Old/New Testament

10 The law can show only a little about the good things that are coming. It cannot show the good things themselves. People come to worship God. But the law can never make them all right by the same sacrifices that are brought every year.

² If the law could make people all right, they would stop making sacrifices. The people who come to worship would be made clean for all time, and they would not remember the wrong things they had done.

³ But, by making these sacrifices, they show that they do remember the wrong things they have done.

⁴ The blood of bulls and goats can never clean wrong things from people's hearts.

⁵ That is why Christ said when he came into the world, `You did not want sacrifices and gifts. But you made a body for me.

⁶ Animals that are burned for sacrifices, and animals killed to clean away the wrong things that people do, did not satisfy you.

⁷ Then I said, "See, I have come to do what you, God, want me to do." This is what is written about me in the book of the law.'

⁸ First he said, `You did not want sacrifices and gifts, and animals that are given to be burned as sacrifices, and animals killed to clean away people's wrong ways. You did not like them.' These sacrifices are made to obey the law.

⁹ Then he said, `See, I have come to do what you want me to do.' He took away the first kind of sacrifices so that the second kind would remain.

¹⁰ God wanted us to be made holy. We have been made holy by Jesus Christ. He made us holy by once making his body a sacrifice.

¹¹ Every priest stands day after day doing his work. He makes the same sacrifices many times. But these sacrifices can never clean away the wrong things people have done.

¹² But Christ made one sacrifice to clean away their wrong ways for ever. Then he sat down beside God.

¹³ Since then, he is waiting till his enemies are put under him.

¹⁴ By one sacrifice Christ has made right for ever all those people who are being made holy.

¹⁵ The Holy Spirit tells us about this also.

¹⁶ First he said, `This is the agreement that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts. I will write them in their minds.'

¹⁷ Then he also said, `I will never remember the wrong things they have done and the times they did not obey.'

¹⁸ When these wrong things have been forgiven, a sacrifice is not needed for them again.