among the Jews-for this contrast is still carried on-stood before the altar continually to repeat the same sacrifices which could never take away sins. But this Man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down for ever [30] at the right hand of God.

There-having finished for His own all that regards their presentation without spot to God-He awaits the moment when His enemies shall be made His footstool, according to Psa 110:1-7: “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” And the Spirit gives us the important reason so infinitely precious to us: “For he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”

Here (ver. 14) as in verse 12, on which the latter depends, the word “for ever “has the force of permanence-uninterrupted continuity. He is ever seated, we are ever perfected, by virtue of His work and according to the perfect righteousness in which, and conformably to which, He sits at the right hand of God upon His throne, according to that which He is personally there, His acceptance on God’s part being proved by His session at His right hand. And He is there for us.

It is a righteousness suited to the throne of God, yea, the righteousness of the throne. It neither varies nor fails. He is seated there for ever. If then we are sanctified-set apart to God-by this offering according to the will of God Himself, we are also made perfect for God by the same offering, as presented to Him in the Person of Jesus.

We have seen that this position has its origin in the will, the good-will of God (a will which combines the grace and the purpose of God), and that it has its foundation and present certainty in the accomplishment of the work of Christ, the perfection of which is demonstrated by the session at the right hand of God of Him who accomplished it. But the testimony-for to enjoy this grace we must know it with divine certainty, and the greater it is, the more would our hearts be led to doubt it-the testimony upon which we believe it must be divine. And this it is. The Holy Ghost bears witness to us of it. The will of God is the source of the work; Christ, the Son of God accomplished it; the Holy Ghost bears witness to us of it. And here the application to the people, called by grace and spared, is in consequence fully set forth, not merely the fulfillment of the work. The Holy Ghost bears us witness, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”

Blessed position! The certainty that God will never remember our sins and iniquities is founded all the steadfast will of God, on the perfect offering of Christ, now consequently seated at the right hand of God, and on the sure testimony of the Holy Ghost. It is a matter of faith that God will never remember our sins.

We may remark here the way in which the covenant is introduced; for although, as writing to “the holy brethren, partakers of the heaven]y calling,” he says, “a witness to us,” the form of his address is always that of an epistle to the Hebrews (believers, of course, but Hebrews, still bearing the character of God’s people). He does not speak of the covenant in a direct way, as a privilege in which Christians had a direct part. The Holy Ghost, he says, declares, “I will remember no more,” & etc. It is this which he quotes. He only alludes to the new covenant, leaving it aside consequently as to all present application. For after having said, “This is the covenant,” & etc., the testimony is cited as that of the Holy Ghost, to prove the capital point which he was treating, that is, that God remembers our sins no more. But he alludes to the covenant (already known to the Jews as declared before of God) which gave the authority of the scriptures to this testimony, that God remembered no more the sins of His people who are sanctified and admitted into His favour, and which, at the same time, presented these two thoughts: first, that this complete pardon did not exist under the first covenant: and, second, that the door is left open for the blessing of the nation when the new covenant shall be formally established.

Another practical consequence is drawn: sins being remitted, there is no more oblation for sin. The one sacrifice having obtained remission, no others can be offered in order to obtain it. Remembrance of this one sacrifice there may indeed be, whatever its character; but a sacrifice to take away the sins which are already taken away, there cannot be. We are therefore in reality on entirely new ground-on that of the fact, that by the sacrifice of Christ our sins are altogether put away, and that for us, who are sanctified and partakers of the heavenly calling, a perfect and everlasting permanent cleansing has been made, remission granted, eternal redemption obtained. So that we are, in the eyes of God, without sin, on the ground of the perfection of the work of Christ, who is seated at His right hand, who has entered into the true holiest, into heaven itself, to sit there because His work is accomplished. Thus all liberty is ours to enter into the holy place (all boldness) by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, that is His flesh, to admit us without spot into the presence of God Himself, who is there revealed. For us the veil is rent, and that which rent the veil in order to admit us has likewise put away the sin which shut us out.

We have also a great High Priest over the house of God, as we have seen, who represents us in the holy place.

