Hebrews reads less like a letter than a sustained sermon, its own closing line calls it "a word of exhortation," building a single cumulative argument across thirteen chapters: Christ is superior to every figure and institution that structured Israel's relationship with God. He is greater than the angels who delivered the law at Sinai, greater than Moses who led Israel out of Egypt, and greater than the entire Levitical priesthood, because he serves as a permanent high priest "in the order of Melchizedek," a mysterious king-priest from Genesis mentioned nowhere else in comparable depth.
Where the old priesthood offered animal sacrifices repeatedly, year after year, unable to fully remove sin, Christ offers himself once, entering "not a sanctuary made with hands" but heaven itself, a sacrifice the letter treats as final and complete. Interwoven with this argument are five urgent warnings against drifting away or falling back from the faith, addressed to readers apparently tempted to abandon the new covenant for the older, more familiar forms of worship they had left. Chapter 11, sometimes called the hall of faith, catalogs figures from Abel to the prophets who "died in faith, not having received the promises," framing the whole letter's argument as the climax of a much longer story.