Sermon 8 -- Hebrews 10
The beginning of Hebrews 10 continues to develop three threads that have been exposed previously in earlier chapters:
1. The idea of once and for all,
2. The blood of the Christ, and
3. The comparison of the Old Law to the New Covenant.
The chapter begins with the image, that has been used repeatedly, of the shadow, i.e. the "glass darkly", the "copy and shadow of what is in heaven", "patterns of the heavenly sanctuary onto its Earthly shadow", etc. This character of the shadowy mundane law is proposed as a REASON for the once-and-for-allness of Jesus' sacrifice.
Hebrews 10:1-2
Christ's Sacrifice Once for All
"1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
2 If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins."
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It is very important to emphasize the sentence, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves.” The use of the word “realities” situates the author’s perspective from the standpoint of spirit consciousness--spirit as the prime reality, of which carnal reality is a faint shadow. Below, in the Henry Commentary, we will encounter the word “substance”, which really means, in the context of Hebrews, that which is REAL.
“That the Jews then had but the shadow of the good things of Christ, some adumbrations of them; we under the gospel have the substance.”
Hence, Spiritual Reality constitutes, in the Christian cosmography, the true substance of life. Henry states, farther on, that spiritual realities “are the best things; they are realities of an excellent nature.” The word “things” and “substance” would seem to contradict the notion of spiritual realities as somehow discarnate, lacking weight and mass; perhaps we only dimly perceive the true nature of spiritual reality? Perhaps it has some kind of mass in the way light beams have mass — on and off?Perhaps when we meet each other face to face, then we will know?
Also, on further consideration, I'm afraid the expression "once for all" has two different meanings, and BOTH of them are implied in this text. The sense in which I have been responding to it, as once and finally, something to be put at an end in terms of time, is definitely implied—the word “once” demarcates a discreet point on the time continuum that implies both a beginning and an ending.
However, there is another sense in which "once for all" means "one time for all mankind", an interpretation that has nothing to do with time, but rather with collective souls of Men. This latter sense is most appropriately applied to the reminder that the offerings in the old tabernacle are weak and ineffective compared to the offering of Christ's blood of the New Covenant. The author goes on, once again to talk about animal sacrifices, and how these were just not good enough for God, so He came to offer Himself instead:
Hebrews 10:3-7
“3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins,
4 because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, 'Here I am--it is written about me in the scroll-- I have come to do your will, O God.'”
We have covered all this ground before, but the Matthew Henry Commentary offers some elegant paraphrases expressing the idea that the new covenant is replacing the old covenant:
"Verses 1-6 Here the apostle, by the direction of the Spirit of God, sets himself to lay low the Levitical dispensation; for though it was of divine appointment, and very excellent and useful in its time and place, yet, when it was set up in competition with Christ, to whom it was only designed to lead the people, it was very proper and necessary to show the weakness and imperfection of it, which the apostle does effectually, from several arguments. As,
- I. That the law had a shadow, and but a shadow, of good things to come; and who would dote upon a shadow, though of good things, especially when the substance has come?
Observe,
1. The things of Christ and the gospel are good things; they are the best things; they are best in themselves, and the best for us: they are realities of an excellent nature.
2. These good things were, under the Old Testament, good things to come, not clearly discovered, nor fully enjoyed.
3. That the Jews then had but the shadow of the good things of Christ, some adumbrations of them; we under the gospel have the substance.”
[Sidebar: I find the language of these sentences interesting because the spiritual reality of the new covenant, a covenant originating in heaven, is described as having “substance”. As we just mentioned, this is a slightly paradoxical use of the term, because we are used to thinking of “substance” as physical. Clearly, if what we know on the mundane level is a “shadow” of the real, then the real may be described as having “substance”; and yet, spiritual reality can hardly be thought of as having material tangibility. It just goes to show how easy it is to get tangled up in our verbal catechisms. Perhaps what is “REAL” is whatever EXISTS, and a SHADOW of a REAL THING would make a poor substitute for the REAL REAL THING.]
