What is the soteriological significance of Hebrews 10:1 in the context of God's Redemption Plan?

Question

• How does this verse highlight the transition from the Law and the Old Covenant to the fulfillment of redemption in the Messianic era?
• How does this verse illustrate the continuity and discontinuity between the two covenants within God's overarching plan for salvation?

Text: Hebrew 10:1 (NET)

For the law possesses a shadow of the good things to come but not the reality itself, and is therefore completely unable, by the same sacrifices offered continually, year after year, to perfect those who come to worship.

Answer 1

The old covenant wasn't useless:

God did not design the law to grant eternal salvation. All the rituals and sacrifices were a foreshadowing. They were a prelude to the greater work of redemption that would be accomplished by Christ.

Here, the same ideas are summarized. The old covenant was not incorrect, or useless. However, its true purpose was not eternal salvation. The real purpose of the old covenant was to point people towards Jesus Christ, as the fulfillment of God's ultimate plan. (Bibleref)

It wasn't useless, but the repeated sacrifices of the Old Covenant were unable to perfect. What then was needed? A better sacrifice.

What the law did do was prepare the way for the coming of Christ by establishing the concept of sacrifice for sin. Why was it discontinued? Because the Law could not achieve the perfection God required for a complete relationship with Him.

The law merely presents a shadow of the essential spiritual blessings and does not perfect those who seek God through it. Its sacrifices therefore must be continually repeated and the consciousness of sins is annually revived, for animal blood cannot take sins away. Accordingly, when Christ comes into the world He says, “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, I am come to do Thy will”. He proclaims the uselessness of O.T. sacrifices, that He may clear the ground for “the offering of the body of Christ”. This is the great distinction between Christ and all other priests. They stand daily ministering, He by one offering has perfected those who approach God through Him. (Expositor's Greek Testament)

Real atonement for sin was made by the offering of the body of Christ once for all, Hebrews 10:10.

The law needed to be fulfilled and replaced by the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, which could truly perfect those who draw near to God.

What we see is a transition from the shadow (the Law) to the reality (Christ).

The Old Covenant set the stage for the New Covenant’s fulfillment through Christ’s redemptive work, bringing about the reality of salvation that the Law could only foreshadow.

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How does this verse illustrate the continuity and discontinuity between the two covenants?

Continuity:

1. Shadow: The Law was described as a “shadow” of the good things to come, not the reality itself. The shadow was never the ultimate reality, and this remained true.
2. Redemption: The Old Covenant’s sacrificial system educated God’s people about the gravity of sin and the necessity of atonement. The need for atonement remained true.

Discontinuity:

1. Inefficacy of the law: It clearly states that the Law is “completely unable” to perfect. This inefficacy revealed the need for a new and better covenant. This changed with the coming of Christ.

Answer 2

1. The verse in question does not highlight the transition from the Law and the Old Covenant to the fulfillment of redemption in the Messianic era. It states that to be a fact.

2. The verse in question does not illustrate the continuity and discontinuity between the two covenants within God's overarching plan for salvation. It states that to be a fact.

The question is asking about the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) but the verse in question cannot, in and of itself, express the reasons for the Law being but a shadow of the good things that came through Jesus Christ, and nor does it; it cannot express the reasons for the sacrifices demanded in the Law never making those submitting to that Law "perfect", and nor does it.

For those reasons, all of chapters 4, through to the end of 10 in Hebrews would need to be scrutinized, as well as a raft of other Bible texts that also explain how the Law (all of it, not 'just' the sacrificial system) was a pointer to Christ, a 'tutor' designed to lead people to faith in Christ, wherein only can 'perfection' be found.

This answer would stress that nobody here (so far, including myself) is claiming, or even suggesting, that the Law of the old covenant was useless. It was fulfilled, in Christ. It served its purpose, so that a new way was opened up to those desiring to be acceptable to God. No longer would annual sacrifices of animals be needed, for the one perfect sacrifice had been made, in Christ. That is what the verse following the verse in question explains, so that a hermeneutic answer needs to start with verse 2. It begins with "For" showing its continuity with verse 1, which also starts with 'For' showing it continues from the previous chapter:

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect, (2) for then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins." Hebrews 10:1-2 A.V.

The verse in question can only be a spring-board into the massive depths of the soteriological significance of how the old covenant Law led into the new covenant law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus - Romans 8:2 & 10:4. The Law itself showed the futility of seeking salvation by works, so that when the New Covenant in Christ came, it set forth another way of salvation altogether, that of faith in Christ, and believers in him would discover release from legalistic works. I have in my notepad a list of 50 texts that delve into that aspect of soteriology - the Law now being superseded by Christ fulfilling it. Of course, that is a topic, and not for the Hermeneutices site. I must stick to the verse in question, and trust this answer will suffice.

Answer 3

The Law is shadow in the sense of prefiguration of the coming “grace and truth” (John 1:17) through advent of Christ, i.e. incarnation of the Father’s co-eternal Logos, only through which the path to salvation, that is to say, perfection (for to reach a condition of graceful growth towards perfection in God is to be saved and unless one is in this condition one cannot be saved) was paved.

But shadow was also important as preparation and as a check from indulging into iniquities, that would exacerbate and aggravate the fallen condition of mankind. But by Law nobody could reach perfection even if by pedantically adhering to all its precepts.

For instance, you are oppressed by enemy whom only an iron sword can defeat, and you are promised this iron sword, yet with a condition of a mutual covenant that before the arrival of the iron sword you will be engaged in training yourself a sword-fighting with a wooden sword. Problem is that you get so accustomed to the oppression and so “lubricate” this oppression by your delectation with sword-fighting trainings, that when the iron sword arrives, you fail to desire it, but fetishize your modus vivendi and even desire to throw the iron sword into the depth of the ocean, for it endangers your accustomed life-style.

Thus, Law entailed its own lawful abolition by advent of Christ, and as Paul emphatically says, because of this, if anybody still adheres to the Law rituals and precepts after the advent of Christ, is a breaker of Law, for by Law we should die for Law (cf. Galatians 2:19).

Answer 4

It is perfectly fine to notice the continuation and discontinuity from the idea of a shadow and a reality.

The ceremonial law pointed to the actual death of Christ, and so the useless sacrifices from the standpoint of cleansing the conscience were given meaning in the actualization of them in Christ’s penal death under the moral law for our sin, providing an actual cleansed conscience. The discontinuity is that once the real has occurred the shadow pointing to it has no purpose.

The moral law in turn is closely related as it was the reason the sacrifice was needed as it could not make a person righteous being that we were unable to obey it and were therefore condemned hopelessly under it, until the sacrifice and obedience of Christ, who was born and lived under it, to redeem us from it, was actualized in his redemptive work. Therefore the shadow of a law written on stones continued in his fulfilling of them and the form of their existence became living in us through new birth. The discontinuity is that once the laws’s demands have been satisfied in full, it can no longer condemn and accuse those who were formerly under it.

The physical Kingly judicial law and theocracy similarly was a shadow of the kingdom of heaven. Christ is the King of Peace and Grace, and the old physical kingdom with sword and blood and capital punishments is superseded by a spiritual kingdom of blessedness and holiness in love. The old kingdom was actualized and the new kingdom made the old unnecessary so that the realm of civil law and kingly earthly powers is handed over strictly to the world to govern the wicked.