Five-year Bible reading plan for 9 October 2025

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Hebrews, Chapter 10, verses 11-18

¹⁰ The sacrifice of Christ's body, once offered, ¹⁴ for ever hath taken away sins

¹¹And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins:

¹²But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

¹³From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

¹⁴For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

¹⁵Whereof 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.

Read more:Hebrews, Chapter 10

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10

10:11 Every priest standeth - As a servant in an humble posture.

10:12 But he - The virtue of whose one sacrifice remains for ever. Sat down - As a son, in majesty and honour.

10:13 Psa 110:1.

10:14 He hath perfected them for ever - That is, has done all that was needful in order to their full reconciliation with God.

10:15 In this and the three following verses, the apostle winds up his argument concerning the excellency and perfection of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ. He had proved this before by a quotation from Jeremiah; which he here repeats, describing the new covenant as now completely ratified, and all the blessings of it secured to us by the one offering of Christ, which renders all other expiatory sacrifices, and any repetition of his own, utterly needless.

10:16 Jer 31:33, etc

NOTES

Speaking about Christian life, the author of the letter recalls ancient prophecies whose meaning comes down to the fact that the messianic age is the age of universal redemption and forgiveness of sins...

Speaking about Christian life, the author of the letter recalls ancient prophecies whose meaning comes down to the fact that the messianic age is the age of universal redemption and forgiveness of sins. He understands perfectly well that nothing of the kind can be achieved by the partial purification that traditional Yahwist purifying sacrifices could provide. Something must happen that will qualitatively change the situation with purification. And this something must undoubtedly be connected with the Person of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Thus the image takes shape of what is usually called the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.

The issue, of course, is not ransom in the sense in which we usually understand that word today, not that God buys someone back from the devil, paying for the redeemed with the life of His Son. The issue is redemption in the sense in which purifying sacrifices in the Old Testament books are sometimes called redemptive: they free a person from the power of sin, partially and for a time, at the cost of God's intervention and the death of the animal offered in sacrifice, which, of course, is in no way guilty of the sins of those who are freed from them through the sacrifice being offered. So Christ too takes upon Himself the consequences of the sins we have committed, and for this He comes into the fallen world, which in the end kills Him. And He consents to being killed, although He is, of course, in no way guilty of the sins whose consequences He takes upon Himself, and indeed has no part in any sin at all.

Yet without such cleansing intervention, the fullness of sanctification will remain inaccessible to fallen humanity, just as the Kingdom will remain inaccessible. Christ voluntarily gives up His life, goes to death, sacrifices Himself in order to intervene in the situation connected with our sins, in order to deal in our place with the consequences of what we have done, because we ourselves will never be able to deal with those consequences. This is the sense in which both Paul and his disciple, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, speak of redemptive sacrifice.

Once again recalling Jeremiah's words about the new, messianic union-covenant, the author of the letter...

Once again recalling Jeremiah's words about the new, messianic union-covenant (vv. 15-17; cf. Jer. 31:31-33), the author of the letter thereby moves from the concept of the external Torah to the concept of the inner Torah, and also to the image of the living Torah, which was well known not only to Jewish tradition but also to early Christian tradition. These concepts and images were foundational for the Christian worldview of his teacher as well: Paul in his letters also turned more than once to the theme of the inner Torah and to the image of the living Torah, seeing them as the basis for understanding what Christianity and life in the Kingdom are.

The main distinguishing feature of life in the Kingdom, the author of the letter, following the apostle, considers to be freedom from sin, which makes the former priestly Torah no longer relevant: in its former quality it was directed precisely toward resisting sin, which cannot exist in the Kingdom (v. 18). Yet its meaning and significance remain the same: the main purpose of the priestly Torah was the sanctification of the people, and this task remains relevant. Life in the Kingdom is sanctified life, so that the residents of the Kingdom need sanctification no less, and even more, than those who sought and awaited the Kingdom in our still-untransformed world in pre-Christian times. Moreover, they need sanctification in all its fullness, which the former priesthood cannot give, but whose possibility is opened to them with the coming of the Savior (vv. 11-14). And this sanctification had to be not external, touching first of all the body of the one being sanctified, but internal, beginning in the heart and eventually taking hold of the whole person.

Of course, such sanctification cannot be instantaneous, since it presupposes a person's final liberation from sin and the transformation of his nature; but by definition it does not allow repetition. If, for any reason, this spiritual process is interrupted, a falling back is inevitable, and then everything has to begin again from the start. In the Kingdom there is not and cannot be repeated cleansing and repeated sanctification: repeated cleansing would mean that a resident of the Kingdom at some moment ceased to be one, cutting himself off from the life he had lived before, and now he needs to return, in a certain sense beginning everything from zero. That is why the author of the letter speaks of the perfection of those being sanctified: they have already become residents of the Kingdom, now awaiting its final triumph and Christ's return in glory (vv. 12-14).

For many centuries people considered the language of sacrifice the most adequate means of communion with God (or gods)...

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