Back to Henry:]
“II. That the law was not the very image of the good things to come. An image is an exact draught of the thing represented thereby. The law did not go so far, but was only a shadow, as the image of a person in a looking-glass is a much more perfect representation than his shadow upon the wall. The law was a very rough draught of the great design of divine grace, and therefore not to be so much doted on.
[Sidebar: The contrast of the mirror image with the shadow is clever and apt. How much more clear, then, must our spiritual vision be when we see Jesus not through a mirror, but face to face.
Back to Henry:]
“III. The legal sacrifices, being offered year by year, could never make the comers thereunto perfect; for then there would have been an end of offering them. Could they have satisfied the demands of justice, and made reconciliation for iniquity,—could they have purified and pacified conscience,—then they had ceased, as being no further necessary, since the offerers would have had no more sin lying upon their consciences.
But this was not the case; after one day of atonement was over, the sinner would fall again into one fault or another, and so there would be need of another day of atonement, and of one every year, besides the daily ministrations. Whereas now, under the gospel, the atonement is perfect, and not to be repeated; and the sinner, once pardoned, is ever pardoned as to his state, and only needs to renew his repentance and faith, that he may have a comfortable sense of a continued pardon.
[Sidebar: There are several references in this chapter to the idea encountered earlier, of the devotee who has discovered the Christ and then fallen away. We first encounter the idea of the unforgivable sin in Hebrews 6:4-6:
“4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,
5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6 if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”
There is food for contradiction here because in one place it says that the penitent who backslides into sin is unredeemable, and yet here it says that “the sinner, once pardoned, is ever pardoned as to his state”. How can the sinner, so pardoned, ever fall out of grace with the Father? We encounter this type of contradiction whenever we try to understand the cosmic machine in the terms of the human concept of justice. Clearly the new law has loopholes built into it which blur the lines of Karmic clarity into swatches of question marks. The questions are answered through faith, a faith that legitimately allows us to dismiss certain logical contradictions as trivial; faith gives us the license to believe and yet not understand.
Back to Henry:]
“IV. As the legal sacrifices did not of themselves take away sin, so it was impossible they should. There was an essential defect in them.
- 1. They were not of the same nature with us who sinned.
2. They were not of sufficient value to make satisfaction for the affronts offered to the justice and government of God. They were not of the same nature that offended, and so could not be suitable. Much less were they of the same nature that was offended; and nothing less than the nature that was offended could make the sacrifice a full satisfaction for the offence.
- 3. The beasts offered up under the law could not consent to put themselves in the sinner’s room and place. The atoning sacrifice must be one capable of consenting, and must voluntarily substitute himself in the sinner’s stead: Christ did so.”
[Sidebar: This is an important point: it distinguishes between the impersonal sacrifice of material, and the personal Self-Sacrifice practiced by the Christ. In a way, it reminds me of the parable of widow’s mite: the rich guy’s offering was not blessed because he sacrificed nothing he was going to miss, but the widow gave up her lunch for the greater good—this is self-sacrifice, and puts the subject right down there in the trenches with the beneficiary of the sacrifice. Jesus came down to our level and made a sacrifice we could understand. He “consented” to make the sacrifice for a reason, and that reason was each and every one of us.
Back to Henry:]
“V. There was a time fixed and foretold by the great God, and that time had now come, when these legal sacrifices would be no longer accepted by him nor useful to men. God never did desire them for themselves, and now he abrogated them; and therefore to adhere to them now would be resisting God and rejecting him. This time of the repeal of the Levitical laws was foretold by David (Psalm 40:6-7), and is recited here as now come.
“6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—
but my ears you have opened—
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.
7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.”
but my ears you have opened—
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.
7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.”
Thus industriously does the apostle lay low the Mosaical dispensation.”
Hebrews 10 continues to drive home the point that the new covenant is better than the old covenant; that the priest of the synagogue performs empty rituals that must be repeated every day precisely because they are so impotent—if they were not impotent we wouldn’t have to repeat them over and over again. The sacrifice “once for all” of Jesus has put an end to all that repetitious “sound and fury signifying nothing”.
