Hebrews 13:14 - Homilies By D. Young

The continuing city.

The two previous verses express, in a thoroughly Hebraistic way, an invitation to be crucified together with Christ. At the same time, these Hebrew Christians are reminded of the wilderness and tent life which their forefathers led for forty years. What they experienced in the outward reality let us experience by the inward spirit. We belong to the future more than to the present.

I. OUR VIEW OF PRESENT SURROUNDINGS . We have cities, but not continuing ones. It would be very foolish in us, knowing all we do and hoping for all we do, to look upon the states and governments of this world as do those in whom nationality is the very strongest feeling. We must pray to be preserved from that narrow and one-sided idealism which so glorifies fatherland as to make it the chief object of one's enthusiasm and effort. Our hearts must not be deceived by the outward splendors of capital cities. And yet, while the pilgrim spirit is in us, let it not be a restless and a carping one. No one should be more interested in the life, prosperity, and good government of a state than the Christian.

II. OUR OUTLOOK TOWARDS THE FUTURE . An abiding city, a city where there is true stability and true glory, is no dream. We have it not yet, but we shall have it if we seek for it. What an interest the Christian is exhorted to have in abiding, continuing things! Faith, hope, and love are to abide; all abiding things will be manifested after the great shaking; and they will cohere into the true dignity of the heavenly state. Never has the human imagination been more nobly employed than in bodying forth the conditions and appearances of a perfect state. But those indulging such imaginations had no definite way of reducing them to fact. Here, however, the Christian is spoken of as seeking for the coming city in a very definite way. True, our present life is as it were a camp-life, but not for all that like the life of savage or gipsy. Our camping-places are all stages in the journey to the new Jerusalem.—Y.