Hebrews (Vol. 2): An Anchor for the Soul

(10:1-18)

1

Covenant and Perfection

HEBREWS 10:1-18

As we said in our first volume on the epistle to the Hebrews, no New Testament book has had more background research than Hebrews, and none has spawned a greater diversity of opinion, though there is broad agreement that the grand theme of this epistle is the supremacy and finality of Jesus Christ.

A consensus also exists regarding the general identity of the recipients: they were a group of Jewish Christians who had never seen Jesus in person, yet had believed. Their conversion had brought them hardship and persecution with the result that some had slipped back into Judaism. And, thus, the purpose for the letter was to encourage them to not fall away, but to press on (cf. 2:1ff.; 3:12ff.; 6:4ff.; 10:26ff.; and 12:15ff.).

There is also universal agreement, first expressed by Origen, that only God knows certainly who wrote this letter. There is also agreement that the author, whoever he was, was a magnificent stylist with an immense vocabulary and a vast knowledge of the Greek Old Testament.

Despite general agreement on these matters, no scholar has yet proven the exact destination or occasion of the letter — though many contemporary scholars tentatively propose that the letter was written to a small house-church of beleaguered Jewish Christians in the mid-sixties before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Hebrews was evidently written to a group of Jewish Christians whose world was falling apart. The author’s conveying the greetings of several Italian Christians who were with him (13:24) supports the idea that the harried little church was on Italian soil — very likely in or around Rome.

Their Christianity had not been a worldly advantage. Rather, it set them up for persecution and the loss of property and privilege, and now could possibly even cost them their lives.

We know they had already paid a price for their initial commitment to Christ. As the writer recalls in 10:32-34:

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

This description of their earlier sufferings fits well into the picture of the hardships that came to Jewish Christians under Claudius in A.D.49. Suetonius’ Life of the Deified Claudius records that there were riots in the Jewish quarter at the instigation of Chrestus. As a result, Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome (25.4). Chrestus, historians believe, is a reference to Christ, and the riots and expulsion occurred when Jewish Christians were banished from the synagogue by the Jewish establishment.

Now, as the author of Hebrews writes, fifteen years have gone by since the Claudian persecution, and a new persecution looms. No one has been killed yet, but 12:4 raises the possibility that martyrdom may soon come — "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood."

The writer of Hebrews was writing to admonish and encourage his friends, a small group of Jewish Christians who were scared stiff! Some had begun to avoid contact with outsiders. Some had even withdrawn from the worshiping community altogether (10:25). The author feared there might be those who, if arrested, would succumb to the conditions of release — a public denial of Christ (6:6; 10:29). The tiny home-church was asking some hard questions: Did God know what was going on? If so, how could this be happening to them? Did he care? Only God could protect them, but where was he? Why did he not answer? Why the silence of God?

The letter arrived, and word was sent out. The congregation gathered. Perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty were seated or standing around the house. All were quiet. Through these magnificent words the beleaguered church was brought face to face with the God who speaks, and this God — through his superior Son, Jesus Christ — would bring them comfort in the midst of life’s troubles.

Now we will continue our study of this remarkable Biblical document, beginning with chapter 10.

Soon after I began to date my future wife, Barbara, I obtained her picture — a beautiful black-and-white 8 x 10 photograph taken the year before we met — and it immediately became an item of pre-nuptial worship. It was one of those bare-shouldered, sorority-style pictures so popular at the time. She looked like an angel floating in the clouds. It became my portable hope, most often sitting on my desk, sometimes in my car, at other times propped in front of my plate and my love-struck eyes.

However, the day came when we stood before God and our families and friends and pledged our lives to each other as she became mine. Suddenly I had gone from the possession of a one-dimensional portrait to the possession of the real thing, who smiled, talked, and laughed — a real, three-dimensional wife — a living, life-loving soul! And the picture? It remained just as beautiful, but from then on it received relatively scant attention.

But imagine that one day I appear before my wife holding the blackand-white photograph, and I say, My dear, I’ve missed your picture, and I’m going back to it. I really am attached to the silhouette and the monochrome shading and the matte finish. Then I passionately kiss the glass protecting the photograph, clutch it to my chest, and exit mumbling my devotion to the picture — I love you, O photograph of my wife. You’re everything to me.

People’s suspicions that pastors are weird would be confirmed. Time to call for the men in the white jackets!

