Brothers and sisters, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for in fact I have written to you quite briefly.

23 I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.

24 Greet all your leaders and all the Lord’s people. Those from Italy send you their greetings.

25 Grace be with you all.

I recently read an article bemoaning the lost (or rapidly disappearing) art of letter writing. When we stumble across old letters, we may see things in them that seem trivial to us, but they were not to the writer or the recipient. Here, in the closing words of ‘Hebrews’, we find some of the commonplaces and conventions of ancient letter-writing. We have seen this type of format elsewhere in the New Testament. (Mind you, this is the only place we read that Timothy had a spell in prison).

In the midst of his concluding remarks, however, the writer says he has written ”quite briefly” (22). This strikes me as somewhat ironic. Hebrews is one of the towering mountain peaks of New Testament theology. Thereby lies another irony, because the writer calls it a ”word of exhortation” (22). But the fact of the matter is that Christian doctrine is to be lived; it is to change our lives.

The ”exhortation” of Hebrews, to press on and not go back, is as needful now as it was when the letter was first composed. The anti-Christian pressures, within our culture, are on the increase, and the devil is out to steal the faith from us. May God’s ”grace” be with us (25), to keep us from capitulating in the face of antagonism and hostility.

‘I have decided to follow Jesus; no turning back, no turning back.’

PRAYER: Thank you Jesus that you are superior to anyone or anything I might trust in or give my life to. Help me to never turn back to any supposed substitute, but keep my eyes fixed on you