For the law, having a shadow of the coming good things, not the image itself of the things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually yearly, perfect those who approach.
Year after year the same sacrifices came back. Why could they never finish the job? The answer is one word: shadow. A shadow can never do the work of the substance that casts it.
Three words carry the argument here: shadow, image, and perfect. Where the ESV has "the true form of these realities," older translations read "the very image" — the wording these writers use.
Only a substance can cast a shadow. An image presents the thing itself. The word translated "perfection" here really means "completion." The whole "law" system was only a shadow, not the substance. Christ and the heavenly system of which He is the centre form the substance. An earthly, material system could not present these heavenly, spiritual things.
This limits how far we can press the Old Testament pictures, or types, for detail.
A shadow gives us very little in the way of detail. We get an outline. We can tell whether a shadow is that of a house or a tree, but not where the windows are in the one or the branches in the other. If we recognise this limit in the types, we will not force meanings into the small details of the person or incident that forms the type. That effort so often ends in what is fanciful and imaginary.
Calling the law a shadow is not running it down. The difficulty is ours. We read Leviticus with the light of Christ already shining on it.
Suppose we could wipe from memory the knowledge of Himself, and all the truths the Holy Spirit has made known to us in this present age. Then we would find that the law was indeed a shadow. There was only an outline, a sketch of divine truth. This does not slight the perfect word of God. It is perfect in its place, as it surely is. The point is that until our blessed Lord came, everything was still waiting.
The shadow was God's own gift. Only He could sketch such a work in advance.
We need to remember what the apostle says: the law has only "a shadow." "The very image" could only be found in that work itself, in its unapproachable excellence. What we have here is a shadow that God alone could give in advance, to witness how many-sided and full that work is.
What kind of perfection could the sacrifices never give?
This does not mean perfection of the person, of course. It means perfection in his standing and relation to God. It is the same perfection spoken of later about the work of Christ: "By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." The sacrifices under the law could not give that perfection — perfection as to one's present and eternal acceptance.
Put another way, the issue is the conscience — whether a person can stand before God without the question of sin still open.
He shows that the law had neither the power nor the aim to make a person perfect as far as conscience goes... Could the law make that conscience perfect? It could not. It never did, with anybody... "The law … can never … make perfect those who draw near." Set that against what Christ has done: "By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" — that is, those set apart by His blood.
The yearly return of the same sacrifices was itself the evidence against them.
It is not that the law sacrifices did not perfect anyone as to the conscience, but that they could not. Their very repetition showed this. Suppose they had been able to cleanse the conscience, giving the offerer complete relief on the whole question of sin. Then those sacrifices would have stopped. We never go on doing what is already done.
The same test reaches beyond animal offerings to any repeated sacrifice.
Whatever the nature of the sacrifice, bloody or unbloody as people say, its repetition proclaims that it failed in the past and cannot help in the future. It cannot settle the question of the offerer's guilt. It cannot secure his acceptance before God. To repeat a sacrifice is wasted labour. More than that, it despises the one perfect sacrifice God has provided.
The shadow pointed forward. That waiting is over.
The law had only "a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things" (Heb. 10:1). The good things have come, and Christians enjoy them today. Christ has established them (Heb. 9:24; Heb. 10:12), the Spirit has revealed them (1 Cor. 2:9-10), and the believer may gaze upon them with the eye of faith (2 Cor. 4:18).
- Shadow — the law gave an outline, not the substance. God Himself gave that outline, but it was never meant to carry the detail.
- Image — Christ is the substance the shadow only sketched. No earthly system could show it.
- Perfect — the perfection at stake is standing and conscience before God, not being personally flawless.
- Repetition — repeat a sacrifice and you announce that it never finished the work. We do not keep doing what is done.
- Come — the good things are here now. Christ established them, the Spirit reveals them, and faith enjoys them.
Since, would they not indeed have ceased being offered, on account of the worshippers once purged having no longer any conscience of sins?
The writer has just said that the law's sacrifices could never perfect anyone. Now he presses the point with a question: if those offerings worked, why did they have to be offered again every year?
The logic is simple enough for anyone to follow.
The man, or the woman, with the weakest mind might grasp this solemn fact. The repetition of a sacrifice declares as clearly as possible that it has not done what was needed in the past. And it cannot do it by any repetition in the future. There must of necessity be an inherent lack in all such sacrifices.
Run the same test the other way, and it proves Christ's work.
In Hebrews 10 this principle applies to the sacrifice. Its repetition proved that sin was there. Christ's sacrifice was offered only once, and that proved its eternal efficacy. Had the Jewish sacrifices made the worshippers really perfect before God, they would have ceased to be offered.
So what does "perfect" mean here?
First, the sacrifices offered under the law could never put those who came to them in the place of constant worshippers. This is clearly what "perfect" means in this passage. And they failed not only because of their inherent ineffectiveness, but also because of their repetition... Now note, to be perfected as a worshipper is to have no more conscience of sins. This exalts worship very highly. In this way worship is not at all the means of our justification, but that for which we are already justified.
The ESV says the worshipers would "no longer have any consciousness of sins." Older translations render it "no more conscience of sins," which is the wording these writers use. So what does that phrase mean?
It simply means this. The conscience of the worshipper who approaches God has been thoroughly purged — made perfect through the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses from all sin. So the worshipper, in drawing near, can appear there without any consciousness of guilt upon him. He is justified, fearless; indeed, he comes with holy boldness and perfect confidence and liberty... The blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat in the sight of God. He looks at the blood, and not at the sin that the blood has put away. It was also sprinkled in front of the mercy seat, in the sight of the approaching worshipper, as proof that God will no more remember his sins and transgressions.
This is where many stumble.
People often find it hard to see how a person can have "no more conscience of sins" while he is at the same time conscious of failure and of sin. But it is when the soul is fully purged that there will be the most consciousness of sin, and of past and present failure. Yet there is no sense of being charged with them before God...
But that raises a second question: what about the believer's day-to-day conscience?
A purged conscience does not therefore imply that we never sin, or that we never have the consciousness of failure, past or present. But it does imply that all dread of a future judgment because of our sins is entirely removed. So a purged conscience is not the same thing as what we call a good conscience. If a true believer fails through careless walk, his conscience will be troubled. Only by confession to God will he regain a good conscience. But this does not touch the eternal forgiveness of his sins, which gives him a purged conscience.
So does each new failure need a fresh cleansing?
Is the child of God sprinkled with blood several times? No. The sprinkling of the blood on the believer answers to the shedding of blood accomplished once for all before God, and neither is repeated. The Christian must hold firmly to a true sense of the value of the blood of Christ offered once. Otherwise we sink back into Jewish elements, and for every failure we look for a fresh sprinkling.
One writer finds a living example in Peter.
How else could he charge the men of Israel with denying Jesus? Had he not denied Him notoriously, recently, and repeatedly with oaths? Now he was so completely cleansed by the Saviour's blood that he boldly charged them with that sin! Had it not been wiped out, he would have been ashamed to whisper the words.
- Repeated — a sacrifice offered again admits that the last one did not finish the work.
- Once — Christ's offering was never repeated, and that single fact is the proof of its lasting power.
- Purged — the cleansing reaches the conscience. The worshipper draws near with no sense of guilt, because God looks at the blood.
- Conscious — a purged conscience is not a numb one. The cleansed soul feels its failures more, yet never fears judgment for them.
