YOU that discern the prize of your high calling, and who are endeavoring to press along the line toward the mark, “gird up the loins of your mind”; strengthen and fortify your purposes and efforts; renew your determination; redouble your diligence; cast aside the weights of unnecessary worldly cares; increase your zeal; and, as the apostle urges, run with patience the race set before you. Run, not like one who is merely beating the air, but like one who has a purpose in view, and who, in desperate earnest, is determined to make his calling and election sure.

As we examine the Book of Hebrews, we see more and more that it was addressed primarily to Jewish Christians. In early chapters, almost from the beginning, Paul warned how easy it is to go out of the truth by letting things slip or by forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. Now, near the end of the book, he reverted back to his concern for converted Jews and the problems in maintaining their faith and in resisting sin in others as well as in their own fallen nature. Our three enemies are categorized as the world, the flesh, and the devil.