Hebrews 10:8-10
“8 First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them" (although the law required them to be made).
9 Then he said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." He sets aside the first to establish the second.
10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
[Sidebar: Remember it was through the BLOOD of Jesus, (according to Steiner, the ETHERISED BLOOD of Jesus), that established His transcendent relationship to the Earth and to Humanity.]
Hebrews 10:11-14
“11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
13 Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool,
14 because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
[Sidebar: The ONE SACRIFICE that “has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” is a cornerstone of many fundamentalist Christian theologies, and is a miracle that we must never cease pondering and admiring.
Going on, Hebrews 10:15-18 makes the first mention, in the book, of the Holy Spirit:]
“15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16 "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds."
17 Then he adds: "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more."
18 And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.”
[Sidebar: Henry makes the following comment on these verses:
“VII. The apostle recommends Christ, from the witness the Holy Ghost has given in the scriptures concerning him; this relates chiefly to what should be the happy fruit and consequence of his humiliation and sufferings, which in general is that new and gracious covenant that is founded upon his satisfaction, and sealed by his blood: Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness. The passage is cited from Jeremiah 31:31:
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:”
in which covenant God promises,
1. That he will pour out his Spirit upon his people, so as to give them wisdom, will, and power, to obey his word; he will put his laws in their hearts, and write them in their minds. This will make their duty plain, easy, and pleasant.
- 2. Their sins and iniquities he will remember no more, which will alone show the riches of divine grace, and the sufficiency of Christ’s satisfaction, that it needs not be repeated,”
The following verses, Hebrews 10:19-22 are a heartfelt affirmation of the glorious new covenant, expressed in the language of song:
A Call to Persevere
“19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”
In a previous sermon I commented on the word “confidence”. In
Hebrews 3:14 we read:
“14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”
In Hebrews 4:16, we read:
"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
I love this elevated ending: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” It feels like a piece of music. The expression “approach the throne with confidence” reminds me of the dichotomous humble pride that we talked about before: Jesus came down to the human level as a humble servant, but, by doing so, he was affirming His superior perspective. Coming to the throne with confidence is a similar dichotomy: in approaching the throne we perform an act of humility; the confidence comes from the fact of our spiritual experience—it shows us that the throne is the fount of all grace, not the block of judgment.
Moreover, I find the use of the word “confidence” to be affirming in a special sense: it must be admitted that the devotee trying to live up to the standards of LAW must constantly encounter feelings of failure or inadequacy, while the new age of Grace encourages us to face the Savior with confidence—maybe not the confidence of equality, but certainly the confidence of one who is loved unconditionally. The connection between God and Man, made possible through the blood sacrifice of Jesus, puts us on a footing with Him that holds no fear. Perhaps the term “God-fearing” is an exclusively Old Testament term? Maybe yes, maybe no. This is something else we will only understand later on.
The next section is very Pauline in its political or social message; it warns us to stick together, to support each other in hope of better days to come:
Hebrews 10:23-25:
“23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
The next section returns to the idea of the unforgivable sin:
“26 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,
27 but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
28 Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."
31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Returning to Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, on Hebrews 10:26-31. we read:
“The exhortations against apostacy and to perseverance, are urged by many strong reasons. The sin here mentioned is a total and final falling away, when men, with a full and fixed will and resolution, despise and reject Christ, the only Saviour; despise and resist the Spirit, the only Sanctifier; and despise and renounce the gospel, the only way of salvation, and the words of eternal life. Of this destruction God gives some notorious sinners, while on earth, a fearful foreboding in their consciences, with despair of being able to endure or to escape it. But what punishment can be sorer than to die without mercy? We answer, to die by mercy, by the mercy and grace which they have despised. How dreadful is the case, when not only the justice of God, but his abused grace and mercy call for vengeance! All this does not in the least mean that any souls who sorrow for sin will be shut out from mercy, or that any will be refused the benefit of Christ's sacrifice, who are willing to accept these blessings. Him that cometh unto Christ, he will in no wise cast out.”
