Hebrews 10:1–18

Original Meaning

The Limited Abilities of the Law (10:1–4)

THE AUTHOR HAS already made the point that the old covenant tabernacle was a “shadow” of greater, heavenly realities (8:5);1 he now applies the same description to the law itself, specifically as it relates to the sacrificial system. As with the old covenant tabernacle, the law’s sacrificial system can only be seen as an imperfect copy of what God ultimately had in mind, since it contained elements that had a degree of ineffectiveness. That it constitutes a “shadow” suggests that the earthly system mimics enough of the original to point God’s people to greater, heavenly realities. Nevertheless, by its perpetual need for new sacrifices, it demonstrates its inadequacy.

What concerns the author most is the law’s inability to “make perfect those who draw near to worship” God (v. 1). The “perfection” he has in mind does not involve a “lack of flaws” but, rather, a state of right relationship with God, in which the worshipers are once and for all cleansed from sin and delivered from a nagging sense of guilt.2 The fact that the old covenant system could not deliver in this regard, as demonstrated by offerings made year after year, shows the need for a better system.

The law’s sacrificial system, rather than delivering worshipers from guilt, actually has the effect of reminding them of their sinfulness and, thus, their constant separation from God (v. 3). Why is this the case under the older covenant? Because the sacrifices of that system—“the blood of bulls and goats”3—do not have the ability to remove sins (v. 4). The author already has made the point that the old sacrifices could “sanctify” or “purify” (9:13, 23) people, but here, significantly, he uses “take away” or “remove” (aphaireo), a word used with reference to sin only one other place in the New Testament. At Romans 11:26–27 Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah saying, “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away [a form of aphaireo] their sins.”4

In Hebrews 10:4, as in the Romans passage, the idea of “removing” sin speaks of the burden sin placed on the worshiper’s conscience being lifted in a decisive, perpetually effective cleansing, which establishes one’s status before God.5 This is what the old covenant sacrifices were unable to do, which is why sin remained a separator, a perennial, detrimental force disallowing a permanently right relationship between God and his people.

Bridging Contexts

IN ATTEMPTING TO bring this passage out of the ancient world and into our own, we must remember, first of all, both the purpose and the importance of this particular section of Hebrews. As to its purpose, the author wishes to crystallize for his hearers the effectiveness and finality of Christ’s sacrifice. The hearers are in danger of turning their backs on their Christian commitment; but the author reminds them, in no uncertain terms, that in so doing they walk away from God’s provision by which people may have a cleansed conscience and a healthy, permanent relationship with him. In the new covenant alone can one find a means for decisive forgiveness from sin and, thus, right relationship with God. The Scripture bears witness specifically that the old covenant system is shown up as defunct by the ministry of Jesus.

The structural location of 10:1–18 indicates this text’s importance, for it culminates the author’s entire expositional treatment of Christ’s person and work in this passage.14 Therefore, we must resist the temptation to move past this section too quickly. The “forgiveness of sins,” heralded in the author’s treatment of the Lord’s sacrifice, is, of course, one of our most basic Christian doctrines. The fact that it is basic may lull us into brushing past it on our journey as if we have already covered this ground, whereas the author intends it to be a permanent place of firm grounding, a source of soul-anchoring stability. Here is where all his Christological work has led us. We have arrived back at the throne at the right hand of God (1:3; 10:12), the place at which we started Hebrews, the most stable place in this or any universe. Here we find a culminating expression of the person and work of our great high priest, Jesus Christ.

The main point. Perhaps more than any other place in Hebrews, 10:1–18 presents clearly the Christian gospel and, therefore, calls us to think clearly about that message and its implications for Christian living. The primary elements of Hebrews’ message of forgiveness are as follows: (1) We have a problem with sin, even if we are ritualistically religious. Rituals cannot place us in right relationship with God and cleanse our consciences from guilt.

(2) The problem of sin has been dealt with in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is the focal truth of “God’s will,” as 10:10 puts it. God willed to make us holy by the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ.

(3) Christ’s work is decisive, a final reckoning with sin by which participants in the new covenant are made perfect forever. There exists no longer a need to work out a way to God. It is finished. The forgiveness one experiences under the new covenant has a finality to end all groping for the means, or the path, to God. The path lies before us, as firm and rock-solid as any reality, and more so than all earthly ones. This is truth on which one may build a life. This is why the author has led us here. The fluctuations in human existence may seem eased by running away from the difficulties of Christian commitment; yet, it is at the heart of Christian truth, the essence of the gospel, that a person can find real stability in life.

