We often overlook work as a means to an end, but God created it and is glorified by us doing it in faith.

Whether or not we endure in faith makes a statement about God, a statement that means life or death. We endure by fixing our hope on our true possession in Christ.

Christian community is the key to holding on to faith and to living for the return of Jesus. This passage helps clarify what Christian community is and how it works.

This verse and the context it draws from help us to trust the faithfulness of God when faced with doubts of mind and soul.

The truth about Jesus explained so carefully earlier in the letter is brought home here with one simple command: draw near to God. But because drawing near to God is easier spoken of than acted on, this passage helps us identify why we struggle to approach God and what we can do about it.

Here, at the climax of the entire letter, we get two images that help us see that Jesus?s work for us is finished and how his work begins to change us.

We know from human relationships how disruptive it is to have displeased the other person and to know we?ve been displeasing. Israel?s relationship with God suffered from this sense that God wasn?t fully pleased with his people, and a major point of their sacrificial system was to remind them of this problem. But Jesus came to perfectly please God, to do his will once and for all, and because of Jesus we can please God too.

Everyone faces a future defined by one of two realities: death and judgment, or Jesus?s death and coming redemption. What will your future be? Are you eagerly waiting for him?

All of us possess a moral conscience, and all of us have experienced what it is to have a defiled conscience?a conscience that tells us we have failed to meet our own standards, much less God?s. This passage explains how Jesus came to purify our consciences, to redeem us from living under the dark cloud of our failure.

The next two chapters of Hebrews are all about blood. They are especially about Jesus?s blood and why his blood is more precious than any other. So why is blood so important, and what does Jesus?s blood actually accomplish?