Hebrews

By N. T. Wright and Patty Pell

For many Jewish Christians of the first century, living in the light of the gospel was challenging. Having accepted Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, they were regarded by still-skeptical family, friends and neighbors as dangerous, misguided and even disloyal to all that God had said earlier on. The letter to the Hebrews was written to show that you can't go back to an earlier stage of God's purposes but must press on eagerly to the one that is yet to come. In these studies by Tom Wright we find encouragement and assurance that pressing on, even in the face of such close and constant pressure to fall back, is its own reward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP Bible Studies
• Release date: Sep 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9780830869251

N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and one of the world’s leading Bible scholars. He serves as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews as well as Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air. Wright is the award-winning author of many books, including Paul: A Biography, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, The Day the Revolution Began, Simply Jesus, After You Believe, and Scripture and the Authority of God.

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Couverture : N. T. WRIGHT, Hebrews (13 STUDIES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS)Illustration

HEBREWS

13 STUDIES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS

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N. T. WRIGHT

WITH PATTY PELL

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Contents

Getting the Most Out of Hebrews.

Suggestions for Individual Study

Suggestions for Group Members

1Hebrews 1

God’s One and Only Son

2Hebrews 2

Jesus as the Truly Human Being

3Hebrews 3

Hold On Tight

4Hebrews 4:1-13

Getting Through to the Sabbath Rest

5Hebrews 4:14–5:14

The Son Becomes the Priest

6Hebrews 6

Keep Up the Good Work

7Hebrews 7

The Permanent Priesthood of Jesus

8Hebrews 8

The Promise of a New Covenant

9Hebrews 9

The Sacrifice of the Messiah

10Hebrews 10

Come to Worship

11Hebrews 11

What Faith Really Means

12Hebrews 12

Looking to Jesus

13Hebrews 13

The God of Peace Be with You

Guidelines for Leaders

Praise for Hebrews

About the Authors

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

GETTING THE MOST

OUT OF HEBREWS

Half the fun of Christmas morning, especially for young children, is the exciting packages in glittering wrapping, with ribbons and bows, all telling you something about how wonderful the present itself will be. Many small children are so excited by the wrapping and the beautiful boxes that they almost ignore the present itself.

The writer of the letter of Hebrews is anxious that the people it is written to should not make that same mistake. The wrapping of the old covenant and its sacrificial system had come off the present; and the present was Jesus himself, God’s own, unique son, sent to fulfill everything the law and the prophets had spoken of. They could move on from the earlier stages of God’s purpose and gladly live out the new one which had dawned. Hebrews is written to urge its readers to not go back to their old ways.

We don’t know who wrote the letter of Hebrews, but we do know it was written to Jewish Christians (who of course formed the nucleus of the earliest church). In the very last chapter, Hebrews 13, we have small indications of the situation of the writer and the readers. Verse 19, which sounds similar to what Paul says in Philemon 22, may indicate that the writer is in prison, though nothing elsewhere in the letter leads us to suspect that. Maybe he is simply engaged in difficult work which prevents him from coming to them at the moment.

The sudden mention of Timothy in 13:23, and of his being released, links this letter to Paul’s world, but frustratingly doesn’t help us get much further with identifying its writer or place of origin. The mention of those from Italy in 13:24 doesn’t necessarily mean that the writer was in Italy at the time; it might easily indicate that there was a small community, wherever he was, who had come from Italy—consisting perhaps of those, like the people mentioned in Acts 18:2, who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius. Saying Italy instead of Rome may well be a note of caution, so as not to put Christians there in jeopardy should the letter fall into the wrong hands. (For more on this letter, also see my Hebrews for Everyone, published by SPCK and Westminster John Knox. This guide is based on that book and was prepared with the help of Patty Pell, for which I am grateful.)

This letter seems to be written not in the very earliest period of the church, but perhaps some time between A.D. 50 and A.D. 70, possibly even after that. For many Jewish Christians things were not easy. Lots of their family members and friends and neighbors had not accepted Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, and they regarded them as dangerous, misguided and disloyal to all that God had said earlier on. All sorts of pressure would have been put on them to try and make them go back to where they had been before, to abandon this new-found movement with its strange claims and to take up again a position of living under God’s law, the law given through Moses.

We know from chapter 10 (verses 32-34) that persecution was a problem for the recipients of this letter. And the writer seeks to further encourage his readers in chapter 11 with examples of those who held to their faith, often in the midst of very difficult circumstances.

Thus, Hebrews was written to show that you can’t go back to an earlier stage of God’s purposes, but must instead go forward, must press on eagerly from within the new stage to