(avg. read time: 7–15 mins.)
12:4 In your struggle [hapax] against sin you have not yet resisted [hapax] to the point of blood,
12:5 and you have altogether forgotten [hapax] the exhortation, which he addresses to you as children,
“My child, do not take lightly [hapax] the discipline of the Lord nor lose courage because of his correction/reproving;
12:6 for the Lord disciplines those he loves and he chastises every child that he accepts.”
12:7 Persevere for the sake of discipline, as children God is treating you, for what child is there whom the father does not discipline?
12:8 But if you do not have discipline in which all children have been partakers/participants, then you are illegitimate/spurious/bastards [hapax] and not children.
12:9 Furthermore we had fleshly parents as discipliners and we respected them; should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
12:10 For they disciplined us for a few days as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good in order that we should share in his holiness.
12:11 Now all discipline does not seem to be joy at the present time but a grief, then later it yields peaceable fruit of righteousness for the ones who have been trained by it.
12:12 Therefore lift up your slackened hands and straighten your weakened knees,
12:13 make straight paths [hapax] for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed.
12:14 Pursue peace with all, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord,
12:15 while seeing to it that no one fails to reach the grace of God, in order/so that no root of bitterness should cause trouble by [and] sprouting and defile many,
12:16 that no one should become a/an [sexually] immoral or unholy person like Esau, who for the sake of a single meal yielded/sold his own birthright.
12:17 For you know that afterwards when he wanted to inherit the blessing he was rejected, for he found no chance for repentance, even though he sought it with tears.
12:18 For you have not approached that which can be touched and that which burns with fire, darkness [hapax], gloom, a tempest [hapax],
12:19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice with words, which made the hearers beg for not another word to be spoken to them,
12:20 for they could not bear what was commanded, “if even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned,”
12:21 indeed, they were so fearful [hapax] at the sight/spectacle [hapax], Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”
12:22 But you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, myriads of angels in festal assembly [hapax]
12:23 and the assembly/church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven/the heavens, and to God the judge of all, the spirits of the righteous [having been] made complete,
12:24 to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks better than that of Abel.
12:25 Beware that you do not reject what you hear, for if those ones did not escape when they rejected/refused the one who warned them on earth, how much more will we who reject the one [who warns] from heaven?
12:26 At that time the voice shook the earth, but now he promises saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also heaven.”
12:27 Now this, “once more,” reveals/makes clear the removal [only in Hebrews] of what is shaken—that is, the things that have been created—so that what cannot be shaken should remain.
12:28 Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakeable kingdom, let us give thanks, and through thanksgiving let us worship/serve God acceptably [hapax] with fear of God/reverence [only in Hebrews] and [divine] awe [hapax];
12:29 for indeed our God is a consuming [hapax] fire.
After the author emphasizes the one who has already completed the goal and crossed the finish line, he reminds the audience that they have not yet resisted to the point of blood in their struggle against sin. They should not forget—as they seemingly already have—the exhortation of Prov 3:11–12, which is presented prosopologically. The first-person pronoun is added to the vocative to bring out the sense of intimacy even further as God addresses the reader as “my child” and exhorts them not to take lightly the discipline of the Lord nor to lose courage because of his correction. The Lord disciplines those he loves and chastises every child that he accepts as his own.
In each pair of terms referring to God’s disciplining love, the first is more positive or neutral while the second is primarily negative, even if readers in the modern West today are inclined to read it all negatively (i.e., only in terms of punishment). Both are necessary to God’s goal of willing the good for those who are his people, which is to say, his children. Humans are fallen and have not yet been completed. Until such time, those who follow God will require correction and training, chastisement and instruction, rebuke and guidance. Only by such means is divine wisdom cultivated and the will of God embodied in the struggle against sin. Just as Christ’s suffering was turned to good because it achieved God’s will in him, believers are to see their suffering as the means by which God shapes them into the children that he wills them to be. What their enemies mean for evil, God can turn to good, as he has done with Jesus, as he has done with the faithful departed, and as he will yet do consummately at the eschaton. But, of course, the fact that God disciplines his children is not fundamentally derived from the fact that there is something wrong with them—although discipline can be corrective in some cases—but from the fact that God declares them to be his children. In other words, discipline is an effect of the loving relationship, not a strong-armed way of causing the relationship or a condition for that relationship to begin. People readily understand the importance of fleshly parents acting as discipliners of their children—surely it would not be better if someone else did it instead—why then should they not see the importance of the Father of spirits disciplining those he loves? For only by means of his way do we find life, for his way leads to himself, the living God and God of life. And certainly, God is in a better position to provide discipline than any other parent. Good human parents act as seems best, but at best they can only proceed in as little ignorance as they can manage. God knows for certain what is for the good of his children and wills it for them in order that they may share in his holiness, which—as we have seen to this point—is a synonym for “completeness” or “wholeness.”
