Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. Greet all your leaders and all the saints. Those who come from Italy send you greetings. Grace be with all of you.

Hebrews 13:20-25 ESV

In Numbers 9:22-27, we find a particularly prized responsibility of the Levitical priests:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

That priestly blessing is repeatedly and alluded to many more times throughout the Old Testament, especially within the Psalms. Psalm 67 is one of my personal favorites. And even in the New Testament, we still have allusions to this priestly invocation. The epistles typically open with a variation of this greeting: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:7). Often called benedictions, David Calhoun explains their significance, saying:

The Reformers noted that the benedictions of the Bible were more than the traditional way of parting; they were prayers of intercession. Furthermore, they were prayers of intercession by a messenger (such as Aaron, Melchizedek, Balaam, and Simeon) sent by God to proclaim that God had indeed granted the blessing promised in the benediction. The benediction was more than a general prayer of intercession; it was concerned with that spiritual blessing that God gave to Abraham and to his seed forever. That blessing was handed down from generation to generation in the temple and, later, in the church. In Christ Jesus ‘the blessing of Abraham’ had come to the Gentiles, wrote Paul in Galatians 3:14. Calvin explained that the benediction is God’s word in a special sense; it is a proclamation of grace, spoken by God’s ministers, by the power of God’s Spirit, and received by the people of faith. More than a prayer, it is a sermon. According to Calvin, the blessing God gives is himself.

Benedictions: A Pocket Guide, 9-10.

In our final passage of Hebrews, we find one of the most marvelous benedictions in all of Scripture, but of course it should not surprise us that the book that has been continuously calling us to set our eyes upon Jesus would conclude with such heavenly words of blessing.

GRACE BE WITH YOU ALL // VERSES 22-24

Since verses 22-25 are a postscript to the sermon-letter itself, let us take a glance at them first before focusing squarely upon the great benediction given in verses 20-21.

I appeal to you, brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. Here the author calls his whole letter a word of exhortation. Throughout our study, I have said that Hebrews is primarily a written sermon that was sent out as a letter, and this description supports that thought. An exhortation is a charge or command to do something, and sermons ought to always be an exhortation in some form. Yes, the author has given us theological teachings of unfathomable depth, yet Hebrews is not simply a theological treatise or essay. The author wrote these words to urge us to do something, not merely to transfer knowledge into our minds. Particularly, his exhortation has been to consider Jesus and to look Him as we run with endurance the race of faith that is before us. And just as the author has repeatedly emphasized God’s act of speaking to His people, the appeal to bear with this exhortation is a call to listen carefully to what was said, to pay close attention to the words that we have just heard.

We may find it humorous that the author calls these thirteen chapters of a sermon brief, but I find this to be a wonderful vindication. Hebrews takes about 40-45 minutes to read, and since my sermons consistently hover around that same timeframe, I have biblical justification for saying that my sermons are brief!

In all seriousness, anyone who has ever taught deeply through a book of the Bible knows that the author is not exaggerating in the slightest. John concluded his Gospel by saying of Jesus’ earthly ministry: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). If that is true of Jesus’ earthly ministry, how much more of His heavenly ministry that has been the focus of Hebrews? John Brown wrote: “I have delivered nearly one hundred lectures of an hour’s length on this Epistle; and yet I am persuaded I have but very imperfectly brought out those ‘treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ which are contained in these brief terms” (726). Although Hebrews speaks briefly on Christ, we could each spend the remainder of our lives only studying this book, and we will still say with Brown that we have only imperfectly discovered its treasures.

In verse 23, the author informs his readers that Timothy has been released from prison and apparently hopes to see the readers along with the author. This is the only reference to Timothy’s imprisonment in the New Testament.

Verse 24 urges the readers to make the author’s greetings known to the whole church. The greeting of those who come from Italy may be read in one of two ways. If the readers were in or near Rome, then these were Italian Christians who were currently wherever the author was. If the readers were in Jerusalem or anywhere else outside of Italy, then these were Christians in Italy where the author must have been. It is likely that we will never definitely know which is correct in this life.

THE GOD OF PEACE & OUR LORD JESUS // VERSE 20

Circling back to the great benediction in verses 20-21, we find the three major sections within it. First, in verse 20, the author invokes the God of peace and proceeds to give a snapshot of how He has brought us peace with Himself through his Son, our Lord Jesus. Second, in verse 21, we find what the author is calling upon God to do for us and work in us. Third, verse 21 concludes the benediction with a doxology ascribing all glory to our God.

Now may the God of peace Even though “our God is a consuming fire” (12:29) and even though the holiness of His presence caused Isaiah to cry out in terror, He is the nevertheless the God of peace. Indeed, the peace that God brings is not simply the cessation of strife; rather, it means being complete, whole, and being well. I think R. Kent Hughes is right to see a parallel here with Jeremiah 29:11, “which reads literally, “‘For I know the plans I am planning for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for shalom and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope'” (based on NASB). Significantly, this promise of shalom was given to God’s covenant people at the beginning of the Babylonian captivity when it appeared that the seas of the Gentile world had inundated God’s people for good” (471-472).

