Search
In Hebrews 10:5-10 we see that Christ is the unique sacrifice and offering. In the Old Testament there are various kinds of sacrifices and offerings. A sacrifice dealt with sin and sins, whereas an offering was a gift to God for His pleasure. All the sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament are types of Christ as the unique sacrifice and offering in the New Testament. Through Christ as the offerings, we and God, God and we, have a mutual enjoyment, the fellowship of co-enjoyment (Deut. 12:7).
According to the book of Hebrews, Christ, the ascended God-man, is our High Priest. In the Old Testament the duty of the high priest was to offer something to God, either a sacrifice or a gift, not only to make propitiation but also to please God. As sinners with a sinful nature and sinful deeds, we had a problem with God, and God had a problem with us. There was no peace between us and God. Something had to be done to appease the situation between us and God. Christ appeased this situation by making propitiation for us. Moreover, Christ did something to make God happy. God wanted to be happy with us, but our sins made Him unhappy. Before we were saved, God loved us, but He was not happy with us. Therefore, Christ offered Himself not only as a sacrifice for sin but also as a gift to please God and thereby make Him happy.
Christ as the unique sacrifice and offering in the New Testament was prophesied in the Old Testament. The New Testament is related to the Old Testament. This relationship is indicated by a portion of Hebrews 10:7: “In the roll of the book it is written concerning Me.” The “roll of the book” in this verse refers to the Old Testament. This indicates that the Old Testament gives us a full record of Christ, either by plain words or by types (Luke 24:27, 44, 46; John 5:39, 46). For example, Isaiah 53 predicted that Christ would come to be the sacrifice for sin, that is, to replace and terminate the Levitical sacrifices (vv. 6, 11-12).
In keeping with this, Psalm 40:6-8 says, “You do not delight in sacrifice and offering; / You have prepared ears for Me; / You do not require burnt offering and sin offering. / Then I said, / Behold, I have come; / In the scroll of the book / It is written concerning Me. / I delight in doing Your will, O My God.” The word in verses 6 through 8 is actually the word of Christ, as quoted by Paul in Hebrews 10:5-7. The prophecy in Psalm 40:6-8 is one of the greatest revelations concerning the all-inclusive Christ in the commission that God committed to Christ in His first coming through incarnation, which was to put away the animal sacrifices of the old covenant and to establish Himself, in His body, as the sacrifice of the new covenant. This is to terminate God’s Old Testament economy and to initiate God’s New Testament economy, in which Christ replaces all the offerings as well as all things, all matters, and all persons (cf. Matt. 17:4-8; Col. 2:16-17; 3:10-11).
In the prophecy in Psalm 40:6-8, Christ comes through His incarnation to terminate God’s old economy and initiate God’s new economy, His New Testament economy, by replacing the animal sacrifices and establishing Himself as the unique sacrifice of the new covenant. As such a sacrifice, Christ is the factor that enacts God’s New Testament economy (Matt. 26:28) that He may be its centrality and universality for the producing and building up of the church as His organic Body, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Hence, Christ has changed the age for the consummating of God’s new creation out of God’s old creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). His changing of the age is greater than the creation of the universe mentioned in Genesis 1.
A sacrifice is for sin and sins before God, and an offering is for fellowship with God. These two things were the elements upon which the old covenant was established, and the old covenant was the centrality and universality of God’s economy in the Old Testament. God’s not delighting in and not requiring sacrifice and offering points to the termination of His economy in the Old Testament. This is the importance and the greatness of this prophecy.
Psalm 40:6 says, “You have prepared ears for Me.” This was quoted by the apostle Paul in Hebrews 10:5 as “a body You have prepared for Me.” The boring of the slave’s ears indicates that the master required the slave’s obedience (Exo. 21:6). It signifies that God required obedience of Christ, who in His humanity was God’s slave (Phil. 2:7). This obedience, spoken of by Paul in Philippians 2:8, was for Him to do the will of God by being the sacrifice and the offering in His crucifixion in the flesh, the body (Col. 1:22; Heb. 10:7-10). Based on this, Paul interpreted the boring of the ears as the preparing of a body, in which Christ offered Himself to God as the sacrifice and the offering to replace the sacrifice and the offering of animals in the Old Testament.
Psalm 40:7 says, “Behold, I have come,” indicating Christ’s first coming through His incarnation for the establishment of the new testament by Himself as the enacting sacrifice and offering. Verse 7 also says, “In the scroll of the book / It is written concerning Me.” This indicates that Christ was prophesied in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and that Christ will do God’s will for the accomplishment of God’s New Testament economy according to the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him.
