5 -- The Main Takeaway of Hebrews (4:14-16; 10:25-31)

1 -- The Setting of Hebrews
2 -- The Cast of Characters
3 -- The Context at Corinth/Ephesus (13:22-25)
4 -- Closing Clues (13:1-19)
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The main takeaway of Hebrews is to keep going. Hold fast. Persist in faith.

1. Hebrews hangs on two hinges. Amid all its complex argument, the author wanted to make its main takeaway clear, so he put it in twice.

4:14-16 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the skies -- Jesus, the Son of God -- let us hold fast the confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who was tempted in every way similarly without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we might receive mercy and find grace for a well-timed help.

This verse stands at a key point in the sermon. The author is about to go full steam about Jesus as a high priest. This was surely a fairly striking and new idea. Sure, the early Christians had understood Jesus' death as a sacrifice since the very beginning. But there's a big difference between thinking of Jesus as a sacrifice and thinking of him as the one doing the sacrificing. [1]

To think of Jesus as a high priest is unprecedented in the rest of the New Testament. It would have been deeply, deeply controversial if the temple were still standing. [2]

2. We often take these verses in an abstract theological way, but it was pastoral through and through. Jesus was tempted to give up too -- to let the "cup pass" from him. He didn't. And he'll help you make it too. He gets it.

The audience of Hebrews is having a hard time. Persecution. Shame. 

But they have help. They have the ultimate intercessor with God. Their atonement is assured because the greatest high priest has entered the Most Holy Place of heaven -- God's throne room.

10:19-23 Therefore, brothers [and sisters], since we have boldness to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Christ, a new and living way that he made new for us through the veil -- that is, his flesh -- and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in fullness of faith, our hearts sprinkled from a consciousness of evil and our bodies having been washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of hope without wavering, for the one who promised is faithful. 

This is the second hinge. This one comes off Hebrews' central argument about Jesus as high priest. See how similar these two paragraphs are:

• Both have the central point -- "let us hold fast the confession."
• Both back up this point with the fact that Jesus is a great high priest.
• Both urge the audience to approach Jesus as priest for help, confident in his priestly work.

Again, these speak to the situation of Hebrews. They are under duress. They are worrying about atonement. They are in a situation where they might not confess Christ or the hope of his coming kingdom.

The implied worry about a means of atonement is strong. The author is really hammering that their sins are forgiven through Christ -- they should have no worry or consciousness of them any more. Their bodies are washed with pure water through their baptism. They should keep trusting in God's promises.

10:24-25 And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good works, not neglecting the assembling of ourselves as is the custom of some but exhorting each other and all the more as we see the day approaching.  

Some have stopped meeting together for the weekly agape meal, no doubt accompanied by a word of exhortation like the sermon of Hebrews. 

We can think of several reasons why. One is clearly social pressure and shame fatigue. Another may be actual persecution -- leaders have died and people are in jail. Perhaps Jerusalem has been destroyed and Jewish leaders put to death in Rome. Monuments to the event will be erected.

Perhaps all the twelve disciples are gone. Paul is gone. Peter is one. John the son of Zebedee is gone. John the elder is perhaps the only first disciple still standing.

The theme of loving one another is real in the New Testament. It's not some liberal crap. It's right there in the New Testament, page after page. If you don't like it, if your first impulse is to come up with exceptions, you probably have a spiritual problem.

[1] There is a hint in Romans 8 of Paul thinking of Jesus as an intercessory priest (8:34). But this is a unique image in itself in the New Testament.

[2] Hebrews is an "intermediate form" in the development of Christian theology. It is not quite at the Logos of Hebrews, but Philo did consider the Logos to be the high priest of the universe (Dreams 1.215-16). I personally suspect that logos speculation of this sort was instrumental on the way to the high Christology of John.