- Constant — the gift is a settled place as a worshipper. Worship is not how we get justified; it is what we are justified for.
But in these [there is] a calling to mind of sins yearly.
The argument of this verse turns on one word: reminder. Israel's yearly sacrifices did the opposite of what a sacrifice should do. Instead of clearing sin out of mind, they brought it back to mind every year.
The day being described is the Day of Atonement, kept on the tenth day of the seventh month. Rather than closing the file on the past year's sins, the gathering reopened it.
That shadow of an atonement never set the conscience free for good. It was itself a yearly reminder of unforgiven sins (verse 3). Every year, when Israel gathered on the tenth day of the seventh month, they admitted their defilement and their own unfitness for the Lord's presence. So the Law showed a shadow of good things to come. At the same time it testified to something solid and never-ending: sin unpurged and always growing.
We stop doing what is already done. The fact that the same sacrifices came round again each year is itself the writer's proof that they had settled nothing.
If they could have cleansed the conscience, giving the offerer complete relief about sin, no one would have gone on offering them. We never go on doing what is done. In fact their effect ran the opposite way. Instead of removing sins from the conscience so that they were no longer to be remembered, the sacrifices brought them to mind at least once every year.
One writer puts it in terms anyone with a debt will know.
The repetition of the offering only proved that the question of sins was not yet settled. It was like a great debt: paying the interest year by year never reduces it. So each year only brought back to mind that sins had not yet been taken away.
Why could the blood of animals do no better? Because the Old Testament word for what those sacrifices achieved is not the same word the New Testament uses for what Christ achieved.
In these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. What happened was that God, in His forbearance, "passed over" the sins committed before Christ died. So the word used again and again in the Old Testament is "atonement," and its literal meaning is "covering." The word for "remission" means "a sending away," not merely a covering. … In the Old Testament, then, we find sin covered for the time being, because God bore with it, while the full sending away of sin still lay ahead. Only the death and resurrection of Christ accomplished it.
For the worshipper, the burden could be eased but never lifted.
The worshipper might indeed feel, up to a point, that the sins he had already committed were gone. But as soon as he had offered his sacrifice, he began to sin again, and every fresh sin needed another sacrifice. So he was never free from guilt before God or in his own conscience. … The burden of sin was therefore never wholly removed from the conscience of a Jewish saint.
Against that yearly recall of sins, the chapter piles up its negatives. Each one lands on a different party.
God's holiness has been fully met in the one Sacrifice! So He can say of us, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds NO MORE"! — the opposite of "a reminder of sins every year" (Heb. 10:3). Worshippers today, "having once been cleansed," have NO MORE "consciousness of sins" (v. 2)! The work for which Jesus sat down is so completely done that the Holy Spirit declares there is NO LONGER "any offering for sin"! No more remembrance of sins on God's side! No more conscience of sins on the worshippers' side! No more offering to be made on Christ's side!
Believers still keep a memorial. But what is called to mind at the Lord's Supper is a Person, not a record of failure.
It is a remembrance, not of sins, like the legal sacrifices (Heb. 10:3), but a remembrance of "Me," says Jesus, and therefore of sins put away. … To pray about the forgiveness of sins would clash with the table. It would be a reproach on the Sacrifice of the Son of God, even if no one meant it that way. It would be building again the things Christ had destroyed. It would make His blood, like the blood of bulls and goats, only the reminder of sins and not the remover of sins.
- Reminder. Each year the Day of Atonement admitted Israel's defilement and unfitness for God's presence. The shadow kept pointing at sin it could not remove.
- Repetition. A sacrifice that must be repeated has settled nothing. Paying the interest never reduces the debt.
- Impossibility. Animal blood could only cover sin, and God bore with it for a time. Sending sin away waited for the death and resurrection of Christ.
- Relief. Until then no worshipper's conscience came to rest. Fresh sin arrived faster than fresh sacrifice.
- Reversal. Now there is no more remembrance of sins on God's side, no more conscience of sins on ours, and no more offering on Christ's. So our memorial recalls Him, not our sins.
For blood of bulls and goats [is] incapable of taking away sins.
The letter to the Hebrews has been arguing that Israel's yearly sacrifices never finished their work. This verse gives the reason. It states a flat impossibility. So why did God command a system that could not do the job, and what was it pointing to?
The failure was not in the amount of blood but in the kind of victim.
The benefit was impossible because the work was inadequate. Animal sacrifice, as an atonement for human sin, is both unequal and untrue. There was nothing acceptable to the God of judgment in the blood of animals. Man owed God obedience and had robbed Him of it. The life of a creature that by nature cannot know His will could never make that up. So pouring out such a life in death had no power to redeem from sin. God had no quarrel with the animals that perish. He had laid the law of His commandments on His people. Its curse could never fall in their place on an unthinking animal that never knew the voice of truth.
Verse 4 explains why the sacrifices had to keep coming. A ritual that has to be repeated is a ritual that never finished, and one writer puts it in terms of money owed.
The repetition of the offering only proved that the question of sins was not yet settled. Like a great debt owed, it was never reduced by the paying of the interest year by year. Each year thus only brought to remembrance the fact that sins had not yet actually been taken away. The blood of animals could not possibly accomplish such a result.
The same logic runs the other way, too. What is genuinely finished is never done again.
It is not that the sacrifices under the law did not perfect anyone's conscience. They could not. Their very repetition showed this. Suppose they had been able to cleanse the conscience, so that the person who brought them got complete relief about the whole question of sin. Then they would have stopped being offered. We never go on doing what is already done.
The verse denies something specific to animal blood: taking sins away. The Old Testament and the New Testament use different words here.
In His forbearance God "passed over" the sins people committed before Christ died. That is the word set in the margin against Romans 3:25. So the word used so often in the Old Testament is "atonement," which literally means "covering." … The word for "remission" means "a sending away," and not just a covering. So in the Old Testament we find sin covered for a time by the forbearance of God, while it waited for the complete sending away of sin. Only the death and resurrection of Christ did that.
They were still worth something — but only as a promise of payment to come.
The forgivenesses of Old Testament times were like promissory notes with a distant due date. The due date came when Christ died, and turned the notes into the pure gold of a redemption God Himself accomplished.
Meanwhile the worshipper did get something from them, but never a clear conscience.
The worshipper might indeed feel, to some degree, that the sins he had already committed were removed. But as soon as he had offered his sacrifice, he began to sin again, and every fresh sin needed another sacrifice. So he was never free from guilt before God or in his own conscience. … God passed over the sins of His people, because these sacrifices pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ.
The next verse draws the conclusion. This impossibility is the reason the Son came at all.
It is summed up in verse 4 in the words, "take away sins". The blood of bulls and goats could not do this, but the work of Christ has. So we read in verse 5, "Therefore (that is, since this is so), when He comes into the world He says, Sacrifice and offering You did not want, but a body You have prepared for Me". He came to do what other sacrifices could not do, and took a body so that the question of sins might be settled for ever.
For the believer the result is not a lost memory but a lifted burden.
There is still consciousness of sins, but there is no conscience of sins. That is, sin is not resting on the conscience as something that affects our relationship with God, or our standing before Him. The work of Christ has settled that question completely. So despite the sin of the past life, despite the sinfulness of the heart, despite failures, nothing remains on the conscience between the soul and God.