Here we find answers to our inadequacies as we learn that it is not up to us to work out our ultimate purpose in this life. Here we find a solution for our nagging, debilitating guilt, that incessant accuser who whispers what we already know in our ear. Here, even in our journeying through this life, we find a place of permanence, a place of stability in which we will always be “home,” for we find our rest in the presence of God himself. Our application of this text must speak to these implications of gospel truth for the Christian life.

Are you “guilty”? At the same time, this passage contains several interpretive pitfalls into which an expositor might stumble. Speaking of the old sacrificial system in 10:2, the author addresses that system’s inability to cleanse worshipers permanently. If the sacrifices of animals could have cleansed them once for all, he reasons, then the worshipers “would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.” The interpreter might infer from these statements that under the new covenant system, since the sacrifice of Christ can cleanse completely and permanently, Christians no longer “feel guilty” about sins. Yet, this assumption presents us with a serious pastoral and theological problem.

Imagine a woman sitting in church on Sunday morning, listening to the preacher’s sermon. She has been brooding all morning because of an event the night before. Last evening her husband came home late from work, even though they were to have guests for supper, and she needed help with their three children. He did not call to tell her he was detained at work, and by the time he walked through the door she was in a rage. Her anger expressed itself both in profanity and hurtful comments about his inadequacy as a husband. After a miserable evening with their guests, her husband attempted to ask forgiveness and discuss the situation. She would have none of it. In fact, this morning as they dressed for church, she still would not speak to him.

Now she sits in church and the Spirit of God has begun to work on her heart. She begins to think of those New Testament passages that speak of not sinning through anger and not using unwholesome language in one’s speech. Her conscience has begun to bother her—she is “feeling guilty.” Yet, as the preacher goes on with his sermon, he comes to Hebrews 10:2 in his NIV text. Drawing implications from the text, he explains that under the new covenant a believer should no longer feel guilty. Given her state of heart and mind, she is confused by that pronouncement. What should she do? Since Christians are not supposed “to feel guilty,” should she see her feelings as an attack of the evil one and say to herself, “There must not be anything to this”? Should she question whether she is indeed a true Christian? Or is it the Spirit of God who prompts her, as God’s child, to deal with her actions of the night before?

The clause from 10:2 translated by the NIV as “have felt guilty for their sins” may be rendered as “have a consciousness of sins.” As detailed in our treatment of Hebrews 9, the word “conscience” (syneidesis) means either personal intuition (i.e., a knowledge of something) or, more specifically, the moral awareness of good or evil.15 Hebrews proclaims that believers now, through the work of Christ, have a clean conscience before God—we are no longer separated from him by our sins, since Christ has taken them out of the way. What can be inferred from 10:2 is that sin no longer looms in front of the Tent of Meeting, barring our way to God. We no longer have a consciousness of sin as a factor determining our standing before God. We have been forgiven completely and finally.

In this sense the term “guilt” or “guilty” may not be the best way to refer to a Christian from the standpoint of New Testament theology. The New Testament almost never speaks of a Christian as “guilty.”16 We are not guilty before God since we have been justified by the work of Christ. Of justification Millard Erickson writes:

In the New Testament, justification is the declarative act of God by which, on the basis of the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning death, he pronounces believers to have fulfilled all of the requirements of the law which pertain to them. Justification is a forensic act imputing the righteousness of Christ to the believer; it is not an actual infusing of holiness into the individual. It is a matter of declaring the person righteous, as a judge does in acquitting the accused.17

Hebrews’ concept of the “cleansed conscience” closely relates to this theological tenet (cf. Heb. 9:9, 14; 10:2, 22).

Nevertheless, Christians still sin,18 as may be seen in the few New Testament passages that call for believers to repent (2 Cor. 7:9–10; 12:21; 2 Tim. 2:25; Rev. 2:5, 16; 3:3, 19) or confess their sins (James 5:16; 1 John 1:9). Also, the Lord’s Prayer, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness, may certainly be considered still relevant for the believer (Matt. 6:7–15). When believers sin, however, they are not cut off from relationship with God, since God’s new covenant commitment of forgiveness through Christ still stands. However, the sin committed is one for which Christ had to die as sacrifice. While the evil done does not separate us from God, its cost and its incongruity with Christ’s work of sanctification in us (Heb. 10:14) still rightly burden our hearts.