On these truths are founded the exhortations that follow. One word before we enter on them, as to the relation that exists between perfect righteousness and the priesthood. There are many souls who use the priesthood as the means of obtaining pardon when they have failed. They go to Christ as a priest, that He may intercede for them and obtain the pardon which they desire, but for which they dare not ask God in a direct way. These souls-sincere as they are-have not liberty to enter into the holy place.They take refuge with Christ that they may afresh be brought into the presence of God. Their condition practically is that in which a pious Jew stood. They have lost, or rather they have never had by faith, the real consciousness of their position before God in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ. I do not speak here of all the privileges of the assembly: we have seen that the epistle does not speak of them. The position it makes for believers is this: those whom it addresses are not viewed as placed in heaven, although partakers of the heavenly calling; but a perfect redemption is accomplished, all guilt entirely put away for the people of God, who remembers their sins no more. The conscience is made perfect-they have no more conscience of sins-by virtue of the work accomplished once for all. There is no more question of sin, that is, of its imputation, of its being upon them before and, between them and God. There cannot be, because of the work accomplished upon the cross. The conscience therefore is perfect; their Representative and High Priest is in heaven, a witness there to the work already accomplished for them. Thus, although the epistle does not present them as in the holiest, as sitting there-like in the Epistle to the Ephesians-they have full liberty, entire boldness, to enter into it. The question of imputation no longer exists. Their sins have been imputed to Christ. But He is now in heaven-a proof that the sins are blotted out for ever. Believers therefore enter with entire liberty into the presence of God Himself, and that always-having no more for ever any conscience of sins.

For what purpose then is priesthood? What is to be done with respect to the sins we commit? They interrupt our communion; but they make no change in our position before God, nor in the testimony rendered by the presence of Christ at the right hand of God. Nor do they raise any question as to imputation. They are sins against that position, or against God, measured by the relationship we are in to God, as in it. For sin is measured by the conscience according to our position. The perpetual presence of Christ at God’s right hand has this twofold effect for us: 1st, perfected for ever we have no more conscience of sins before God, we are accepted; 2nd, as priest He obtains grace to help in time of need, that we may not sin. But the present exercise of priesthood by Christ does not refer to sins: we have through His work no more conscience of sins, are perfected for ever. There is another truth connected with this, found 1Jn 2:1-29: we have an Advocate [31] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. On this our communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ is founded and secured. Our sins are not imputed, for the propitiation is in all its value before God. But by sin communion is interrupted; our righteousness is not altered-for that is Christ Himself at God’s right hand in virtue of His work; nor is grace changed, and “he is the propitiation for our sins;” but the heart has got away from God, communion is interrupted. But grace acts in virtue of perfect righteousness, and by the advocacy of Christ on behalf of him who has failed: and his soul is restored to communion. Nor is it that we go to Jesus for this; He goes, even if we sin, to God for us. His presence there is the witness of an unchangeable righteousness which is ours; His intercession maintains us in the path we have to walk in, or as our Advocate He restores the communion which is founded on that righteousness. Our access to God is always open. Sin interrupts our enjoyment of it, the heart is not in communion; the advocacy of Jesus is the means of rousing the conscience by the action of the Spirit and the word, and we return (humbling ourselves) into the presence of God Himself. The priesthood and advocacy of Christ refer to the condition of an imperfect and feeble, or failing, creature upon earth, reconciling it with the perfectness of the place and glory in which divine righteousness sets us. The soul is maintained steadfast or restored.

Exhortations follow. Having the right thus to approach God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith. This is the only thing that honours the efficacy of Christ’s work, and the love which has thus brought us to enjoy God. In the words that follow, allusion is made to the consecration of the priests-a natural allusion, as drawing near to God in the holiest is the subject. They were sprinkled with blood and washed with water, and then they drew nigh to serve God. Still, although I doubt not of the allusion to the priests, it is quite natural that baptism should have given rise to it. The anointing is not spoken of here-it is the power or privilege of the moral right to draw nigh.

