NOTES for Heb 10:1-10
Continuing the discussion of sacrifices, the author of the letter returns again to a theme Paul addressed more than once: the insufficiency of the Torah for the complete transformation of the human person. As a disciple and follower of the apostle, he illustrates this through the priestly Torah, which prescribed regular sacrifices, including sacrifices of purification. He draws attention to what his teacher had often said: following the Torah makes it possible to resist sin, but it does not make it possible to be rid of sin once and for all. Applied to the priestly Torah, this means a bad infinity of sacrifices with no end in sight, because after each purification, which is inevitably relative, and each sanctification, which is inevitably incomplete, the person who has been purified and sanctified sins again and loses that sanctification (vv. 1-2). Sacrificial blood can cleanse a person from the consequences of a specific sin, but it cannot free a person from what the New Testament books call original sin. Thus sacrifices of purification paradoxically become for a person a reminder of the sinfulness from which they were supposed to deliver him (vv. 3-4). True, complete purification is accomplished once, just as complete sanctification can only be a one-time reality: complete purification frees a person from his sinfulness once and for all, and complete sanctification, even when it unfolds over time, still does not imply the possibility of losing sanctification and returning to the former state, after which everything would have to begin again.
That is why the author of the letter speaks of the final sanctification of the faithful "through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (v. 10). Such final sanctification opens the road to the Kingdom for those who seek it, completely changing the former pattern of purification sacrifices and all other sacrifices. It is in this sense that the author of the letter speaks of the uselessness of the former sacrifices: they are relevant only to the former, pre-Christian order of things (vv. 5-9). In the Kingdom, the priestly Torah ceases to be relevant in the same sense that the Torah in general ceases to be relevant there: after the transformation of the world and of human nature, it is no longer needed as a means of fighting sin, which has been defeated once and for all. And the priestly Torah ceases to be relevant in the Kingdom as a means of the incomplete purification and relative sanctification that it used to provide, when the world still lay in evil (v. 9).