Slices
Prepare
Pray or sing: ‘Just as I am, though tossed about / With many a conflict, many a doubt; / Fightings within, and fears without, / O Lamb of God, I come, I come!’ (Charlotte Elliot).
Bible passage
Christ’s sacrifice once for all
10 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 Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. 3 But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. 4 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, my God.”’
8 First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’– though they were offered in accordance with the law. 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.
Explore
Paul confessed, ‘For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing’ (Romans 7:19). This war of wills – self-will striving with God’s will – rages within every human heart. The root of all sin is the creature’s declaration of independence from the Creator.
The sacrifices prescribed by the law were important (v 8b), but impotent (v 4). While reminding people of their sinfulness (v 3) and need for atonement, these were powerless to save or sanctify (vs 1b,2). The heart of the matter is a surrendered heart. So God looks for a different kind of sacrifice – not burnt offerings, but a submissive will; willingness to step down from the throne and let God reign; readiness to relinquish autonomy and pledge allegiance to him.
Being perfectly submissive to the Father (v 9a), Jesus offered the only perfect sacrifice, powerful to save and sanctify us (v 10). With Paul, we can exclaim: ‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Romans 7:24b,25).
Respond
The problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar’ (attributed to DL Moody). Do you need to crawl back up to the altar, saying, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will’?
Deeper Bible study
The old sacrificial system could not ‘make perfect those who draw near’ (v 1), but ‘we have been made holy’ (v 10). With bated breath, I thank my Lord…
In Hebrews 10 our writer is reaching the climax of the arguments of the first ten chapters of his letter. I begin today by noting (again) the passage’s contrasting words and phrases: on the one hand words like ‘shadow’, ‘repeated endlessly’, ‘year after year’, ‘annual reminder’; and on the other hand ‘realities’, ‘once for all’, ‘sets aside’. I worship my Lord that he has removed my sins for ever, unlike the old sacrificial system which reminded worshippers constantly of their sinfulness.
How puzzling this teaching must have been to the original Jewish Jesus-followers who listened to it! Did not God himself set up the sacrificial system in detail? Yes, but Paul had already drawn attention to the contrast between shadow and reality.1 Our writer now pictures Christ using the words of a David psalm2 to draw attention to what God really desires. The ‘pierced ears’ of the Hebrew text of Psalm 40:6 have been translated dynamically by the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the writer of Hebrews) as a ‘prepared body’ (see v 5). The background is probably the devoted, listening, suffering obedience of the Lord’s servant in Isaiah.3
I conclude today’s meditation by reflecting on the contrast in verse 5 between ‘Sacrifice and offering’ and ‘a body’. Unwilling, unknowing animals were dragged to sacrifice under the old system, without any choice in the matter. It was and is the perfect will of God to make us holy – and, in knowing, loving obedience to that will, Christ offered his own body for us once and for all. For this premeditated dedication to my salvation, flinched from and carried through, Jesus, you will be my hero for ever.
‘Here his whole name appears complete; / nor wit can guess, nor reason prove / which of the letters best is writ, / the power, the wisdom, or the love.’4
1 Col 2:17 2 Ps 40:6–8 3 Isa 50:4–11 4 Isaac Watts, 1674–1748 ‘Nature with open volume stands’
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: 1 Kings 6,7; 1 Corinthians 12
Pray for Scripture Union
Central region team leader Simon Barker has been involved in annual Lifepath events in Olney the past few years. It’s disappointing to have had to cancel these now that schools are closed. Pray for the children and young people who would have come, that they will hear about God’s life-changing love in other ways.
