Halima kept a shoebox under her bed. It had once held a pair of black court shoes she wore to her cousin’s wedding, but for the last four years it had held something else.
Inside were three small bottles of olive oil, each from a different programme, each prayed over by a different minister. There was a white handkerchief from a crusade in Ibadan. There was a booklet titled Forty Nights at the Gate, with instructions to pray at exactly 3am and a warning that missing a single night would mean starting again from the first. There was a sheet of paper listing foods she must not eat during a particular fast, a printed envelope for a “breakthrough seed,” and a calendar from two years earlier with certain dates circled in red ink. She could tell you where each item had come from and what it had promised.
She was not a careless or foolish woman. She was a nurse at a teaching hospital, sharp and capable, respected by the doctors she worked with. She loved the Lord. She had been born again for eleven years. But somewhere along the way she had become convinced that there was always one more thing she needed to do before God would really move in her life. Every new teaching that came to town seemed to carry the missing piece. Each one worked for a few weeks, in the sense that it made her feel she was finally doing enough. Then the feeling faded, and she waited for the next one.
She came to see me after a midweek service. She had the shoebox in a nylon bag. She set it on the table between us, opened the lid, and said, very quietly, “Pastor, I am tired. Please tell me honestly. Is there anything else I am supposed to be doing?”
I have thought about that question many times since. It is the question of an unsettled heart. And there is a verse near the end of Hebrews that answers it.
A verse at the end of a long argument
Hebrews 13:9 is often quoted on its own, but it sits at the end of a long and carefully built letter, and we will only understand it properly if we read it where it stands:
Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.
The letter was written to believers who were under real pressure. Many scholars think they were Jewish Christians, and the whole argument of the book suggests people who were tempted to drift back toward the old system of priests, sacrifices and regulations. They had endured hardship before. The writer reminds them of the days when they “took joyfully the spoiling of your goods” (Hebrews 10:34). But the years had worn on them. Some had stopped meeting with other believers. Some were growing tired. The familiar religious structures they had left behind must have looked very solid compared with a faith that centred on an unseen High Priest in heaven.
So for twelve chapters the writer has shown them that Jesus is better. Better than angels. Better than Moses. A better priest, with a better covenant, a better sacrifice and better promises. He has warned them not to “let them slip” (Hebrews 2:1), not to harden their hearts, not to cast away their confidence.
Now, in the closing chapter, he turns to practical instructions about love, hospitality, prisoners, marriage, money and leaders. And right in the middle of them comes verse 8, which is one of the best-known sentences in the New Testament: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”
Look at where it is placed. Just before it, the readers are told to remember the leaders who first spoke God’s word to them and to follow their faith. Those leaders may have died. Ministries change. Teachers come and go. But Jesus Christ does not change. He was the same Saviour yesterday, when they first believed. He is the same today, under pressure. He will be the same for ever. And just after it comes the warning: “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.” Because Jesus has not changed, the believer does not need to keep changing foundations.
That is the setting of our verse. It is not a minor note about diet. It is the writer’s final summary of the whole letter. Stay with the unchanging Christ, and let your heart be made firm by grace.
Carried about
The phrase “carried about” describes something being swept along, carried off course by a force outside itself. The picture is of a boat without an anchor, or a leaf in a gutter during the rains, going wherever the current takes it. Paul uses similar language when he describes immature believers:
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.
“Tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” Paul and the writer of Hebrews were describing the same danger. A believer who is not settled will be moved by whatever is blowing hardest at the moment. Notice that Paul connects this with being “children,” and notice that he describes some of these winds as coming through “the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness.” Not every new teaching is harmless. Some are designed to unsettle people, because unsettled people are easier to lead, and sometimes easier to profit from.
The writer of Hebrews describes the doctrines as “divers and strange.” Divers means varied, many-coloured, coming in all kinds of forms. Strange means foreign, alien to the gospel they had received. The danger is not usually one dramatic heresy that everyone can recognise. It is a steady stream of different additions, each one slightly unfamiliar, each one promising something the believer feels is missing.
