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.