Hebrews 12

For that very reason, we also, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, having laid aside every weight and the easily entangling sin, let us run with endurance the race that is placed before us,

looking away to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of the faith, who, for the joy that is placed before him, endured a cross, despising {its} shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider the one that has endured such opposition by sinners against themselves, so that you might not become weary in your souls, giving up. \*

You have not yet resisted to the point of blood, struggling against sin,

and you have completely forgotten the exhortation that instructs you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the discipline of the Lord, nor become weary {when} being reproved by him; 6 For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he whips every son whom he welcomes.” \*

Endure for discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son {is there} whom his father does not discipline?

But if you are without discipline, of which all {men} have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not his sons. \*

Furthermore, on the one hand, we had the fathers of our flesh {as} discipliners and we were respectful {of them}; on the other hand, will we not much more be subjected to the Father of the spirits and live?

For indeed, they were disciplining {us} for a few days according to {what} seems {best} to them, but he, to benefit {us}, so that we might share his holiness.

Now every discipline does not seem to be joy at the present, but pain, but afterward it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness for the ones having been trained by it. \*

Therefore, make straight the drooping hands and the knees that have been paralyzed,

and make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame might not be dislocated, but rather might be healed. \*

Pursue peace with all {men}, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord,

carefully watching that no one is falling short from the grace of God, not any root of bitterness is growing up to cause trouble, and by this many might become defiled,

not any sexually immoral or profane one such as Esau, who in exchange for one meal sold his own birthright.

For you know that even afterwards, desiring to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, because he found no place {for} repentance, even though he sought it with tears. \*

For you have not come to {what} can be touched and to a blazing fire and to darkness and to gloom and to a storm

and to a sound of a trumpet and to a voice of words of which the ones having heard begged for not a word to be added to them.

For they could not endure {what} was ordered: “If even an animal might touch the mountain, it must be stoned.”

And the thing being made visible was so fearful that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.” \*

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly

and to the church of the firstborn ones, {who} have been registered in the heavens, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous ones made perfect,

and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood speaking better than Abel. \*

See that you do not refuse the one speaking. For if those did not escape, having refused the one warning {them} on earth, much less we {who} are turning away from the one from heaven,

the voice of whom at that time shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Still once I myself will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” \*

But this {phrase}, “Still once” indicates the removal of the things being shaken, that is, of {the things} created, so that the things not being shaken might remain.

Therefore, receiving an unshakeable kingdom, let us have gratitude, through which let us serve well-pleasingly to God, with reverence and awe,

for indeed our God {is} a consuming fire. \*