In Hebrews 10:5-9, after quoting this prophecy concerning Christ in Psalm 40:6-8, Paul commented that Christ’s coming to do God’s will is to take away “the first that He may establish the second” (Heb. 10:9). The first in Paul’s comment refers to the sacrifices and offerings of the first covenant, the old covenant; the second refers to the sacrifice of the second covenant, the new covenant, which sacrifice is Christ.
As the unique sacrifice and offering, Christ took away all the sacrifices and offerings of the old testament and established Himself as the new testament sacrifice and offering. Christ is our sacrifice to deal with sin and sins, and He is our offering, our gift, presented to God for God’s satisfaction.
In the old dispensation God commanded His people to offer to Him sacrifices and offerings. But when Jesus came and lived on this earth, God no longer delighted in those Old Testament offerings. Instead, it was God’s will to replace them with Christ Himself. Christ came to be the real sacrifice and living offering, who offered Himself on the cross as the reality of all the offerings. He is the reality of the sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering.
Actually, Christ came to replace all the Old Testament types. In other words, by Christ’s first coming, the entire old testament was terminated and replaced. Now our offering and sacrifice are Christ. Day and night we offer Christ to God as all kinds of offerings. Whenever we sin, we ask God to forgive us, taking Christ, God’s Son, as our sin offering and trespass offering. He is the real offering for our sin and transgressions. When we need peace toward God, we can take Christ as our peace offering. We can also take Him as our burnt offering and meal offering. Christ is everything to us because He fulfilled all the Old Testament types and has taken them away. Today He is the reality of all the types in the Old Testament.
Psalm 40:8 says, “I delight in doing Your will.” The will of God is to replace all the sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament with Christ as the unique sacrifice and offering in the New Testament. This is the divine will ordained by God, revealed in the Old Testament prophecy. Hebrews 10:5-10 indicates that Christ is the reality of and the replacement for the Old Testament offerings. Verses 8 and 9 say, “‘Sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You did not desire nor delight in’ (which are offered according to the law), He then has said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second.” The will of God here is to take away the first, the animal sacrifices of the old covenant, that the second, the sacrifice of Christ of the new testament, may be established. The new testament offerings are Christ Himself. Today God’s desire and pleasure are not in animal sacrifices; God’s desire and pleasure are altogether in one person — Christ.
God’s will is to have a Body as the enlargement and expression of the processed Triune God and to have Christ as the replacement for all the sacrifices and offerings that we may enjoy Him as our all in all. God’s will is to have a Body for Christ. If we would be a part of the Body of Christ, which is the enlargement and expression of Christ, we need to take Christ as our everything and enjoy Him. The Body of Christ comes out of our enjoyment of Christ. The Old Testament saints were centered around the sacrifices and the offerings, which meant everything to them. However, Christ came to do God’s will by replacing all the sacrifices and offerings in order that He could be everything to us. Now we can enjoy Christ as the reality, the body, of all the sacrifices and offerings. We daily need to practice taking and applying Christ as our sin offering and trespass offering, which will usher us into the enjoyment of Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering, consummating in our enjoyment of Him as the peace offering plus the wave offering, heave offering, and drink offering.
The sin offering signifies that Christ was made sin for us that through His death on the cross, sin might be condemned (Lev. 4:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; John 1:29; 3:14). The trespass offering signifies that Christ bore our sins in His own body and was judged by God on the cross to deal with our sinful deeds that we might be forgiven of our sinful conduct (Lev. 5:6; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; Isa. 53:5-6, 10-11; John 4:15-18). The burnt offering, which was wholly for God’s satisfaction, typifies Christ as God’s pleasure and satisfaction, as the One whose living on earth was absolutely for God (Lev. 1:3; Num. 28:2-3; John 7:16-18). The meal offering typifies Christ in His humanity and in His human living, which was proper, even, tender, fine, balanced, pure, and sinless (Lev. 2:1, 4; John 7:46; 18:38; 19:4, 6). The peace offering typifies Christ as the Peacemaker, the One who became the peace and the fellowship between God and us by shedding His blood and dying for us, enabling us to enjoy Christ with God and to have fellowship with God in Christ for our mutual satisfaction with God (Lev. 3:1; Eph. 2:14-15; John 12:1-3; 20:21; Rev. 21:2). The wave offering signifies the resurrected Christ in love (Lev. 7:30; 10:15). The heave offering typifies the powerful Christ in ascension and exaltation (Lev. 7:32; Exo. 29:27; Eph. 1:21). The drink offering signifies Christ as the enjoyment of the offerer, enabling the offerer to be filled with Christ as the heavenly wine and even to become the wine offered to God for His enjoyment and satisfaction (Exo. 29:40; Num. 28:7-10; Isa. 53:12; Phil. 2:17; 2 Tim. 4:6; Judg. 9:13).
