Hebrews 10

The law holds only a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things; the same yearly sacrifices can never make perfect those who draw near. Wesley: the Mosaic dispensation is a bare, unsubstantial shadow of the gospel blessings, not the solid image of them, and cannot perfect the worshipers as to justification or sanctification.

Both camps say this together first: cultus fulfillment, not an atonement-extent fight. The shadow points forward; the true form is Christ. Arminians hear that the yearly cycle never completed what it pictured; the good things are sincerely given in the gospel, and perfection is found only in the once-for-all offering that follows.

Calvin: under the Law was shadowed forth only in rude and imperfect lines what is under the Gospel set forth in living colors. The Law was not useless; the fathers were helped by the representation; yet our condition is much more favorable. The same Christ, the same righteousness, sanctification, and salvation are exhibited to both; the difference is in the manner of setting them forth.

The annual sacrifices prove their own inability. Perfection is not delayed for lack of sincerity in the worshiper; it is delayed because the shadow cannot do what only the substance can. The cultus argument is about once-for-all fulfillment in Christ, not about inventing a limited-versus-general quarrel here.

Otherwise they would have ceased: once cleansed, the worshipers would no longer have consciousness of sins. Wesley: those once perfectly purged would have been no longer conscious either of the guilt or power of their sins.

The repetition itself is the proof. If the sacrifice had finished the work, the altar would have fallen silent. Both camps hear a conscience that still needs a better blood—the blood that actually cleanses, offered once.

Calvin reasons: when there is no longer any consciousness of sin, there is then no need of sacrifice; but under the Law the same sacrifice was often repeated; then no satisfaction was given to God, nor was guilt removed, nor were consciences appeased.

The logic is forensic and cultic. The yearly return is evidence that guilt was not taken away. The gospel will answer with a cleansing that does not need to be redone on the altar.

In those sacrifices there is a yearly reminder of sins every year. Wesley: a public commemoration of the sins of the last and of all the preceding years—a clear proof that the guilt is not perfectly purged away.

The Day of Atonement kept memory alive so that hope would look beyond bulls and goats. The reminder is pastoral honesty, not despair; it drives the draw-near of faith toward the better sacrifice.

Calvin: sins were brought to remembrance that guilt might be removed by the sacrifice then offered—not any remembrance, but that which required a sacrifice for its removal.

The gospel also remembers sin unto repentance; but the cultus reminder here is the annual confession that another victim is still needed. That need ends only when one offering perfects those who are being sanctified.

It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Wesley: impossible to take away either the guilt or the power of them.

Shared ground: animal blood cannot reach the conscience. Arminian interpreters and Reformed alike refuse to treat the old sacrifices as a second gospel. They were types; the antitype is Christ's body offered once.

Calvin: the blood of beasts could not cleanse souls from sin. The Jews had in this a symbol and pledge of the cleansing, but with reference to another—the blood of Christ. Far otherwise is the power of Christ's blood; it is not right to measure his offering by the former sacrifices.

Impossibility is not skepticism about grace; it is the hinge that opens to the once-for-all cross. Substitutionary blood that actually takes away sins is human and divine—Christ's.

So when Christ comes into the world, he speaks the words of Psalm 40: sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire, but you prepared a body for me. Wesley: into the world, not into the tabernacle, because all the world is interested in his sacrifice; a body prepared that he may offer up himself.

The incarnation is for an offering. God prepares a body; the Messiah comes not with another goat but with himself. The world is interested—Wesley presses the wideness of the interest—while both camps confess the same prepared body and the same cross.

Calvin: this entering into the world was the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. David as type looked farther than his own age; we must come to the kingdom of Christ for the full truth that God does not require the old sacrifices of the faithful under the new.

Christ speaks in the psalm. The prepared body is the instrument of obedience unto death. The desire of God is not more animals but the Son who comes to do his will.

You had no pleasure in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin. Paired with v. 5, the psalm dismantles confidence in the cultus as final.

God is not pleased with the shadow as if it were the substance. Pleasure is reserved for the will done in the body of Jesus. This is not contempt for the law God gave; it is the law's own testimony that something better was coming.

Calvin: God is not condemning hypocritical sacrifices only; he denies that they are required of the faithful and sincere once Christ has come. Without them there may be a perfect obedience to God, which could not be true were not the Law's sacrificial system fulfilled and set aside in Christ.

No pleasure in the type as terminus. Pleasure is in the Son's obedience. The ceremonies had their schoolmaster role; they are not the destination.

Behold, I have come to do your will, God, as the scroll of the book says of me. Wesley: in this very psalm it is written of me; accordingly I come to do thy will by the sacrifice of myself.

The will of God is not a secret decree against the text; it is the will the Son obeys in offering himself. Both camps glory here: substitutionary obedience, freely undertaken, once for all.

Calvin: Christ alone was fully competent to do God's will. This passage should stimulate us all to prompt obedience; Christ is the pattern of perfect obedience that all who are his may imitate—Lo, I come.

The scroll already named him. The will he does is the Father's saving purpose accomplished at the cross, not a human self-salvation. The members follow the Head in obedience, but only the Head's offering sanctifies.

He said above that God neither desired nor took pleasure in the law's sacrifices and offerings. Wesley: when the Psalmist pronounced those words in his name.

Both traditions agree: the law's own offerings are relativized by the law's own Scripture. The parenthesis is honest—they are offered according to the law—and still they are not God's final pleasure. The argument is fulfillment, not antinomian scorn.

Calvin: after having said above that sacrifice and offering God would not, which are offered according to the law—then he said, Lo, I come. The contrast is deliberate: law-offerings versus the will done in Christ's body.

"According to the law" marks the first that will be taken away. God gave the sacrifices; God also announced their limit. Scripture interprets Scripture toward Christ.

Then he said, Behold, I have come to do your will; he takes away the first so that he may establish the second. Wesley: in that very instant he subjoined; by this very act he taketh away the legal, that he may establish the evangelical, dispensation.

Both camps: first and second are covenants/dispensations of sacrifice—shadow replaced by substance. Arminian readers hear the second established for all who come by the living way that follows.

Calvin: see why this passage was quoted—that we may know the full and perfect righteousness under the kingdom of Christ stands in no need of the sacrifices of the Law; when they are removed, the will of God is set up as a perfect rule. The sacrifices of beasts were to be removed by the priesthood of Christ.

Abolishing the first establishes the second. The second is Christ's once-for-all obedience and offering. The elect are sanctified in that will; the gospel of that will is preached without fencing off peoples.

By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Wesley: by which will—of God, done and suffered by Christ—we are sanctified: cleansed from guilt, and consecrated to God.

Shared first: substitutionary, once-for-all cross; sanctified through his body offered. Wesleyan Arminians see a consecration for those who believe, the offering sufficient and sincerely given; "once for all" shuts the door on repeated altars, not on the gospel call—only the finished offering received by living faith.

Calvin: Christ by offering himself fulfilled the command of his Father, and we have been thus sanctified. Through the offering of the body: Christ found in himself what could appease God, so that he had no need of external aids. Christ alone was sufficient and capable of performing whatever God required.

"We have been sanctified" is the definitive consecration of those in Christ by the one offering. Once for all is both temporal and sufficient—no mass, no second victim. The cultus is fulfilled; those being sanctified in the next unit stand on this finished work.