- Impossible, not just weak. An animal never knew God's will and never broke His law, so the curse owed by man could not fall on it.
- Repetition is the receipt. A sacrifice repeated every year never finished its work. We never go on doing what is already done.
- Covered, not carried off. The Old Testament word means covering; the New Testament word means sending away. Only the second is a real taking away of sins.
- Notes, then gold. Before the cross, forgiveness was credit given on a promise. The cross paid the note in full.
- Therefore a body. Because animal blood could not do it, the Son came in a body that could. The believer now remembers past sin without carrying it on the conscience.
Wherefore coming into the world he says, Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body.
The letter has just said that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins, and now it answers the obvious question: what can? Christ speaks the words of Psalm 40 as He enters the world, and one Person in one prepared body takes the place of the whole sacrificial system.
Christ is not setting aside one ritual. He looks at the whole range of offerings He is about to end.
This is a quotation (an adaptation) from the fortieth psalm — the burnt-offering psalm, as the twenty-second is the sin-offering one. In this we see our blessed Lord looking at the whole array of sacrifices provided under the legal covenant. There are the peace-offerings, the meat-offerings, the burnt-offerings, and the sin-offerings. He looks at them all, and, "when He comes into the world, He says, Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired."
The Old Testament had already admitted this about itself, long before the letter to the Hebrews was written.
The Old Testament itself bore clearest witness to the fact that animal sacrifices were of no real value in the eyes of God, and this Psalm is like the light breaking through the mist, declaring that at least Someone would take the place of all such offerings.
Psalm 40 does not read as Hebrews reads. There the words speak of ears opened, or dug out.
This shows the freedom with which the Spirit of God enlarges on the thought He first gave under His inspiration. The psalm is prophetic, so it speaks of the opening or forming of the ears. That suggests the obedience of our Lord, since the ear receives the instruction to be obeyed. But the New Testament passage comes after His holy person is fully revealed. There the Spirit teaches us that His body was one specially prepared for this obedience.
One writer sets three passages side by side: the psalm, the prophet's Messiah who listens each morning, and the law's servant who gives up his freedom to serve for life.
Other ears were deaf through sin. His ears alone God dug open, since He alone ever heard and obeyed... Then comes the prophet who speaks of the Messiah wakened morning by morning to hear... It is not only holy humanity given Him at the start, but His habit of daily dependence as "the Servant." The picture given in the law completes the case. At the end of faithful service, when He might have gone out free, He submits to have His ear bored through with an awl, as the sign of serving for ever. It is His death for the glory of God, and the life and blessing of all who believe.
God did not simply give Him a body like everyone else's.
This exactly suits what is revealed about His coming as man. He was to be born of a woman, and in this way He was more fully man than Adam. Yet He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, as neither Adam nor anyone else was. God fitted a body for the Son so truly that even in human nature He alone should be the Holy One of God.
Someone had to be there to receive that body.
But who was He, this One for whom the body was prepared? Before He came into the world — before there was a world to come into — He bound Himself by a solemn oath to do the will of God. Who in the wide universe could take up that will and complete it? Surely only the uncreated Son, whose eternal home is at the Father's side.
A body fit for obedience was still not enough by itself. The obedience had to run all the way to death.
In Him we have one fit to be the sacrifice. He took on Himself the form of a servant, and became obedient to the commands of Jehovah. It was His will to do it, and He was able to do it... To bring sinners into God's presence, He must not only keep the law Himself, but become obedient to death, even the death of the cross. He might preach righteousness in the congregation, but men hated it. He might do every work of blessing, but they envied Him and mocked Him. All the expressions of righteousness in Him were of no use alone. He must also become a sacrifice; He must shed His blood.
The quotation is repeated a few verses later, and the repetition has a purpose.
The apostle repeats this quotation in verses 8 and 9 to show that "the first" must be taken away, so that "the second" may be established. The law itself bore witness that its own terms were unsatisfactory. So it had to give way to One who would do the will of God.
- Need. God did not desire the old offerings, and Scripture itself said so before Christ came.
- Gift. In place of them God prepared a body for His Son — a real human body, holy as no other, fitted for obedience.
- Ear. The psalm's opened ears and the letter's prepared body say the same thing: He took the place of the Servant who only ever hears and obeys.
- Cross. A perfect life of obedience alone could not bring sinners to God; the prepared body had to become the sacrifice.
- Result. The One who spoke before He had a body takes the first system away, so the second may stand.
Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin.
God is speaking here about offerings He Himself had commanded. That raises a hard question. How can God turn down the very system He set up? And what did He want instead?
The wording here follows the Septuagint, the old Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is stronger than the Hebrew:
"In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you took no pleasure." The last words are still the forceful wording of the Septuagint. They do not exactly reflect the Hebrew, which reads, "You did not ask." Men easily satisfied themselves. When they prospered, and no obvious evil called for sacrifices for sin, they trusted that God was satisfied with freewill offerings. But God was always looking for His will to be done.
The rejection falls on the offering, not on the person carrying it to the altar:
When an Israelite brought an offering, God was pleased with the offerer; it was a movement of heart toward God. But He could not take pleasure in the offering. It could not do for the offerer what God wanted to do for him. This is why the wording is "did not desire." Many Scriptures show us that the pleasure of God is bound up with the doing of His will. Nothing could secure the pleasure of God until Christ came. The offerings were imperfect; how could God take pleasure in them?
God's refusal is not coldness. He will not settle for anything that leaves the worshipper's conscience untouched:
The worshipper once cleansed has no more conscience of sins. The blood of bulls and goats clearly could not put away sins in this way. Everyone grants that this is impossible. So — and this is very precious to our souls — God had no pleasure in sacrifices that could not put away our sins. What a God we have to deal with! He says, as it were, "My love to you is eternal. So I cannot have pleasure in sacrifices that fail to present you in holiness, free from any conscience of sins." He took away completely what could not take away our sins.
Notice when God said this — while the sacrifices were still going on:
Those animal sacrifices had no lasting value in themselves, and they never could have. Far from cleansing guilt, they had to be repeated again and again. That very repetition showed that the sins were still there, always coming back into remembrance before God. But God had in His purpose a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than these. Yes, in the middle of the whole system of sacrifices He had already voiced His dissatisfaction with what fell so far short of His own nature and of His people's need.
The verse names two specific classes of offering, and God's answer to their failure was not a better animal but a Person:
Going into more detail, He names burnt offerings and offerings for sin. These sacrifices had less of the character of communion, and so had a deeper meaning. But God had no pleasure in them. In a word, the Spirit had already declared the Jewish service unacceptable to God... In their place He had prepared a body for His Son — a vast and important truth! For the place of man is obedience. So, in taking this place, the Son of God put Himself into the position to obey perfectly.
The psalm quoted here says, "I delight to do your will." Hebrews leaves those words out. One writer explains why:
Our Lord always found delight in doing the will of the Father along His path. But He found no delight in being made sin. We would gather that is why the Spirit leaves out "I delight" here.
If God set aside the shadows He Himself gave, returning to religious ceremony is a step backward:
Ritual religion today slavishly copies the shadows. That copying marks its poverty and blindness. The more elaborate the ritual, the feebler the spiritual life. How can anyone who truly knows the glorious reality go back to "the weak and worthless elementary principles" (Gal. 4:9)? God Himself declared that He "had no pleasure" in them.
- No pleasure. The worshipper who came pleased God. The offering never did, because it could not do for him what God wanted done.
- No power. Love drives the refusal. God would not settle for sacrifices that left the conscience still burdened with sins.
- No secret. He said this while the sacrifices were still going on. His dissatisfaction stood on record inside the very system He had given.
- No substitute but a body. In place of burnt offerings and sin offerings, God prepared a body for His Son, because the place of man is obedience.
- No delight. Hebrews leaves out the words "I delight," for Christ found no delight in being made sin. And no one who knows the reality should go back to the shadows.
Then I said, Lo, I come (in [the] roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will.
When the Son steps into the world, He speaks. His words come from Psalm 40, written down long before He arrived. His answer to a whole system of sacrifices God had no pleasure in is one sentence about a will, a book, and a person who has come.
These verses let us listen in on what passed between the Father and the Son:
This is what the Son of God says in this most solemn passage (v. 5-9). By the grace of God we are allowed to know what passed between God the Father and Himself when He undertook to fulfil the will of God. We hear what He said, and the eternal purposes of God which He carried out. He takes the place of submission and obedience, of performing the will of another. God would no longer accept the sacrifices offered under the law — the passage points out four kinds of them. He had no pleasure in them. In their place He had prepared a body for His Son — a vast and important truth, for the place of man is obedience. So, in taking this place, the Son of God put Himself in the position to obey perfectly... Notice that before He was in the place of obedience, He offers Himself to accomplish the will of God. He does this out of free love, for the glory of God, as One who had the power. He must be God to do it, and to undertake all that God could will.
Books then were scrolls, and every scroll carried a label:
"In the scroll of the book it is written of me." Books at that time were rolls of parchment. A label on the outside showed the contents. That helped you find the roll when it stood on the shelf with others. So the spiritual label of the sacred roll — the summary of the Scriptures — is that Jesus Christ would come to do the will of God.
Commentators differ over which book is meant:
Here again some have suggested it is the book of God's eternal purposes, the records of heaven, as you might say. That is a very precious thought, and I would not rule it out. But is it not rather the volume of the Old Testament — the book of Leviticus, for instance, the book of all those rules for sacrifice? Once you have this thought, you can go back to Leviticus. You read there of the burnt offering and the sin offering, and you say: in the scroll of the book it is written, not of the offering, but of Christ Himself.
Psalm 40 says "I delight to do your will"; Hebrews 10 quotes the verse without the delight. One writer traces the missing words to the offering each passage has in view:
Notice how Psalm 40 includes the words "I delight," while the quotation in Hebrews 10 leaves them out. The reason is that Psalm 40 has mainly the burnt offering in view, while Hebrews 10 also has the sin offering in view. The Son always delighted to do the Father's will as the burnt offering. But it was no delight to Him to be made sin as the sin offering. So the words "I delight" do not appear when sin is in view.
Coming to do God's will took Him down a road that grew darker at every step:
He had to endure the cross, in all its terrible depths of sorrow and suffering, if God's will was to be done. His love for His God and Father carried Him into those unfathomed depths. To the natural eye His path looked all wrong, but in devotion to God's will He went on. He looked into the dark cup He had to drink. Sweat like blood fell from Him, yet He took the cup and drank it. "Your will be done," He said.
Because salvation begins in God's will and not ours, it rests on something that does not shift:
Here is the source of all blessing: it comes from the divine will. "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God." It comes from the will of God, not from the will of man: that is only sin... God's will was His; and that will alone brought salvation and life where man's will had brought only sin and death. This gives stability and perfection to everything — to find its source and origin in the will of God. If it had been the result of my will, everything would be as unsteady and changeable as man's will is.
- Written — the label on the scroll, the summary of Scripture, is that Christ would come to do God's will.
- Prepared — God set aside sacrifices He had no pleasure in and prepared a body for His Son, putting Him in the position to obey perfectly.
- Delighted — Psalm 40 says He delighted in that will; Hebrews drops the word, because He found no delight in being made sin.
- Endured — the will He came to do led into the dark cup, and He drank it rather than turn back.
- Established — blessing that starts in God's will, not ours, cannot shift. Our own will brought only sin and death.
Above, saying Sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou willedst not, neither tookest pleasure in (which are offered according to the law);
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
then he said, Lo, I come to do thy will. He takes away the first that he may establish the second;
Hebrews 10:9 quotes words that Christ spoke as He came into the world. He sets one thing aside so that another can stand — which raises the question of what "the first" is, what "the second" is, and why God works this way.
One writer describes the moment a Man steps into a religious system built on sacrifice.
A Man comes on the scene. People looked on Him as a carpenter's son, and He never spoke against the temple services. But when the Holy Spirit comes to explain His mind, we learn that the whole ritual of services was now all in vain, and that He had come to set it all aside. And who was He? The One who was the Word of God. Here we see what His thoughts were before He came into the world: "I come to do Your will; I set aside all sacrifices and establish Your will."
The proof was not a new claim. The law testified against itself.
In verses 8 and 9 the apostle repeats this quotation. His aim is to show that "the first" must be taken away, so that "the second" can be established. The law itself testified that its own terms fell short. So it had to give way to One who would do the will of God.
Commentators differ on how wide the two words reach. The writers below quote an older translation: "He takes away the first that He may establish the second." One takes the pair as the law set against the will of God:
So it is said here, "Lo, I come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first" (that is, the law), "that He may establish the second" (that is, God's will). People often confuse God's will with the law, without understanding that the two are set here in the sharpest contrast.
Another takes them as covering two whole systems:
So, broadly, the "first" means Judaism and the "second" means Christianity. By that we mean the whole system of grace, revealed and established in Christ, which runs on to the completion of all God's purposes in new creation. Every feature of this system is "new," and will remain "new" for ever. It could not grow old. The "first" is old, and has disappeared; the "second" abides eternally.
The verse is careful about which of the pair God builds on.
Then we read "He takes away the first, that He may establish the second." It does not say that He established the first, but He has established the second. We saw in chapter 9 that first and second there referred to place; but here it is the first and second orders that are in mind; the material displaced by the spiritual of which it was the type. It has ever been so in the ways of God; the first goes, it is taken away; but the second abides, it is established.
Did God change plans when the old covenant failed?
We thus see that the new covenant was not an afterthought, brought in when the old covenant failed. God knew the end from the beginning. The new covenant was in His mind from the very first. "He takes away the first that He might establish the second." Again, "In that He says, A new covenant, He has made the first old. Now that which decays and grows old is ready to vanish away." So the word new does not just mean new instead of old. It means that the new displaced the old — the two cannot stand side by side!
This pattern runs right through the families of the Old Testament.
Again and again, we come across firstborn sons who fail, and the blessing goes to another who has no claim to it. Cain was the firstborn, but Seth displaced him. Isaac displaced Ishmael, Jacob displaced Esau, and Joseph displaced Reuben. The underlying principle is clear: the firstborn speaks of man in his natural strength... And, this is the point, natural man acting in his own strength always leads to failure. In order for blessing to happen, God has to provide the "second."
The number in the verse carries a promise of finality.
He is "the last Adam." The contrast here is between the first and the last, not the first and the second. Why last? Because that word rules out any idea that a third or later race could ever be needed, or come on the scene. "He takes away the first that He may establish the second," is what Hebrews 10:9 says. He never takes away the second in favour of a third! The second is established.