Again, we may notice that, as to the foundation of the truth, this is the ground on which Israel will stay in the last days. In Christ in heaven will not be their place, nor the possession of the Holy Ghost as uniting the believer to Christ in heaven; but the blessing will be founded on water and on blood. God will remember their sins no more; and they will be washed in the clean water of the word.

The second exhortation is to persevere in the profession of the hope without wavering. He who made the promises is faithful.

Not only should we have this confidence in God for ourselves, but we are also to consider one another for mutual encouragement; and, at the same time, not to fail in the public and common profession of faith, pretending to maintain it, while avoiding the open identification of oneself with the Lord’s people in the difficulties connected with the profession of this faith before the world. Besides, this public confession had a fresh motive in that the day drew nigh. We see that it is the judgment which is here presented as the thing looked for-in order that it may act on the conscience, and guard Christians from turning back to the world, and from the influence of the fear of man -rather than the Lord’s coming to take up His own people. Heb 10:26 is connected with the preceding paragraph (Heb 10:23-25) the last words of which suggest the warning of Heb 10:26; which is founded, moreover, on the doctrine of these two chapters (9 and 10), with regard to the sacrifice. He insists on perseverance in a full confession of Christ, for His one sacrifice once offered was the only one. If any who had professed to know its value abandoned it, there was no other sacrifice to which he could have recourse, neither could it be ever repeated. There remained no more sacrifice for sin. All sins were pardoned by the efficacy of this sacrifice: but if, after having known the truth, they were to choose sin instead, there was no other sacrifice by virtue even of the perfection of that of Christ. Nothing but judgment remained. Such a professor, having had the knowledge of the truth and having abandoned it, would assume the character of an adversary.

The case, then, here supposed is the renunciation of the confession of Christ, deliberately preferring-after having known the truth-to walk according to one’s own will in sin. This is evident, both from that which precedes and from verse 29.

Thus we have (chaps. 6, 10.) the two great privileges of Christianity, what distinguishes it from Judaism, presented in order to warn those who made profession of the former, that the renunciation of the truth, after enjoying these advantages, was fatal; for if these means of salvation were renounced, there was no other. These privileges were the manifested presence and power of the Holy Ghost, and the offering which, by its intrinsic and absolute value, left no place for any other. Both of these possessed a mighty efficacy, which, while it gave divine spring and force, and the manifestation of the presence of God on the one hand, made known on the other hand the eternal redemption and the perfection of the worshiper; leaving no means for repentance, if any one abandoned the manifested and known power of that presence; no place for another sacrifice (which, more over, would have denied the efficacy of the first), after the perfect work of God in salvation, perfect whether with regard to redemption or to the presence of God by the Spirit in the midst of His own. Nothing remained but judgment.

They who despised the law of Moses died without mercy. What then would not those deserve at the hand of God, who trod under foot the Son of God, counted the blood of the covenant, by which they had been sanctified, as a common thing, and did despite to the Spirit of grace? It was not simple disobedience, however evil that might be; it was contempt of the grace of God, and of that which He had done, in the Person of Jesus, in order to deliver us from the consequences of disobedience. On the one hand, what was there left, if with the knowledge of what it was, they renounced this? On the other hand, how could they escape judgment? for they know a God who had said that vengeance belonged unto Him, and that He would recompense; and, again, the Lord would judge His people.

Observe here the way in which sanctification is attributed to the blood; and, also, that professors are treated as belonging to the people. The blood, received by faith, consecrates the soul to God; but it is here viewed also as an outward means for setting apart the people as a people. Every individual who had owned Jesus to be the Messiah, and the blood to be the seal and foundation of an everlasting covenant available for eternal cleansing and redemption on the part of God, acknowledging himself to be set apart for God, by this means, as one of the people-every such individual would, if he renounced it, renounce it as such; and there was no other way of sanctifying him. The former system had evidently lost its power for him, and the true one he had abandoned. This is the reason why it is said, “having received the knowledge of the truth.”

Nevertheless he hopes better things, for fruit, the sign of life, was there. He reminds them how much they had suffered for the truth, and that they had even received joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had a better and an abiding portion in heaven. They were not to cast away this confidence, the reward of which would be great. For in truth they needed patience, in order that, after having done the will of God, they might receive the effect of the promise. And He who is to come will come soon.

