Hebrews 10

Every priest stands daily, offering often the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. Wesley: every priest standeth as a servant in an humble posture.

Both camps: standing is unfinished work. The daily service is not diligence praised but inability exposed. Arminians and Reformed together refuse to treat repetition as a path to perfection; only Christ's single offering takes away sins.

Calvin: the conclusion of the whole argument—daily sacrificing is inconsistent with and wholly foreign to the priesthood of Christ; after his coming the Levitical priests were deposed from their office.

When Christ's priesthood is set up, the other falls. The same sacrifices that can never take away sins are not a second gospel; they are the shadow's last word about its own limit.

But he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God. Wesley: the virtue of whose one sacrifice remains for ever; he sat down as a son, in majesty and honour.

Sitting means the priestly work of offering is finished. The finished sacrifice is the ground of a sincere gospel; we do not re-offer Christ, we receive him by faith.

Calvin: lest men imagine Christ idle in heaven, he sat down at God's right hand—his dominion and power. He will not suffer the efficacy of his death to be destroyed or buried; he lives that by his power he may fill heaven and earth.

One sacrifice for all time, then session. The cross is not incomplete; the throne is not unemployed. Intercession and reign continue; expiatory offering does not.

Waiting until his enemies are made a footstool—Psalm 110. The finished offering does not nullify the coming victory; it secures it.

Both camps urge patience under the session of Christ. Enemies remain for a time; the seated Priest-King will have them underfoot. Faith waits without inventing another sacrifice.

Calvin: this state continues until Christ lays prostrate all his enemies. If our faith seeks Christ sitting on God's right hand, we shall enjoy the fruit of his victory when Satan, sin, death, and the world are vanquished.

Waiting is not uncertainty about the offering; it is certainty about the reign. The footstool promise keeps hope forward-looking after the once-for-all cross.

For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Wesley: he hath perfected them for ever—has done all that was needful in order to their full reconciliation with God.

Single offering; perfected for all time; ongoing "being sanctified." Arminian readers hear perfection as full reconciliation accomplished in the cross for those who believe, while sanctification continues as they abide; the offering is not repeated.

Calvin prefers "consecrated" or "perfected": all the saints find a full consecration in the one offering of Christ. "Them who are sanctified" includes all the children of God; the grace of sanctification is sought elsewhere in vain.

Perfected for all time is definitive for those in Christ; "being sanctified" is the ongoing work in the same people. The single offering actually perfects; it does not merely make perfection possible and then wait on an independent will.

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us. Wesley: in this and the following verses the apostle winds up his argument; he repeats Jeremiah, describing the new covenant as completely ratified and all its blessings secured by the one offering of Christ.

Both camps: the Spirit's witness in Scripture seals the argument. The new covenant is not a human upgrade; it is God's sworn mercy proved by the finished sacrifice.

Calvin: this testimony from Jeremiah is not adduced superfluously. He now stands on the remission words to conclude there is no more need of a sacrifice since sins are blotted out.

Spirit-breathed Scripture interprets the cross. The witness is to us—the church that reads Jeremiah fulfilled in Christ's blood.

This is the covenant: laws on hearts, written on minds. Interior writing, not only exterior tablets.

The new covenant renews the people so they love God's will. Both camps refuse a grace that leaves the heart untouched. The writing is God's act; the response is living obedience enabled by that grace.

Calvin notes the Jeremiah quotation returns with the heart-and-mind writing, then presses the remission clause as the hinge for "no more offering."

God writes his laws within. The covenant people are remade. This interior work accompanies the once-for-all forgiveness that ends sacrificial repetition.

I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more. Wesley: all the blessings of the new covenant secured by the one offering, rendering other expiatory sacrifices and any repetition of his own utterly needless.

Common ground: forgiveness, not divine amnesia as carelessness. God chooses not to recall against us what the blood has covered. Wesleyan Arminians hear this mercy held out in the gospel to all who repent and believe.

Calvin: God does not now remember sins, because an expiation has been made once for all; otherwise the Prophet's promise of the New Testament benefit would be to no purpose.

Non-remembrance rests on a finished price. Sins are remitted in a way different from the old shadows—not a different mercy, but a different and final price.

Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. The logic is airtight: forgiven people do not need another victim.

Both camps shut the door on repeated propitiatory offerings. Flee to the one sacrifice, not back to the altar; hold the confession; the warning and the endurance that follow assume this finished forgiveness.

Calvin: where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. The sacrifices of the Law are proved abolished, and any repeated expiatory mass is a vain fiction against the Apostle's argument.

Pastorally: forgiveness ends offering. The church's worship is thanksgiving and communion, not a new Calvary. From this settled forgiveness the letter turns to confidence, assembly, warning, and endurance.