Charles Spurgeon Commentary Hebrews 10

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. For then would they not have ceased to be offered?

If the sacrifice had really put away sin, surely it would never have needed to be offered again. If one sacrifice had put away the guilt of Israel, there would have been no need to bring another.

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.

A man could go to the Levitical sacrifices for twenty consecutive years, and yet be no further advanced. He must go again and again as long as he lived. They were only figures and shadows and types; the real sacrifice is Christ.

For the law—

The old ceremonial law of Moses,—

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.

Those who were sprinkled with the blood of the Old Testament sacrifices did not feel that their sin was forever put away. They went back, after the victim had been offered, with a certain measure of rest and relief, but not with that perfect rest which is the accompaniment of the pardon that Jesus gives to those who come to God through him.

For –

If the worshippers had in this way been made perfect; if they had been completely cleansed and accepted through these sacrifices, –

Then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.

The fact that there was a lamb to be offered every morning and every evening, and that there was a great day of atonement to be observed every year, proved that there was sin still remaining, which had not been put away, sin that the worshippers needed to come again, and again, and yet again, with fresh sacrifices for their fresh sins. The apostle's argument is unanswerable.

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.

This refers to the old ceremonial law, under which the Jews lived so long. They always had to go on, year after year, offering the same kind of sacrifices, because the work of atonement was never done perfectly; men were not cleansed or saved by it, so the process had to be constantly repeated.