This brings us back to the lady in church. She should feel burdened by her sin and confess it to the Lord and her husband (the husband needs to confess his insensitivity as well). Her burden, however, should not, in and of itself, cause her to question her relationship with God, if she has committed herself to a new covenant relationship with God. In this sense, her subjective feeling of guilt should be addressed by the fact that objectively, before God, she is not guilty because of Christ’s sacrifice. Finally, the preacher in this case study should clarify the passage under consideration, interpreting rightly what lies behind Hebrews’ proclamations concerning the “cleansed conscience.”

Perfect people? A second interpretive pitfall is closely related to the pitfall of misunderstanding “guilt” in Hebrews and stems from a failure to interpret terms in context. We have seen the concept of perfection from time to time in Hebrews,19 and the possible misunderstandings of the term warrant a closer look at 10:1 and 14. The first speaks of the law’s inability to make worshipers perfect; the second turns this dismal pronouncement on its head, stating that by his sacrifice Christ has accomplished this very feat: “because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

Now if we read this statement with our usual definition of “perfect” in mind, we likely will be either shocked or confused. Christians know they are not “perfect” in the sense of “no faults or failings.” Yet, the term perfect, as used in Hebrews, carries the sense of “complete, whole, adequate, having arrived at a desired end.” Insofar as Christ has perfected us for all time, it means that by his sacrifice he has made us completely adequate for a relationship with God by consecrating us.20 We have arrived at the end that God desired to accomplish via his Son’s death on the cross. His work to put us in right relationship with himself has been made complete.

A forgetful God? A third hermeneutical misstep involves the quote of Jeremiah 31:34 in Hebrews 10:17. Through the prophet God says, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” This statement should not be taken, with crass literalism, to mean that God literally cannot remember the sins we commit (recall that this text covers the sins of our past, present, and future). God is omniscient, all-knowing. The words “I will remember no more” are a concise summary of Jeremiah’s statement: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Notice the parallelism. The verbal concepts “forgive” and “remember no more” parallel each other, as do the objects “wickedness” and “sins.” Just as these latter words convey the same basic idea of wrongdoing, so also the verbal concepts both speak of forgiveness. The parallelism is used for style and emphasis, but communicates one truth—that God forgives sins.

One of my favorite writers, Max Lucado, provides an example of this misstep:

I was thanking the Father today for his mercy. I began listing the sins he’d forgiven. One by one I thanked God for forgiving my stumbles and tumbles. My motives were pure and my heart was thankful, but my understanding of God was wrong. It was when I used the word remember that it hit me.

“Remember the time I …” I was about to thank God for another act of mercy. But I stopped. Something was wrong. The word remember seemed displaced. It was an off-key note in a sonata, a misspelled word in a poem. It was a baseball game in December. It didn’t fit. “Does he remember?”

Then I remembered. I remembered his words. “And I will remember their sins no more.”

Wow! Now, that is a remarkable promise.

God doesn’t just forgive, he forgets. He erases the board. He destroys the evidence. He burns the micro-film. He clears the computer.

He doesn’t remember my mistakes.21

Unfortunately, Lucado has missed the point. When the Scripture says to us that God “forgets” our sins, what it means is that God “forgives” us completely, stamping our sins as having been dealt with.

Contemporary Significance

THE ACCOMPLISHMENT. MY father, to whom, along with my mother, I have dedicated this commentary, has been one of my greatest encouragers in life. I remember my father, again and again as I grew up, boosting the flagging confidence of a sometimes awkward boy with, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” This statement, of course, spoke of work-ethic values—determination, perseverance, confidence, preparation, willingness—sweat-stained values that have marked my life and for which I am grateful. My father was saying to me, “If you will work hard for your dreams, you can accomplish much.” And he was right. He and the authors of Proverbs would feel at home discussing life over homegrown vegetables and hearth-fire stew.

Nevertheless, life has a hard edge of reality to it. We are forced to face our limitations sooner or later. We fail, sometimes repeatedly. Some tasks or goals in life stay beyond our reach, no matter how much we “put our minds to” them. I will never run a four-minute mile. I cannot speak all the languages of the world. I even have a hard time killing all the grass in my garden. At times I do not even do well those things of which I am quite capable. In a pastoral ministries class in seminary my colleagues and I were taught that the first, foundational confession of the minister should be, “We are but dust” (actually, I think the first should be, “God is God”!).

Of course such limitations have been with us from the beginning. I now am the father of a two-and a five-year-old, the younger a girl, the older an energetic boy. Anna cannot yet clean herself, much less her clothes. She has just started to walk but cannot walk a great distance. She is utterly dependent on her parents for food, shelter, and a host of other basics. Joshua cannot mow the yard, although he sometimes rides the mower with me. He cannot throw a baseball like a big-leaguer—yet. He has just started to read and write but cannot do multiplication. These kids are wonderfully limited, wonderfully dependent.

