Hebrews 10:5-10 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers preachers one more opportunity to publicly reflect on how God comes to us in the here and now. Hebrews’ author, after all, professes in verse 10 that “we have been made holy [hagiasmenoi*] through the sacrifice [prosphoras] of the body of Jesus Christ once for all [ephapax].”

On this last Sunday in Advent, a message on that holiness may, with the Spirit’s help, draw together the ways God has not just already come and will come again, but also graciously comes to God’s adopted children in this time and place. After all, Hebrews’ writer’s reference to our holiness points to a reason why Jesus came the first time, how God will treat us when Christ returns, and what God is already doing right now.

While the violence that continues to plague our world makes some Christians shrink back from this text’s language of sacrifice, we can be honest about the fact that imagery plays a prominent role in the New Testament generally and the book of Hebrews specifically. In fact, Hebrews 10 alone refers to Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf no less than five times.

Jesus’ friends may wince at talk about Christ’s sacrifice (especially during the week of Christmas). However, the Spirit can use Hebrews 10 to help remind Jesus’ friends that he was born in Bethlehem’s manger in the long shadow cast by Calvary’s cross. Our Epistolary Lesson can serve as a kind of antidote for all the sentimental Christmas imagery and language that has so often flourished in the Body of Christ.

It bluntly reminds us that the Son of God became the baby Jesus to grow up to suffer and die. He endured that horror to rescue us from all the messes we’ve made for others and us. Before we get to Christmas Eve or morning’s stirring music and pageantry, Hebrews offers a solemn reminder of how it all eventually turns out for Jesus.

Yet it might seem that to present that reminder, Hebrews’ author puts words into Jesus’ mouth. After all, the gospels record nothing of what verses 5-9 report him as saying. But, of course, Jesus’ followers don’t just profess that the Spirit inspired Hebrews’ writer to pen these words. We also see Hebrews 10’s quotes of Jesus as consistent with his expressed will.

Today’s Epistolary Lesson begins with the word, “Therefore [dio].” It links this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson that it introduces to what Hebrews’ author has just written. In Hebrews 10:1-4 he writes about God’s Israelite people’s sacrificial system. It especially addresses its shortcomings. Verse 4 summarizes that inadequacy this way: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” While Israel’s sacrifices poignantly reminded God’s people of their guilt, they could not get rid of their sins.

As a result, verses 5-6 report, “When Christ came [eiserchomenos] into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifice [Thysian] and offering [prosphoron] you do not desire [ethelesas], but a body you prepared [katertiso] for me; with burnt offerings [holokautomata] and sin offerings [peri hamartias] you were not pleased [eudokesas].” In essence Hebrews’ author lays side by side the Israelite sacrificial system and Jesus’ saving work. In verse 8 Hebrews quotes Jesus as saying something very similar to verses 5 and 6’s message. The Message paraphrases him as telling the Father: “It’s not fragrance and smoke from the altar that whet your appetite.”

While God summoned God’s Israelite people to offer offerings and sacrifices, Hebrews insists they largely served to remind them of their need for God’s grace. They weren’t enough to turn away God’s righteous fury at human disobedience and the misery it causes. So while Jesus was a true Israelite for whom sacrifices were offered (cf. Luke 2:42), only the sacrifice that was his suffering and dying could be enough to take away his friends’ sins.

Christians can be honest that we sometimes struggle with God’s acceptance of us as the result of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. But preachers might point to all the ways God is rightly and deeply angered by the harm our sin, sins and sinfulness cause not just others, but also us. We might point to the anger God experiences over the violence in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as on our streets and in our homes. We might even argue that sin’s horrific destructiveness is the chief reason human offerings and sacrifices just aren’t enough to satisfy God.

Preachers might also use verses 5 and 6’s sacrificial imagery as a prompt to explore all the ways we naturally try to please God. Few of us any longer offer burnt offerings and sacrifices. Not even Jewish people do that anymore. But don’t we naturally try to please God or a god by being nice people, successful parents or prosperous workers? Hebrews 10 reminds God’s dearly beloved people that none of that is enough. Among other things, after all, we easily turn away from our “niceness” and toward our sinfulness.

In verse 7 Hebrews’ author quotes Jesus as recognizing that no human being can rescue ourselves or others from the havoc our sins so often wreak: “Here I am – it is written [gegraptai] about me in the scroll of the book [kephalidi bibliou] – I have come to do your will [thelema], my God.” Verse 9 basically repeats that profession. The Message paraphrases the incarnate Son of God as saying something very similar to the Father there: “I said, ‘I’m here to do it your way, O God, the way it’s described in your book.”

Here is the beating heart, not just of Hebrews 10, but also of the entire incarnation. The Son of God became fully human – while remaining fully divine – to do the Father’s will. He surrendered himself at every moment and every turn to doing what God wanted him to do.

The Son of God voluntarily experienced the full and utter humiliation of becoming a helpless baby, including all the indignities that accompany infancy, because he understood that was the Father’s way for him. Jesus grew up to let people do their very worst to him because he realized that was his Father’s will for him.

Yet in and through all of this blood, gore and violence comes the most amazing grace of it all! Jesus willingly came to us the first time to let others humiliate, reject and torture him for the sake of his friends and followers. In verse 10, Hebrews’ author adds, “By [the Father’s] will [thelemetai], we have been made holy [hagiasmenoi] through the sacrifice [prosphoras] of the body of Jesus Christ once for all [ephapax].”

Somehow through all that Jesus endured, Christians have been hagiasmenoi. We have been sanctified and purified. But, of course, this didn’t just somehow magically happen all by itself. While Hebrews doesn’t explicitly say that here, Christians profess that the God who came to us in Christ now comes to us by the Holy Spirit to transform us more and more into the likeness of our Lord and, by God’s grace, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But, of course, even the holiest of Jesus’ friends now have only the beginnings of such holiness. Yet Hebrews declares our sanctification to be a stated fact. So what’s going on there? Perhaps three things. Hebrews’ author is so confident in the Spirit’s transforming work that he reports it as being already completed. What’s more, he realizes that God already views and treats God’s adopted children as “holy.” On top of all that, however, Hebrews’ author also points to that which will, by God’s grace, be completed when Christ comes again: our complete transformation into holy, resurrected people.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

It isn’t just difficult to understand just why Christ had to suffer so profoundly to make his followers holy in God’s sight. It’s also notoriously difficult to understand just how Christ’s sacrificial humiliation and suffering make us holy in God’s sight.

In one of C.S. Lewis’ masterpieces, Mere Christianity, he writes about the Christian doctrine of atonement. He notes how “Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and has given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter.”

But you don’t need to believe this theory or that one for the atonement to give you a fresh start. Christians disagree about the theories. They are not necessary to our faith any more than understanding exactly how a meal (with its vitamins and proteins, etc.) nourishes us is necessary for it to nourish us. People were nourished and pleased by the nourishment long before anybody understood about vitamins and proteins.