What They Say About Hebrews

. . . Hebrews is a call for ultimate certainty and ultimate commitment. James Olthuis has described Hebrews as a "certitudinal Book": it concerns itself with the issue of certainty by confronting ultimate questions about life and death with ulitmate realities. Its presentation of the way in which God responds to the human family as one who speaks, creates, covenants, pledges, calls, and commits himself is intended to breathe new life into men and women who suffer a failure of nerve because they live in an insecure, anxiety-provoking society. Hebrews participates in the chracter of Scripture as gift. It is a gift the Church sorely needs.

William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (WBC 47A; Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 1991), xii.

Hebrews is a magnificent New Testament document. It is carefully constructed and beautifully written, theologically profound and powerfully argued. It challenges our understanding of reality and makes us �ponder a world in which the unseen is more real, more powerful, and more attractive than that which can be seen and touched and counted�. The letter that wonderfully portrays Jesus as Son of God and great high priest, who is both human and divine, the crucified and exalted one, also makes stringent demands on its readers in relation to Christian discipleship. It summons believers, just as it did the first listeners, to �unqualified commitment, unflagging perseverance and a willingness to suffer� for one�s faith.

Peter O'Brien, The Letter to the Hebrew (PNTC; Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2010), 1.

Consciously rhetorical, carefully constructed, ably written in quality Greek, and passionately appreciative of Christ, Heb offers an exceptional number of unforgettable insights that have shaped subsequent Christianity.

Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 683.

The letter to the Hebrews is outstanding among all the epistles in the New Testament; it reads like none of the other letters do. In fact, if not for the list of greetings that ends the letter, one would not have thought that is was a letter at all. Right from the very first sentence, it reads rather more like a sermon. And what a sermon it is in its lofty proclamation of the superiority of Christ and the gift of salvation that come through him. Through twelve and a half closely argued chapters it examines this theme from various angles, repeating the main thesis again and again—as well as more than 30x words such as "great/greater than," "superior to," "better than," "perfect/perfector" to characterize Christ and the Christian faith—with the goal of exhorting the reader not to abandon the faith. With many of us living increasingly in a society where Muslims are our neighbours, we should not overlook its particular significance for our witness among them. If only Christians have expounded Christ to our Muslims friends the way the author of Hebrews has expounded him, that as the Son Jesus is far far better than the prophets (or "the Prophet") many Muslims would have had a very different conception of our Lord indeed. For our Muslim friends who have received Jesus as their Lord, the message of Hebrews would be a powerful consolation and encouragement to stay with Him and not return to a mere prophet.

The enire New Testament is, of course, about Jesus Christ. Yet, having said that, it is not overstating the case to suggest that Hebrews is more "passionately obsessed" about Christ than any other NT document. It deserves to be preached more often and again and again.