Hebrews 10:1-4 (HCSB)
Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those realities, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, once purified, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
The writer of Hebrews makes a very important point to those who are tempted to return to the legalism of the Old Covenant with its sacrifices and its rituals. Put simply, those sacrifices and rituals are not the reality; they are only shadows of the reality that came to fruition with the New Covenant.
The proof of his thesis is just as simple: if the sacrifices under the Old Covenant could perfect people, they wouldn’t have to be repeated annually. If they were ultimately effective, a person would bring a single sacrifice, they would be made pure and holy, and no further sacrifice for sins would be necessary. But the fact that, even after the sacrifices were made on their behalf, the people still were untransformed, and merely went back to their old way of life again, proved to the writer that those annually repeated sacrifices were not the ultimate goal.
The simple fact is that external rituals, no matter how impressive or personally meaningful to the participants, cannot effect internal transformation. The only thing that can do that is internal action. And that is something that the Old Covenant rituals and sacrifices never promised, and that they could never deliver.
It is only through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, only through the heart-melting, soul-cleansing, mind-transforming baptism with the Holy Spirit that true and lasting transformation can be obtained. And, thankfully, that has been made fully available under the New Covenant to all those who turn to Jesus by faith.
Father, it is amazing that anyone would wish to turn away from reality to the mere symbols of that reality, away from true power to the impotence of ritual, away from genuine purity to the symbolism of ritual sacrifices. But some people are more comfortable with the theory of righteousness, which they can keep safely in its box where it can be discussed and dissected, than with the reality of true righteousness, which is under your complete control, and thus not subject to our desires and direction. Help us, Lord, to not be satisfied with wading around in the shallows of what You have provided, so that we see, but never truly experience all the grace, purity, and power You have made available to us. Instead, help us to plunge in, to dive deep into all that is possible in Jesus, so that we never want to turn back. Amen.