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This feature has been enlarged upon in 9: 12-14, where the "blood of bulls and goats
and the ashes of an heifer" are seen in their typical "purifying of the flesh", and the blood
of Christ Who offered Himself without spot to God is seen as the great antitype purging
the conscience from dead works, that those thus cleansed may serve the living God.
Likewise in the same chapter the apostle, speaking of the gifts, sacrifices, meats, drinks
and divers baptisms, says they were imposed until the time of reformation and could
never make those who did the service "perfect as pertaining to the conscience". Further
in 10: 22 when the controversy is over, the apostle exhorts his readers to:
"Draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled
from an evil conscience."
Had the sacrifice once perfected the offerer as pertaining to the conscience, no further
offering would have been necessary or tolerated. The law was a shadow, it purified the
flesh, and its repeated offerings testify to its insufficiency. Further, the very repetition is
a continual remembrance of sin, whereas when the New Covenant is in force God says,
"Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more".
The final setting aside of the sacrifices of the law is made in verse 4:
"For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins."
The argument now rests upon the very nature of things. Nothing more can be said.
Can a shadow save us? Will a ceremonial, an external cleansing satisfy us? Can the
blood of an animal make reconciliation for a man? The answer is No, and that answer
Scripture has already anticipated in the fortieth Psalm.
The prepared body.
In brushing aside the last remaining hope of Israel under the law, and in shutting down
any future argument by the word "impossible", the apostle was but reaching forward to
the glorious fact that "what the law could not do, God did by sending His Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 8: 3). The quotation from Psa. 40: is prefaced by the
words, "Wherefore when He cometh into the world". This can only refer to His first
coming in the flesh. He is yet to be brought into the world again, when all the angels of
God shall worship Him (Heb. 1: 6). We are permitted (let us remember what holy ground
is here) to learn the words that the Son of God breathed when the moment came for His
birth at Bethlehem. His name was to be called Jesus, for He was coming into the flesh to
save His people from their sins by the sacrifice of Himself:
"Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me" (Heb. 10: 5).
When we turn to the Psalm quoted we read:
"Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; mine ears hast Thou opened" (Psa. 40: 6).
It is a fact unquestioned that Psa. 40: gives a translation of the Hebrew, yet the LXX
which purports to translate the Hebrew reads as the Greek New Testament it is too wide a
subject to discuss here as to how the LXX came by its present rendering; what we may