The Peril of Falling Away

6 Therefore let us go on^[a] toward perfection,^[b] leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God,^(A)

¹² For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,^{(A) 13} for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.^(B)

¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit^[a] offered himself without blemish to God, purify our^[b] conscience from dead works to worship the living God!^(A)

7 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.^(A)

Pressing toward the Goal

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal,^[a] but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ^[b] has laid hold of me.^{(A) 13} Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold^[c] of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,^{(B) 14} I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly^[d] call of God in Christ Jesus.^{(C) 15} Let those of us, then, who are mature^[e] think this way, and if you think differently about anything, this, too, God will reveal to you.^(D)