Study Desk

For if Joshua had given them the true rest, we should not afterwards hear God speaking of another still future day.

It follows that there still remains a sabbath rest for the people of God.

For He who has been admitted to His rest, has rested from His works as God did from His.

For God's Message is full of life and power, and is keener than the sharpest two-edged sword. It pierces even to the severance of soul from spirit, and penetrates between the joints and the marrow, and it can discern the secret thoughts and purposes of the heart.

For we have not a High Priest who is unable to feel for us in our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in every respect just as we are tempted, and yet did not sin.

For every High Priest is chosen from among men, and is appointed to act on behalf of men in matters relating to God, in order to offer both gifts and sin-offerings,

And for this reason he is required to offer sin-offerings not only for the people but also for himself.

So Christ also did not claim for Himself the honour of being made High Priest, but was appointed to it by Him who said to Him, "My Son art Thou: I have to-day become Thy Father;"

as also in another passage He says, "Thou art a priest for ever, belonging to the order of Melchizedek."

For Jesus during his earthly life offered up prayers and entreaties, crying aloud and weeping as He pleaded with Him who was able to bring Him in safety out of death, and He was delivered from the terror from which He shrank.

For God Himself addresses Him as a High Priest for ever, belonging to the order of Melchizedek.

For although, considering the long time you have been believers, you ought now to be teachers of others, you really need some one to teach you over again the very rudiments of the truths of God, and you have come to require milk instead of solid food.

Such persons are mere babes. But solid food is for adults--that is, for those who through constant practice have their spiritual faculties carefully trained to distinguish good from evil.

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once for all been enlightened, and have tasted the sweetness of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit,

it is impossible, I say, to keep bringing them back to a new repentance, for, to their own undoing, they are repeatedly crucifying the Son of God afresh and exposing Him to open shame.

For land which has drunk in the rain that often falls upon it, and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sakes, indeed, it is tilled, has a share in God's blessing.

For God is not unjust so that He is unmindful of your labour and of the love which you have manifested towards Himself in having rendered services to His people and in still rendering them.

But we long for each of you to continue to manifest the same earnestness, with a view to your enjoying fulness of hope to the very End;

For when God gave the promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself,

For men swear by what is greater than themselves; and with them an oath in confirmation of a statement always puts an end to a dispute.