Hebrews 10:2

Else would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins.

The problem in this verse lies in the question of why it is implied that efficacious sacrifices able to perfect the worshipers, if they had existed, would have ceased. Would there not have been more and more men of each succeeding generation who needed to have the benefit of such sacrifices? Westcott said,

The inefficiency of the sacrifices is proved by their repetition. If it be said that the repeated sacrifices dealt only with later sins, the answer is that we have to deal with sin and not with sins only; to be assured that our true relationship with God has been re-established. A sacrifice which offers this for humanity, and we need no less, cannot be repeated.[3]

In this same vein of thought, Lenski said:

If any person should sin and be disturbed in conscience, all he would need to do would be to turn in repentance to that final sacrifice as we now return to Christ's sacrifice. A final sacrifice would not need to be repeated for any person's sin.[4]

True as the above scholarly views appear, however, there is another sense in which the sacred text may be understood. As Milligan noted,

If these bloody sacrifices had been really efficacious in taking away the sins of the people, there would, of course, have been no need of repeating them WITH REFERENCE TO THE SAME SINS (emphasis mine).

Milligan goes on to show that there was a repetition of the sacrifices over and over, with regard to the same sins. He said:

Besides these special offerings, others were offered daily (Exodus 29:38ff, weekly (Numbers 28:9,10), monthly (Numbers 28:11-15), and yearly at each of the three great festivals (Leviticus 28). But nevertheless, on the tenth day of the seventh month, all the sins of the past year were again called into remembrance and an atonement made.[5]

Milligan further pointed out that even the sacred services of the great Day of Atonement failed to prevent the same sins from being remembered again, as proved by the ceremony of the scapegoat which bore "away" the sins of the people, a thing that would not have been required if the sins had truly been forgiven or no longer existed.

[3] Brooke Foss Westcott, op. cit., p. 305.

[4] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of James (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1938), p. 235.

[5] R. Milligan, New Testament Commentary (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1962), p. 267.