1. Therefore since we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2. looking to Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right of the throne of God.
3. For consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you be weary and faint in your minds.
4. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
5. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by Him;
6. for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives."
7. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the father does not chasten?
8. But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then you are bastards and not sons.
9. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?
10. For truly they chastened us for a few days according to their own pleasure, but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.
11. Now chastening for the present does not seem to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are exercised by it.
12. Because of this, straighten up the hands which hang down and the enfeebled knees.
13. And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed.
14. Follow peace with all, and holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord;
15. looking diligently lest any fail of the grace of God, or lest any root of bitterness springing up disturb you, and by it many are defiled,
16. (lest there be any fornicator, or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.
17. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he did not find any place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears).
18. For you have not come to the mountain that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor to blackness and darkness and tempest,
19. and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words (which voice they who heard begged that a word should not be spoken to them any more,
20. for they could not endure the thing commanded, "And if so much as a beast should touch the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart,"
21. and so fearful was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake).
22. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
23. to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are written in Heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
24. and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
25. See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape, those who refused him that spoke on earth, much more we shall not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from Heaven,
26. whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I will not only shake the earth, but also the heavens."
27. And this word, "Yet once more," signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, so that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
28. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear,
29. for also, "Our God is a consuming fire."