If the first is gone, our confidence has to move with it.
Giving up all hope of blessing on the ground of law, and turning the flesh out of its place, does not please us by nature. It is the opposite. Still it is the course that is according to God... If Christ the Second Man fills our vision, the first man and the covenant of law that applied to him are set aside.
- First removed. Christ came to set aside the whole system of sacrifice as useless, and the law itself testified that its own terms fell short.
- Second established. In its place stands the will of God, done by Christ — and only the second is ever called established.
- No overlap. The old and the new cannot stand side by side. The new displaces the old and stays new for ever.
- No afterthought. The second was in God's mind from the very first. Seth, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph rehearsed it long before Hebrews stated it.
- No third. God never sets aside the last Adam for a successor, so our hope moves off the first man and onto Christ.
by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
This verse gathers up the whole argument before it: our standing before God rests on God's will, carried out in Christ's body, in an offering made only once. Two questions press on the reader: what does "sanctified" mean here, and why does "once for all" settle the matter for good?
The phrase "by that will" points back to the sentence just before it. There, God takes one thing away so another can stand. Commentators read the "first" as the law, and the "second" as God's own will:
So it is said here, "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He does away with the first" (that is, the law), "in order to establish the second" (that is, God's will). People often confuse God's will with the law without realising it, but here the two stand in the sharpest contrast.
That will is the reason we are set apart at all. And whose will it is matters.
He came to do the will of the LORD. Now faith understands that it is by this will of God that those He has called to Himself for salvation are set apart to God — in other words, are sanctified. This is the will of Him who, in His eternal wisdom, prepared a body for His Son. 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.
The word trips up many readers. They assume it describes a change in their character, so they doubt it applies to them. Commentators take it in another sense, drawn from the furnishings of Israel's tent of worship:
Many believers have very mistaken thoughts about sanctification, because they have not searched the Scriptures on the subject. Many who would say they are justified would hesitate to say they are sanctified. Why? They hold the false notion that being sanctified means being holy in nature. They do not find this true of themselves. So they go on hoping to be sanctified, and can never say they are. But sanctification is not to be understood that way. The vessels of the sanctuary were sanctified; but did the gold of those vessels differ from ordinary gold? Certainly not. They were set apart for God according to His will. The sprinkling of blood and the anointing with oil made them vessels for His service.
The verse speaks of the offering of Christ's body. Scripture says that body was "prepared" for Him. The choice of word matters:
There is no hint of "creation" here. In this important passage the Spirit's purpose is to teach us the unique nature of that body. It was suited to become the sacrificial offering to God "once for all" (v. 10). So the word "created" is avoided, and "prepared" is used. Because of how it came into being, this "body" had its own special feature: a holiness that belonged to it and had no equal. The Holy Spirit secured that holiness, so that the Son's obedience "to the point of death, even death on a cross" might be shown in it.
"Once for all" is not a detail of timing. It governs the believer's whole standing, moment by moment:
The offering is offered, never to be repeated. He is not busy with continual sacrifice as the priests under the law were. He has sat down at the right hand of God, not needing to rise again on this account. Nothing more remains to be offered: "by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." There is never a moment when they are not in the full value of that work before God.
This has a sharp edge. It weighs any practice that still offers a sacrifice for sin day after day:
Is it not a sacrifice going on day by day, with the same proof of ineffectiveness as in the Jewish sacrifices? The letter to the Hebrews sets those sacrifices against the offering of Christ's body once for all (Heb. 9, 10), and against its result now to the believer. For where there is forgiveness of sins, "there is no longer any offering for sin."
The verse names God's will and Christ's offering, and nothing else. So it tells an anxious reader where not to look:
It is useless and unnecessary to look within. Our faith, our repentance, our experiences and our feelings hold nothing that will bring relief or peace to a burdened conscience. This Scripture takes our thoughts right away from ourselves and fills them with the will of God and the work of Christ.
- The will — Our setting apart begins in God's will, not ours; the law is taken away so that this will may stand.
- The body — That will required a body prepared for the Son, holy in its very origin, and therefore fit to be the offering.
- The offering — Made once, never repeated; the Priest sat down because nothing remains to be done about sin.
- The result — "Sanctified" means set apart for God, like the sanctuary vessels. It is a standing, not a level you reach.
- The rest — So peace comes from looking away from our feelings to God's will and Christ's finished work.
And every priest stands daily ministering, and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
Israel's worship never stopped: the same altar, the same animals, the same priest back at his post the next morning. The writer points to that routine and to what it never achieved. The priest is always standing, and the sins are still there.
The argument turns on a piece of missing furniture. Israel's tent of worship held everything needed for work and nothing to sit on.
Under the law, the priest stood. In the tabernacle there was a table, a lampstand, an altar; but there was no seat. The priest kept standing, because his work was never finished — always doing, never done. How like that is much of the work today, where there is no rest for the soul. Provision is made for doing, but never for knowing that a work is done forever.
The word "daily" is not praise for the system. It marks a covering that lasted one day.
Under the law, the priest of Israel offered up the daily sacrifice, and the blood of it was good for the day on which it was shed. It neither covered past sins nor future sins. Fresh sins called for fresh blood. There was no lasting value in the blood that was shed. God required constant sacrifices, and the sins of the people required constant offerings. Daily sins had to be met by the sacrifice of that day; but the conscience of the one coming to God was never at rest.
The repetition itself is the evidence. If the offering came round again, it had not settled the matter the first time.
Suppose they could have cleansed the conscience, giving the offerer complete relief about the whole question of sin. Then they would have stopped being offered. We never go on doing what is already done. In fact their effect ran in exactly the opposite direction. They did not clear sins from the conscience for good. Instead, by set ceremony, they brought sins to mind again at least once every year.
Were the priests careless? Each phrase of the verse rules that out and points the blame elsewhere.
Every day the priest stood at his post at the altar, ministering there. He only repeated the same service the next day, or at the next occasion for which that sacrifice was commanded. But all of it was useless when it came to taking away sins. Daily offering — then there was no lack of devoted service at the altar. The same sacrifices — then they did not fail through any neglect of the ritual. So where did they fail? The failure was built into them. For the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sins.
The verse describes something still going on. The temple service was running on the day these words were written.
The Apostle spoke of a powerlessness that belonged to the very day he wrote — one that neither time nor repetition could remove. Still, the daily sacrifices were being offered up. If the case rested for eternity on those sacrifices, it was hopeless. How completely and decisively the sinner is driven to the one perfect sacrifice of Christ! It is that, or nothing.
The standing priest means most when set beside the One who sat down.
In the Old Testament order of things every priest stands, and never sits down. He never sat down, because his work of sacrifice was never done. Day after day he was ministering and offering, often the same sacrifices, bulls and goats — we read of it in the book of Leviticus. Those sacrifices can never, never take away sins. There is a difference of only one letter between the work of a priest of Aaron's line and such a high priest as ours. It is the difference between "never" and "ever." He sits forever because the work He does is done forever.
The verse still speaks to any system that puts a man back at an altar with a sacrifice to repeat.
The priest under the Levitical system could never sit down, for the obvious reason that his work was never done. There is remarkable force and meaning in the way the inspired writer puts this. "Every priest" — "stands daily" — "offering repeatedly" — "the same sacrifices" — "which can never take away sins." No human language could set out more vividly the dreary monotony and complete uselessness of the Levitical ceremony. How strange that the Christian world, with such a passage of holy Scripture in front of it, has set up a human priesthood with its daily sacrifice!
