Hebrews 10:1-18. Today’s reading ends a major section in the letter to the Hebrews. The author has been comparing Jesus and his personal sacrifice to the Old Testament system of sacrifices practiced by the Jewish people. Remember the author originally wrote this letter to Jewish believes who were being pressured to return to their original faith and practices by family and friends. The situation was even more important to those family and friends in the face of a war with the Roman government. Remember too, that many of these Jewish believes in Jesus had been priests in the old system.
Today’s reading divides into four paragraphs (vv. 1-4; vv. 5-9; vv. 10-14; vv. 15-18). IN the first paragraph the author talks about the Law. This is the system of honoring God that Moses set up at God’s command. Although it came from God it was not the end of the story, according to the author of Hebrews it was only a shadow. In yesterday’s post we talked about the problem between man and God; and the solution, Jesus. Many Jews thought that obedience to the Law was the solution. In this paragraph the author point out that if the Law solved the sin problem then it would not have to go on year in and year out. The Law did have a point though, according to verse 3 it kept the people aware that they were offending God.
The second paragraph uses several quotes from Psalm 40 to point out that there was always a progression in God’s mind about dealing with the sin problem. Although the Psalm was originally written by David the author of Hebrews puts the words into Jesus mouth. This fact either points to the fact that ultimately Jesus was the force behind the words of God or that he fulfills the ultimate role of David as God’s forever king for the kingdom; in a sense Jesus is the ultimate David. Of course the original readers may have understood both meanings mixed together. The progression was that God never intended the sacrifices of animals to deal with sin that is why Jesus had to come and “do God’s will.” (vv. 7, 9) Verse 8-9 make the progression clear by using words like “after” and “then”.
The next paragraph explains what the “will of God” was that Jesus did. He offered himself for our sins. While the offerings that the priests under the old system made had to be day by day and year after year the sacrifice that Jesus made was just once. After he made his sacrifice he sat down next to God. Sitting down shows us his work was finished and the place he sat hints again at his royal position as the ultimate king in David’s line. Verse 14 makes it clear what the effect of his sacrifice was, it made things right between us and God. The end of verse 14 also has an interesting little side note, we may be forgiven but there is a process for our day to day lives, we are being sanctified or set apart. Every day we have the opportunity to return God’s love for us by living a life which pleases him.
The final paragraph extends this though and shows us how the new way is better than the old. Before, there were laws that each person failed to keep, we all sin, under the new system our forgiven lives make possible God actually living in us. The Holy Spirit comes into us and motivates us to live lives that make God happy. That is what it means when it says he will put his laws on our hearts and in our minds. God will not hold us to blame for our “sins and lawless deeds”. This is a shorter quote of Jeremiah 31 with the longer quote in Hebrews 8:7-12. This ties this conclusion back to idea in Hebrews 8 of a new and old contract between us and God.
Some scholars see in these four paragraphs a reflective structure called a chiasmus (I talked about this in another post but you would have to search the posts to find which one). In this case paragraphs 1 and 4 reflect each other but as a contrast and paragraphs 2 and 3 reflect each other but are parallel in their idea. Paragraph 1 basically tells us we can tell the old system does not deal with sin because the sacrifices are repeated while paragraph 4 points out that Jesus’ sacrifice is better as seen in the fact that he only had to do it once. Paragraph 2 tells us the repeated sacrifices have been replaced by the one sacrifice and paragraph 2 tells us that the one ultimate priest, Jesus, had replaced the old group of priests.
All together we see that the Jewish believers were not abandoning the faith of their fathers but were taking part in it’s ultimate fulfillment. The author has shown them from the Old Testament that the Law was a shadow of the real thing and that Jesus is the real deal. In verse 16 the author makes a subtle change when he quotes Jeremiah 31:33 he says “them” while in the Old Testament it says “the house of Israel”. The change probably hinted to the readers that the fact that there were non-Jewish believers in Jesus was part of the plan all along too. The conclusion in verses 17-18 are for all of us God will not remember our sins (in terms of making us pay for them) because Jesus once for all offering allows us to be forgiven.
God thank you for your once for all sacrifice for me and for others. Thank you for doing what I could never do; pay the price for my sins that allows me to have a relationship with you. Thank you for cleaning me up and making me a suitable place for the Holy Spirit. Thank you for the Holy Spirit in my life showing me the way. Help me listen to him and understand him. Let my life be pleasing to you today.