The reality of all the offerings is Christ realized as the Spirit (John 1:17; 14:6, 17). This means that in our experience the Spirit is the reality of the offerings. If we do not have the Spirit in a subjective way, we will not have the reality of the offerings but only the doctrine regarding Christ as the offerings. In Himself Christ is the reality of the offerings, but He cannot be this reality to us apart from His being the life-giving Spirit. The more we pray concerning Christ as the offerings with the realization that He is the life-giving Spirit, the more we will enjoy Him as the offerings. The way to enjoy Christ is to contact Him and take Him in as the Spirit of reality.
We need to live a life according to God’s heart and will by daily enjoying Christ as the reality of all the offerings. This is for the fulfillment of the great will of God, which is to have Christ as the replacement for all the offerings in the Old Testament in order that we may enjoy Him as everything in living and practicing the Body life for the building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God (Eph. 1:5, 9, 11; Heb. 10:7-10; Rom. 12:2).
Hebrews 10:10 tells us that by the will of God “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Christ offered His body once for all to replace all the sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament with Himself in order to sanctify us unto God.
Hebrews 10:19-20 says, “Having therefore, brothers, boldness for entering the Holy of Holies in the blood of Jesus, which entrance He initiated for us as a new and living way through the veil, that is, His flesh.” In these verses we see that Christ is the Initiator of a new and living way.
As the Initiator of a new and living way, Christ opened the way for us to enter the Holy of Holies by His blood through the veil, His flesh (v. 20). This refers to His death on the cross, which rent the veil in the temple to open a new and living way for Him to enter through His own blood into the Holy of Holies, where He is in the direct presence of God, ministering as our High Priest all that God is into our being as our life and life supply in the heavenly atmosphere. The Holy of Holies is the place within the veil, where we may enjoy Christ, ministering the riches of God in the heavenly atmosphere. When we receive such riches of the divine being into our being, we enjoy Christ as the Initiator of a new and living way.
The way into the Holy of Holies has been cut. According to the Greek, the word new in verse 20 means “freshly slain.” Through Christ’s death on the cross, the way has been “freshly slain” for us. What was slain was not only the flesh but the entire old creation. In this verse the veil, which is His flesh, signifies the old creation, including us. On the veil were cherubim (Exo. 26:31), which signify the creatures (Ezek. 10:15). This indicates that in His flesh Christ bore all the creatures. When the veil was rent, the cherubim were also rent, signifying that when the flesh of Christ, which is typified by the veil, was crucified, all the creatures borne by Him were also crucified with His flesh. This flesh has been slain. According to Matthew 27:51, when the Lord Jesus died, the veil was split in two from top to bottom, meaning that it was not rent by anyone on earth but by God in the heavens. The old creation has been slain, and a new and living way to enter into the Holy of Holies has been cut. Now through the riven veil of the flesh and by the blood of Jesus, we can enter into the Holy of Holies. His death and His blood are still available to us today.
The Holy of Holies today is in heaven, where the Lord Jesus is (Heb. 9:12, 24). How, then, can we enter the Holy of Holies while we are still on earth? The secret is our spirit, referred to in 4:12. Christ who is in heaven is now also in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). As the heavenly ladder (Gen. 28:12; John 1:51), He joins our spirit to heaven and brings heaven into our spirit. Hence, whenever we turn to our spirit, we enter into the Holy of Holies. There we meet with God, who is on the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16).
Through the better sacrifices of Christ, we have boldness to enter into the Holy of Holies (9:23; 10:19). It is not a small thing to enter the Holy of Holies, for there God is sitting on the throne of grace. In order to enter into such a place, we must have boldness, and we have it by Christ’s death and by His blood. By the Lord’s death and His blood we have the boldness to enter the Holy of Holies at any time, unlike the high priest in the Old Testament, who could enter into it only once a year (9:25).
The Holy of Holies in Hebrews 10:19 refers to the Holy of Holies in our spirit. Our human spirit is the Holy of Holies, which is God’s residence, the chamber in which God and Christ dwell. If we would find God and Christ, there is no need for us to go to heaven. God in Christ is so available, for He is in our spirit. The Holy of Holies in our spirit corresponds with the Holy of Holies in the heavens. In principle, these are two aspects, two ends, of one entity. Subjectively speaking, the Holy of Holies today is in our spirit. Therefore, we must discern our spirit from our soul (4:12) so that we may enter into the Holy of Holies, where Christ, the shekinah glory of God, and the presence of God are, where we can contact God, obtain mercy, and find grace as the flowing, living water for us to enjoy. This flowing, living water is simply the Spirit of grace who transmits the riches of Christ as grace into our spirit for our enjoyment to meet our timely need. This is the key to the experience of the things of Christ that are revealed in this book. Without the key of our spirit, Christ would only be objective to us, and we would have no way to enter into Him.