- Standing. The tent of worship had no chair. The priest never sat, because his work was never done.
- Daily. The blood covered only the day it was shed. Fresh sins called for fresh blood, so the conscience never came to rest.
- Repeated. The offering came round again, and that repetition was the verdict. We do not keep doing what is already done.
- Powerless. The priests were devoted and the ritual was kept. The weakness lay in the sacrifices themselves.
- Seated. One letter separates the two priesthoods. The old could never take away sins. The new sat down forever, because His work is finished.
But *he*, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down in perpetuity at [the] right hand of God,
Hebrews 10:12 sets one figure against another: the priest who never stops working, and the Man who has sat down. Everything turns on that seat: what it says about His work, where it puts Him, and what it settles for us.
One commentator starts with the furniture of the old sanctuary, and with what is missing from it:
Under the law, the priest stood. There was in the tabernacle a table, a lampstand, an altar; but there was no seat. The priest stood all the time, because his work was never finished — always doing, never done. Much of the work we see today is like that: the soul gets no rest. There is provision for doing, but never for knowing that a work is done for ever. In contrast with that, our Lord, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down. We know He is at work for us — praying for His people's needs, and all that. But as for the sacrifice, He has offered it — it is finished. What could add to the value of that sacrifice? He offered one sacrifice for sins; there it stands alone in its grandeur, and nothing can add to it.
The ESV joins the words "for all time" to the offering. Older translations read "for ever," and join it to the sitting instead. One commentator says the placement matters:
"After He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever sat down." Remove the comma, if it is in your Bible. It does not say He offered a sacrifice for ever, because that would suggest an offering that never ends. It says that when He had offered it once, then He for ever sat down. His seat is eternal, as far as His work goes.
The word does more than stretch into eternity. It also rules out any break, and one writer links our conscience to the unbroken seat of Christ:
"By one offering He has perfected for ever those who are sanctified." That phrase "for ever" means more than eternally; it means without a break. It carries permanence before God, with no interruption. It is not the word that speaks of eternity, though of course it is that too; but it is permanently perfect before God. Christ is always sitting at the right hand of God — "always" here is the same word — and so our conscience is for ever perfect. Scripture uses it in Hebrews 10:12 to show He has nothing more to do.
If the offering is perfect, so is what it produces:
The offering made to God on the cross was such that God can say of those who come to Him, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." And the One who made that offering for us pleases God so much that He is now sitting at God's right hand. As for the sacrifice, He has "sat down in perpetuity": there is no repeating it. And as for those He made that perfect offering for, Scripture says, "By one offering He has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified." The sacrifice is perfect, and so is the result. The worshippers, once purged, can stand before a holy God with no more conscience of sins. In this way they honour the work of Christ, and show their faith in what God says about it.
One writer puts the consequence plainly:
"For ever perfected." No man who understands this can talk of fresh applications of the blood of Christ, or of repeated or continued sacrifices for sins. This takes away the whole system of repetitions and fresh applications. This one sacrifice stands alone, and for ever perfects.
He is not saying we never fail. A believer "may be conscious of sin and failure, and there will surely be repentance and confession." But the question of conscience is settled.
Hebrews mentions this seat more than once, and each mention gives its own reason for it:
In Hebrews 1:3 the Son has set Himself down "at the right hand of the Majesty on high" because of who He is as Son of God. He did this after having "by Himself" made purification for sins. In Hebrews 10:12 the Lord Jesus again sets Himself down "at the right hand of God." This time it is because of the greatness of His finished work, in that He "offered one sacrifice for sins." That sacrifice never needs repeating, because its effect is infinite and eternal.
- One — one sacrifice for sins, offered once; it stands alone, and nothing can add to it.
- Seated — the tabernacle had no chair, because that work was never done; Christ sat down because His was.
- For ever — one writer ties the phrase to the sitting rather than the offering; it means without a break as much as without end.
- Perfected — while He stays seated, the believer's conscience stays perfect before God.
- Finished — no repeats, no fresh applications of the blood; that whole system is gone.
waiting from henceforth until his enemies be set [for the] footstool of his feet.
The verse hangs on one small word: after the offering, the Man at God's right hand is waiting. What He waits for tells us what is still ahead. What He no longer waits for tells us what is already finished.
The whole force of the picture comes from comparing two postures. One priest never sits; this One does.
The contrast in priesthood is also very striking. The high priest descended from Aaron was weak himself. He needed a sacrifice for himself. He always stood and could never sit down, because he could never present to God a finished work. But the holy, innocent, unstained Son of God offered one sacrifice for sins and sat down — and that forever — at the right hand of God. He has nothing more to do about atonement for sins. He is only "waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet."
His waiting is not leftover business from the cross. It concerns a different group of people.
Hebrews 10 uses His seat at God's right hand to show that the work is perfect and finished. It is not always in progress, as with the Jewish priest. If anything, it proves that Christ is not ruling among His enemies. He is waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. In Hebrews 10 He has completed His offering for His friends. From now on He waits for another thing: vengeance on His enemies. "The kingdom," in the full and literal sense of the word, will witness that.
The word "until" sets a limit. The state of the world shows that the limit still stands.
Christ is not yet sitting on His own throne. When He had finished the work on the cross, God said to Him, "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." But the day is coming when He will put down His enemies and sit on His throne. According to the Scriptures, the present state of things is this: Christ is sitting at the right hand of God — until He makes His enemies His footstool. Look at all the wars and uproar and misery and wretchedness and superstition around us. Do you think that Christ is sitting on His throne?
Notice where this line falls in the chapter, and which throne it points to.
In Hebrews 10:13 we find a remarkable break in the flow. Verse 12 gives the work of the Lord Jesus and its effect, and verse 14 gives the glories of His work in contrast with the many sacrifices of the law. But in between come these words about waiting. ... "Sit at my right hand." Scripture does not present the Lord as now sitting on His own throne, but soon He will. He is now on the Father's throne, but when He sits on His own throne we shall sit with Him (Revelation 3:21, and see Matthew 25:31).
The gap between the finished sacrifice and the subdued enemies is not empty time.
And the Lord Jesus Christ, rejected by man, is sitting at God's right hand as Man, waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. Patient grace is working in the meantime to call sinners to the knowledge of the salvation He has accomplished.
The world's condition proves the point, and it shows what God is doing instead.
They are not made His footstool yet. If they were, He would not allow matters to go on in the world as they do now. It is another thing that God is doing now. He is gathering out His joint-heirs, and, having this purpose, He says, Sit at my right hand until the time when your enemies shall be made your footstool.
His posture sets the terms for His people.
We may well wait if Christ is waiting; but we wait in suffering and conflict. He is waiting to reign. Then He will cause full blessing to flow out for His own, whether in heaven or on earth, and He will banish evil from both.
This shapes what a believer expects from the world now.
Christ is waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. We must wait for it, to see the world set right... The idea that goodness is to have its rights in this world is to forget the cross and Christ. We cannot have our rights until He has His, for we have none except His.
- Finished — A priest with unfinished work never sat down. Christ offered one sacrifice and sat down.
- Waiting — The offering for His friends is over. What is left is the subduing of His enemies.
