Hebrews (Understanding the Bible Commentary | UBC)
Overview
This commentary reveals the true purpose of the book of Hebrews: to exhort and encourage Jewish Christians to remain faithful to Jesus and not to turn back to Judaism. These words of comfort—intended to help early believers to hold fast to the Christian hope without wavering in the face of persecution, ridicule, and insults—contain lessons that can guide our own faith today.
Top Highlights
“All that God did previously functions in a preparatory manner, pointing as a great arrow to the goal of Christ. This is the argument our author so effectively presents throughout the book. Christ is the telos, the goal and ultimate meaning of all that preceded.” (Page 22)
“There can be no question but that it is a major and probably the major purpose of the book to warn the readers of a danger and to exhort them to faithfulness (thus the frequent applications, e.g., 2:1–3; 3:6, 12–14; 4:1, 11–13; 6:1–12; 10:26–31, 35–39; 12:3–17; 13:9). If the argument presented above is correct, then it is the author’s concern to warn Jewish-Christian readers against apostatizing to their former Judaism.” (Page 11)
“Making Jesus perfect through suffering refers primarily to the accomplishment and fulfillment of God’s purposes. The perfection is not a moral or ethical perfection, for Jesus in this sense was always perfect. Jesus was made perfect in the sense of being brought to a certain ‘completeness’ associated with the fulfillment of God’s plan. In his suffering and death there is therefore a completeness to his humanity that corresponds to his completeness as God’s Son.” (Page 50)
“Unbelief here implies not intellectual doubting as much as deliberate unfaithfulness. From the author’s perspective, unbelief and disobedience are inseparable. The unbelief and unfaithfulness of Israel were inexcusable because the Israelites had received abundant evidence of God’s reality and love (cf. 4:2).” (Page 66)
“Second, the Son is described as the one through whom he [God] made the universe” (Page 23)
Of all the major New Testament books none perhaps stands in greater need of elucidation and exposition for the modern reader than the letter to the Hebrews. It is therefore an occasion of much interest to the Bible-reading public that such a volume as Dr. Hagner’s . . . is on hand to assist them. . . . His writing shows that he is en rapport with the epistle, determined to let it speak its own relevant message to those who wonder how the Jewish messiah can be the world’s redeemer, and anxious to help those who find this part of the New Testament strange and forbidding.
—Ralph P. Martin, distinguished scholar in residence, Fuller Theological Seminary
- Title: Hebrews
- Author: Donald A. Hagner
- Series: Understanding the Bible Commentary Series
- Publisher: Baker
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2012
- Pages: 304
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible. N.T. Hebrews › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 9781441252012, 9780801046483, 1441252010, 0801046483
- Resource ID: LLS:NIBCNT79HEB
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-12T21:58:54Z