The idea of the unforgivable sin reminds me of the Last Judgement scenario we have suggested before, wherein it is we ourselves, not Jesus, who pass final judgement. In the face of the absolute truth, that is unavoidable in the presence of the all-knowing Christ, we all must do away with the lies we have use to veil our eyes and obscure our spiritual vision. Thus. “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,”; i.e., we will have set our spiritual sight on the hypnotic deception of the material plane, and will be unable to tear out eyes way from the dark, the Light behinds us, forever lost to us.
Eternal Hell is a thought that stops me in my tracks every time I think of it, but I have to admit the possibility that some people just won’t learn. There is a wonderful passage in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, his fanciful description of a kind of purgatory-like place where departed souls tend either toward higher ground, or Hellish darkness. In this passage a sinner rejects finally the pleas of a loved one trying desperately to turn the sinner’s eyes toward the light. The loved one is described as “the Lady”. While passing through the woods, this Lady comes across a Ghost who used to be her husband. Shrunken and dwarfish, and silent himself, this Ghost leads around a bizarre, ambulatory puppet like a ventriloquist’s dummy, which Lewis names the Tragedian, that speaks for him. The Tragedian claims to have been worried about the Lady, distressed that she was there without him, believing she must have missed him terribly. But she denies this, explaining that “There are no miseries here”. Starting on page 115 we read:
“I DO not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy. For he had almost been overcome. Somewhere, incalculable ages ago, there must have been gleams of humour and reason in him. For one moment, while she looked at him in her love and mirth, he saw the absurdity of the Tragedian. For one moment he did not at all misunderstand her laughter: he too must once have known that no people find each other more absurd than lovers. But the light that reached him, reached him against his will. This was not the meeting he had pictured; he would not accept it. Once more he clutched at his death-line, and at once the Tragedian spoke. "You dare to laugh at it!" it stormed. "To my face? And this is my reward. Very well. It is fortunate that you give yourself no concern about my fate. Otherwise you might be sorry afterwards to think that you had driven me back to Hell. What? Do you think I'd stay now? Thank you. I believe I'm fairly quick at recognising where I'm not wanted. 'Not needed' was the exact expression, if I remember rightly."
From this time on the Dwarf never spoke again: but still the Lady addressed it.
"Dear, no one sends you back. Here is all joy. Everything bids you stay." But the Dwarf was growing smaller even while she spoke.
"Yes," said the Tragedian. "On terms you might offer to a dog. I happen to have some self-respect left, and I see that my going will make no difference to you. It is nothing to you that I go back to the cold and the gloom, the lonely, lonely streets-----."
"Don't, don't Frank," said the Lady. "Don't let it talk like that." But the Dwarf was now so small that she had dropped on her knees to speak to it. The Tragedian caught her words greedily as a dog catches a bone.
"Ah, you can't bear to hear it!" he shouted with miserable triumph. "That was always the way. You must be sheltered. Grim realities must be kept out of your sight. You who can be happy without me, forgetting me! You don't want even to hear of my sufferings. You say, don't. Don't tell you. Don't make you unhappy. Don't break in on your sheltered, self-centred little heaven. And this is the reward-----."
She stooped still lower to speak to the Dwarf which was now a figure no bigger than a kitten, hanging on to the end of the chain with his feet off the ground.
"That wasn't why I said, Don't," she answered. "I meant, stop acting. It's no good. He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now."
"Acting," screamed the Tragedian. "What do you mean?"
"That wasn't why I said, Don't," she answered. "I meant, stop acting. It's no good. He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now."
"Acting," screamed the Tragedian. "What do you mean?"
The Dwarf was now so small that I could not distinguish him from the chain to which he was clinging. And now for the first time I could not be certain whether the Lady was addressing him or the Tragedian.
"Quick," she said. "There is still time. Stop it. Stop it at once."