Halima’s shoebox was a collection of exactly that kind of variety. No single item in it was a denial of Christ. She still believed that Jesus died for her sins and rose again. But each item carried an unspoken message: Jesus plus this. The cross plus forty nights at 3am. Grace plus the right oil, the right seed, the right date. And because the addition was always changing, she could never settle. Every new wind moved her a little further.
There is a way to recognise this pattern in your own life. Ask yourself what you were told the last new practice would do for you. Then ask whether it did it. Then ask how long it was before you were looking for the next one. “Not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.” The writer is saying, in effect, that the people who have given themselves most fully to these things have not been helped by them. The restlessness never ended. It simply moved on.
What it means to be established
PunchlineAgainst all this restlessness, the writer sets one simple statement: “For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace.”
The word translated established means to make firm, to confirm, to make stable and secure. The same family of words appears elsewhere in Hebrews. The great salvation “was confirmed unto us by them that heard him” (Hebrews 2:3). And when the writer speaks of God’s promise to Abraham, he says that among people “an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife” (Hebrews 6:16). In ordinary Greek usage outside the Bible, this word could be used for the legal guarantee attached to a sale, the document that confirmed a buyer’s ownership so that nobody could later contest it. To be established is to have the matter settled so firmly that it is no longer open to dispute.
Notice what is established: the heart. The writer is concerned with the inner life, the place where confidence, fear, desire and conscience live. You can keep a full calendar of religious activity and still have a heart that is not established. In fact, the busier the outward activity becomes, the more it can reveal that the inner life has not found its rest.
Notice also what does the establishing: grace. The heart is not made firm by intensity, by novelty or by severity. It is made firm by the free, undeserved favour of God given to us in Jesus Christ. That is the only foundation stable enough to hold a human heart, because it is the only foundation that does not depend on the human heart holding itself up.
Think about it. If my security rests on the faithfulness of my observance, my security is only as stable as my observance. On the nights I wake at 3am, I feel secure. On the night I sleep through, I am back at the beginning. But if my security rests on what Christ has done, it is as stable as His finished work, which is to say it cannot be shaken at all. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” A heart established in grace has borrowed its stability from Him.
Paul expresses the same truth: “Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God” (2 Corinthians 1:21). And Peter prays that “the God of all grace... make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you” (1 Peter 5:10). It is God who establishes. And He does it by grace.
A heart that rests on its own observance is only as stable as its last observance. A heart established in grace is as stable as the finished work of Christ.
Not with meats
What were these “meats”? The word simply means foods. The writer does not explain exactly which practices were troubling his readers, and we should be honest that we do not know every detail. It may have concerned the food laws of the old covenant, the careful distinctions between clean and unclean. It may have concerned meals connected with the sacrifices, since the very next verse speaks of an altar and those who “serve the tabernacle.” It may have included other religious food regulations that were circulating at the time. What is clear is the writer’s verdict: these things “have not profited them that have been occupied therein.”
He has already explained why. In chapter 9 he describes the old system as one “Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10). Those regulations had their place. They were a figure, a teaching aid, pointing forward. But the writer says plainly that they “could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience” (Hebrews 9:9). They could deal with the outside of a person. They could not reach the conscience. Then he shows what can:
But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us . For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
“How much more shall the blood of Christ... purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” That is what the troubled heart actually needs: a cleansed conscience, and the assurance that the decisive offering has already been made. A new regulation can supply neither. The animal sacrifices had to be repeated because they never finished the work. Christ “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
Notice the phrase “dead works.” These are not necessarily wicked works. They are religious works done to obtain what only Christ can give: activity performed in the hope of earning a clean conscience, a secure standing, a favourable hearing. They are dead because they come from fear rather than from life, and because they cannot produce what they promise. The blood of Christ cleanses the conscience from them, so that we are free “to serve the living God.” Service remains. But it is the service of a cleansed person, not the anxious labour of someone still trying to get clean.
Paul says something very similar to the Romans: “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17). And to the Corinthians: “But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse” (1 Corinthians 8:8). The point is not that food is unimportant to daily life. The point is that no food, and no regulation about food, can commend us to God or establish our hearts before Him.
