Animal Blood Can’t Perfect You – Hebrews 10:1–4
Oct 28, 2025 120
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (ESV)
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Shadows, Not Solutions
The Old Testament sacrificial system was never meant to be the final answer. It was a shadow—pointing forward to something better, something real.
Year after year, the same sacrifices. Day after day, priests standing at the altar. Bulls and goats slaughtered. Blood sprinkled. And then? Do it all again next year.
If those sacrifices actually worked, they would have stopped. The worshippers would have been cleansed once and for all. But they weren’t.
What Repetition Reveals
Verse 3 is devastating: “In these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.”
The sacrifices didn’t remove the problem. They highlighted it. Every repeated sacrifice was a reminder: sin is still here. You’ve fallen short again. The debt hasn’t been paid.
Repetition doesn’t prove effectiveness. It proves inadequacy.
And verse 4 says it plainly: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
Impossible. Animal blood could never deal with the moral corruption of human rebellion against a holy God. It was never designed to.
Waiting for Something Better
So why have the sacrificial system at all? Because it taught Israel to wait and to look forward to the day when God would provide a sacrifice that actually works.
The law was a gracious gift, but it was incomplete. It pointed beyond itself to the reality that was coming – the body and blood of Jesus, offered once for all.
The Good News Is…
The good news is that what animal blood could never do, Christ has done. His sacrifice doesn’t need repeating. It worked. You don’t stand before God hoping the debt gets paid again next year. Through Christ, it’s already paid. Finished. Forever.
Reflection
Where are you tempted to think that your religious efforts or repeated rituals will make you right with God? How does this passage challenge that thinking?
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