Naturally they will outgrow most of these limitations, just as their parents and grandparents have. But there is at least one limitation they will not outgrow on their own, a limitation with which their parents, their parents’ parents, and all their ancestors to time immemorial have not been able to handle by force of human will. That limitation, of course, has to do with sin. We simply cannot overcome sin or turn back its consequences, and neither can they. No one can—except God.

Most religions involve some form of human “doing” for God—“sacrificing” something to win favor with the Almighty. At the heart of Christianity stands the core truth that God has done something for us, through the sacrifice of his Son, that we could never do for ourselves. He has taken our sins out of the way, forgiven us completely, and relates to us, intimately and eternally.

An analogy to how we should respond to God’s graciousness is set in Brazil. A woman named Dona Nusa lay in her casket, killed in a car accident the day before. Her son Cesar, her daughter, other relatives, and a young woman named Carmelita stood near by. Tall and dark, Carmelita was dressed this day in simple clothing. The young woman, from the interior of Brazil, had been adopted into Dona Nusa’s family more than two decades earlier. At that time she was seven years old and an orphan, the product of a prostitute and an unnamed father. Moved by compassion, Dona Nusa intervened, taking little Carmelita into her family.

When almost everyone else had left the funeral chapel, Carmelita stayed behind, weeping quietly at the side of the casket. Earnestly, tenderly, she leaned over the coffin of her adopted mother, caressing it gently. She voiced her good bye with “Obrigada, obrigada” (“Thank you, thank you”). Dona Nusa had reached out and given Carmelita a life that the little orphan had no ability to craft for herself.22 Pure graciousness.

We should weep; for God has given us the freedom, the forgiveness, the life, which we could not win for ourselves. Our tears are not tears of separation but tears of homecoming; not tears of death but tears of life; not tears of a past but tears falling on a bedrock of hope for the future. Our sins have been taken away and we, through the accomplishment of another, have been brought to the Father and incorporated into his family forever. This is the gospel.

Freedom from guilt. While in graduate school I worked residential construction for a while. One young man, also a seminary student, started to work for my boss at the same time I did, and we became friends. As we came to know one another, my friend confided in me about the difficulties he was having at home. He and his wife had been married for about a year, but they were struggling emotionally and had no physical relationship. It seems she had had a sexual encounter prior to meeting him and now lived in the dark, debilitating shadow of that immoral act. Her guilt weighed on her to the point of breaking her emotional stability and almost breaking her marriage.

All of us have a past, a few black secrets we would not want broadcast to our friends and associates. A sexual sin. A lie. A cheat at school or work. An act of pure meanness. Sins of attitude and action that are hard to forget. Our enemy, the Accuser, loves to lead these shades of the past into our consciences, pricking our hearts and damaging our minds with darts dripping of guilt. Yet, if we are new covenant people, we are, in fact, not guilty before God. Our wrong action of the past has been consumed in Christ’s right work of sacrifice. Yes, we should confess and repent as we sin—Christ paid a great price for each sin we commit, and each must be taken seriously lest we be stunted in our spiritual progress. But then each sin should be left behind, for the deal has been closed, God has turned away from our unrighteous deeds and turned toward us.

I have wondered often what Simon Peter experienced upon meeting Jesus for the first time after the resurrection—for the first time after the denials. How hard it must have been to carry that past into the presence of Christ. Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes beautifully of the event, with its strained mix of overwhelming joy and grief:

The Savior looked on Peter. Ay, no word,

No gesture of reproach: the heavens serene,

Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean

Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord

Looked only on the traitor. None record

What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen

Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,

Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,

Have missed Jehovah at the judgment-call.

And Peter, from the height of blasphemy—

“I never knew this man”—did quail and fall,

As knowing straight that God, and turn’d free,

And went out speechless from the face of all,

And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

I think that look on Christ might seem to say,

“Thou Peter! Art thou, then, a common stone

Which I at last must break my heart upon,

For all God’s charge to His high angels may

Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday

Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run

Quick to deny me ‘neath the morning sun?

And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray?

The cock crows coldly, Go, and manifest

A late contrition, but no bootless fear;

For, when thy final need is dreariest,

Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here:

My voice to God and angels shall attest,

‘Because I know this man, let him be clear.’”23

“Let him be clear.” The same has been said to us. We like Bunyan’s Christian have, in reality, come to the cross and had our burden of guilt cut from off our backs and rolled into the tomb. There is but one resurrection—and later another—with which each of us has to do. Let guilt lie.

