NOTES for Heb 10:1-18

Today, in a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, the apostle Paul speaks of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Paul emphasizes that the sacrifice is offered in the Body of Jesus Christ only once and never needs to be repeated, because forgiveness of sins is granted through Christ. This is why Christ’s words in the passage from the Gospel according to Mark are so important: “...whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” It is precisely the way of cruciform love that makes us the people whom Christ redeemed, those for whom he offered himself in sacrifice.

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).

Continuing the discussion of the Torah and of sanctification through traditional Yahwist sacrifices, the author of the epistle, like his teacher Paul, speaks of the insufficiency both of the Torah itself, which had not opened into the fullness of the living Torah, and of the sanctification connected with it. Indeed, for Paul, even before his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, the fullness of life in God was bound precisely to the living Torah; he considered every other way of following the Torah insufficient.

After that encounter, he understood that the person of Christ is the only example in the world of the living Torah actually fulfilled. He also understood that even the inner Torah, by itself, is not yet the fullness of life with God: the inner Torah only points out the way, but it does not guarantee that the person following it will be able to walk that way.

In the fullness of the living Torah revealed to the world by Christ, not only the Torah as a legal or moral code disappeared, but also the inner Torah as that spiritual compass which pointed the way to the goal: now the goal itself stood before one's eyes. The author of the epistle extends this view of the Torah to sacrifices and to sanctification. Earlier, by being sanctified, a person as it were marked the direction of movement, pointed the way to the goal, and set out toward a place he could not reach, just as a sinful person could not become the living Torah no matter how hard he tried to follow the inner Torah.

Now, with the coming of Christ, the possibility finally appeared of reaching the goal, of being sanctified in all the fullness possible for a human being, and of sharing no longer in the Presence that was found at every earthly altar, but in the Presence that abides at the throne of glory. And in the rays of that throne, the way to which the Savior opens as High Priest of the Kingdom, all earthly altars and all sacred rites disappear. The sacred rites of Christians are not a replacement for the former Yahwist rites within continuing earthly history, but the suprahistorical fullness of sanctification opened to the world through the presence of the Kingdom within it.

But all this is actual only for those for whom the Kingdom is the reality of their own life. For everyone else, in essence, nothing changes. They continue to live in the old spiritual rhythm of periodic cleansing and sanctification, repeated again and again because outside the Kingdom a person is doomed to tread in place, even if he is formally a member of the Church. Then, for such a person, his church life is essentially no different from the life characteristic of believing Yahwists of the pre-Christian era, even if outwardly it is completely Christian.

In the Letter to the Hebrews Paul touches on a theme important for all of us. He exposes the boundary between following some rite or other and living faith, the doing of the Father's will.

One can object to this understanding of the matter by saying that behind a rite there almost always stands the faith of previous generations, the Church, and therefore the Lord Himself. In many cases this is so, though not always. But the point is that a rite can screen God from us. As a result, sadly, one can stop perceiving Him as a Person and see only a set of prescriptions, restrictions, and actions required of oneself.

But Paul, quoting Christ's words, emphasizes the doing of the heavenly Father's will, and for this living communion with Him Himself is necessary, in prayer and in reading His Word. And already through this the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, gives us the right perception and the fullness of participation in the rite of the Church.

Speaking about Christian life, the author of the letter recalls ancient prophecies whose meaning comes down to the fact that the messianic age is the age of universal redemption and forgiveness of sins. He understands perfectly well that nothing of the kind can be achieved by the partial purification that traditional Yahwist purifying sacrifices could provide. Something must happen that will qualitatively change the situation with purification. And this something must undoubtedly be connected with the Person of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Thus the image takes shape of what is usually called the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.

The issue, of course, is not ransom in the sense in which we usually understand that word today, not that God buys someone back from the devil, paying for the redeemed with the life of His Son. The issue is redemption in the sense in which purifying sacrifices in the Old Testament books are sometimes called redemptive: they free a person from the power of sin, partially and for a time, at the cost of God's intervention and the death of the animal offered in sacrifice, which, of course, is in no way guilty of the sins of those who are freed from them through the sacrifice being offered. So Christ too takes upon Himself the consequences of the sins we have committed, and for this He comes into the fallen world, which in the end kills Him. And He consents to being killed, although He is, of course, in no way guilty of the sins whose consequences He takes upon Himself, and indeed has no part in any sin at all.