How absurd for anyone, once having the substance, to go back to the shadow. Yet, some in the early church were forsaking the Covenant of Grace for the Old Covenant of the Law. And this is what the author of Hebrews wants to steel his people against as he concludes his comparison of the Old and New Covenants in 10:1-18.

THE PROBLEM OF IMPERFECTION (vv. 1-4)

The author/pastor begins with a forthright statement of the facts: The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves (v. 1a). As a shadow, the Law is only a pale reflection, a mere outline or silhouette, and is thus unsubstantial.¹ The Ten Commandments, the Book of the Covenant, and the Tabernacle cultus only foreshadow the reality of Christ. And as a shadow, the Law had substantial imperfections that the writer proceeds to spell out:

For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (vv. 1b-4)

Imperfect Cleansing

Of course, the author of Hebrews was not the first to understand that animal blood would not atone for sins. Scriptural writers had been alert to this for hundreds of years. David’s repentant words head the list: You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:16, 17). Consider also Samuel’s words to King Saul: Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams (1 Samuel 15:22). And Isaiah said:

The multitude of your sacrifices — what are they to me? says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! (Isaiah 1:11-13a)

Later Isaiah expressed God’s displeasure at offerings when one’s heart is not right:

But whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog’s neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig’s blood, and whoever burns memorial incense, like one who worships an idol. They have chosen their own ways. . . . For when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, no one listened. (66:3, 4)

Similarly, Jeremiah inveighed against sacrifices presented without an obedient heart:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. (Jeremiah 7:21-23)

God said through Hosea, For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6). And Amos shared God’s thoughts about wrong-hearted sacrifices:

I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5:21-24)

Lastly, we include the famous words of Micah:

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:6-8)

It is a fact that at the time of Christ many pious Jews honored the sacrificial system and even offered sacrifices, but realized that those sacrifices could not remove sin. This is why, when the Temple was destroyed and the sacrifices ended, the people so easily adapted. They understood that animal sacrifice was insufficient to obtain forgiveness.²

An Imperfect Conscience

Because the old system could not take away their sin, it produced a second imperfection — a guilty conscience (cf. v. 2). Of course one’s conscience can be seared or defaced, as C. S. Lewis noted in joking with a friend when he wrote:

We were talking about cats and dogs the other day and decided that both have consciences but the dog being an honest, humble person, always has a bad one, but the cat is a Pharisee and always has a good one. When he sits and stares you out of countenance he is thanking God that he is not as these dogs, or these humans, or even as these other cats!³

But assuming that one didn’t have a cat’s non-conscience, one’s conscience under the Old Covenant always had a pervasive sense of dis-ease. One’s inner moral discernment⁴ always registered a floating guilt, and in some, this was a raging, unquenchable guilt.

Not all the blood of beasts

     On Jewish altars slain,

Could give the guilty conscience rest

     Or wash away one stain.

Memorialized Imperfection

The result was, as verse 3 points out, that the sacrifices remained as an annual reminder of sins. As a matter of fact, the Day of Atonement increased the burden of those with sensitive hearts. The Day’s well-defined ritual was constructed to aggravate one’s conscience. The shadow of the Old Covenant Law and sacrifice inflamed the unrequited need for forgiveness and a clear conscience. The photograph, so to speak, pictured what could be and activated an ache for the reality.

The Old Covenant simply could not make perfect those who draw near to worship (v. 1). It was good, as far as it went. But it was frustratingly inadequate.

THE SOLUTION FOR IMPERFECTION (vv. 5-9)

Of course, the Godhead was not unaware of this, and beginning in verse 5 we have a brief synopsis of the conversation that took place there when Jesus elected to come into the world as a man.

The Divine Dialogue

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said [Christ’s pre-incarnate words]: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, O God’ (vv. 5-7). Actually, Christ’s words here were a quotation from King David taken from a paraphrased Greek version of Psalm 40:6-8 (LXX, Psalm 39:7-9). David had spoken it one thousand years earlier, but Christ in Heaven took it and reapplied it, so as to describe his own inner thinking and dialogue with the Father when he came into the world.

