5. The Structure of the Epistle

The divisions of the epistle are determined by its purposes. Those purposes were: to hold in the faith those who had already believed, and to draw into it those Jews who had not yet believed, with the addition of an exhortation to patient endurance of all that had to be suffered for the faith. The first purpose is the primary one. To achieve it, the holy Paul strives to depict the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, with powerful inducements that dispose the reader toward faith and to steadfast perseverance therein. This constitutes the first and largest part of the epistle — chapters 1–10. We shall call it the Dogmatic Part, concerning the superiority of the New Covenant economy of salvation over the Old. The second part — the smaller — contains an exhortation to endure afflictions suffered for the faith, along with certain moral instructions on Christian conduct and life. It comprises two and a half chapters: 11–13:25.

The final verses of the last, the thirteenth, chapter constitute a postscript.