A body hast thou prepared me

Having stated the finality of the sacrifice of Christ the writer reverts to the ineffectiveness of the Levitical sacrifices. Their ceaseless repetition indicated their inability to save. The offerers still were loaded with the burden of guilt and had no direct access to God’s presence. So the sacrifices continued. What they did do was create a remembrance of sins, the conscience of the offerer becoming aware of the reality of sins, which called for a propitiation which annual, animal sacrifices could never provide. These sacrifices could not meet the need of sinful men, v. 4, neither did God have any pleasure in them, vv. 6, 8. The offering of insensible beasts could never furnish a foundation on which God’s justice could finally find satisfaction and provide the basis for the dispensing of His mercy. God’s will with regard to sacrifice would be fulfilled when Someone sinless, and thus qualified, in the freedom of His own moral choice, would appear and devote Himself to doing God’s will, even to the sacrifice of Himself.

We are allowed to hear the divine counsels concerning the provision of such a sacrifice. He who speaks has come to sacrifice Himself. His coming was not with a view to His incarnation only, but to His atoning sacrifice. The thought of entire willingness to obey the will of God on the part of the Son is expanded into the preparation of a body for absolute surrender to that will. Psalm 40’s ‘mine ears hast thou opened’, v. 6, is given as ‘a body hast thou prepared me’, Heb. 10. 5, following the Septuagint version. The psalm gives the thought of a listening ear, cp. Isa. 50. 5. The phrase in Isaiah 50, ‘I was not rebellious, neither turned away back’ strengthens the thought of willingness and obedience. The body prepared by the Father for the Son was the instrument of His self-surrender and devoted submission to the Father’s will. This was no unthinking sacrifice. He saw the horror of sin as no one else: in its dark rebellion against God and its results for man. He knew what He had to do about it - He offered Himself. Majestically He proclaims, ‘I come . . . to do thy will’. There was no uncertainty as to the competence of the sacrifice; there would be no doubt about the fulfilment of God’s will.