“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. Otherwise, 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. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, my God.’’” -Hebrews 10:1-7
In the previous chapter, the author of Hebrews has been setting up how the blood of Jesus Christ is a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of all of humanity for all time. But considering the emphasis that the Jews put on their ritual sacrifices, and the Jews are the primary audience for this letter, he feels the need to continue to emphasize that point. Jesus Christ is the real thing! Ritual and routine sacrifices are no longer necessary now that Jesus Christ has come and has been the perfect sacrifice that truly brings about forgiveness of sins.
Verse 1 sums up this point well. The law, referring primarily to the Law of Moses but also to the entire Old Testament, is like a shadow, whereas Jesus Himself is the reality. A shadow can tell you about an object vaguely, but not specifically like the real object itself. The law can only vaguely accomplish God’s purposes, whereas Jesus is the real deal.
Those sacrifices required by the law can never make people perfect, just as you can never perfectly tell all of the details of an object just by its shadow. You can make ritual sacrifices year after year, as the people of Israel did, but those will never truly make people perfect in the moral and spiritual sense of being without sin.
The author uses a rhetorical question in verse 2: If those ritual sacrifices would make people perfect, why are they still being offered? They would no longer be needed if they did help people achieve perfection and true forgiveness of their sins. If killing animals as sacrifices truly worked as a perfect sacrifice, that action would not need to be repeated because everyone would have been truly cleansed of their sins.
Instead, God commanded that those sacrifices continue to be offered every year to remind the people of their sins (verse 3). When we remember our sins, we also remember our need for a Savior. In the case of the Jews who lived before Jesus’ time, that remembrance would keep them looking forward to the Savior who was promised to come.
In our case, looking back to Jesus’ sacrifice, the remembrance of our sins reminds us of why Jesus had to come and die. But we no longer need to sacrifice animals every year, which is why we have other annual celebrations instead, such as Christmas to remember Jesus’ birth, Good Friday to remember Jesus’ death, and Easter to remember His resurrection. Good Friday especially points us to remember our sins as the reason why Jesus had to be put to death for our sake.
Again in verse 4, the author emphasizes that these yearly sacrifices and rituals are not satisfactory to take away sins. He uses a strong word in Greek that’s translated as “impossible” to provide extra emphasis for this point. The Greek word used for “take away” refers to the complete removal of sin. The ritual animal sacrifices clearly could not provide true forgiveness.
As the author of Hebrews often does, he quotes Old Testament Scripture in verses 5-7. In this case, he quotes Psalm 40:6-8. Because the old sacrificial system was not sufficient, a new solution had to come, and that solution was Jesus Christ coming into the world. He perfectly fulfilled the prophecies in this passage of Scripture. Jesus existed as God before He came to earth in a physical body (see John 1:1-14 and Colossians 1:15-20), but He did have a body that was prepared for Him. God did not desire ritual sacrifices and offerings but instead prepared Jesus Christ to be that perfect body. Jesus came to do God’s will on earth.
Verse 7 seems to refer to what is recorded about Jesus in Luke 4:16-21. Jesus went into the temple, read from the scroll containing the words of the prophet Isaiah, and proclaimed that He is the one to fulfill those prophecies. Jesus came to do the Father’s will. Even if He did not like what was going to happen to Him and the brutal and violent way that He was going to die, He still followed the Father’s will (see Matthew 26:36-46) because that is why He came.
While the intended original audience of this passage was the Jewish people who had been living with the ritual sacrificial system for their whole lives, this passage is important for us today as well. We often place great importance on things that are not truly important in God’s eyes. While we don’t kill animals during our worship services, we do have other rituals that we feel are required in order to worship God. But we need to remember that the only reason we even have worship services is because Jesus Christ came to the earth to be the perfect sacrifice for us once and for all, to accomplish the will of the Father. Nothing else will save us, and nothing else really matters!
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