Hebrews 10:5-10 – Christ, the effective sacrifice

Christ was not just the perfect sacrifice, He was also the effective sacrifice.  In verses 5-7, the author did an unusual thing. He literally took the words of David from Psalm 40 and put them on the lips of Christ. In these verses, once again, the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of animal sacrifices was re-iterated. God did not take pleasure in those sacrifices. Why? It was because the sacrifices were offered only as a formality. The people had turned something God provided into a mechanical ritual, instead of heartfelt repentance and faith. The sacrifices were offered up with neither the willingness of the heart to draw near to God nor the desire to please Him. Many times we see in the Old Testament how the Lord said, that His desire was for obedience more than sacrifice. In Psalm 51:16-17 we read, “For Thou dost not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; Thou art not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” David knew that sacrifices and burnt offering could not remove the guilt of his sins. Otherwise, he would have easily offered them and fixed the guilt of his sins. But he knew that only a repenting heart and the willingness to walk in obedience could please God.

In verse 7, the author then showed Christ’s willingness to come and be the sacrifice. Christ knew that it was the Father’s will for Him to come as the sacrifice. In saying that “…a body Thou hast prepared for me;” God was seen to have planned for Christ’s incarnation. This thought here would also refute the late 1st century teaching of Gnosticism. Jesus did not just seem to be human but that He was truly human. Here we also see Christ responding by saying, “Behold, I have come to do Thy will, O God.”  Christ consciously and deliberately offered His life to God to do His will. The statement, “… in the roll of the book it is written of me …” suggests that the Old Testament writings already anticipated the coming of this Messiah in human form. The will of God that Christ came to fulfill was to lay down His life for the redemption of mankind.  

In verses 8 and 9, the author repeated what he said in the previous two verses. Here, he identified four Old Testament sacrifices and offerings. The term “Sacrifices” refers to peace offering; the “offerings” were probably those voluntary “meal offerings;” the burnt offerings would be the sacrifices that were wholly consumed. The “sacrifices for sin” would refer to that class of sacrifices stipulated in Leviticus 4-5. All these were only types that were foreshadowing the work of Christ. 

Verse 9; concerning Christ’s coming to do God’s will, is a great statement when properly understood. He literally came into the world to do the will of God. He was on earth and every day of His life He sought to do the will of the Father. In John 4:34, He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” And despite the tremendous weight and pain, He said to the Father, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” As a true man, Jesus was tempted to do the things human so often would do. But Christ’s response to every tempting moment had always been, “Father not my will but yours be done.” And He did that in a human physical body, what no fallen human being had done and will ever do. He constantly obeyed God.

However, Christ came from eternity where His will had always been in harmony with God and He took on human flesh. In human form, Christ continued to harmonize His will with the Father’s. While on earth, Christ lived by the Word of God perfectly. And He did it with great joy. This formed the basis on which God was totally satisfied. His was a life of total obedience. He was the only person, whose personal will merged with God’s will in totality. The will of God that had never been obeyed to its fullest by any man, Christ completely accomplished them. His action had removed and abolished the Mosaic Covenant and its sacrificial system. And in its place God now established the second, the New Covenant. This was God’s will and it satisfied Him. Christ’s offering of Himself superseded the Levitical sacrifices in that it justified the believers and set them apart to God, once and for all times. Christ had set us a standard to emulate. Let’s be totally obedient to the Father! Let’s live to please Him and Him alone!