Hebrews 12

¹Therefore we also, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and the easily-ensnaring sin, let us run with endurance the race set before us,

²looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

³For consider him who has endured such great hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary, fainting in your souls.

⁴You have not yet resisted to the point of blood in your striving against sin.

⁵And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: 'My son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, nor lose heart when rebuked by him.'

⁶For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he scourges every son whom he receives.

⁷Endure for the sake of discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not discipline?

⁸But if you are without the discipline in which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

⁹Furthermore we had the fathers of our flesh as discipliners and we respected them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

¹⁰For they indeed for a few days disciplined as seemed best to them, but he for our benefit, that we might share in his holiness.

¹¹All discipline for the moment does not seem to be joyful but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

¹²Therefore lift up the drooping hands and the weakened knees,

¹³and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.

¹⁴Pursue peace with all people and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord;

¹⁵watching carefully lest any one fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and through it the many be defiled;

¹⁶that no one be a sexually immoral person or an irreverent person like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.

¹⁷For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, even though he sought it with tears.

¹⁸For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched, to blazing fire and to darkness and to gloom and to tempest,

¹⁹and to the sound of a trumpet and to a voice of words, which those who heard begged that no further word be added to them,

²⁰for they could not bear what was commanded: 'If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot through with an arrow.'

²¹And so fearful was what appeared, that Moses said, 'I am terrified and trembling.'

²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels,

²³and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous who have been made perfect,

²⁴and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than Abel.

²⁵See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if those did not escape who refused the one warning on earth, much more shall we not, who turn away from the one warning from heaven,

²⁶whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, 'Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.'

²⁷Now the expression 'yet once more,' signifies the removal of the things that are shaken as of created things, so that the things that are not shaken may remain.

²⁸Therefore, receiving an unshakeable kingdom, let us hold on to grace, through which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe;

²⁹for indeed our God is a consuming fire.