Assurance of salvation. We live in a world of people and things that are less than completely dependable. It seems at times that we cannot be sure of anything. The dishwasher breaks. The copier at work needs to be repaired—again! The car has yet another problem that breaks the budget for the month. Things simply do not always work; they are visible evidences that this world and its elements are “pass[ing] away” (1 John 2:17). People too disappoint. A friend hurts you with an unguarded remark. A spouse fails to do that errand that you had been assured would get done “today.” The repairman doesn’t show up when he promised. The boss doesn’t come through with the raise.

And to make it worse, we cannot even depend fully on ourselves. The “new year’s resolution” has become a cliché joke because no one expects anyone really to follow through. For the Christian such shortfalls are especially egregious when related to sin. We bludgeon ourselves with our lack of consistency in the ways of God. The lingering habit that sucks our spiritual vitality like a leech can lead to a crisis of faith as we face our own blaring weaknesses. We may ask, “If I cannot get myself together better than this, am I really a Christian?”

What gives assurance? As a professor at a Christian, liberal arts university, I have students who struggle with that question. Most often the query arises from a relentless battle with some unholy act or lifestyle. It is beastly difficult to live with a strong sense that Christ has broken the power and penalty of sin in you if sin seems to win the day, almost every day. And so they come seeking assurance.

Rather than pointing them back to a conversion or confirmation experience of the past,24 I ask the following two questions: (1) Are you committed to a relationship with God through the work of Jesus Christ, depending on his sacrificial death alone for the forgiveness of your sins? We go through the gospel in detail to make sure they understand its message, and I stress the comprehensive nature and decisiveness of Christ’s sacrifice for sins. His work on behalf of new covenant people covers all our sins, past and future, and covers them completely and for all time. No sin is too great or too long in duration for Christ to forgive.25 Our stumbling does not negate the work of Christ.

(2) If the person is committed to a relationship with God through trust in Jesus (I trust them to be genuine in this confession since I cannot look into their hearts), then I ask a second question: Is there any sin in your life that is causing you to doubt your salvation? Quite often this is also answered in the affirmative. If so, we discuss the dynamics of spiritual development and ways to deal with temptation (such as prayer, Bible study and memorization, staying out of situations conducive for falling into the sin, and meaningful involvement in the church and in the lives of fellow believers). I end by challenging my brother or sister in Christ to persevere in trusting the sufficiency of Christ’s work and to endure in the fight against sin.

The process described above has seemed to help many since it directs one’s attention anew to the decisive work of Christ as our only true basis for assurance. “He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (10:14).

Original Meaning

The Superior Sacrifice of Christ (10:5–10)

THANKFULLY, CHRIST CAME into the world to set things right, and the author supports this assertion by quoting Psalm 40:7–9. The use of the conjunction “therefore” (dio) in 10:5 shows the coordination of thought between what has come before and what now follows, the inability of the law’s sacrificial system being set in stark contrast to the ministry of Christ. That Christ “came into the world” could be used in Jewish contexts to refer simply to someone’s birth, but here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, the author uses the clause to refer to the Incarnation (e.g., John 1:9; 6:14; 11:27).6

The author takes the psalm quotation itself from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, as is his practice. This text has two primary components in which he shows special interest: (1) God’s dissatisfaction with the old covenant sacrificial offerings and (2) the willing obedience of the speaker, whom our author understands to be Christ. Furthermore, Hebrews 10:8–9 demonstrates that the order in which these components are found in the psalm is also important. In 10:8 the writer remarks, “First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them.’” Parenthetically he explains that the sacrifices of the old system were, for some reason, unsatisfactory even though God had prescribed them in the law. This motif is a common one in the Old Testament (e.g., 1 Sam. 15:22; Ps. 50:8–10; Isa. 1:10–13; Jer. 7:21–24; Hos. 6:6), pointing to heartfelt devotion as an essential component of true worship. The practice of ritualistic sacrifice apart from a sincere commitment to God’s will falls short of the divine intention for the sacrificial system.

In 10:9 the author continues, “Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’” The “then,” taken from Psalm 40:7, indicates to the writer a temporal sequence within the psalm. In other words, the accomplishing of God’s will by Christ now has supplanted the use of animal sacrifices, as indicated by his comment, “He sets aside the first to establish the second” (Heb. 10:9). The writer concludes his interpretation of the Old Testament passage by introducing the term body (10:10), taken from the first verse of the Psalm text. It was by God’s will, expressed in the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, that believers have been made holy.