¹⁶ And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

In the midst of reflecting on the deeper trenches of spiritual profundity, as afforded in the book of Hebrews, we risk running aground on the shoals of academic buffoonery. After all, every religion has it ascetics who spend hours adrift in the contemplations of the inner life and the minutiae of their fine points. We, of course, can travel along with the confidence that our truth is indeed God’s truth. But truth is meant to be lived, not just to be thought! The truth about Christ’s superiority is not just a means to spiritual contemplation for the mystics of Christianity, as an end in itself. No, it is more robust than that.

The book of Hebrews does not leave us to guess, after our praise and worship, how to “not neglect doing good and sharing.” Again, Hebrew understatement in the negative emphasizes the positive. We, who no longer need to offer sacrifice for our sins in order to be acceptable to God, and in fact are already now accepted because of His once-for-all-time sacrifice—we of all people should go and share with others (by this we understand to mean tangible sharing of our physical resources and possessions with others in need).

While some of this is fleshed out in the following verses, the idea here is that we should be characterized as “do-gooders” and being generous. The natural outworking of being saved by His sacrifice is that the old motivation is removed, namely, to do good because we are meriting, as it were, our way into heaven. We now have a new motivation, and that is gratitude for what He has done (Hebrews 12:28). We do good, because God has done good to us. And if He never did any further good, then that would be enough for our eternal gratitude. Yet, our good gift of salvation from the hand of God, tells us that He is a good God, that is characteristic of Him. And therefore if He was good enough to save us, then He is good enough to give us everything we need for living for Him. ^“His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3).

So God is immensely pleased with our priestly sacrifice of doing good and sharing the blessings of God with others. If anything, Christianity is a working faith, it makes a difference. In all our enjoyment and fascination and deep reflection on Christ’s superiority, our lives should demonstrate the superiority of Christ-likeness in our influence on the world around us!

Lord, help me be more like Your Son that others may be attracted to Him. Let Your generosity toward me be reflected in my generosity to others.