The author is almost repeating the themes he has already written but if he does then it is needed. The believers are thinking of walking away from being followers of Jesus to going back to Judaism with its religious practices. And you might say this doesn’t apply to you. However the temptation we always have is to begin to try and do good works as a means to feel we are right before God. If I’m praying, reading the Bible, going to church, doing acts of kindness then that shows I am good. But of course that is also how we feel when the opposite happens. When I sin again, when I am not nice and am unkind, selfish then that shows I am a bad person and God most probably doesn’t like me and will judge me.
It is of course faulty thinking. It isn’t the truth.
“It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” (Hebrews 9 v23)
Don’t let anyone lead you to believe that heaven in some way needed purifying. There is no physical tabernacle with all of its furniture in heaven. It is us who needed purifying and it called not for earthly sacrifices but something far better. This of course was His once-for-all-sacrifice. We are the heavenly things, we are the people who God lives within and the only way He could enter within was His own sacrifice and nothing of our good works.
So why go back to good works as a means to gain favour with God when the ultimate work has already happened for your life. You have been purified through Christ’s blood. Why not simply accept that truth. There is nothing that you can do to make what He has done better. This is a better way to live.
Missions Paul 