Just as to God’s promises, there is an eschatological goal to Christian suffering, hence why it can be seen in pedagogical terms. Like all discipline, such an experience does not seem to be joy at the time, but it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness later. That is to say, it eventually bears the fruit for which it was made for those whom it trained. To whatever degree this may be realized in the present life, they are assured that it will be realized in the age to come because of the promises of the faithful God who is directing their lives and history as a whole towards that goal. They have glimpsed this much in the history of the story of faith in which they share and climactically in Jesus, in whose way they follow and who has gone ahead of them on the path to resurrection and enthronement. Therefore, they are encouraged to lift up their slackened hands and to straighten their weakened knees to do what needs to be done. They are to make straight paths for their feet so that they can set aright what is out of joint for their own healing—for every step towards wholeness is healing for that which makes humans other than what God created them to be—in anticipation of the day when they will be made truly complete.
Of course, there are some practical ways to exercise this discipline in which God has trained his children, some of which the author provides here, and more of which he provides in ch. 13. More directly, this theme is related to approaching God and thus the author focuses on the peace of the community and the condition of holiness, both of which contribute to approaching God. First, he tells his audience to pursue peace with all as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord, as is consistent with the author’s overarching emphasis on Jesus’s accomplishments of sanctification, purification, completion, and so on. Indeed, holiness is the goal towards which believers are being shaped, as was already indicated in v. 10. Likewise, peace—earlier described by a related notion of rest—is a condition of the goal towards which the community is moving, which should shape the harmony of the community in the present.
Second, he encourages them to be attentive to one another so that no one of them should fail to reach the grace of God—once again, an eschatological goal—and so that, as a result, no root of bitterness should sprout and cause trouble by defiling those who are called to holiness. If any of the believing community turn against God in ways described in chs. 6 and 10, such people can spread their condition by sowing discord and disbelief among the community. It is easier to act preventatively than to deal with the fallout of the crisis afterwards. They must take care that neither they nor anyone that they know should become an immoral or unholy person like Esau, for indeed anyone who leaves the path to holiness, eschatological peace, and living with God as God’s people for the sake of participating in the sin of the world that so easily distracts (cf. v. 3) is certainly like Esau in selling their birthright, their inheritance, for the sake of a single mess of pottage. Esau did this because he was starving and his immediate need for nourishment overwhelmed his perspective of the long-term. Not all sins appeal to needs, but all of them operate in similar fashion by forcing the loss of perspective as everlasting inheritance is sacrificed at the altar of immediacy. He is also representative of such a problem because he wanted to inherit the blessing despite selling his birthright and he found no chance for repenting of what he had done before, and this despite seeking it with tears (in contrast to 5:7, where Jesus prayed to God with tears and was heard because of his reverence). As earnestly as he wanted to change his fate, the opportunity had passed him by. This is why the author has been insistent that today is the day of salvation. There is no better day than today for repentance, and one never knows if today will in fact be the last day for it.
The author then provides the theological exposition that is the basis for this ethical exhortation, which is in reverse order from his typical format. For he tells them that his audience has not approached Mt. Sinai—which he references in a roundabout, but rather clearly allusive fashion—as it burned with fire, was enveloped with darkness, gloom, a tempest, and the sounds of a trumpet and a thunderous voice with words. This scene took place in Exod 19 and 20 as God declared who his people are and was soon to give them a covenant that defined what that meant. The people were overwhelmed with this assault on their senses of a most glorious theophany. They could not bear it or the command to not even let a beast touch the mountain, lest they should need to stone it. Moses himself was fearful at the spectacle and he had to walk to the center of it to receive the covenant from God.
