12
“Consider Him Who Patiently Endured”
1 For that very reason, then, we, too, having around us so vast a crowd of witnesses, and stripping off every hindering weight and the sin that so easily hinders, must run the race set before us with patient endurance,
2 keeping our eyes fixed on the one who pioneers and fully and finally consecrates faith, that is, on Jesus, who for the joy set before him patiently endured the cross, thinking nothing of the shame of that kind of death, and now sits at the very right hand of the throne of God.
3 Yes, consider him who patiently endured at the hand of sinners such fierce hostility against himself, lest you grow weary and give up.
4 It is not yet to the point of violent death that you have had to hold out in your fight with sin.
5 And have you completely forgotten those strengthening words in which you are addressed as children?
“My child, don’t make light of the LORD’s discipline,
and don’t give up when he brings correction.
6 It is those whom the LORD loves, you see, to whom he brings discipline;
he lays the rod on every child whom he accepts.”+
7 Endure trials and suffering as discipline; it is as a father does his children that God is dealing with you. What child, after all, is not disciplined by his father?
8 If you don’t undergo discipline, however, something in which all children have shared, it means that you are illegitimate, not true children.
9 We have all had human fathers, moreover, on the one hand, who shaped us through training and discipline, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing, then, on the other hand, to submit ourselves to the Father of spirits, in which case we will live?
10 Whereas our human fathers, you see, for a short time, disciplined us as it was that they thought best, God does it for our benefit, so that we may become set apart in goodness just as he himself is holy.
11 Although no discipline seems pleasant, moreover, while it is happening, but painful, later on it yields back to those who have been trained by it a peaceful harvest of righteousness.
12 That is why you must “strengthen the hands that have become tired and the knees that have become weak”+
13 and “keep walking on straight paths,”+ so that your lame legs may not grow worse, but be healed.
14 It is peace in your relations with everyone, as well as the holy life apart from which no one will see the Lord, that you are to continually pursue,
15 making sure that no one falls short of obtaining God’s gift of help; that there doesn’t spring up any “root that produces bitter fruit,”+ by whose poisonous influence many might become defiled;
16 that no one becomes sexually immoral, or irreverent like Esau, who gave up his inheritance rights as the firstborn son in exchange for one mere little meal! For you know that afterward, when Esau wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected.
17 He had no opportunity, you see, to repent, even though it was with tears that he sought the blessing.
18 You have not come, after all, before a mountain that can be touched and which is burning with fire and which is covered in darkness and gloom and storm,
19 and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of a voice so terrifying that the people begged not to hear another word.
20 Indeed, they couldn’t endure the command that was given: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.”+
21 The scene was so terrifying, in fact, that Moses said, “I am so afraid as to tremble.”+
22 You have come, rather, before Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and before countless thousands of angels in festal gathering,
23 and before the assembly of those who are firstborn, whose names have been written in the heavens, and before the judge, who is God over all, and before the spirits of righteous people fully and finally consecrated for priestly service,
24 and before the intermediary of a new covenant, namely, Jesus, and before the sprinkled blood that lifts up a cry far more merciful than that of the blood of Abel.
25 Make sure that you don’t close your ears to the one who is speaking. If those people, you see, did not themselves escape punishment when they refused to listen to him who delivered the divine message on the earth, how much less will we escape if we turn our backs on him who does so from the heavens?
26 It was merely the earth that his voice shook at that time. At present, however, he has promised, “Once more I will shake” not only “the earth,” but “heaven,”+ too.
27 Now this phrase “once more” clearly shows that God is going to move from their place the things that can be shaken—that is, the things that have been made—so that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.
28 That is why, since it is an unshakable Kingdom that we are to receive, we must give thanks, through which we may offer acceptable service and worship to God, with reverence and awe.
29 For our “God is a consuming fire.”+