Hebrews 9:10

Hebrews 9:10. And the reason is plain, being only with meats, and drinks, and divers washings (or baptisms, a reference to the legal and traditional conditions of eating and drinking, comp. 1 Corinthians 8, and Colossians 2:16-23, and to the various baptisms commanded by the law both for people and priests).

Carnal ordinances. They may have been performed in a right spirit. They may have been accompanied by some spiritual blessing. But they were mainly material, not spiritual. They purified the flesh and not the spirit. They failed to meet the demands of the awakened conscience and to bring back that blessed fellowship with God which sin destroys. Burdensome in themselves (so the word ‘imposed' means, comp. Acts 15:10-28), they were also inadequate for spiritual purposes. They were imposed on men to prepare them for better things, and for a better time, when all is to be put right in the conscience, in the life, and with God.

Such is the earthly sanctuary and its ordinances. The contrast, the time of reformation not ‘a time,' as if there were several, not quite ‘ the time;' the Greek simply marks the quality of the time itself ‘until what is to prove God's set time, when all is to be made straight' is described in the following verses.