It is to this life of patience and perseverance that the chapter applies. But there is a principle which is the strength of this life, and which characterises it. In the midst of the difficulties of the Christian walk the just shall live by faith; and if anyone draws back, God will have no pleasure in him. “But,” says the author, placing himself as ever in the midst of the believers, “we are not of them who draw back, but of them that believe unto the saving of the soul.” Thereupon he describes the action of this faith, encouraging believers by the example of the elders who had acquired their renown by walking according to the same principle as that by which the faithful were now called to walk.

Footnotes for Hebrews Chapter 10

26: It is not the same word as to “bore, or thrust through , in Exo 21:1-36 nor as “open” in Isa 1:1-31. The one (digged) is, to prepare for obedience, the other would be to bind to it for ever, and to subject to the obedience when due. Exo 21:1-36 intimates, the blessed truth that, when He had fulfilled His personal service on earth, He would not abandon either His assembly or His people. He is ever God, but ever man, the humbled man, the glorified and reigning man, the subject man, in the joy of eternal perfection.

27: As throughout the epistle, the Messiah is the subject. In the psalm it is the Messiah who speaks, that is, the Anointed here below. He expresses His patience and faithfulness in the position which He had taken, addressing Jehovah as his God and He tells us that He took this place willingly, according to the eternal counsels respecting His own Person. For the Person is not changed. But He speaks in the psalm according to the position of obedience which He had taken, saying always, ‘I’ and ‘me’, in speaking of what took place before His incarnation.

28: Remark, also, here not only the substitution of the reality for the ceremonial figures of the law, but the difference of principle. The law required for righteousness, that man should do the will of God, and rightly. That was human righteousness. Here Christ undertakes to do it, and has accomplished it in the offering up of Himself. His so doing the will of God is the basis of our relationship with God, and it is done, and we are accepted. As born of God our delight is to do God’s will, but it is in love and newness of nature, not in order to be accepted.

29: It speaks of this last in the exhortations, Heb 12:14. But in the doctrine of the epistle, “sanctification” is not used in the practical sense of what is wrought in us.

30: The word translated here “for ever “is not the same word that is used for eternally. It has the sense of continuously without interruption, “eis” ____ “dienekes”. He does not rise up or stand. He is ever seated, His work being finished. He will indeed rise up at the end to come and fetch us, and to judge the world, even as this same passage tells us.

31: There is a difference in detail here; but it does not affect my present subject. The High Priest has to do with our access to God; the Advocate with our communion with the Father and His government of us as children. The Epistle to the Hebrews treats of the ground of access and shews us to be perfected for ever; and the priestly intercession does not apply to sins in that respect. It brings mercy and grace to help in time of need here, but we are perfected for ever before God. But communion is necessarily interrupted by the least sin or idle thought-yea, really had been, practically if not judicially, before the idle thought was there. Here the advocacy of John comes in: “If any man sin,” and the soul is restored. But there is never imputation to the believer.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1–4. The Law. The law of Moses. Having a shadow of the good things to come. It did not contain the good things, but only the shadow of them. They were typified in the law but exist in the gospel. Can never … make the comers thereunto perfect. That is, free them from sin, and thus perfect their consciences.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

The writer shows the weakness of the law and its sacrifices, why God gave the law, and the perfection of the new priesthood and Christ's sacrifice.

the law is only a shadow of the good things to come

This speaks about the law as if it were a shadow. The author means the law is not the good things that God had promised. It only hints at the good things that God is going to do. (See: Metaphor)

not the real forms of those things themselves

"not the real things themselves"

year after year

"every year"

would the sacrifices not have ceased to be offered?