But this is not the mountain of the new covenant, the mountain where they encounter God. Instead, they have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the city of the new covenant where they have everlasting dwelling with God and a greater demonstration of his glory, precisely because his faithful are now enabled to approach it. This heavenly Jerusalem is described in greater detail in Revelation 21:1–22:5 as the goal of all of God’s promises to dwell with his people, to unite heaven and earth thereby. That movement is never made explicit here as it is in Revelation; there are only hints here and there—as I have tried to note throughout—about the ultimate goal of the holiest of matrimonies. Those who have been united by faith with Jesus will also find many others in this city who were residents of heaven and who were residents of the former earth. The other occupants are described as myriads of angels in festal assembly and as the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in the heavens. These are the faithful servants of God from heaven and earth joining together in one city to celebrate in worship the God they have in common, the one described here as the judge of all. He is, after all, the one who decides who will enter the rest that is this city and who will not and he is the one whose judgment sets the world aright, establishing and sustaining community with himself by his presence in this city with the faithful, and completing the deliverance of his people by bringing them to his goal. This is the place where the presence of God brings completion to the spirits of the righteous. They are made complete by virtue of being made whole in holiness and, more implicitly here, as a result of being resurrected (e.g., L.A.B. 19:12–13). And finally, they have approached Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, the one who made such an approach possible in the first place by his sprinkled blood (as noted already in 9:11–23; 10:19–22, 29). This blood speaks better than that of Abel, the first person cited in the tradition of faith in the previous chapter. Abel’s blood is described as crying out to God after Cain murdered him, but Christ’s blood answers the outcry of the faithful and secures the promises of God for them. Abel’s blood presented the problem while Christ’s blood presented the solution, and thus Abel’s blood became a testimony to Christ’s. This is indeed the nature of the gospel story, that Christ has enveloped, incorporated, and fulfilled all that has come before him by his faithfulness to God’s will and has guaranteed that the story will yet come to its final promised resolution.
In that light, the author continues his exhortation in v. 25 about the consequences of turning away from that which they have been offered and promised. They must beware that they do not reject the gospel that they have heard. Otherwise, they are surely more culpable and destined for more severe judgment for rejecting the one who warns them from heaven than the wilderness generation who rejected the one who warned them on earth. God’s voice shook the earth then as he spoke from Mt. Sinai, but a greater shaking is coming, as promised in Hag 2:6. Haggai similarly makes the connection to the exodus and the glory of what will effectively be a new Jerusalem with a new, more glorious temple adorned with the wealth of the nations (2:7–9; cf. Isa 60:5, 11; 61:6; 66:12). The author now uses the quote with slight variations compared to the LXX—reversing the word order of “earth” and “heaven” and adding “not only” to make the statement flow more smoothly with his argument—to say that this shaking will actually result in the removal of the “made” (i.e., created) things so that what cannot be shaken should remain. In connection with what the author had said in the previous section, this means that the everlasting kingdom of God and new creation—represented here primarily through the new Jerusalem—will remain after this shaking so that the cataclysm will indeed bring a new Jerusalem, a new experience of God’s kingship, and a new form of the everlasting presence of God with his people. Since this is what the author and his audience are receiving, he exhorts them to give thanks, thereby worshiping God acceptably with the fear (once again, εὐλάβεια) and awe of God. These are appropriate responses to who God has revealed himself to be and what he has promised that he will yet do. For indeed God is a consuming fire, a terrifying judge, but a life-giver as a Lord. This is an allusion to—not clearly a direct quotation of—Deut 4:24, wherein Moses warns the people about rebelling against God as their parents did. This is all the more appropriate here because the context of this statement in Deuteronomy is the Israelites approaching the promised land, while the context of this statement in Hebrews is approaching the more cosmic promised land, the new Jerusalem, in which the world becomes the promised land as the sphere of God’s people encompasses all of the new creation.