The Epistle to the Hebrews

⭑ Unlocked Dynamic Bible :: World English Bible Catholic ⭑

- Chapter 12 -

(2 Timothy 2:1–13)

We know about many people like these who proved that they trusted in God. Let us put off everything that weighs us down and so we put away the sin that clings to us. Then let us run our race patiently and do everything God gives us to do until we make it to the finish line.

And let us keep thinking about Jesus and give him all our attention. He is the one who leads us and he makes our faith complete. He is the one who endured the terrible suffering on the cross and he paid no attention to the people who tried to shame him. He did this because he knew how joyful God would make him later. He now sits at the place of highest honor beside the throne where God rules in heaven.

Jesus patiently endured it when sinful people hatefully acted against him. Strengthen your hearts and minds with Jesus’ example so that you will not give up trusting God or become discouraged.

God Disciplines His Sons

While you have struggled against being tempted to sin, you have not yet bled and died because of resisting evil, as Jesus did.

Do not forget these words that Solomon spoke to his son, which are the same with which God encourages you as his children: “My son, pay attention when the Lord is disciplining you, and do not be discouraged when the Lord punishes you,

because everyone the Lord loves he also disciplines, and he severely corrects everyone he calls his own.”

God may discipline you by requiring you to endure difficult things that happen to you. When God disciplines you, he is treating you as a father treats his children. All fathers discipline their children.

So if you have not experienced God disciplining you like he disciplines all his children, you are not true children of God. You are like illegitimate children who have no father to correct them.

Furthermore, our natural fathers disciplined us when we were young, and we respected them for doing that. So we should certainly more readily accept God our spiritual Father disciplining us so we will live eternally!

Our natural fathers disciplined us for a short time as they considered right, but God always disciplines us to help us share in his holy nature.

During the time God is disciplining us, it does not seem to be anything about which we can rejoice. Instead, it pains us. But later it causes those who have learned from it to live righteously, which produces peace in us.

So, instead of acting as though you were spiritually tired out, trust God’s discipline to renew you.

Go straight forward following Messiah so that believers who are weak in trusting Messiah will gain strength from you and not become crippled. Instead, they will be spiritually restored as an injured and useless limb becomes well again.

A Call to Holiness

(1 Peter 1:13–21)

Try to live peacefully with all people. Do your best to be holy, since no one will see the Lord if he is not holy.

Beware that none of you stops trusting in God, who has done kind things for us that we did not deserve. Be on guard so that none of you act in an evil way toward others, because that will grow like a root grows into a big plant, leading many believers to sin.

Do not let anyone be immoral or disobey God like Esau. He exchanged the rights he had as a firstborn son for only one meal.

Esau later wanted to get back his birth rights and all that his father Isaac’s blessing would give him. But Isaac refused to do what Esau requested. So Esau found no way to get back his birth rights and blessing, even though he sought it tearfully.

An Unshakable Kingdom

(Exodus 20:18–21; Deuteronomy 5:22–33)

In coming to God, you have not experienced things like what the Israelite people experienced at Mount Sinai. They approached a mountain that God commanded them not to touch because he himself had come down to that mountain. They approached a blazing fire, and it was gloomy and dark, with a violent storm.

They heard a trumpet sound, and they heard God speak a message. It was so powerful that they pleaded for him not to speak to them like that again.

For God had commanded them, “If a person or even an animal touches this mountain, you must kill him.” The people were terrified.

Truly, because Moses was terrified after seeing what happened on the mountain, he said, “I am trembling because I am very afraid!”

Instead, you have come to the presence of God who truly lives in heaven, to the “New Jerusalem.” That is like what your ancestors did when they came to worship God on Mount Zion in Israel, upon which the earthly Jerusalem was built. You have come to where there are countless angels who are rejoicing as they have gathered together.

You have joined the assembly of all the believers who have privileges as firstborn sons, whose names God has written down in heaven. You have come to God, who will judge everyone. You have come to where the spirits of God’s people are, people who lived righteously before they died, and whom God has now made perfect in heaven.

You have come to Jesus, who arranged a new covenant between us and God by the blood that flowed when he died on the cross. Jesus’ blood made it possible for God to forgive us, and his blood is better for us than Abel’s blood.

Beware that you do not refuse to listen to God who is speaking to you. The Israelite people did not escape God punishing them when Moses warned them here on earth. So we shall surely not escape God punishing us if we reject what he says when he warns us from heaven!

The earth shook when he spoke at Mount Sinai. But now he has promised, “I will shake the earth again, one more time, and I will shake the heavens, too.”

The words “again, one more time” indicate that God will remove those things on earth that he will shake, everything that he has created. He will do this in order that the things in heaven that cannot shake may remain forever.

So let us thank God that we are becoming members of a kingdom that nothing can shake. Let us worship God by gratefully thanking him and by being greatly in awe of his great power and love.

Remember that God we worship is like a fire that burns up everything that is impure!

(2 Timothy 2:1–13)

Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls.

God Disciplines His Sons

You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.

You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;

for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”(a)

It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline?

But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children.

Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?

For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, (b)

and make straight paths for your feet,(c) so what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.

A Call to Holiness

(1 Peter 1:13–21)

Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord,

looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and many be defiled by it,

lest there be any sexually immoral person or profane person, like Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal.

For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears.

An Unshakable Kingdom

(Exodus 20:18–21; Deuteronomy 5:22–33)

For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm,

the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them,

for they could not stand that which was commanded, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned”.(d)

(e)

So fearful was the appearance that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”(f)

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels,

to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect,

to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,(g) and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel.

See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,

whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”(h)

This phrase, “Yet once more” signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.

Therefore, receiving a Kingdom that can’t be shaken, let’s have grace, through which we serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe,

for our God is a consuming fire.(i)

Footnotes

(a)12:6 ℘ Proverbs 3:11-12

(b)12:12 ℘ Isaiah 35:3

(d)12:20 TR adds “or shot with an arrow”

(e)12:20 ℘ Exodus 19:12-13

(f)12:21 ℘ Deuteronomy 9:19

(g)12:24 ℘ Jeremiah 31:31

(h)12:26 ℘ Haggai 2:6

(i)12:29 ℘ Deuteronomy 4:24