Hebrews 12:12-24

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹² Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees^{(A) 13} and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.^(B)

Warnings against Rejecting God’s Grace

¹⁴ Pursue peace with everyone and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵ See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and through it many become defiled.^{(C) 16} See to it that no one becomes an immoral and godless person, as Esau was, who sold his birthright for a single meal.^{(D) 17} You know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, even though he sought the blessing^[a] with tears.^(E)

¹⁸ You have not come to something^[b] that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest,^{(F) 19} and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.^{(G) 20} (For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.”^{(H) 21} Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”)^{(I) 22} But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,^{(J) 23} and to the assembly^[c] of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,^{(K) 24} and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.^(L)