Page 72 - Hebrews- Student Textbook

12.3 Chapter 10 - The Supremacy of Jesus’ Sacrifice to All Previous Sacrifices

Five new realities in the life and work of Jesus have replaced the former service of
sacrifices under the older times of the Mosaic ceremonial law, argued the writer of
Hebrews in chapter 10. These five new realities were:

1. God’s law pointed to the good things that were to come in Christ (10:1–4).
2. Jesus gave his body as the only effective sacrifice that could accomplish the will of God
(10:5–10). This was in accord with what the psalmist had promised in Psalm 40:6, 9. Messiah
had come to do God’s “will” (that “will” occurs four times, in 10:7, 9, 10, 36).
3. Jesus sat down at the right hand of God after offering the one great sacrifice for all sin for all
time, and He now awaits the moment defined by the Father for the final vanquishing of all
enemies (10:11–14). By this one sacrifice, Jesus had made perfect forever those who are in the
process of being sanctified (10:14).
4. The Holy Spirit had testified in the older covenant that this new order that Jesus introduced was
coming (10:15–18). Now the law of God will be grafted onto the hearts of men and women.
5. Jesus’ stunning sacrifice calls forth the triad of faith, hope, and love (10:19–25). Men and
women can now draw near to God with full assurance of faith and with the confidence won by
Christ’s blood and death on the cross.

The problem with the Levitical sacrifices was that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to
take away sins” (10:4); but neither had the law of Moses promised that the sacrifices would have had
that kind of efficacy. These sacrifices merely pointed to the work of Christ that would come in the
future; until then, the word of God applied to the heart of a genuinely repentant sacrificer was
proleptically beneficial in anticipation of Christ’s death. The picture of sacrifice of the animals pointed to
the need for a vicarious substitute who would give up its life for the life of the one who had sinned. But
the problem was these sacrifices had to be repeated over and over again, and the lives yielded up in
death were the lives of animals and not that of a perfect man who was also God.
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CONTEXTUAL GUIDE

A. The literary unit begins in chapter 8:1 and continues through 10:18.

B. This alludes to the three ways in which the ministry of Jesus is superior to the ministry of the Levitical
priests.
1. Jesus' superior sacrifice (His own blood, cf. 9:12-14)
2. Jesus' once-for-all offering (7:27)
3. Jesus' heavenly, not earthly, sanctuary (cf. 9:11)

C. The VERB teleioō is used repeatedly in Hebrews.
1. 2:10, Jesus made perfect through suffering
2. 5:9, Jesus made perfect and became the source of eternal salvation
3. 7:19, Mosaic Law made nothing perfect
4. 7:28, Jesus made perfect
5. 9:9, Mosaic ritual not able to make worshipers' consciences perfect
6. 10:1, Mosaic ritual unable to make worshipers perfect

53 Kaiser, (pp. 364–366).

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