We have an altar
The writer then makes a startling statement. Having said that the heart should be established with grace and not with meats, he says, “We have an altar.” It is as though he anticipates someone objecting: but surely we need something to eat at the altar, some sacred meal, some visible ritual, to be secure. And he answers: we already have one.
We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
Under the old covenant, the priests could eat portions of many sacrifices. But on the Day of Atonement, the bodies of the animals whose blood was carried into the most holy place were not eaten at all. They were taken outside the camp and burned. The writer sees Jesus in that picture. Our sin offering was not offered in the temple courts. He “suffered without the gate,” outside the walls of Jerusalem, at Golgotha. Our altar is the cross. What we feed on is Christ Himself and His finished sacrifice.
Then comes the call: “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” For these readers, the camp represented the whole familiar religious world they had grown up in, with its priests, its temple, its rituals and its social respectability. Going outside the camp meant leaving the security of that system and standing with a crucified Messiah, which brought shame and sometimes persecution.
Here is something we must not miss. Grace does not establish the heart by removing every cost of following Jesus. These believers were being asked to stay with Christ even when an impressive religious alternative appeared to offer an easier place to stand. A heart established in grace can bear reproach, because it does not need the approval of the camp. “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” The believer’s security is not in a system that can be seen and admired. It is in a Person, and in a city still to come.
That speaks to us today in a different setting. The “camp” may be the pressure of what everyone around us is doing, the newest emphasis that seems to carry spiritual prestige, the programme that makes you feel part of the serious inner circle. Grace may call you to stand quietly outside that camp with Jesus. It may mean being the person in your fellowship who is not chasing the latest thing. That can feel lonely. But it is where He is.
When a practice is asked to do too much
I need to be careful here, because none of this means that every spiritual discipline is suspect. Paul warned the Colossians about something very similar to what Hebrews describes, and his words help us draw the line in the right place:
Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
“Touch not; taste not; handle not.” Paul is describing regulations that look impressive. They “have indeed a shew of wisdom,” he says, and they involve self-imposed worship, an appearance of humility and harsh treatment of the body. But they are “not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.” In other words, for all their severity, they have no real power to restrain the flesh or transform the heart.
But Paul does not say that all disciplined living is useless. Elsewhere he values self-control, prayer, fasting and purposeful service. The question is never simply whether a practice is good. The question is whether the practice expresses dependence on Christ, or whether it has become a substitute basis for confidence.
Fasting is a helpful example. A believer may fast to make room for prayer and to focus his attention on God. That is a healthy and biblical practice. But suppose he is told that a single interruption will cancel God’s willingness to hear him. Now his confidence has shifted from Christ to a flawless observance. The fast is being asked to carry a weight Scripture never placed on it.
The same examination applies to a reading plan, a special meeting, a particular time of prayer or a pattern inherited from a respected teacher. Ask what the practice is helping you do. Does it help you hear and obey the word of God? Does it create room for love and responsible service? Or does it keep you fearful that God may withdraw because the procedure was not completed exactly?
We do not need to abandon a useful practice simply because it has been misused. We do need to remove the claim that it supplies something missing in Christ. And we should ask these questions without contempt for the people involved. Many sincere believers learned such habits while genuinely seeking God, and the Lord was gracious to them in their seeking. Correction can honour that sincerity while explaining why the confidence belongs elsewhere.
Settled but still teachable
NuggetThere is a counterfeit of being established, and it is called stubbornness. Some people hear a message like this and conclude that being settled means never having to reconsider anything. That is not what the writer of Hebrews means.
Stability rests in Christ while continuing to listen to Scripture. Stubbornness refuses correction because a familiar opinion has become part of a person’s self-protection. A rooted believer can hear a hard question and return to the Bible to examine it. A defensive believer must silence the question because his preferred conclusion has become the thing holding him up. Grace gives us the freedom to admit that we have misunderstood a passage, because our security never rested on being right about everything.