"Stop what?"
"Using pity, other people's pity, in the wrong way. We have all done it a bit on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. You see, I know now. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic . . . because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, 'I can't bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.' You used your pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end. And afterwards, when we were married . . . oh, it doesn't matter, if only you will stop it."
"And that," said the Tragedian, "that is all you have understood of me, after all these years." I don't know what had become of the Dwarf Ghost by now. Perhaps it was climbing up the chain like an insect: perhaps it was somehow absorbed into the chain.
"No, Frank, not here," said the Lady. "Listen to reason. Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?"
"Love? How dare you use that sacred word?" said the Tragedian. At the same moment he gathered up the chain which had now for some time been swinging uselessly at his side, and somehow disposed of it. I am not quite sure, but I think he swallowed it. Then for the first time it became clear that the Lady saw and addressed him only.
"Where is Frank?" she said. "And who are you, Sir? I never knew you. Perhaps you had better leave me. Or stay, if you prefer. If it would help you, and if it were possible, I would go down with you into Hell: but you cannot bring Hell into me."
"You do not love me," said the Tragedian in a thin bat-like voice: and he was now very difficult to see.
"I cannot love a lie," said the Lady. "I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go."
There was no answer. The Tragedian had vanished. The Lady was alone in that woodland place, and a brown bird went hopping past her, bending with its light feet the grasses I could not bend.”
"You do not love me," said the Tragedian in a thin bat-like voice: and he was now very difficult to see.
"I cannot love a lie," said the Lady. "I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go."
There was no answer. The Tragedian had vanished. The Lady was alone in that woodland place, and a brown bird went hopping past her, bending with its light feet the grasses I could not bend.”
This passage depicts a heartbreaking scene, that, unfortunately, must happen in reality many times a day on this Earth, this veil of tears. It goes to show that, for some, Hell is a destiny chosen through weakness so profound that, in the sinner, the faintest hint of human individuality has been lost forever.
Back to Hebrews 10:32-39:
“32 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering.
33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated.
34 You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.
35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.
37 For in just a very little while, "He who is coming will come and will not delay.
38 But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him."
39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.”
In conclusion we have seen that beginning Hebrews 10 develops the three threads:
1. The idea of once and for all. In the expression “once for all” there are grounds for contradiction because in one place the letter says that the penitent who backslides into sin is unredeemable, and yet here it says that “the sinner, once pardoned, is ever pardoned as to his state”. How can the sinner, so pardoned, ever fall out of grace with the Father? We encounter this type of contradiction whenever we try to understand the cosmic machine in the terms of the human concept of justice. Clearly the new law has loopholes built into it which blur the lines of Karmic clarity into swatches of question marks. The questions are answered through faith, a faith that legitimately allows us to dismiss certain logical contradictions as trivial; faith gives us the license to believe and yet not understand.
2. The blood of the Christ as the ransom for Man. Remember it was through the BLOOD of Jesus, (according to Steiner, the ETHERISED BLOOD of Jesus), that established His transcendent relationship to the Earth and to Humanity.
3. The comparison of the Old Law to the New Covenant. The offerings in the old tabernacle are weak and ineffective compared to the offering of Christ's blood of the New Covenant. The author of Hebrews, by the direction of the Spirit of God, sets himself to lay low the Levitical dispensation; for though it was of divine appointment, and very excellent and useful in its time and place, yet, when it was set up in competition with Christ, to whom it was only designed to lead the people, it was very proper and necessary to show the weakness and imperfection of it.
The chapter ends with an exhortation to STAY THE COURSE—don’t give up. Salvation is yours through faith. Let’s stick together and help each to see that which is unseen, but which is more real than the sharpest sword.
Let is pray: Jesus thank you for the hope of faith. Thank you for redeeming us from the snares of sin, and giving our minds rest from the confusion and ultimate intangibility of worldly unreality. Give us confidence, in prayer, to project our consciousnesses forward into a moment of timeless bliss in your uncrowded presence. Amen.