The author uses a question to state that the sacrifices were limited in their power. This can be stated in active form. AT: "they would have ceased offering those sacrifices." (See: Rhetorical Question and Active or Passive)

ceased to be

"stopped being"

the worshipers would have been cleansed

Here being cleansed represents no longer being guilty of sin. This can be stated in active form. AT: "the sacrifices would have taken away their sin" or "God would have made them no longer guilty of sin" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)

would no longer have any consciousness of sin

"would no longer think that they are guilty of sin" or "would know that they are no longer guilty of sin"

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins

Sins are spoken of as if they were objects that animal blood could sweep away as it flowed. AT: "For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to cause God to forgive sins" (See: Metaphor)

the blood of bulls and goats

Here "blood" refers to these animals dying as sacrifices to God. (See: Metonymy)

translationWords

law

shadow

good

God

perfect

sacrifice

priest

clean

sin

sign

blood

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

CH. 10. The first eighteen verses of this chapter are a summary, rich with fresh thoughts and illustrations, of the topics on which he has been dwelling; namely (1) The one sacrifice of Christ compared with the many Levitic sacrifices (1–10). (2) The perfectness of His finished work (11–18). The remainder of the chapter is occupied with one of the earnest exhortations (19–25) and solemn warnings (26–31), followed by fresh appeals and encouragements (32–39), by which the writer shews throughout that his object in writing is not speculative or theological, but essentially practical and moral.

1–14. THE ONE SACRIFICE AND THE MANY SACRIFICES

1. δύναται DEKL. δύνανται אAC. The plural is probably a mere oversight due to the previous προσφέρουσιν.

1. Σκιάν. The σκιά is the opposite to the εἰκών, and the two words sum up the whole of the preceding argument.

τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν. Of the good things which Christ had now brought into the world (Heb 9:11).

οὐκ αὐτὴν τὴν εἰκόνα. “The Law,” says St Ambrose, “had the shadow; the Gospel the image; the Reality itself is in Heaven.” By the word image is meant the true historic form. The Gospel was as much closer a resemblance of the Reality as a statue is a closer resemblance than a pencilled outline.

ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις. Not “with those” (as in A. V.), but “with the same sacrifices, year by year, which they offer continuously, make perfect them that draw nigh,” i.e. the Priests can never with their sacrifices, which are the same year by year, perfect the worshippers. Some have given a fuller sense to the words “the same,” as though it meant that even the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement cannot make any one perfect, being as they are, after all, the same sacrifices in their inmost nature as those which are offered every morning and evening.

εἰς τὸ διηνεκές. “To perpetuity.” See Heb 10:12, &c.

οὐδέποτε δύναται. This may be the right reading, though the plural δύνανται “they are never able,” is found in some MSS. If the latter be the true reading the sentence begins with an unfinished construction (anakoluthon).

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The arrangement of the verse is much disputed. Rend. "The law, with the same sacrifices which they continually renew year by year, can never make the comers thereunto perfect." 217

A shadow [σκιαν] . The emphasis is on this thought. The legal system was a shadow. Skia is a rude outline, an adumbration, contrasted with eijkwn, the archetypal or ideal pattern. Skia does not accurately exhibit the figure itself. Comp. ch. Heb 8:5.

Of good things to come [των μελλοντων αγαθων] . From the point of view of the law.

The very image of the things [αυτην την εικονα των πραγματων] For eijkwn image, see on Rev 13:14; Phi 2:7. Pragmatwn things expresses a little more distinctly than mellontwn the idea of facts and realities.

Can [δυναται] . Dunatai might be expected with oJ nomov the law as the subject. If dunatai, the plural, is retained, the clause the law - image of the things must be taken absolutely, the construction of the sentence breaking off suddenly, and the subject being changed from the law to the priests : "The priests can never," etc. It is better to read dunatai in the singular, with Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and Weiss.

Continually [εις το διηνεκες] . See on ch. Heb 7:3, and comp. vers. 12, 14. Const. with offer.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

fii, The Old Sacrifices and the New: the abiding efficacy of Christ's One Sacrifice (c. x. 1—18).