Paul describes the healthy kind of settledness this way:
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.” The way you began is the way you continue. You received Christ by grace, through faith, without bringing anything to pay for Him. You walk the same way. And notice the pictures Paul uses: “rooted,” like a tree; “built up,” like a building on a foundation; “stablished in the faith,” the same idea Hebrews uses. And all of it “abounding therein with thanksgiving.” A heart established in grace is a grateful heart. It has stopped asking what more it must do and has started thanking God for what He has done.
So when a new teaching unsettles you, here is a sensible way to respond. Read the passage beyond the single verse being quoted. Ask how the explanation relates to Christ’s priesthood and finished work. Ask whether it accounts for the text or merely borrows its vocabulary. Be like the believers in Berea who “received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). Take difficult questions to mature teachers who will open the Scriptures with you. You do not have to reach a verdict on every unfamiliar claim immediately. A confident speaker may create urgency, but urgency is not evidence that his interpretation is sound.
An established heart is free to love
The final verses of this paragraph show us what a heart established in grace actually does. It is not idle. It is not indifferent to how it lives. It is finally free to give itself to the things that please God:
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Look at the two sacrifices the writer describes. The first is “the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” The second is “to do good and to communicate,” which means to share what we have with others. These are the sacrifices of the new covenant. Christ has already secured our forgiveness, so these are offerings of thanksgiving and generosity from people who have been forgiven.
And look at the rest of chapter 13. Love the brethren. Show hospitality to strangers. Remember those in prison and those who are suffering. Honour marriage. “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). The heart established in grace becomes useful in all these places, because it is no longer occupied with maintaining an uncertain spiritual status.
That is one of the hidden costs of an unsettled heart. A believer who is always chasing the next requirement has very little attention left for other people. Her energy goes into her own security. She is busy with the 3am alarm, the list of forbidden foods, the dates on the calendar. When grace settles the heart, that energy is released. She has time to visit the sick, to welcome a stranger, to give, to praise. Grace does not make people passive. It frees them from self-absorption and turns them outward.
Halima and I sat with that shoebox for a long time. I did not tell her she had been foolish. She had been sincere, and God had been kind to her through all those years of searching. But we read Hebrews 13:8-9 together, slowly, three times. Then I asked her what she thought Jesus had left undone at the cross that any of the items in the box could complete.
PunchlineShe looked at the box for a while. Then she said, “Nothing.” And she began to cry. It was the crying of relief.
She did not throw everything away that evening. Some weeks later she told me she had given away the oil to an elderly woman in her church who used it for cooking. She kept the handkerchief because it reminded her of a crusade where she had heard the gospel preached clearly. She still fasted sometimes, but now she fasted to pray, not to qualify. She stopped setting the 3am alarm. “I sleep now,” she said. “And when I wake up, Jesus is still the same.”
The shoebox went back to holding shoes.
Perhaps you have your own version of that box. It may not be under your bed. It may be a list in your head of things you must do before God will really move. Hear the answer the writer of Hebrews gave to people who were tired of being carried about. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever. It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace. There is nothing else you are supposed to do to make His work complete. Let your heart rest there, and then go and do good.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What new teachings or practices have you taken up in the past few years, and what did each one promise you? Did it deliver?
- In what ways might you be living by “Jesus plus” something? What is the something?
- How does the phrase “purge your conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14) speak to your own experience of religious activity?
- What is the difference between a settled heart and a stubborn one? Where are you tempted toward each?
- If your heart were fully established in grace, what would you have more time and energy to do for others?
This Week
Read Hebrews 13:5-16 once each day this week. Then choose one spiritual practice you value and write down three things: what it helps you do, what authority you may have given it beyond what Scripture warrants, and how you could continue it as an expression of trust in Christ rather than as a condition of His favour. Finally, choose one of the sacrifices of Hebrews 13:16 and offer it this week: do good to someone in a concrete way, or share something you have with a person in need.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You are the same yesterday, today and for ever. Thank You that Your blood has purged my conscience from dead works and that nothing remains to be added to what You finished on the cross. Forgive me for the times I have been carried about by every new teaching, looking for something more to make me secure. Establish my heart with grace. Keep me teachable under Your word and settled in Your love. Free me from restless religious striving so that I may offer You the sacrifice of praise, and give myself to doing good and sharing with others. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.