On the one hand, we need to have an objective vision of Christ as the One who is superior to Judaism in every aspect. On the other hand, we must realize that today He is the eternal Spirit, the Holy One, who brings Himself into our spirit. God the Father deals with us in our spirit, so in order to contact God, experience Christ, and realize the Spirit, we must discern our spirit from our soul. This means that we must always turn to the spirit and experience the dividing of our spirit from our soul. When we turn to our spirit, we enter into the Holy of Holies. Then we have Christ as the presence of God. We can contact God in all His fullness and enjoy Christ as the tree of life in the flow of the living water (Rev. 22:1-2). The tree of life is Christ as our grace, and the flow of living water is the transmitting Spirit.
God’s intention in His creation of man was that man would partake of the fruit of the tree of life and thereby receive the eternal life of God. But in the fall, Satan’s evil nature was injected into man. As a result, man had to be barred from the tree of life. According to Genesis 3:24, Jehovah God “drove the man out, and at the east of the garden of Eden He placed the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” Thus, man was estranged from the life of God. The cherubim, the flame, and the sword signify God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness. These three things kept sinful man from receiving eternal life. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled all the requirements of God’s glory, holiness, and righteousness. Therefore, through the redemption of the Lord Jesus, the way has been opened for us to contact the tree of life once more. The tree of life is in the Holy of Holies. As believers in Christ, we have been brought back to the tree of life. Now the divine life in the Holy of Holies may be our daily enjoyment.
In Old Testament times only the high priest could enter into the Holy of Holies. Once a year he brought the atoning blood and sprinkled it upon the expiation cover. That was the old way. In Hebrews 10 we are told that now, in the New Testament age, there is a new way of entering into the Holy of Holies. This new way is not only for the high priest but for all believers, not by the blood of goats and bulls but by the blood of Jesus, and not through an unrent veil but through a veil that has been rent. Now we may pass through the rent veil, enter into the Holy of Holies, and go directly to the throne of grace.
The blood of Jesus opens the way for us to come into the Holy of Holies. Because the Lord has opened the way and brings us in, we may enjoy God in the Holy of Holies and daily be infused with Him. The living way, the way to the tree of life, has been opened by the blood of Jesus. This opened way has now become the new and living way for us to come into the Holy of Holies. Therefore, through the redeeming blood of Christ, we can once again enjoy the tree of life.
To enter the Holy of Holies is to come before God in order to contact God and pray to God. This is by means of the redeeming blood shed by the Lord Jesus on the cross that washes away all sins, which hinder our fellowship with God (1 John 1:3, 6-7). Through His blood, He has brought us before God so that we might become a new creation to take the new way. Because we are sinful in the old nature and in the flesh, there is no other way to enter into our spirit and remain in the spirit than through the blood of Christ.
If we are careless with God and our fellowship with Him, we may not sense that we are sinful. This is because regardless of how spiritual we may be, we are still in the old nature, the self, the soul, and the flesh. But if we care for our fellowship with the Lord and desire to enter into the Holy of Holies, we will immediately sense a condemnation within. If we mean business with the Lord to come into His presence, we will sense that we need the cleansing blood. Sometimes we may not sense a particular problem, but we may still have a general sense that we are dirty because we are still in the old nature. Therefore, we need the blood to cleanse us. It is through the blood and by the blood that we can enter into the Holy of Holies, that is, into our spirit.
The veil in Hebrews 10:20 is the second veil (9:3) within the tabernacle; this veil typifies the flesh of Christ. When Christ’s flesh was crucified, this veil was rent (Matt. 27:51), thus opening the way for us, who were alienated from God, who is signified by the tree of life (Gen. 3:22-24), to enter into the Holy of Holies to contact Him and take Him as the tree of life for our enjoyment. This implies that because our old man was crucified with Christ, we have an open way to contact and enjoy God in our spirit as our life and life supply.
The way by which we enter into the Father is the crucified Jesus and resurrected Christ with His redemption (Heb. 10:19-20). When Jesus was crucified, the veil that separated man from God was rent from top to bottom. His crucifixion opened the way and made Him the way. Ephesians 2:18 says, “Through Him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father.” This verse indicates that through Christ as the way we have access in the Spirit unto the Father. When we call upon the name of the Lord, we have the sense that we are in the presence of God and that God is within us. Today the Triune God is the life-giving Spirit. Actually, Christ as this life-giving Spirit is the access for us to touch God and enter into Him.
