There is a very good reason why we often speak of the distinction between the law and the gospel, and the fact Christ’s death upon the cross can save even the guiltiest of sinners. Christ’s righteousness (his obedience) is received through faith alone and is the ground of our justification before God. The reason why we talk about these things so often is that these things are taught throughout the pages of Scripture, and they are repeatedly emphasized in the Book of Hebrews. In this epistle we read that it is because of Jesus’s obedience to the will of God in offering himself as the once and for all, final, and perfect sacrifice for sin, that we have the forgiveness of our sins, a clean conscience before God, that we are being sanctified, and that we already have an eternal redemption. It is because Jesus has done all of this for us as our great high priest, that we live in the new covenant era where there are no more sacrifices for sin, no priests to make them, and no holy places in which God dwells in the midst of his people, protecting us from his wrath and from his glory.

We now take up the author’s discussion of Christ’s sacrifice for sin in chapter 10–concentrating (as we have done in the previous installment in this series) on the “once for all” and the “how much more” descriptions of our Lord’s redemptive work on behalf of sinners. In this section of Hebrews we find some of the most important teaching in the entire New Testament about the purpose and the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ. This is why it is wise that we take our time as we work through this section of Hebrews, and why we should digest this material carefully and prayerfully.

In order to understand why the unknown author of Hebrews emphasizes the particular theological points that he does, we need to keep in mind that he is writing to an unnamed church (likely a house church in Rome or Alexandria) which is made up of recent converts from Judaism to Christianity. Apparently, a number of the people who originally founded this church had renounced Jesus Christ and returned to that religion in which they had been raised. The author of Hebrews composes this epistle to demonstrate the absolute superiority of Jesus Christ to all things, effectively removing any reason or justification to return to Judaism. The result is this letter in which we learn a great deal about the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ, the nature of his sacrifice upon the cross, as well as how our Lord’s priesthood gives us a clean conscience before God, confidence to approach God in prayer, and a solid hope that our eternal priest will return to deliver his people at the end of the age.

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