Hebrews 10:1-41For 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. (Hebrews 10:1‑4). In chapter 9 we have learned that a place in heaven is secured for every believer, not by anything the believer has done, but wholly through the work of Christ and the position He occupies before the face of God. In chapter 10 we learn how the same work is applied to the believer’s conscience, in order that even now he may enjoy and, in spirit, enter this new place. To find our home with Christ in heaven itself, it is necessary to have a purged conscience. The first eighteen verses of chapter 10 plainly set forth how this purged conscience is secured.
In three passages, in chapters 9 and 10, the apostle speaks of a “perfect” or “purged” conscience. In chapter 9:9 he definitely states that the Jewish sacrifices could not make the offerer perfect as to the conscience. Again, in chapter 9:14, we read of the perfect offering of Christ purging the conscience from dead works so that the believer is set free to worship the living God. Lastly, in chapter 10:2, we are told that the worshipper who has a purged conscience is one who has no more conscience of sins. He who has a conscience of sins lives in the dread that God will one day bring him into judgment on account of his sins, and therefore cannot enjoy peace with God. To have no more conscience of sins implies that this dread of judgment is removed by seeing that God has dealt with all the sins of the believer.
Nevertheless, though God will never bring the believer into judgment for his sins, as a Father He may have to deal in chastening if, as children, we sin (chapter 12: 5-11). A purged conscience does not therefore imply that we never sin, or that we never have the consciousness of failure, either past or present, but it does imply that all dread of a future judgment on account of our sins is entirely removed. Thus a purged conscience is not to be confounded with what we speak of as a good conscience. If, by reason of careless walk, a true believer fails, his conscience will be surely troubled, and only by confession to God will he regain a good conscience. This, however, does not touch the question of the eternal forgiveness of his sins which gives him a purged conscience.
Under the law it was impossible to obtain a “perfect” or “purged” conscience. At most, the sacrifices could only give temporary relief. Each fresh sin called for a fresh sacrifice. Had the sacrifices given a purged conscience, they would not have been repeated. The law showed, indeed, that a sacrifice was needed to take away sins, but it was only a shadow of good things to come; it was not the substance. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins.
How, then, is a purged conscience obtained? The following verses answer this question by bringing before us three great truths:
First, the will of God (verses 5-10);
Second, the work of Christ (verses 11-14);
Third, the witness of the Spirit (verses 15-18).
Hebrews 10:5-75Wherefore 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. (Hebrews 10:5‑7). The will of God was written in the volume of the book. This clearly is not the volume of Scripture, for this reference to the volume of the book forms part of the quotation from Psalm 40. It would seem to be a figurative reference to the eternal counsels of God. Coming into the world, the Lord says that He has come to do the will of God. Sacrifice and offerings under the law could not carry out God’s will. A body had to be prepared for the Lord so that, in accord with the counsels of God, He might accomplish the will of God.
Hebrews 10: 8-9. What the Lord said when He came into the world had already been said “above” in heaven. To carry out the will of God necessitated taking away the first covenant to establish the second.
Hebrews 10:1010By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10). In the tenth verse we are definitely told what the will of God is. There we read, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” It is in vain and needless to look within in the endeavor to find in our faith, our repentance, our experiences or our feelings, that which will bring relief or peace to the burdened conscience. This Scripture so blessedly takes our thoughts entirely away from ourselves and occupies us with the will of God and the work of Christ. God discovers to us the blessed secret of His counsels that it is His will to have us divested of every spot of sin, not through anything we have done or can do, but entirely through the work of another, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 11 brings before us the utter hopelessness of Jewish sacrifices. This verse covers a period of fifteen hundred years, and with one comprehensive sweep takes in every Jewish priest, all the days of their never-ending works with the innumerable sacrifices which they offered. Then we are told that this vast parade of human energy, with the rivers of blood that flowed from Jewish altars, “can never take away sins.”
Having thus in one brief verse dismissed the whole Jewish system, the apostle in verse 12 presents in contrast the mighty work of Christ. “This Man,” Christ, in contrast to all the Jewish priests, “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins”—in contrast to all the Jewish sacrifices—“forever sat down on the right hand of God,” in contrast to the priests who were ever standing, never having finished their work.
The blessedness of the truth of this verse is somewhat obscured by the faulty rendering of the Authorized Version. The comma, coming after the word “forever,” links these words with the one sacrifice. Properly, the comma should come after the word “sin,” leaving the word “forever” rightly connected with Christ having sat down at the right hand of God. Christ might have done one work forever, meaning He would never undertake the work again, and yet that work would not be finished. If, however, He has sat down “forever” or “in perpetuity” (JND), it is the everlasting proof that His work is finished. So far as the work of atonement is concerned, He will never have to rise up. Moreover, as He has sat down at the right hand of God, we know that His work is an accepted work.
The two verses that follow set forth the result of Christ having sat down in perpetuity, both for His enemies and for believers. For His enemies it involves judgment; His work having been rejected, there is nothing more to be done to put away sins. “Henceforth” Christ is waiting “till His enemies be made His footstool.”
As to the sanctified, Christ, as risen and glorified, is perfected; and by His work He has perfected the believer. We wait to receive our glorified bodies, but our souls have been perfectly cleansed from sins in the sight of God by the work of Christ. As one has said, “The Father and the Son could do no more for our sins than is already accomplished in the sacrifice of Jesus, and revealed to our faith in the written Word.” Not only has Christ sat down forever, but believers are sanctified forever. If Christ has sat down in perpetuity, then believers are perfected in perpetuity.
Hebrews 10:15-1815Whereof 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. (Hebrews 10:15‑18). The passage has presented the will of God as the source of our blessing, and the work of Christ as the efficacious means by which the blessing is secured. Now the apostle presents the witness of the Spirit as the One who brings to us the knowledge of the truth with divine authority, so that it may be possessed with divine certainty. In other Scriptures we read of the witness of the Spirit in us (Rom. 8:1616The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: (Romans 8:16)); here it is the witness of the Spirit “to us.” The witness “to us” is what the Spirit has said in Scripture. Then follows the quotation from Jeremiah 31:3434And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:34), already quoted in chapter 8, to present the terms of the new covenant. Here the quotation is repeated to prove that the efficacy of the work of Christ is such that God can say of believers, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” God does not say, “Their sins and iniquities I will not remember,” but “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” The simple statement that God would not remember our sins might imply that He passed them over. But when God says that they will be remembered “no more,” it implies that they have all been remembered, confessed, borne, and dealt with in judgment. As they have been dealt with, God can righteously say they will be remembered “no more.”