Where these Jewish Christians not facing the prospect of something just as terrifying? The sword of Rome was readying to strike them down. They could run back to Judaism to escape, but they would be abandoning Him who sits in the heavens and laughs at the plotting of nations and conspiring of rulers. Just as God sustained His people while in Babylon, so would He sustain them while in Rome. Indeed, here in the 21st Century we have the wonder of hindsight to behold that Babylon and Rome are nothing but history, while God’s people continue to endure as His kingdom continues to expand. Thus, this was no empty promise of peace.

Indeed, we can take comfort in the God of peace, whether in life or death, because He is the God who raises the dead: who brought again from the dead. The very worst that befall us in this life is death, which is a great enemy of mankind. Yet although we must all still die, Christ’s death and resurrection has removed the sting from death. It is no doubt still an unpleasant and sobering reality, but Christians do not need to fear death, for the One who conquered death through death is not ashamed to call us His brothers. And because He is our Savior, His resurrection is the security of our own resurrection. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:20-23:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

This resurrected Savior is also the great shepherd of the sheep. God’s people are the sheep, which is imagery used throughout Scripture in places like Psalms 23 and 100. The establishment of the Christ as the shepherd over God’s people was prophesied in places like Ezekiel 34:23-24:

And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.

Jesus, of course, took this title upon Himself, saying, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). And that is precisely what Christ did for us upon the cross. He laid His life down for us. He died to bring us life. His death in our place made Him the good shepherd, but His resurrection is fittingly tied to Him being the great shepherd, for “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (7:25). He is our good shepherd because He died for us, but He is our great shepherd because He lives forever to keep watch over us and will return “to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (9:28).

The God of peace brought this great shepherd of the sheep from the dead by the blood of the eternal covenant. In contrast with the covenant of Sinai, which began under the mediation of Moses and was put to an end through Christ, this covenant between the Father and the Son to work the redemption of mankind is eternal. It eternally extends into the future, where we are made into partakers of life everlasting through the redemption that Christ accomplished for us. Yet this covenant also eternally extends into the past. Ephesians 3:11 calls the gospel “the eternal purpose” of God. This means that Adam’s fall into sin did not catch God by surprise; rather, it was always the plan of the Triune God to glorify the Son through His redemption of the cosmos.

Indeed, although this eternal covenant has been ratified by the Son’s blood, it was His perfect obedience to the Father through the greatest humiliation ever known that has resulted in His receiving the highest exaltation, as the Christ hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 shows:

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Indeed, that is the name of this great shepherd: our Lord Jesus. How we have moved through verse 20 is how the author structured this first part of the benediction in the original Greek, with Jesus’ name coming at the very end of the verse. In English, we have a fairly set word order. For example, the dog bit the boy does not mean the same thing as saying that the boy bit the dog. Help may be required for both, but we need know who did the biting before we can know whether we need to go to a hospital or to a therapist. In Greek, word order is far less strict because nearly every word takes on different endings to show what part of speech it is. Thus, by placing the phrase our Lord Jesus at the end of this verse, the author did so with purpose. Perhaps he did so for the rhetorical tension of building up to the name that is above every name. I think it is also likely that the author desired to have Jesus’ name at the center of the benediction. Just as the center of Hebrews focused squarely upon the priestly work of Christ, so is this benediction centered upon the lordship of Jesus. This is rightly the very core of our faith. The very essence of our confession of hope is that Jesus is the Christ, the guarantor of the new covenant who has put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself. The God of peace only looks peaceably upon because Jesus has paid for our sins and forever mediates as our living and great shepherd. The only fitting response to these truths is to cry out to Jesus the same as Thomas: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28)!

WORKING IN US // VERSE 21

In verse 21, we move into the blessing itself that the author is petitioning the God of peace to work: equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight

Notice that there are two clauses to this verse. First, he appeals for the God of peace to equip us with everything we need to do His will, which includes (second) Him working in us.

Doing the will of God is the end and purpose for which we were created. He is the Creator; we are His creation. Whenever we live has God has designed us to live, we are walking in His will. Sin, of course, is any deviation from His design. Indeed, all sin is inherently idolatry because in order to sin we must first believe that we know better than God and that our design for our lives is superior to His. That is also why pride is the foundational sin upon which all other sins are built.

Yet through Christ, we are being remade into those who desire to do the will of God. And as He is remaking us, He also equips us to do His will. Brown notes that the word translated equip “properly signifies ‘to set to rights what is out of order,’ thus preparing it for its proper use.” Paul used this word in Ephesians 4:13 when noting that God gave His church pastors and teachers “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.” The Gospels use it to describe fishermen mending their nets. It is also used to by Paul in Romans 9:22 to say that God prepares some people as vessels of wrath for destruction. Most interestingly in our context, Hebrews 11:3 used this word to say that “the universe was created by the word of God.” Thus, like God shaping the formless void at the beginning of the world, like a fisherman mending his net, or like a potter forming a lump of clay, so too does God equip us to do His will. Indeed, He must equip us to do His will, or we will not have the desire or ability to do so.

