Faith that works by grace
Context: After Heb 12 finished explaining why faith leads believers to love and obey God, chapter 13 describes how this obedience looks like, i.e. what good works believers are led to do by the Holy Spirit through God’s grace working in them.
Warm-up: In your own profession or when watching e.g. professional sports, or a play, or a concert, when and how did it first dawn on you how much study and practice it takes to ultimately deliver an excellent performance?
Read: Hebrews 13
1) vv1-3: Does anything strike you about the order of the duties described here, or the way they are to be fulfilled?
- v1: Why is continuing in brotherly love even more challenging than to just love?
- v2: How can one ‘neglect’ hospitality? Does v2 mean that all your guests will be angels? Have you ever felt like hosting any? (How) would you know?
- v3: Have you considered to consistently pray together for a persecuted Christian or church, or to support any?
- What do you find helps you to cultivate real empathy in relationships?
2) vv4-6: What do sexual infidelity and love of money have in common that might call for mentioning them together?
- What is at stake about your own heart when it gets polluted in this way?
- What will a divided heart in these areas of life do to others whom you love?
- ‘Keep your life free of love of money’: How does that differ from saying: Thou shall not love money? Are we ourselves in control over what we love or don’t love? [cf Jn 8:34-36; Ecc 9:1, were the point is to show that we are entirely in the sovereign hand of God the creator, even to set our hearts free from our enmity towards God and from our love of idols]
3) vv7-14: What action do these words about leaders call for: The same as vv17-19? Why not?
- vv7-9: What criteria are we given here to discern which leaders you should follow?
- What makes something a ‘strange’ teaching: That you have not yet heard of it?
- How does v9 itself define what should be considered as ‘strange’?
- Is strange whatever contradicts the gospel, 1 Tim 6:3? [Most cults develop around non-biblical doctrines about how believers are supposed to become empowered to supposedly ‘holier’ ways of living other than by receiving God’s free grace through faith: Regulations about food and health in particular are most common]
- v10: As the tabernacle was already long gone and replaced by the temple worship, who are those who ‘serve the tent’?
- vv11-14 suggest that Jewish leaders excommunicated Jews who came to believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah (cf Jn 9:34). How does the Spirit lead believers to respond to such rejection?
- vv12-23: Should believers expect to be rejected by other religious people? cf Jn 16:2. By which ones? cf 1 Jn 3:12
4) vv15-16: What kind of sacrifices are Christians led to make by the Holy Spirit?
- Why is praise mentioned even before charity? => What happens when religious people engage in charitable work but ultimately take the glory for themselves?
- What happens when praise of God is not accompanied by genuine charity? [By definition: Lip service]
5) vv17-19: Why submit to and pray for your leaders?
- What happens where religious people do only one but not the other?
- What makes it difficult to cultivate these virtues?
- What exactly do you pray for your leaders? What prayer did the writer of Hebrews ask for, v19?
- Is submission the same as never questioning anything? Why not?
6) vv20-21: What does the writer actually say in this concluding ‘benediction’?
- In light of what the preceding 12 chapters were all about, what do you make of the way how v20 refers to the resurrection and the blood of Jesus?
- v21, Compare KJV to ESV: Does the blood of Christ ‘equip’ believers (ESV), or does it rather perfect them (KJV) (gr. katartizo)?
- ‘that you may do this will‘ (ESV): What does ESV read into these verse compared to literal translations (e.g. YLT: ‘…make you perfect in every good work to do his will, doing in you that which is well-pleasing before him, through Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory…’
- Who is really said to do this and to get the glory for it?
- Is it optional “…that you may do it” (ESV), or does God’s word promise that this is certain to happen in those who believe?
7) vv22-24: What is the author’s own last word about this letter, v21?
- Do you think ‘short exhortation’ refers to only the last chapter, or rather to the entire letter? If anything, what of this letter did you find challenging to ‘bear with’ (gr. anecho)?
- Is the concluding wish ‘Grace be with you’ more than verbiage? => How was the meaning of ‘grace’ defined in this letter?
- Is it grace if God would consider even our imperfect works as good enough? cf v9 (cf Heb 4:16; 12:15)
- Or is grace God’s power that is needed to do any work at all that pleases God? cf Ro 1:16-17
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