Heb. 13 Heb. 12:1–4 An exhortation to patience and constancy enforced by the example of Christ. Heb. 12:5–13 The benefit of God’s chastisements. Heb. 12:14–17 Exhortation to peace and holiness. Heb. 12:18–24 The dispensation of the law compared with the privileges of the gospel. Heb.

The Spirit proceeds in this chapter in his exhortation or counsel unto duties worthy of the former doctrine of Christ, and suitable to the foregoing examples, enumerated Heb. 11.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith: as if all the former witnesses were not enough, he adds a more excellent one than them all, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who is not only a pattern to them in their race and running of it, but a help, and for which end they were looking to him:…

For consider him; the connection is rational, that they ought to regard this example, for that there were greater sufferings behind than any yet they had endured, which would enforce it, as Heb.

Ye have suffered ranch for Christ already, but there is more that he requires from you, and is yet behind, Heb. 10:32–34; the condition he fixed with you as his disciples, in Luke 14:26, to lay down your life as well as your relations and goods for him.

And ye have forgotten; eklelhsye, whether rendered interrogatively: have ye forgotten? Or positively: ye have forgotten; either way it carrieth a check upon their forgetfulness of what was of the greatest importance for them to remember in the time of persecutions, and implieth a direction of them…

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth: for showeth this to be a suasory reason against fainting under God’s rebukes, and enforcing the foregoing duty: sheet whomsoever, son or daughter, every child, that God the Father choicely loveth, taketh into his bosom, tendereth as a parent doth a child,…

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: his reason he illustrateth from the convertibility of sufferring affliction and chastening from God the Father, and being his child; If ye have a child-like sense of chastening, such afflictions and sufferings from him as the Father…

But if God chasten you not, or if he do, and ye have not grace, or do not rightly endure it, are not managing yourselves well under it, nor are profited by it, when all and every one of his children are partakers of it, then are ye a false and spurious seed, and not God’s genuine offspring,…

Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us: he enforceth the duty of not despising nor fainting under the Lord’s chastening, from the consideration of his being our Father, and better than any earthly one, and from his goodness in that relation, and therefore we ought to submit…

For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure: as God hath his prerogative in paternity, so he hath the transcendency in the end of chastening his children; for our natural parents, fathers of our bodies, nurtured us by the word and rod for a little time, the days of…

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: a further argument to persuade Christians not to despise nor faint under the Lord’s chastenings, is the good issue of them, subjoined to fortify them against the suggestions of flesh and blood, as if they could not be from love,…

This introduceth the use of the doctrine of God’s chastening providences, stated before. Wherefore concludes the rationality and necessity of the duty subjoined, as consequent from the truth asserted before.

Make straight, smooth ways, such as have all stones of stumbling and rocks of offence removed, so as themselves may be set right in comfort, and duty, and walking; lest being lame or halting in their minds between Judaism and Christianity, because of the violent persecution of them by their infidel…

Here begins the second head of counsel in this chapter. That seeing the gospel church Officer, the great Reconciler of sinners to, and Sanctifier of them for, God, was fully revealed to them, it did now concern them to promote peace with men, and perfect holiness towards God: this is pursued to the…

To further their pursuit of peace and holiness, he metaphorically proposeth a caution against what might stop them in it, which he properly specifieth and exemplifieth in Esau, Heb. 12:15–17.

This properly interprets the root of bitterness before, by two special fruits of it. Lest there be any fornicator: uncleanness, πορνος, is not to be taken so strictly, as only to note fornication, uncleanness committed by unmarried persons, but all sorts of pollution and filthiness, as it is used…

For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: as Esau’s sin was, such was his penalty; for they knew, and were well acquainted with this in Moses’s history of him, that after he had despised his birthright, and sold it, being at man’s estate, Gen.

For showeth, Heb. 12:18–24, the apostle enforcing on these Hebrews, and with them on all Christians, the pursuit of holiness and peace, by subjoining the great helps they have for it, beyond what the Old Testament church had, they being freed from the legal dispensation, which was less helpful to…

And the sound of a trumpet; which was most shrill and dreadful, it sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, giving a fearful alarm unto Israel to draw near to the Lord to hear his law to them, and covenant with them, and to see a type of their doom, if they transgressed it, in an obscure…

The reason of the foregoing deprecation, and which adds to the terribleness of this covenant dispensation; for the voice surpassed their strength and capacity, that they must die if they heard it any more, so dreadful was the sound and matter of it; for the commandment and threatening was: That if…

It must needs be a dreadful, fearful, horrid, and astonishing apparition, and exhibition of the great Lawgiver here, that such a person as Moses, so sanctified by him, so favoured with familiarity with him, so constituted mediator between the people and God in this work for their good and comfort,…

The Spirit now adds the privilege of Christians in the better state to which they have access by the gospel dispensation, Heb. 12:22–24; Ye have left those hinderances and disadvantages instanced in before, but are come to these helps for yonr furtherance in holiness; ye have an access to all those…

To the general assembly: other inhabitants of this heavenly city and polity with whom believers are incorporated, are such, into whose communion they have admittance here below, viz.

And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant: the Mediator of the Sion covenant is better than the mediator at Sinai, and more able to promote the holiness required by it.

Here the Spirit closely applieth his former arguments for their pursuit of holiness, especially that of Christ’s speaking by his blood to them; by caution, Heb. 12:25–27; by counsel, Heb. 12:28–29.

Whose voice then shook the earth: the sin and punishment of gospel despisers and rejecters, is aggravated by the Person concerned in both. It is that Jesus, the great Angel of the covenant, speaking now by his blood, whose voice at the delivery of the law on Mount Sinai, and selling Israel in a…

The interpretation of the former matter in this verse, is introduced by reassuming: And this, Yet once more; as if he said: I told you that God promised, Yet once more, &c.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved: in this verse the apostle follows his doctrine with counsel to several duties; such as concern the first table, and terminate on God, in this and the following verse; such as concern the second table, Heb. 13:1;c.

The motive enforcing this duty is no less terrible than that given to Israel under the law, obliging their obedience to that covenant dispensation, Deut. 4:23–24; The Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.