Yet without such cleansing intervention, the fullness of sanctification will remain inaccessible to fallen humanity, just as the Kingdom will remain inaccessible. Christ voluntarily gives up His life, goes to death, sacrifices Himself in order to intervene in the situation connected with our sins, in order to deal in our place with the consequences of what we have done, because we ourselves will never be able to deal with those consequences. This is the sense in which both Paul and his disciple, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, speak of redemptive sacrifice.

Once again recalling Jeremiah's words about the new, messianic union-covenant (vv. 15-17; cf. Jer. 31:31-33), the author of the letter thereby moves from the concept of the external Torah to the concept of the inner Torah, and also to the image of the living Torah, which was well known not only to Jewish tradition but also to early Christian tradition. These concepts and images were foundational for the Christian worldview of his teacher as well: Paul in his letters also turned more than once to the theme of the inner Torah and to the image of the living Torah, seeing them as the basis for understanding what Christianity and life in the Kingdom are.

The main distinguishing feature of life in the Kingdom, the author of the letter, following the apostle, considers to be freedom from sin, which makes the former priestly Torah no longer relevant: in its former quality it was directed precisely toward resisting sin, which cannot exist in the Kingdom (v. 18). Yet its meaning and significance remain the same: the main purpose of the priestly Torah was the sanctification of the people, and this task remains relevant. Life in the Kingdom is sanctified life, so that the residents of the Kingdom need sanctification no less, and even more, than those who sought and awaited the Kingdom in our still-untransformed world in pre-Christian times. Moreover, they need sanctification in all its fullness, which the former priesthood cannot give, but whose possibility is opened to them with the coming of the Savior (vv. 11-14). And this sanctification had to be not external, touching first of all the body of the one being sanctified, but internal, beginning in the heart and eventually taking hold of the whole person.

Of course, such sanctification cannot be instantaneous, since it presupposes a person's final liberation from sin and the transformation of his nature; but by definition it does not allow repetition. If, for any reason, this spiritual process is interrupted, a falling back is inevitable, and then everything has to begin again from the start. In the Kingdom there is not and cannot be repeated cleansing and repeated sanctification: repeated cleansing would mean that a resident of the Kingdom at some moment ceased to be one, cutting himself off from the life he had lived before, and now he needs to return, in a certain sense beginning everything from zero. That is why the author of the letter speaks of the perfection of those being sanctified: they have already become residents of the Kingdom, now awaiting its final triumph and Christ's return in glory (vv. 12-14).

For many centuries people considered the language of sacrifice the most adequate means of communion with God (or gods). The logic is simple: suppose God (or one of the gods), for some reason, does not want to deal with me. But surely He (or he) wants something. Meat... or the fruits of the earth... I give this, and communion is restored - until the next time. Of course, this logic is connected with the fact that a person constructs God and His needs "in his own image." At the same time, for a time God, as it were, agrees to this way of communion and even lays out in great detail (in the law of Moses) what sacrifices are to be offered, and how and when they are to be offered.

The point is that God always takes into account what relationships a person is already capable of, and what relationships he is not yet capable of. And the language of sacrifice works until the time of the New Covenant arrives. All Old Testament sacrifices turn out to be prefigurations of the one sacrifice that Christ will offer on the cross.

Indeed, why does God not want to deal with man? Because man is in sin, that is, in opposition to the will of God. Old Testament sacrifices are directed toward appeasing God and restoring communion with Him. But what does God truly want from us? Love expressed in filial obedience (see Hos. 6:6; Matt. 9:13). This is what Jesus offers to God on the cross in an absolute degree, and therefore the appeasing of God, His forgiveness of sins, and the restoration of relationship also take place in an absolute degree. This means that God no longer accepts any sacrifices, because He has already accepted the perfect sacrifice. This is what the apostle Paul writes about in today's passage.