- Until — The word sets a limit no one has reached yet. Wars and misery show He is not yet ruling from His own throne.
- Meanwhile — Patient grace calls sinners and gathers joint-heirs who will share the throne He is yet to take.
- Together — Because He waits, His people wait in suffering and conflict. We claim no rights in this world before He receives His own.
For by one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified.
This verse ends a long argument. Israel's priests offered the same sacrifices again and again. Christ offered one. Two words then carry the weight: "perfected" and "for all time." In what sense is a believer already complete?
The verse explains why Christ sat down. The old system repeated everything; this offering left nothing to finish.
Whenever the Holy Spirit teaches this subject fully, His special theme is "once," "once for all." That rules out a sacrifice that continues, as well as one that is repeated… He was not standing and offering repeatedly, like the Jewish priests. When He had offered one sacrifice, He sat down for ever. That is, He did not have to get up and offer anything more. The reason was that by that one offering He had perfected the sanctified for ever.
The phrase is not only about length of time. It describes a condition that has no gaps in it, matching the unbroken position of Christ Himself.
I am perfected for ever (the words "for ever" meaning not merely for eternity, but what is uninterrupted). As Christ is always at the right hand of God, so we are uninterruptedly before God. There is never a moment when the believer is not the righteousness of God, as standing in Christ… He is my witness that I am perfect — a perfection that never changes.
"Perfected" here is not a claim about the believer's character. It is about the settled question of guilt.
The precious blood of Christ has settled the whole question of guilt, and settled it for ever. So the believer is perfect as to his conscience (9:9). He could never reach that under Judaism. He knows that all his sins are forgiven (10:14, 17). He has reached the goal that was in view. In this sense he is perfected, though he still has sin in him and, if he is careless, may fall into it. He is not yet perfected as to his person. But he is perfected as to his condition before God — pardoned, and pardoned for ever, by the offering of God's Son.
Older translations say the purged worshipper has "no more conscience of sins." That wording is easy to misread.
Those sanctified by His blood are "perfected in perpetuity" by it. Once purged, they have "no more conscience of sins." But this does not mean "no more consciousness of sins" — that is, of committing them. It means we are conscious of the power of that work, which stays before God for us always. There is never a moment's break in this.
The word does not always carry the same sense in Scripture.
Scripture looks at sanctification in two ways. It can be something still going on (1 Thessalonians 5:23). It can also be a settled condition (1 Corinthians 6:11). In Hebrews, apart from one verse, it means a settled condition (2:11; 10:10, 14).
Some readers still wonder whether they qualify. The answer turns on what the word means here.
"Sanctified," in the letter to the Hebrews, never means inward sanctification by the Spirit of God… "Sanctify" means "to set apart." When a person believes, God sets him apart from the rest of the world. He puts all the value of the precious blood of Christ upon him… So everyone who believes is sanctified in this sense, and is therefore "perfected forever" by the one offering (v. 14).
Because the standing rests on the offering, it does not rise and fall with the believer's performance.
The one glorious sacrifice of Christ is of infinite value to God. In righteousness it lets Him bring even the weakest believer into His presence as PERFECTED FOREVER. God says you are perfected forever. It is not because of the amount of your faith or service or walk. It is only because of the infinite value to Him of the one offering of Christ for your sins.
The verse rules out any repeated application of the blood. It still leaves room for repentance over daily failure.
He may be conscious of sin and failure, and there will surely be repentance and confession. This is God's way of restoring the soul when communion has been interrupted… But as to the conscience, Jesus has judged and borne all sins. He has put them away, so that they can be remembered no more… No one who understands this can speak of fresh applications of the blood of Christ, or of repeated or continued sacrifices for sins.
- One — one offering, never repeated, never continued. The seated Priest proves nothing is left to do.
- For ever — not just long, but unbroken. Christ is always at God's right hand, so the believer is always accepted.
- Perfected — perfect in conscience and standing, not yet perfect in person. Sin may still be in us, but God has settled the guilt.
- Sanctified — set apart by the blood, not by achievement. It covers every believer, the weakest as fully as the strongest.
- Therefore — no fresh sprinkling, no repeated sacrifice. Repentance restores broken fellowship; nothing at the cross needs redoing.
And the Holy Spirit also bears us witness [of it]; for after what was said
The chapter has just said that a single offering has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, and now a third witness takes the stand. The question is not whether Christ's work is enough, but how anyone can know it is — and where that knowledge is found.
This verse completes a sequence that runs through the chapter. It adds nothing to redemption. It says something about it.
Verses 15-18 give the testimony of the Holy Spirit. It confirms the standing that the sanctified have through the offering of Jesus Christ. The point here is not the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. It is the testimony He gives to the work of Christ, finished down here. Three things about grace stand out in what comes before. First, the will of God decided on the work to be done for us. Second, the sacrifice of Christ carried out this divine will. Third, the Holy Spirit gave His testimony to this will of God, accomplished by Christ.
Why bring in a witness at all, when the work is already finished?
Now the Apostle presents the witness of the Spirit as the One who brings us the knowledge of the truth with divine authority, so that we may hold it with divine certainty.
The small preposition carries the weight. Elsewhere the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. Here He testifies from outside us, and He does it on the written page.
But the Holy Spirit stoops to take the place of Witness, and He is completely reliable. It is not here His witness in us as in Romans 8:16. In our passage He is seen as testifying to us from outside, and at once we are pointed to what is written in Jeremiah 31. The words of Jeremiah were the words of the Spirit; his writings the writings of the Spirit. The witness of the Spirit to us is found in the written Word of God.
The verse points backward — "after saying" — to words spoken through the prophet Jeremiah centuries earlier. For readers raised on those Scriptures, that was not a weak argument but the strongest one available.
Here in Hebrews 10 the witness of the Spirit is the Old Testament Scripture, Jeremiah 31. The Spirit of God had dictated those words long before. To a Jewish reader they were therefore a conclusive witness. Under the terms of this covenant, the Spirit of God had promised the whole inward work in people's hearts and minds — the new birth. He had also promised complete forgiveness of sins. This being so, then the Old Testament itself indicated that offerings for sin would cease. This is inescapable. Had the Jews ever considered so plain a fact, set down in their own Scriptures?
The words of the testimony follow in the next two verses. One writer weighs their exact order.
God does not say, "I will not remember their sins and their lawless deeds," but "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." The simple statement that God would not remember our sins might imply that He passed them over. But when God says He will remember them "no more", it implies that they have all been remembered, confessed, borne and dealt with in judgment. Because they have been dealt with, God can justly say He will remember them "no more".
What, then, of a believer who still fears that God keeps a record of his sins?
And here is the secret of settled peace. If I think that God will ever remember sin, I am denying the will, the work, and the testimony of God. In short, if a believer in Jesus, it comes to being a sin to have the least thought of God's ever imputing a sin to me. It is just as much a work of the flesh as to commit the sin.
Many search their feelings for confirmation before they have accepted what is written. The order runs the other way.
We have the witness in us when we believe the witness to us. We have then received the Word into our hearts — and, remember, the Word is the witness.
The same warning is put in terms of where our attention lands:
People often look for the witness of the Holy Spirit in them while they have not believed the witness of the Holy Spirit to them.
- Willed. The chapter moves in three steps. God's will plans the work, Christ's sacrifice accomplishes it, and the Spirit testifies that it is done.
