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Christ’s Sacrifice Once for All

10Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it^* can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. ²Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshippers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? ³But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. ⁴For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. ⁵Consequently, when Christ^* came into the world, he said,
‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
   but a body you have prepared for me;
⁶ in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
   you have taken no pleasure.
⁷ Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
   (in the scroll of the book^* it is written of me).’
⁸When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sin-offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), ⁹then he added, ‘See, I have come to do your will.’ He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. ¹⁰And it is by God’s will^* that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

11 And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. ¹²But when Christ^* had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, ¹³and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ ¹⁴For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. ¹⁵And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
¹⁶ ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them
   after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
   and I will write them on their minds’,
¹⁷he also adds,
‘I will remember^* their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’
¹⁸Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

A Call to Persevere

19 Therefore, my friends,^* since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), ²¹and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²²let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.