In the preceding section the writer of the Epistle has pointed out the completoness of the one single Highpriestly work of Christ in comparison with the crowning service of the Old Covenant on the Day of Atonement. He once for all was offered (c. ix. 28); and in due time, coming forth from the Divino Presence, Ho will proclaim the consummation of Ilis work. Thus He stands in sharp contrast to the Levitical High-priests. Their work was repeated because it was essentially imperfect. In other words, that which seemed to give it special attractiveness and power, as sppealing scnsibly to the worshipper year by year by a visible and impressive service, was a sign of its inefficacy and transitoriness to those who looked deeper. Because the Law witnessed to something which it did not include or convey, its message was given again and again. This thought is now extended from the genern! representative sacrifice to the Lovitical sacrificos generally. The Apostle points out (1) the inhorent weakness and the provisional office of these sacrifices (x. 1—4); and, in contrast with these, (2) the true nature of the Sacrifice of Christ (5—ro). He thon shews (3) the perpetual officacy of Christ's Sacrifice from His present position of Kingly Majesty (11—14) ; and (4) tho consequent fulfilmont in Him of the prophetic description of the New Covenant (15—18).

(1) συ. 1—4. The essential inadequacy of the Legal encrifices to remove sin,

The sacrifices of the Mosaic system could not bring τελείωσις, for just what they did once they did afresh when the time came round (Ὁ. 1); and such repetition could not have been required if they had been spiritually efficacious (9. 2). Viewed in their real

character they were designed to declare a need which they did not satisfy (0. 3); and which essentially they could not satisfy (ὁ. 4).

: For as having a shadow only of the good things to come, not the very image of the oljects, the Lato can never, by the same sacrifices which they affer year by year, make perfect Jor ever e who come to worship. * Since in that case would they not hace ceased to be offered because the worshippers would have had no more conscience of sins, when they had been cleansed once for all ἢ 3 But in them sine are called to remembrance year by year; ‘for tt is impossible that blood of bulls and goats should take away eins.

1. σκιάν... τελειῶσαι) The sentence is complicated, and the natural order of the words is modified by the . desire of the writer to emphasise the mnin ideas of his statement. If we adopt the reading δύναται the rendering appears to be fairly clear: For as having a. shadow only of the good things to come, not the very image of the objects, the Law can never, by the same sacrifices which they—the appointed ministers of the system—offer year by year, in a continually recurring cycle, make perfect for ever those who come to God on the way which it opens.

In this rendering it is assumed that the two phrases κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτόν and els τὸ διηνεκές are placed (irregularly) at the head of the clauses to which they belong in order to bring out the conceptions of ‘yearly repetition’ and

‘perpetuity’ of effect, which respectivoly characterise the Old and New Covonanta.

The same purpose of emphasis explains tho fact that εἰς τὸ διηνεκές precedes the verb to which it belongs, while elsewhere it follows it: ov. 12, 14; vii. 3.

The connexion of els τὸ διηνεκές with

The difference between the ‘shadow’ and the ‘image’ is well illustrated by the difference between a ‘typo’ and a ‘sacrament,’ in which the characteristic differences of the Old and New Covenants are gathered up. The one witnessce to grace and truth beyond and outside itaolſ: the othor is the pledge and the means through which grace and truth are brought home to us.

Hence many saw in ‘the good things to como’ the sacramonts of tho Christian Church; and Thoophylact, accepting this interpretation, carries our thoughts still further. As the image is better than the shadow, so, he argues, will tho archetype be better than the image, the realities of the unseon world than ‘the mysteries’ which now represent them.

Ono other point is to be noticod. Things visible and semiblo are the shadows: things unseen and spiritual are the substance. Tho whole world is made for us a shadow of somo unimaginable glory.

τῶν μελλ. ay. | of the good things to come, the blessings which belonged to

note.

2. The inefficacy of the sacrifices is proved by their repetition. If it be said that the repeated sacrifice dealt only with the later sins; the answer is that we have to deal with sin and not with sins only: to be assured that

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901), The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and The Epistles of St John (1883) — public domain (pre-1929). Text recovered from Internet Archive / Google Books OCR scans. Westcott’s Gospel of John commentary is not included (its OCR lost the chapter running-heads required for reliable verse-keying). Some Greek quoted in the Hebrews volume is imperfectly rendered by the OCR.