(Read Heb. 10:1-221For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. 3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. 4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. 5Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: 6In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. 7Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. 8Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; 9Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. 10By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: 12But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; 13From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. 14For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 15Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, 16This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; 17And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. 18Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. 19Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21And having an high priest over the house of God; 22Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:1‑22).)
GOD was not satisfied with the sacrifices offered under the law. They could not possibly take away sins, or make the comers to God perfect as pertaining to the conscience. We now turn to that offering the value of which in the sight of God and for the soul of man no words can fully express, and we find that in the offering of the body of Jesus,
God’s heart is satisfied.
There is a lifting up of the veil, as it were, in the 5th to the 9th verses of Heb. 10, and man is given to know not only God’s counsels but God’s heart. Man is told what passed between God the Father and God the Son. Man hears Him say He would take the place of obedience and fulfill the divine will. None but a divine person could do this, and the Son became a man in order to accomplish the counsels of God.
God prepared a body for Him; He came to earth for the express purpose of carrying out all that God required in relation to man’s sin. “Lo I come to do Thy will,” was, as it were, the title of the book of His life on earth, even as it is recorded in that of God’s eternal counsels, “In the volume of the Book it is written of Me, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.”
From the cradle to the cross Jesus pleased God. The angelic hosts saw in Him, who had become a man, everything that delighted God’s heart, and the Father Himself opened His heavens upon Him, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”
But the very perfection of the way of the holy Son upon earth only marked more intensely the distance from God of the steps of the sinful sons of men. Each act of His, good, perfect, and acceptable to God, rendered the acts of men by contrast darker still. His was a solitary path. There is a companionship in sin, and in its reward. Man may well say to his fellows, even as said the thief upon the cross to his companion, “Thou art in the same condemnation, and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds;” but of the Son, separate from sinners, and dying for the guilty, and bearing their condemnation, the word is true, “This Man hath done nothing amiss.” (Luke 23:40, 4140But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. (Luke 23:40‑41).) His holy life ended, not as Enoch’s or Elijah’s, by being taken up without dying to heaven, but at the cross, where God forsook Him. But it was upon the cross, dying a sacrifice for sin, that His delight in His Son was the deepest. There at its highest was His obedience witnessed. In His agonies, His body and His soul sufferings, the will of God was accomplished.
The typical fires of the Jewish altars blend in the sacrifice of the body of Jesus. Is it the meat offering—the holy life of Jesus from the cradle to the cross; is it the burnt offering—the voluntary giving up of Himself; is it the sin offering—the satisfaction for man’s guilt; or is it the peace offering—the communion sacrifice, wherein man, reconciled to God, enjoys fellowship with Him concerning Jesus’ death; or, again, is it the yearly sacrifice of the Great Day of Atonement, upon which the blood carried within the Veil and sprinkled upon the Mercy seat teaches us of God’s own righteousness being satisfied? Each and all find their explanation it the unmingled perfection of the offering of the body of Jesus offered once for all.
He offered Himself without spot to God; He was also made sin for us who knew no sin; and in His sacrifice God found His perfect pleasure Jesus yielded up His body, which God had prepared Him, to affliction and to death, and His atoning sacrifice the will of God in relation to sin was accomplished—yes, perfectly accomplished. And now God Himself rests in the work, of which the record eternally stands, “It is finished.” The very chapter before us opens to us God’s thoughts upon the completed work of Jesus.
Let us earnestly consider the perfect satisfaction which God has in the finished work of His Son in relation to human guilt. When the soul receives the truth, that the heart of God is abundantly pleased, eternally satisfied, with what His Son has done as the Sacrifice, then it is in a condition to accept this consequent truth.
The sanctification of God’s people. (5:10-14.)
“By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” The will of God is accomplished by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, The offering of the body of Jesus Christ is the means whereby God sanctifies.
Sanctification is setting apart. A saint is one who is set apart to God. The scriptures show us persons sanctified, set apart, made holy by the blood of Christ, and then these same persons being rendered personally holy by the action of the Holy Spirit within their hearts. There is a difference between a person being made holy by God by the blood of Jesus shed for him, and the same person becoming more and more Christ-like by the work of the holy Spirit within him. Those who are once set apart by the blood of Jesus may not so live as to honor God; but grievous as this is, the imperfection of their walk cannot invalidate the perfection of Christ’s work before God. God has sanctified His people by what Christ did. Here, then, is a rock that can never be moved.
In considering this we have not so much as to look into our hearts, we have to remember God’s accomplished will, and the offering of the body of the Son, by whom that will was accomplished. We look within, we only take off our eyes from what Christ has done for us. Not that we make light of practical holiness, but we must keep in their due place these two things—the work of Christ for the believer, and the work of the Spirit in the believer. And as we have now before us the consideration of God setting apart to Himself, sanctifying those who believe, and the work of Christ as the means of effecting our sanctification, we must not turn from that, to the work of the Holy Spirit within those whose persons have been set apart to God by the sacrifice.
God’s will has been accomplished. The work is done, and, being perfect, cannot be done over again. To suppose its repetition is to suggest its imperfection. The result of the accomplished will of God is that God’s people are perfectly and everlastingly sanctified. The value of Christ’s one offering is the measure of their sanctification by God.
The result of believing that Christ has by His one offering fulfilled God’s will is the acknowledgment that sins are taken away, and therefore
A purged conscience.
A conscience cleansed by blood, even the blood of God’s Son. “If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh” (if such blood produced the temporal sanctification of the bodies of men), “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (9:13-14). Pious Jews obtained relief to their consciences by the means of the sacrifices they brought to God, but the blood of Christ has effected for us an eternal cleansing. However deeply conscious we may be, as taught by the Holy Spirit, of our daily failure and frequent sin, yet such is the efficacy of the blood of Christ that God does not impute sin to those who believe. Do we believe that God is satisfied, then shall not our consciences be so also? If God has told us that He has sanctified us by the blood, shall we any more plead with Him to cleanse by it? Nay, “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge our conscience.”
“Christ died, then I am clean,
Not a cloud above, not a spot within.”
This gracious liberty before our holy God finds its result in energy for Him. The worshipper who had been daily bringing to God dead works begins to serve the living God. He had spent the former part of his life in seeking to be cleansed, now, being cleansed, his freedom is to serve the God who gave His Son to cleanse him. Instead of a routine of dead works in order to appease God, his is the energy of living deeds in the spirit of pleasing his God. H. F. W.