Hebrews Chapter 10

From The Open Bible Project

10:1 For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near.

• (1) He prevents a private objection. Why then were those sacrifices offered? The apostle answers, first concerning the yearly sacrifice which was the solemnest of all, in which (he says) there was made every year a remembrance again of all former sins. Therefore that sacrifice had no power to sanctify: for to what purpose should those sins which are purged be repeated again, and why should new sins come to be repeated every year, if those sacrifices abolished sin?
• (a) Of things which are everlasting, which were promised to the fathers, and exhibited in Christ.

10:2 Or else wouldn't they have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins?

10:3 But in those sacrifices there is yearly reminder of sins.

10:4 For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

10:5 Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, "Sacrifice and offering you didn't desire, but you prepared a body for me;

• (2) A conclusion following those things that went before, and encompassing also the other sacrifices. Seeing that the sacrifices of the law could not do it, therefore Christ speaking of himself as of our High Priest manifested in the flesh, witnesses plainly that God rests not in the sacrifices, but in the obedience of his Son our High Priest, in whose obedience he offered up himself once to his Father for us.
• (b) The Son of God is said to come into the world, when he was made man.
• (c) It is word for word in the Hebrew text, "You have pierced my ears through" that is, "you have made me obedient and willing to hear".

10:6 You had no pleasure in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin.

10:7 Then I said, 'Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.'"[30]

10:8 Previously saying, "Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you didn't desire, neither had pleasure in them" (those which are offered according to the law),

10:9 then he has said, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,

• (d) That is, the sacrifices, to establish the second, that is, the will of God.

10:10 by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

10:11 Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and often offering the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins,

• (3) A conclusion, with the other part of the comparison: The Levitical high priest repeats the same sacrifices daily in his sanctuary: upon which it follows that neither those sacrifices, nor those offerings, nor those high priests could take away sins. But Christ having offered one sacrifice once for the sins of all men, and having sanctified his own for ever, sits at the right hand of the Father, having all power in his hands.
• (e) At the altar.

10:12 but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God;

10:13 from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet.

• (4) He prevents a private objection, that is, that yet nonetheless we are subject to sin and death, to which the apostle answers, that the full effect of Christ’s power has not yet shown itself, but shall eventually appear when he will at once put to flight all his enemies, with whom we still struggle.

10:14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

10:15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

• (5) Although there remains in us relics of sin, yet the work of our sanctification which is to be perfected, hangs on the same sacrifice which never shall be repeated: and that the apostle proves by referring again to the testimony of Jeremiah, thus: Sin is taken away by the new testament, seeing the Lord says that it shall come to pass, that according to the form of it, he will no more remember our sins: Therefore we need now no purging sacrifice to take away that which is already taken away, but we must rather take pains, that we may now through faith be partakers of that sacrifice.

10:16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them: 'After those days,' says the Lord, 'I will put my laws on their heart, I will also write them on their mind;'"[31] then he says,

10:17 "I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more."[32]

• (f) Why then, where is the fire of purgatory, and that popish distinction of the fault, and the punishment?

10:18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

• (g) He said well, for sin: for there remains another offering, that is, of thanksgiving.

10:19 Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus,

• (6) The sum of the former treatise: We are not shut out from the holy place, as the fathers were, but we have an entrance into the true holy place (that is, into heaven) seeing that we are purged with the blood, not of beasts, but of Jesus. Neither as in times past, does the High Priest shut us out by setting the veil against us, but through the veil, which is his flesh, he has brought us into heaven itself, so that we have now truly an High Priest who is over the house of God.

10:20 by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

• (h) So Christ’s flesh shows us the Godhead as if it were under a veil, For otherwise we could not stand the brightness of it.

10:21 and having a great priest over the house of God,

10:22 let's draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and having our body washed with pure water,

• (7) A most grave exhortation, in which he shows how the sacrifice of Christ may be applied to us: that is, by faith which also he describes by the consequence, that is, by sanctification of the Spirit, which causes us to hope in God, and to procure by all means possible one another’s salvation, through the love that is in us one towards another.
• (i) With no double and counterfeit heart, but with such a heart as is truly and indeed given to God.
• (k) This is it which the Lord says, Be ye holy, for I am holy.
• (l) With the grace of the Holy Spirit.

10:23 let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering; for he who promised is faithful.

10:24 Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good works,

10:25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as you see the Day approaching.

• (8) Having mentioned the last coming of Christ, he stirs up the godly to the meditation of a holy life, and cites the faithless fallers from God to the fearful judgment seat of the Judge, because they wickedly rejected him in whom only salvation consists.

10:26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins,

• (m) Without any cause or occasion, or show of occasion.

10:27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.

• (n) For it is another matter to sin through the frailty of man’s nature, and another thing to proclaim war on God as on an enemy.

10:28 A man who disregards Moses' law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses.

• (9) If the breach of the law of Moses was punished by death, how much more worthy of death is it to fall away from Christ?

10:29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will he be judged worthy of, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

10:30 For we know him who said, "Vengeance belongs to me," says the Lord, "I will repay."[33] Again, "The Lord will judge his people."[34]

• (10) The reason of all these things is, because God is a revenger of those who despise him: otherwise he could not rightly govern his Church. Now there is nothing more horrible then the wrath of the living God.
• (o) Rule or govern.

10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

10:32 But remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle with sufferings;

• (11) As he terrified the fallers away from God, so does he now comfort them that are constant and stand firm, setting before them the success of their former fights, so stirring them up to a sure hope of a full and ready victory.

10:33 partly, being exposed to both reproaches and oppressions; and partly, becoming partakers with those who were treated so.

• (p) You were brought forth to be shamed.
• (q) In taking their miseries, to be your miseries.

10:34 For you both had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an enduring one in the heavens.

• (r) Goods and riches.

10:35 Therefore don't throw away your boldness, which has a great reward.

10:36 For you need endurance so that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.

10:37 "In a very little while, he who comes will come, and will not wait.

• (s) He will come within this very little while.

10:38 But the righteous will live by faith. If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him."[35]

• (12) He commends the excellency of a sure faith by the effect, because it is the only way to life, which sentence he sets forth and amplifies by contrast.

10:39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.