Hebrews 10:4

Hebrews 10:4. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats Or of any brute animals; should take away sins Should make full satisfaction and atonement for them, so as to procure the pardon of them on its own account. To understand the apostle, we must remember, that though remission of sins be originally from mere grace and mercy, yet it is not to be accomplished by sovereign grace alone, which would be inconsistent with God’s truth, holiness, and righteous government of the world. Hence shedding of blood has been the appointed means of obtaining it in all ages; and the psalmist, Psalms 50:5, represents all God’s true people as making a covenant with him by sacrifice. And for this appointment much may be said on the principles of reason. For as the most ancient way of teaching was by symbols, emblems, or hieroglyphics, God, by requiring sacrifices of mankind in order to the pardon of their sins, intended hereby to teach them, 1st, Their guilt, and desert of death and destruction: 2d, The great evil of sin, its odious nature, and destructive consequences, in that it could not be expiated without blood: 3d, The necessity of mortifying it, and the carnal principle whence it proceeds: 4th, Hereby to lay a foundation for the confidence and hope of the sinner, with respect to pardon, as the substitution, by divine appointment, of the life of the animal in the stead of the life of the sinner, manifested grace and promised forgiveness: 5th, Hereby also provision was made both for condemning and pardoning sin, both which things, in order to the glory of God and the salvation of mankind, were absolutely necessary to be done. Now, though these ends might be answered, in some faint degree, or, to speak more properly, though a shadow of them might be exhibited in the sacrifices of brute animals, yet they could not be accomplished in an adequate manner, nor the very images of the things be exhibited thereby. For, 1st, These sacrifices could not fully manifest the great evil of sin, and its destructive nature. For what great evil was there in it, if only the death of an inferior creature, or of a number of inferior creatures, was required in order to the expiation of it? Nor, 2d, For the same reason could the sacrifice of these animals adequately manifest the great guilt of mankind in committing sin, and the punishment they thereby deserved: nor, 3d, God’s infinite hatred to it, and the infinite rectitude of his nature, and dignity of his government. Add to this, as the sacrificed animals were not of the same nature with man, who had sinned, their death could not dissolve the debt of death and destruction which the human nature had contracted. Nay, being irrational, they were of an inferior nature, and the lives of ten thousands of them were not worth the life of one man, even if man were no more immortal than they. “In satisfaction to justice, by way of compensation for injuries, there must be a proportion between the injury and the reparation, that justice may be as much exalted and glorified in the one, as it is depressed and debased in the other. But there could be no such proportion between the affront put on the righteousness of God by sin, and the reparation by the blood of bulls, &c.” If a nobleman forfeit his head by high treason, his giving up his flocks and herds would not expiate his offence, and satisfy the law. And if the blood of thousands of them would not be an adequate ransom for the life of one man, much less for the lives of all men. They are in their own nature mortal; man is immortal; and surely the sacrifice of their temporal, yea, short lives, could be no adequate price for men’s everlasting lives. The appointment of these sacrifices, however, was not made in vain. Though they could not take away sin, they had their use. 1st, They purified the flesh from ceremonial defilement, and gave, or restored, to those that offered them, a right to the benefits of the Mosaic dispensation, namely, access to God in his worship, and life and prosperity in the land of Canaan; although they did not purify their conscience so as to procure them admission into the heavenly Canaan. 2d, They continually represented to sinners the curse and sentence of the law, or that death was the wages of sin. For although there was allowed in them a commutation, namely, that the sinner himself should not die, but the beast sacrificed in his stead; yet they all bore testimony to the sacred truth, that, in the judgment of God, they who commit sin are worthy of death. 3d, They were intended, as we have repeatedly seen, to be typical of the sacrifice of Christ; and the temporal benefits obtained for the Israelites by them were emblematical of the everlasting blessings procured for believers by his sacrifice.