It will be seen that a due observation of these "ands" will help us to keep each feature

in its place.

The A.V. leads one to read: "To the general assembly and church of the firstborn", as

though it were one company. Paneguris, the word translated "general assembly", means

an assembly met together for some festal or joyful occasion, and the construction of the

passage necessitates the translation: "And to myriads, a festal assembly of angels".

We learn that myriads of angels were associated with Sinai and the giving of the law:

"The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: The Lord is among

them, as in Sinai, in the holy place" (Psa. 68: 17; see also Deut. 33: 2). If these

angels were at mount Sinai, they shall also be at Mount Sion, and there they will be a

"festal assembly", for "the marriage of the Lamb" will have come.

This church is the church of the firstborn, a special company, those who did not

despise their birthright, nor barter it away for a morsel of meat. This same company is

referred to as: "The spirits of just men made perfect", each expression having been used

in the context of chapters 11: and 12:  In 12: 9 we read of "The Father of spirits"; in

chapter 11: "the righteous" are in view (10: 38; 11: 4, 7, 8), and in 11: 40 it is the

perfecting: "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should

not be perfected".

The close association of the "better thing", the "better country" and the "better

resurrection" with this perfecting shows that here in Heb. 12: we are taken to that time

when this church of the firstborn shall be complete and enter into its inheritance and

become the Bride, the Lamb's wife. Here Abraham will set foot in that city for which he

looked; Moses will receive that reward unto which he had respect; all who believed, yet

died, not having received the promise, will enter into their birthright. The mediator is not

Moses, neither is the blood the blood of bulls and goats: "Jesus" is the Mediator of the

New Covenant, and this blood of sprinkling speaks better things than that of Abel.

This heavenly Sion is before the apostle right through the epistle. The "so great

salvation" of 2: 3 is connected with the "age to come" of which he wrote in 2: 5, and

the "glory" unto which the Captain of salvation was leading (2: 10). The words: "He is

not ashamed to call them brethren" (2: 11), the thought of the Captain being "perfected"

through sufferings (2: 10), find their echo in the word: "God is not ashamed to be called

their God: for He hath prepared for them a city" (11: 16), and the "perfecting" of the

spirits of just men in 12: 23.

It was toward this goal that the apostle urged the Hebrew believers to "go unto the

goal (perfection)". The weights which they were counseled to lay aside would include

those things mentioned in 6: 2, a passage we have already seen in close connection with

Esau and his vain seeking for repentance (6: 4-6; 12: 16, 17).

The section closes with a word of warning, very similar to the warning that precedes

chapter 11: In the structure we show it thus: