• Title Page
• Pentateuch
• History
• Poetry
• Prophets
• Post Captivity Prophets
• Gospels, Acts
• Pauline Epistles
• General Epistles
  • Lesson 56: Hebrews
  • Lesson 57: James
  • Lesson 58: I Peter
  • Lesson 59: II Peter
  • Lesson 60: I John
  • Lesson 61: II and III John
  • Lesson 62: Jude
  • Lesson 63: The Revelation

for the restoration of Onesimus, asking that what he owed might be placed to his account, so the Lord Jesus Christ acts as our Advocate with the Father, having borne our sins. As Philemon, we may believe, received Onesimus on Paul’s account, so God has received us, and made us what we never were before, “profitable” unto Him—“created in Christ Jesus unto good works which he hath before prepared for us to walk in them.”

Hebrews

In the case of the epistle to the Hebrews there is uncertainty as to the authorship. It may have been written by Paul, or Apollos, or some one else, we cannot tell absolutely. There is also uncertainty as to the church addressed. While Jewish Christians are in the mind of the writer very evidently, yet there is no positive knowledge as to where they were located, whether at Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Rome, possibly the place last-named.

But while uncertainty exists as to these two particulars, there can be none whatever as to the reason for writing the epistle. No one can read it carefully even two or three times, without perceiving a two-fold object, viz: to comfort the Christians under persecution, and to restrain them from apostasy on account of it. And the persecution must have been very severe, judging by the nature of the temptation to which it gave rise. For the apostasy contemplated was not like that of the Galatians, the supplementing of evangelical faith by the works of the law, but the renunciation of that faith altogether and the return to Judaism. It is the assumption all the way through that the Temple was still standing at this time, with its glorious history and magnificent priesthood, and that the followers of Moses were allowed to pursue their religion in quietness and peace. All this was very different from the outward meanness and poverty, the unrest and tribulation of those seeking to follow the teachings of the Nazarene.

Theme

There were many lines of argument open to the apostle (for convenience, I assume the writer to be Paul), by which to counter act this tendency towards apostasy, but he chooses only one, viz: Christianity is superior to Judaism as seen in its Founder, Christ. The tempter is represented as urging that Judaism was introduced to the world by “the goodly fellowship of the prophets”! “Christ