Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 13:1

Ἡ φιλαδελφία. “Your brotherly affection.” Not only was “brotherly love” a new and hitherto almost undreamed of virtue but it was peculiarly necessary among the members of a bitterly-persecuted sect. Hence all the Apostles lay constant stress upon it (Romans 12:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 3:14-18, &c.). It was a special form of the more universal “Love” (Ἀγάπη), and our Lord had said that by it the world should recognise that Christians were His disciples (John 13:35). How entirely this prophecy was fulfilled we see alike from the fervid descriptions of Tertullian, from the mocking admissions of Lucian in his curious and interesting tract “on the death of Peregrinus” (§ 16), and from the remark of the Emperor Julian (Ep. 49), that their “kindness towards strangers” had been a chief means of propagating their “atheism.” But brotherly-love in the limits of a narrow community is often imperilled by the self-satisfaction of egotistic and dogmatic orthodoxy, shewing itself in party rivalries. This may have been the case among these Hebrews as among the Corinthians; and the neglect by some of the gatherings for Christian worship (Hebrews 10:25) may have tended to deepen the sense of disunion. The disunion however was only incipient, for the writer has already borne testimony to the kindness which prevailed among them (Hebrews 6:10; Hebrews 10:32-33).

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 13:1

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