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.