The Levitical sacrifices are portrayed as inadequate in 10:1–4. They only foreshadowed the true salvation, which Christ has guaranteed and will someday bring to completion. This is the third and last of the contrary-to-fact conditional statements around which the central argument of this sermon is constructed. The appeal to the repetitive character of Levitical worship and its inability to cleanse the conscience (9:13–14) indicates that the author has not deviated from his original purpose. He is determined to persuade his readers that for salvation they must trust in Christ and his sacrifice and not in the rituals of Judaism. As is often supposed, he is not conceiving of the Old Testament order as a more primitive state of revelation and spirituality than the Christian era. He says nothi…