What a high place this gives Scripture! Our pre-incarnate Savior quoted Psalm 40 as being prophetic of his thoughts at his human birth. Interestingly, the Hebrew of Psalm 40:6 literally reads, ears you have dug for me, but the Greek paraphrase of it that Christ and the author quoted in Hebrews is, a body you prepared for me. This may be because the Greek translator regarded the creation of ears as part of fashioning a whole human body.⁵

Whatever the explanation may be, Christ said in essence, My Father, the Old Testament sacrifices have proven unsatisfactory, so you have prepared a body for me, that I might become a pleasing sacrifice. (The author reiterates this idea in verse 8, noting that the Father was not pleased with the old sacrifices although the law required them to be made.) The fact was, though God had instituted blood animal sacrifices (Exodus 24), he had never been pleased with them and did not see them as ends. He had established them as object lessons to instruct his people about the sinfulness of their hearts, his hatred of sin, the fact that sin leads to death, the need of an atonement, and his delight in those whose hearts were clean and obedient and faithful. But there was nothing appealing to him in the sight of a dying animal. God had no pleasure in the moans and death-throes of lambs or bulls. What he did find pleasure in was those who offered a sacrifice with a contrite, obedient heart.

The Divine Disposition

Having verbalized what the Father wanted — Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death — our Lord now states his joyous resolve: Then I said, ‘Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, O God’ (v. 7). On the verge of the Incarnation, the Lord Jesus stopped to pay tribute to the Old Testament Scripture and to proclaim that what he was about to do had been fully written of in advance in the scroll.

Hours could be spent here inspecting the familiar Old Testament prophecies and types that point so fully to the incarnate Messiah. But the great emphasis here, one we must not miss, is Christ’s exuberant determination and eagerness to obey the Father — Then I said, ‘Here I am . . . I have come to do your will, O God.’ Our Lord did not obey the Father grudgingly or under duress but with joy! Later, in 12:2, the writer tells us that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him. The angels sang at the Incarnation (Luke 2:13ff.) because they were reflecting and expressing Christ’s joy. He had come to die, and that could logically have produced an angelic dirge. But the angels gave out an anthem instead, because of the anthem of Christ’s heart — Then I said, ‘Here I am . . . I have come to do your will, O God.’ There is in Deity Itself the joy of obedience: obedience which is a particular means of joy and the only means of that particular joy.⁶ Jesus willed to be subordinate to God!

What is the application for us? Jesus’ joyous resolve to obediently do God’s will is the essence of the true sacrifice and worship that God desires. Jesus does what God desired from every worshiper in the Old Covenant. God did not want animal sacrifices. What he wanted and still wants is obedience! That is the only sacrifice that is acceptable to God.

Everything is ashes if we are not living in conscious obedience to God. Is there something you know God wants you to do, but you have been unwilling? Perhaps it is a kindness to perform — a confession to make — a gift to give — a commitment to fulfill — a task to perform. If you know what it is, say reverently to him, Here I am . . . I have come to do your will, O God.

THE RESULTS OF PERFECTION (vv. 10-18)

The author introduces the results of Christ’s willingness to do God’s will by saying, And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (v. 10). Jesus’ sacrifice once for all is emphatic, and the writer wants us to see that its results are equally final, for we have been made holy refers to an enduring, continuous state (perfect tense). Our salvation is a completed thing — a done deal.⁷

From the writer’s perspective, the comparative postures of Jesus (our Melchizedekian priest) and the Aaronic priests make the point. He explains:

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (vv. 11-14)

Significantly, there were no chairs in the Tabernacle — no provision whatsoever to sit down. Priests stood or kept moving, because their imperfect work was never over. But Jesus, in exact fulfillment of the Melchizedekian prophecies in Psalm 110:1 — The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’ — sat down forever at the right hand of honor and power (cf. 1:3, 13; 8:1). Jesus rests. Our salvation, as we have said, is a done deal. Our perfection is accomplished. And in the timelessness of eternity our holiness will go on and on.⁸

The preacher to the Hebrews finishes this great section with a brief recap of two perfections of the New Covenant from Jeremiah 31 that were mentioned earlier in 8:10-12 — namely, empowerment and forgiveness.

Empowerment

As to empowerment, we read, The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: ‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds’ (vv. 15, 16; cf. Jeremiah 31:33). Instead of putting his laws on stone tablets, they are placed in the very center of the believer’s being, so that there is an inner impulse that both delights in knowing his law and doing his will.

Shortly after the armistice of World War I, Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse visited the battlefields of Belgium. In the first year of the war the area around the city of Mons was the scene of the great British retreat. In the last year of the war it was the scene of the greater enemy retreat. For miles west of the city the roads were lined with artillery, tanks, trucks, and other materials of war that the enemy had abandoned in their hasty flight.