- Worked. The Spirit's subject is not His work inside the believer, but the finished work of Christ. He speaks to us from outside, not only in us.
- Written. His testimony sits in Scripture. The words of Jeremiah were the words of the Spirit, so an old promise answers a present fear.
- Wiped. The wording is exact. Sins are not overlooked. They were remembered, borne in judgment, and so remembered no more.
- Welcomed. Believe the witness to you and you gain the witness in you. To doubt God here is not modesty. It denies the will, the work and the testimony together.
This [is] the covenant which I will establish towards them after those days, saith [the] Lord Giving my laws into their hearts, I will write them also in their understandings;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
and their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more.
Hebrews 10:17 closes a quotation from Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant, and the writer presents it as the Holy Spirit's own testimony. Two things carry the weight of the verse: who is speaking, and why God says He will remember sins no more.
The argument of the chapter has already set out the will of God and the finished work of Christ. Now a third voice speaks. One writer marks it off from the Spirit's witness inside the believer.
But the Holy Spirit stoops to take the place of Witness, and He is completely reliable. This is not His witness in us, as in Romans 8:16. In our passage He is seen testifying to us from outside, and we are sent at once to what is written in Jeremiah 31. The words of Jeremiah were the words of the Spirit; his writings the writings of the Spirit. The witness of the Spirit to us is found in the written Word of God.
That distinction has a practical edge. A witness outside us cannot be shaken by how we happen to feel today.
The witness of the Holy Spirit is nothing vague, mysterious, or hard to explain. It is a spoken witness and a written witness. Thank God, it is not written in the uncertain, shifting script of moods and feelings, which take one shape today and another tomorrow. The witness of the Spirit is fixed and unchanging.
Everything turns on the exact wording. One writer sets what God said beside what He might have said.
God does not say, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will not remember." He says, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." A simple statement that God would not remember our sins might suggest He passed them over. But "no more" implies that they have all been remembered, confessed, borne and dealt with in judgment. Because they have been dealt with, God can rightly say He will remember them no more.
Another writer takes the same wording back to the cross, and then forward without end.
These words show that the question of sin had to be settled. God does not say, "I will not remember," but, "I will remember no more." He saw our sins and remembered them, for He decided on the death of Christ to do away with them. And now that they are done away with, He remembers them neither today, tomorrow, nor ever.
Does this mean God's memory has failed? One writer draws a line between forgetting and forgiving.
It is not that God forgot the things. He does not remember them — hold them in His mind — against them in any way. When I say I forget as well as forgive, that only speaks of how complete the forgiveness is. It does not mean that, if the matter is brought up, my memory no longer knows it as a fact. If I give an account of myself to God, I must do it fully, or I would lose something of the goodness of Him who has called and saved me.
This promise is not cold doctrine. It reaches the person who still feels the weight of what he has done.
Grace meets those who were once guilty but are now renewed. It comforts those who feel and admit their sinfulness with the assurance of divine forgiveness.
What then about a believer who keeps asking God to pardon sins Christ has already borne?
Suppose a believer comes to God today and says, "O God, pardon my sins." Might God not well ask, "What about the work of Christ?" Might He not well say, "I remembered your sins and lawless deeds when My beloved Son was bearing them on the cross, and they are to be remembered no more"?
- Three strands, one blessing. The will of God, the work of Christ, and the witness of the Spirit all stand behind this verse.
- Witness to us, not in us. The testimony is written in Scripture, not felt in our moods, so it does not rise and fall with us.
- "No more" is the key word. God remembered these sins once — at the cross — and that is why He remembers them no more.
- Forgiven, not overlooked. He does not hold them in His mind against us; this is a settled account, not a failure of memory.
- So rest. To ask again for pardon of sins Christ has already borne is to question His finished work.
But where there [is] remission of these, [there is] no longer a sacrifice for sin.
This verse closes the letter's long argument about sacrifice. Its conclusion is simple: once God forgives sins, a sacrifice has nothing left to do. That leaves every reader one question. Do we treat the work as finished, or do we keep bringing God something more for sin?
The verse is a full stop. Everything from the priesthood onward has been building toward it.
Here the teaching about the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus comes to an end. Hebrews 2:17-18 touched briefly on His two lines of service, and both have now been opened out. His present high priestly service of intercession fills Hebrews 4:14 — 7:25. His sacrificial service fills Hebrews 7:26 — 10:18. As the writer usually does, he now turns to exhortation for the rest of the letter.
The verse turns on one word. It does not mean God simply hid sins from sight.
The word used so often in the Old Testament is "atonement," which literally means "covering." ... We read in Hebrews 10:18, "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin." The word translated "forgiveness" (older versions say "remission") means "a sending away," not just a covering. So in the Old Testament we find a temporary covering of sin while God held back His judgment. It was waiting for the full sending away of sin. Only the death and resurrection of Christ accomplished that.
The same reasoning that once demanded endless repetition now rules it out.
Then comes the conclusion that must follow (verse 18): "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin." The very principle that made repetition necessary in the first sacrifice rules it out in the second. Forgiveness follows the shedding of blood that God accepts. The worshippers have been purged once for all, so they have no more conscience of their sins (Hebrews 9:22; 10:2).
This does not end all remembering of the sacrifice. It removes one thing only.
There may indeed be a remembrance of this one sacrifice, whatever form it takes. But there cannot be a sacrifice to take away sins that are already taken away. So we stand on completely new ground: by the sacrifice of Christ our sins are entirely put away.
The verse follows God's own words quoted just before it. The exact wording matters.
God does not say, "I will not remember their sins and their lawless deeds." He says, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." Simply saying He would not remember our sins might suggest He passed them over. But "no more" means He has already remembered them all, and they have been confessed, borne and dealt with in judgment. Because they have been dealt with, God can justly say He will remember them no more.
These words were written while sacrifices were still going on at Jerusalem. One writer presses their force well beyond that one system.
When these words were written, Jewish sacrifices were still going on at Jerusalem. But they were worthless as offerings for sin, and soon they were all swept away... And yet a very large part of the Christian world still bows down before what they call "the sacrifice of the mass." What a great sin this is! It is worse than keeping up the Jewish sacrifices would have been, if that had been possible.
Commentators differ on one application. Some hold that the verse settles the matter for Christians. On this view Israel will still have sacrifices, but of a different kind:
The Jews will have the forgiveness of their sins, but they will also have sacrifices appointed as reminders of the one effective sacrifice of Christ, offered and accepted once for all.
This is not just doctrine. It changes what a believer can expect from God day by day.
Do you ask, Does that mean I will never again be aware of failure and sin? No, not at all. The nearer we are to God, the more aware we are of failure. It means this: all your sins were laid on Jesus and purged by His atoning death, so God never charges one of them to you again... There is no question of repeated offerings, repeated sprinklings, or fresh applications. All that is Jewish, and has now vanished away.
- Sent away, not covered. Forgiveness here means a sending away. The old system covered sin while God waited; the cross removed it.
- Remembered, then no more. God says He will remember sins "no more" because He has already remembered and judged them in Christ.
- No more offering. The very rule that once required sacrifice after sacrifice now forbids even one more.
- Remembrance, yes; repetition, no. We may remember the one sacrifice, but no sacrifice can take away sins already taken away.
- Never charged again. You will still feel failure — but God never puts one of those sins back on your account.