1 That is why, progressing beyond the elementary teachings about the Messiah, we must move on to maturity, not having to go back and re-lay the foundation: Repentance from acts that lead to death and faith in God, 2 instruction about baptisms and commissioning through the laying on of hands, and about the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of the coming age. 3 And this we will do, if God allows. 4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have at one time been given light, who have experienced the gift from heaven, and have of the Holy Spirit himself received a share as companions, 5 and have of God’s very word known the goodness, having known, too, the powers of the age to come, 6 but who then consciously break faith, to bring them back to repentance, since they are willfully crucifying the Son of God all over again and exposing him to public ridicule. 7 Land that drinks in the rain that falls on it time and time again, you see, so as to produce a crop useful to those for whom it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 If it produces thorns and thistles, however, it is worthless and on the brink of being cursed, and in the end will be burned.

9 Yet we are confident in regard to you, dear friends, of the better course belonging to salvation, even though we speak like this. 10 God is not, after all, unjust; he will not forget your hard work and the love you have shown for the honor of his name in having served the Lord’s holy people+ and in continuing to serve them. 11 Yet we earnestly desire each of you to keep on showing the very same goodwill and concern, aiming to retain full conviction about the reliability of our hope all the way to the finish, 12 so that instead of being so dull and negligent, you may follow the example of those who inherit the promises through faith and patient endurance.

13 When God made his promise, you see, to Abraham, since there was no greater name by which he could swear to add weight to the promise, he “swore an oath” by “his own name,”+ 14 saying, “Only if I am not God will I fail to bless ˢyou richly and multiply your descendants beyond number.”+ 15 And so it was by enduring patiently that Abraham obtained the promise.

16 Indeed, in the case of human beings, it is by the name of someone greater than themselves that they swear their oaths, and for them the oath adds such weighty sanction and confirmation to what is said that it puts a decisive end to any and all argument. 17 In the same way, God, wanting to make it even clearer to the heirs of the promise that his plan could not be altered, put the reliability of his promises beyond doubt by swearing a solemn oath, 18 so that on the strength of both the oath and the promise itself, two unalterable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we would have a truly unshakable source of strength and encouragement—we who have fled to him for refuge, so as to hold fast to the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as a very anchor for the soul, sure and reliable, and reaching through the curtain into the Holy of Holies, 20 where there has entered on our behalf a forerunner, namely, Jesus, having become “forever into the ages” a high priest “in the order Melchizedek.”+