We are all by nature utterly unfit to obey the divine will; we do not know it, we do not love it. God alone can render us fit for doing His will; and this is true, not only with regard to unregenerate, but with regard to regenerate men. “Without Him we can do nothing.”

Brown, 722

He equips us, and He also works in us to do that which is pleasing in his sight. The sacrifices of praise, which we studied last week, are God’s will for us and are pleasing in His sight whenever we do walk in them. Acknowledging His name and doing good to others are the sacrifices of thanksgiving that we now give to God. Sounds easy enough, right? Loving God and loving our neighbor is so simple to say, but so impossible to actually live. Thankfully, God does not leave us on our own to accomplish these commands. He Himself actually enables us to do them. Paul expressed this same reality in Philippians 2:12-13, saying that we must “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Notice that the command to work out our own salvations is real. Our life of faith is a real marathon race that must actually be run. God doesn’t teleport anyone to the finish line. Those who do cross the finish line are covered in real sweat and blisters. Thus, all of the commands that we have read in Hebrews are not hypothetical thought experiments. They are real decrees from Jesus our Lord that we must obey.

Yet even as our obedience is necessary, it is fundamentally God who makes our obedience possible because He is the one who is working in us. Indeed, He gives us both the strength and the desire to obey Him. This is a mystery that only those born of the Spirit can understand. When we do cross that finish line of faith, we will each proclaim as we enter glory: “Yet not I but Christ through me.”

Of course, even in this, the physical sacrifices were earthly shadows of this heavenly reality. What did the Israelites really offer to God? Did God really love gifts of slaughtered animals? No, the Israelites only even possessed those animals by God’s gracious provision. As God says in Psalm 50:10-15:

For every beast of the forest is mine,
    the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the bird of the hills,
    and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
    for the world and its fullness is mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
    or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
    and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

Why should we expect our own spiritual sacrifices of thanksgiving to be any different? Just as the Israelites could only ever give to God what God had already given to them, so it is with us. All of our obedience. Anytime that we boldly acknowledge His name, anytime that we sacrificially do good to others, we can only do so through Jesus Christ. This is why Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” All of our good works are only possible through Christ.

GLORY & GRACE // VERSES 22, 25

to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

About this final phrase of the great benediction, which is a doxology (an ascription of glory to God), Brown writes: “It is impossible, from the construction, to determine with absolute certainty whether this ascription of praise refer to “the God of peace” or to Jesus Christ.”

Many commentators believe Jesus to most likely because of the phrase that immediately preceded it: through Jesus Christ. That is certainly true. Richard Phillips writes:

There is a striking similarity here with what is perhaps the apostle Paul’s greatest doxology. Paul concluded Romans 11 by saying of God, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Rom. 11:36). How fitting it is, since the Book of Hebrews has as its great theme the deity and the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ, who brings us to God, that his same formula should be applied to God the Son. Verse 20 speaks of his blood as the source of our salvation: it is from Jesus Christ that we gain all things with God. Verse 21 asks for Christians to be empowered to serve and please God through Jesus Christ, who is our great Shepherd and leader in salvation. Then the last words of the benediction tell us that all this is also to Jesus Christ, who as God incarnate is the recipient of all our worship and praise.

p. 630

That is also consistent with how the author has presented Jesus. He is the founder of our faith, for the very source and foundation of our salvation is from Him. He is also the apostle, high priest, and mediator of our faith, for we are only saved and kept secure through Him. He is also the perfecter of our faith, for the great goal of our salvation is to see Him and give glory to Him forevermore. We can rest in the security of our salvation from, through, and to Jesus because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Of course, the giving of the glory to God the Father also fits. Romans 11:36 does so. Philippians 2:11 says that the exaltation of Christ as Lord is ultimately “to the glory of God the Father.” Ephesians 1:12, 14 note that our salvation is “to the praise of his glory.”

Instead of needing to choose, let us ascribe singular glory to both the Father and the Son, for together with Holy Spirit is the only true and living God. And as God gets all the glory, He pours upon us unending grace, which is the smaller benediction that concludes the letter: Grace be with all of you.

And as we come to the table that our great Shepherd has prepared for us in the presence of our enemies, we do proclaim that His grace is with us.

Through this bread and cup, we proclaim that the Captain of our salvation has triumphed over death by death, freeing us from our slavery to the fear of death.

We proclaim that the good Shepherd who laid down His life as the once of all sacrifice for our sins is still our great Shepherd, who will never leave us nor forsake us.

We proclaim that Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession, the complete, final revelation of God to us and the mediator and guarantor of the new covenant.

We proclaim that any may now boldly draw near to God’s throne of grace through the curtain of Christ’s flesh and by the cleansing through His blood.

We proclaim that Christ alone “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (7:25) and that He will return “to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (9:28). Through this bread and cup, we taste and see the goodness of our Triune God, who, according to the Scriptures, has saved us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and since it is by, in, through, and from God alone, the song and prayer of the saints is eternally: to God be glory forever and ever!