But Hebrews devotes its 13 chapters to this one point, using all sorts of Old Testament references to show that Jesus is exactly what God had always promised and has now provided to his people. As such, it’s aimed particularly at Jews in the early Church who’d come to see that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah.

What about readers today?

But of course, Hebrews remains true and extremely important to Christians today, most of whom don’t come from this Jewish background. And the book is deliciously quotable, so countless Gentile Christians can nourish their faith and ministries with its powerful verses without a thought for the Jews it was all originally meant for.

But like any book of the Bible, Hebrews wasn’t primarily written to any of us. The fact that it speaks to us despite that is a wonderful thing. And it’s worth knowing why it was written because it’s not hard to apply the issue at the core of the book’s origin to the present.

Hebrews was written to persecuted Jewish Christians

We don’t know who exactly received the letter to the Hebrews, but the nature of the argument, being focused on the Old Testament, tells us they were Jewish Christians. In fact, some translations, like JB Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English, actually prefer to use the title ‘Jewish Christians’, rather than Hebrews, for the sake of clarity and accuracy. The general title, Hebrews, not used on the letter or anywhere in it, is symbolic, tying the recipients to their ancestors all the way back to Abraham, as the author intends to do. The purpose of the argument, showing in the author’s tone, indicates that these Jewish Christians are in trouble.

The crucial point is that they’re not just in trouble with no apparent way out. Having introduced the core argument in chapter 1 – that Jesus was in the Old Testament and is superior to the Old Testament as a purer revelation of God – the author starts to challenge the reader: ‘How, then, shall we escape if we pay no attention to such a great salvation?’ (2.3, GNB). It’s the very thing causing the Jewish Christians trouble, their acceptance of Jesus, that is their salvation, and a greater salvation than the one their ancestors knew. Yet the trouble tempts them to return to that lesser salvation, which Hebrews tells them is ultimately no escape.

Some Jews were hostile to Jewish Christians

As Jews and Christians, the letter’s original readers found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Most Jews hadn’t accepted Jesus, whose death made him, to anyone rejecting the claims of his resurrection, a failed messiah, an executed criminal and possibly a blasphemer. A Jew taking the non-mainstream view that Jesus had in fact risen from the dead and ascended to heaven to reign with God, his Father would have seemed at the very least a bit crazy.

Throughout Acts, the New Testament’s history of the early Church, the Church’s leaders, the Apostles, are in trouble with the Jewish leadership. Although they are to some extent considered apostate for welcoming Gentiles without requiring conversion, they never consider themselves apostate and they persist in identifying as Jews. So as far as the Jewish leadership is concerned, they are rogue members of the community.

Jewish Christians were also persecuted by Gentile authorities

On the other side, the Jewish Christians faced persecution from the Romans. The opposition Jesus had faced originated in his own community, but the Jewish establishment’s plan to discredit him meant presenting him as a threat to Roman rule. And the accusation looked like this: where Jews on the whole were loyal to Rome, Jesus, so his death showed, was a rebel, and his followers, bizarrely persisting in spite of his death, naturally couldn’t be trusted.

Christianity was initially considered by the Romans to be an expression of Judaism, and when the Jews were thrown out of Rome by Claudius (Acts 18.2), it was all of them, whether or not they accepted Jesus. (And it may have been precisely because some did and some didn’t accept Jesus that there was enough of a conflict within Judaism for the emperor to see the whole community as a problem.) But by the time of Claudius’ successor, Nero, Christianity had become distinct from Judaism, and Christians suffered intense persecution. This new religion was unacceptable to the Roman Empire.

Persecution tempts converts to deconvert

In that situation, both sets of persecutors, the Jews and the Romans, might accept deconversion as an appeal against conviction. Jewish Christians could say, ‘I’m not into that whole Jesus thing. I’m just a normal Jew.’ The Letter to the Hebrews was written to tell them that that’s just false. The Scriptures prove what the Jewish Christians have been believing as converts to Jesus. And what Jesus offers is so great, so completely superior to everything, that there is no good reason to reject it.

An evangelist will want to persuade anyone they’re preaching to that salvation in Christ is something everyone needs. They won’t want to leave any space for the person to wonder if maybe this doesn’t apply to them. And of course any Christian can start to backslide. So on that surface level the message of Hebrews is for everyone. But there’s another level, deeper in, between there and the first century Jewish Christians the letter was written for.

What does Hebrews mean for your church?

Hebrews isn’t about generally rejecting salvation or giving up on the teaching of the New Testament. It’s about deconversion. In this situation, someone who had converted is considering publicly undoing their conversion and reverting to their original faith or community. Salvation for someone from an irreligious or nominally Christian background might be seen more as weirdness than an actual conversion. But when someone belonging to another religious community chooses Jesus, that’s seen much more clearly as a change of allegiance. In some cases it means being ostracised from a community and even from family. That hurts more than people who haven’t experienced conversion in that sense can appreciate. And to be offered a way back is extremely tempting.

The letter took its first readers through a mind-blowing elevation of Jesus to convince them that, whatever agony they’re in right now, it just isn’t worth giving in to that temptation to deconvert. Two thousand years later, the letter challenges you to ask what your church is doing to positively share the same message. Are you a welcoming community that offers a deep and rich relationship with Jesus, sufficient to resist the temptation suffered by people who have been through hard conversions to return to their original community? Does your practical gospel sustain that kind of conversion the first readers of Hebrews went through?

You can explore Hebrews further by listening to The Rooted Podcast.

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Hebrews

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