One sacrifice for sins forever: the body prepared and the way opened

Hebrews 10 closes the doctrinal argument begun at 5:1 and opens the long exhortation that runs to the end of the book. The setting is the one described in the previous class: Christian readers, most likely of Jewish background, under social pressure and tempted to drift. The chapter itself looks back to their early days, when they endured 'a great conflict in the face of suffering' (10:32), were publicly shamed and joyfully accepted the loss of property (10:34).

The author is unnamed; authorship and date are discussed in the class on chapters 8 and 9. The writer says that 'every priest stands' daily offering the same sacrifices (10:11). Scholars who date Hebrews before AD 70 take this as a report of the temple service. Others take it as a description of the system as Scripture sets it out.

The chapter rests on the world of Leviticus: the sin offering, the burnt offering and the Day of Atonement. It also rests on a theme within the Old Testament itself, that sacrifice was never a mechanical act: the prophets and psalmists said God wanted obedience and a broken heart (1 Samuel 15:22; Psalm 51:16-17; Hosea 6:6).

Hebrews 10 is the climax of a sermon, and sermons in Hebrews follow a pattern: exposition of Scripture, then 'therefore' and an exhortation. Verses 1-18 are exposition; verses 19-25 are the 'therefore'; verses 26-39 are warning and encouragement. The commands (draw near, hold fast, spur one another on) rest on the claim already made. The writer reads the Old Testament as spoken now: Christ himself speaks Psalm 40 (10:5), and 'the Holy Spirit also testifies to us' in Jeremiah 31 (10:15).

The writer quotes the Greek Old Testament. In Psalm 40:6 the Hebrew has God 'digging' or opening ears for the speaker, and the Greek version has 'a body You prepared for me.' Hebrews follows the Greek, and its argument rests on the word 'body' (10:5, 10). Scholars explain the difference as a free rendering of the Hebrew or as a different Hebrew text. The class reads the verse as the writer used it.

The warning in 10:26-31 follows the rules of covenant warning. It is addressed to a community and describes the end of those who 'trample on the Son of God.' The word 'deliberately' recalls the 'high-handed' sin of Numbers 15:30-31, for which the law had no sacrifice. Verse 39 shows the writer's confidence in his readers. How the warning relates to assurance is contested (see the note).

10:1-4. The law is a 'shadow' (skia) of the good things to come, not the very image (eikon) of them. Year after year the same sacrifices cannot make the worshipers perfect. If they could, the offerings would have ceased, because the worshipers, cleansed once, would no longer have a consciousness of sin. Instead the sacrifices are an anamnesis, a 'reminder' (10:3), of sins every year. The reference is the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), and the statement is flat: 'it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.' The law never promised that blood alone removed sin apart from God's gracious provision; the offerings pointed beyond themselves.

10:5-7. 'When Christ came into the world, He said.' The writer places Psalm 40:6-8 on the lips of the Son at his coming. God did not want sacrifices and offerings as such; he prepared a body. The scroll 'written about me' supplies the reason: 'I have come to do Your will.' What the sacrifices could not do, an obedient human life and death does.

10:8-10. The writer then comments on the psalm. 'He takes away the first to establish the second': the sacrifices according to the law give way to the will of God done by the Son. 'By that will, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all' (ephapax). Sanctified (hagiazo) here means set apart for God and brought near, a status secured by the offering.

10:11-14. The priests stand 'day after day' and offer 'again and again' the same sacrifices, which cannot take away sins. Standing marks unfinished work. Christ 'offered for all time one sacrifice for sins' and 'sat down at the right hand of God' (Psalm 110:1), waiting until his enemies become a footstool. Verse 14 gives the result: 'by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified.' The tenses hold two things together: a completed work for the people, and a people still on the way.

10:15-18. The Holy Spirit testifies to this in Jeremiah 31:33-34, already quoted in 8:8-12: laws within and sins remembered no more. The writer concludes: 'where these have been forgiven, an offering for sin is no longer needed' (10:18). The verse finishes the argument and sets up the Reformation debate noted below.

10:19-25. Three 'let us' commands follow. Since believers have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by 'the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of His body,' and since they have 'a great priest over the house of God,' let us draw near with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and bodies washed with pure water. Many take the last phrase as baptism; others as a figure of cleansing.

• Second, let us hold fast the confession of hope.
• Third, let us consider one another to provoke love and good works, not giving up meeting together, 'as some have made a habit.' The language of approach was the priest's. Here all the people use it.

10:26-31. If we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, 'no further sacrifice for sins remains' but a fearful expectation of judgment. The one who set aside Moses' law died without mercy. How much worse for the one who has trampled the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and insulted the Spirit of grace. The writer quotes Deuteronomy 32:35-36: 'Vengeance is Mine.' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

10:32-39. The writer calls his readers to remember their early courage, to keep their confidence and to persevere, 'so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.' The quotation from Habakkuk 2:3-4 closes the chapter: the coming one will not delay, and 'My righteous one will live by faith.'

The chapter gathers the Bible's teaching on sacrifice. Leviticus 1-7 prescribes burnt, grain, peace, sin and guilt offerings. Alongside the ritual, the prophets and psalmists insist that the ritual is empty without obedience (1 Samuel 15:22; Psalm 40:6-8; 50:13-15; 51:16-17; Micah 6:6-8). Hebrews does not set the prophets against the law. It reads both as pointing to a sacrifice that is also an obedient life. Philippians 2:5-8 and John 6:38 say the same of Christ: he comes down to do the Father's will and becomes obedient to death.

The words 'once for all' belong to a family of New Testament statements: Christ died to sin once for all (Romans 6:10), the righteous for the unrighteous once for sins (1 Peter 3:18), and he appeared once to put away sin (Hebrews 9:26). Against that, Hebrews sets the priest who stands. Nothing in the tabernacle's furnishings is a seat for the priest, because the work was never finished. Christ sits (1:3; 8:1; 10:12).

The chapter also teaches that the benefit is for a people. The new covenant gives forgiveness and the law written within (10:16-17). On that basis every believer has access to the Most Holy Place (10:19-22), a thought developed in 1 Peter 2:4-9 and Revelation 1:5-6, the next class. And sin has a different meaning after the cross: to refuse the one sacrifice is to have nowhere else to go (10:26).

Psalm 40 is a psalm of David in which the speaker says he delights to do God's will, and Hebrews 10:5-7 hears it fulfilled in Christ. This is the writer's own reading, given as the Son's words at his coming into the world; it is not a prediction in the narrow sense. The matching Gospel statements are John 6:38, where Jesus says he came down from heaven to do the will of the one who sent him, and Gethsemane, 'not My will, but Yours be done' (Luke 22:42). Hebrews 5:7-8 has already said that he learned obedience through what he suffered.

Psalm 110:1 is fulfilled when Christ sits at God's right hand (10:12-13); the New Testament cites it of the ascension (Acts 2:34-35; 1 Corinthians 15:25). Jeremiah 31:33-34 is fulfilled in the forgiveness his offering brings (10:16-17). The 'curtain' (katapetasma) of the sanctuary stands for his flesh (10:20). The Gospels record that the temple curtain was torn at his death (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45), an event the writer does not mention here but whose meaning matches his claim that the way is open. In John 17:19 Jesus says he sanctifies himself for his disciples' sake.

Habakkuk 2:3-4 is applied to 'He who is coming', and the coming one is Christ, who will appear a second time (9:28). In the chapter Christ is the obedient Son who fulfills the will of God, the priest who completes a sacrifice, the sacrifice itself, and the king who waits in power until his enemies are put under his feet.