Continuing the discussion of the Torah and of sanctification through traditional Yahwist sacrifices, the author of the epistle, like his teacher Paul, speaks of the insufficiency both of the Torah itself, which had not opened into the fullness of the living Torah, and of the sanctification connected with it...
Continuing the discussion of the Torah and of sanctification through traditional Yahwist sacrifices, the author of the epistle, like his teacher Paul, speaks of the insufficiency both of the Torah itself, which had not opened into the fullness of the living Torah, and of the sanctification connected with it. Indeed, for Paul, even before his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, the fullness of life in God was bound precisely to the living Torah; he considered every other way of following the Torah insufficient.
After that encounter, he understood that the person of Christ is the only example in the world of the living Torah actually fulfilled. He also understood that even the inner Torah, by itself, is not yet the fullness of life with God: the inner Torah only points out the way, but it does not guarantee that the person following it will be able to walk that way.
In the fullness of the living Torah revealed to the world by Christ, not only the Torah as a legal or moral code disappeared, but also the inner Torah as that spiritual compass which pointed the way to the goal: now the goal itself stood before one's eyes. The author of the epistle extends this view of the Torah to sacrifices and to sanctification. Earlier, by being sanctified, a person as it were marked the direction of movement, pointed the way to the goal, and set out toward a place he could not reach, just as a sinful person could not become the living Torah no matter how hard he tried to follow the inner Torah.
Now, with the coming of Christ, the possibility finally appeared of reaching the goal, of being sanctified in all the fullness possible for a human being, and of sharing no longer in the Presence that was found at every earthly altar, but in the Presence that abides at the throne of glory. And in the rays of that throne, the way to which the Savior opens as High Priest of the Kingdom, all earthly altars and all sacred rites disappear. The sacred rites of Christians are not a replacement for the former Yahwist rites within continuing earthly history, but the suprahistorical fullness of sanctification opened to the world through the presence of the Kingdom within it.
But all this is actual only for those for whom the Kingdom is the reality of their own life. For everyone else, in essence, nothing changes. They continue to live in the old spiritual rhythm of periodic cleansing and sanctification, repeated again and again because outside the Kingdom a person is doomed to tread in place, even if he is formally a member of the Church. Then, for such a person, his church life is essentially no different from the life characteristic of believing Yahwists of the pre-Christian era, even if outwardly it is completely Christian.
10
10:1 From all that has been said it appears, that the law, the Mosaic dispensation, being a bare, unsubstantial shadow of good things to come, of the gospel blessings, and not the substantial, solid image of them, can never with the same kind of sacrifices, though continually repeated, make the comers thereunto perfect, either as to justification or sanctification.How is it possible, that any who consider this should suppose the attainments of David, or any who were under that dispensation, to be the proper measure of gospel holiness; and that Christian experience is to rise no higher than Jewish?
10:2 They who had been once perfectly purged, would have been no longer conscious either of the guilt or power of their sins.
10:3 There is a public commemoration of the sins both of the last and of all the preceding years; a clear proof that the guilt thereof is not perfectly purged away.
10:4 It is impossible the blood of goats should take away sins - Either the guilt or the power of them.
10:5 When he cometh into the world - In the fortieth psalm the Messiah's coming into the world is represented.It is said, into the world, not into the tabernacle, Heb 9:1; because all the world is interested in hissacrifice. A body hast thou prepared for me - That I may offer up myself. Psa 40:6,etc
10:7 In the volume of the book - In this very psalm it is written of me. Accordingly I come to do thy will - By the sacrifice of myself.
10:8 Above when he said, Sacrifice thou hast not chosen - That is, when the Psalmist pronounced those words in his name.
10:9 Then said he - in that very instant he subjoined.Lo, I come to do Thy will - To offer a more acceptable sacrifice; and by this very act he taketh away the legal, that he may establish the evangelical, dispensation.
10:10 By which will - Of God, done and suffered by Christ.We are sanctified - Cleansed from guilt, and consecrated to God.