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Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
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but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people.
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he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
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For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh,
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how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
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Hence even the first covenant was not ratified without blood.
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For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,
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saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.”
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And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.
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Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
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Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own;
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For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
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A Call to Persevere
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,
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How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?
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By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the first-born might not touch them.
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In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
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and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.
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For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.
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So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.
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Benediction
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,
