6
“We Must Move On to Maturity”
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.”+