Run the Race and Look to Jesus

1Therefore seeing we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily ensnare us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

2Looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

3For consider him that endured such hostility of sinners against himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds.

4You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.

God's Loving Discipline

5And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of him:

6For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.

7If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not?

8But if you be without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are you illegitimate children, and not sons.

9Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

10For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

11Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are trained by it.

12Therefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;

13And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

Come in Holiness to God

14Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

15Looking diligently lest any man fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

16Lest there be any immoral, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.

17For you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

18For you are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,

19And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:

20(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as an animal touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a spear:

21And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)

Come to God's Great Work

22But you are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

23To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

24And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel.

25See that you refuse not him that speaks. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape, if we turn away from him that speaks from heaven:

Our Kingdom Is Eternal

26Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he has promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

27And this word, Yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

28Therefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

29For our God is a consuming fire.