Hebrews 10:19-20

"Therefore" sums up the entire argument to this point but especially the affirmation of Hebrews 8:1-2 and its exposition in Hebrews 9:1 to Hebrews 10:18. "Brethren" recalls the writer’s address of his audience of believers in the earlier parenetic units (cf. Hebrews 3:1; Hebrews 3:12; Hebrews 6:9). All believers now have an open invitation to come into the holy place. Under the old covenant that privilege was reserved for the priesthood, only part of God’s people.

There are two reasons we can and should approach God (Hebrews 10:22). First, we can have confidence to enter God’s presence now and in the future because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

"It is striking that whenever the writer makes his most emphatic assertions concerning the saving work of Christ, he makes an explicit reference to the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 10:29; Hebrews 12:24; Hebrews 13:12; Hebrews 13:20). This fact is indicative of the importance of the cultic argument developed in Hebrews 9:1 to Hebrews 10:18, where the blood of Jesus is a graphic expression for Jesus’ death viewed in its sacrificial aspect. That cultic argument is clearly presupposed here." [Note: Ibid., p. 283.]

We can enter God’s presence through Jesus’ crucified flesh as though we entered the holy of holies through the torn temple veil (Matthew 27:51). This is an example of a thing (i.e., the veil in the temple) being a type of another thing (i.e., Christ’s flesh). [Note: See my comment on types that precedes my comments on 9:10-11 above.] His sacrifice provided a new and living way compared with the old now dead way of the Old Covenant. The way is not Jesus Himself, in the sense of John 14:6, but the way He opened for us through His death. [Note: Guthrie, p. 211.]

"The way to God is both ’new’ and ’living.’ It is ’new’ because what Jesus has done has created a completely new situation, ’living’ because that way is indissolubly bound up with the Lord Jesus himself.

The "living" way also connotes the fresh, vitalizing realities of the New Covenant. [Note: Hodges, "Hebrews," p. 804.]

"The author is saying in his own way what the Synoptists said when they spoke of the curtain of the temple as being torn when Christ died (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45)." [Note: Morris, p. 103.]