More thoughts on sacrifice - 3 October 2009 |
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Following this earlier post, a few more thoughts on sacrifice in Hebrews 10.
Heb 10:5-10 says that the OT sacrifices, offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings have been ‘abolished’ (v. 8), and that in their place Christ has fulfilled and established the promise of Psalm 40: ‘I have come to do your will.’ Why should obedience to God’s will be the thing that overcomes the inadequacy of the OT sacrificial system?
Maybe it’s like this:
One way of looking at the problem with the OT sacrificial system is that the things represented by the sacrifices were never perfectly reflected in the hearts and minds of the worshippers.
For example, the sacrifices were intended to cleanse the people, to draw them into God’s presence, to express thankfulness and fellowship. But the people, even in their better moments, always harboured a degree of un-cleanness and thanklessness in their hearts. There was always that little part of them that would rather not enter God’s presence or have fellowship with him, preferring friendship with the world instead. They performed the sacrificial rituals, but their hearts were never really in it.
Incidentally, this explains why the OT tirades against sacrifice (e.g. Isa 1) are generally found in contexts where the ungodliness of the people was most obvious. In such instances the disjunction between the significance of the sacrificial rituals and the state of the worshippers’ hearts was at its most blatant. But the same underlying problem existed all the time, even when public hypocrisy was absent.
What they needed was a sacrifice in which the significance of the sacrifice itself was perfectly mirrored in the heart of the person making the offering. A sacrifice offered in full and perfect accord with the will of God. This is what Christ offered. This is why his obedience to the will of God is crucial to the effectiveness of his perfect sacrifice for sins.
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog