Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. {6} For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with {d} meats, which have not profited them that have been {e} occupied therein.

(6) He speaks to those who mixed an external worship and especially the difference of meats with the gospel which he clearly condemns as repugnant to the benefit of Christ.

(d) By this one form which concerns the difference of clean and unclean meat, we have to understand all the ceremonial worship.

(e) Who observed the difference of them superstitiously.

People's New Testament

13:9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. Suffer no false teachers to delude you.

It is a good thing. Though more than thirty years had passed since the church was founded, the temple service still continued, though the apostle has shown that it was done away in Christ. No doubt some of the Hebrew Christians had continued to observe its ceremonials. There were even teachers who taught divers strange doctrines concerning the need of keeping the law. The apostle, however, enjoins that

the heart be established with grace, instead of resorting to sacrificial meats which had proved profitless to make the conscience perfect.

Wesley's Notes

13:9 Be not carried about with various doctrines - Which differ from that one faith in our one unchangeable Lord. Strange - To the ears and hearts of all that abide in him. For it is good - It is both honourable before God and pleasant and profitable That the heart be stablished with grace - Springing from faith in Christ. Not with meats - Jewish ceremonies, which indeed can never stablish the heart.

Scofield Reference Notes

Margin with grace

Grace (imparted). Jas 4:6 Rom 6:1 2Pet 3:18.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. about-rather, as oldest manuscripts read, "carried aside"; namely, compare Eph 4:14.

divers-differing from the one faith in the one and the same Jesus Christ, as taught by them who had the rule over you (Heb 13:7).

strange-foreign to the truth.

doctrines-"teachings."

established with grace; not with meats-not with observances of Jewish distinctions between clean and unclean meats, to which ascetic Judaizers added in Christian times the rejection of some meats, and the use of others: noticed also by Paul in 1Co 8:8, 13; 6:13; Ro 14:17, an exact parallel to this verse: these are some of the "divers and strange doctrines" of the previous sentence. Christ's body offered once for all for us, is our true spiritual "meat" to "eat" (Heb 13:10), "the stay and the staff of bread" (Isa 3:1), the mean of all "grace."

which have not profited-Greek, "in which they who walked were not profited"; namely, in respect to justification, perfect cleansing of the conscience, and sanctification. Compare on "walked," Ac 21:21; namely, with superstitious scrupulosity, as though the worship of God in itself consisted in such legal observances.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

13:7-15 The instructions and examples of ministers, who honourably and comfortably closed their testimony, should be particularly remembered by survivors. And though their ministers were some dead, others dying, yet the great Head and High Priest of the church, the Bishop of their souls, ever lives, and is ever the same. Christ is the same in the Old Testament day. as in the gospel day, and will be so to his people for ever, equally merciful, powerful, and all-sufficient. Still he fills the hungry, encourages the trembling, and welcomes repenting sinners: still he rejects the proud and self-righteous, abhors mere profession, and teaches all whom he saves, to love righteousness, and to hate iniquity. Believers should seek to have their hearts established in simple dependence on free grace, by the Holy Spirit, which would comfort their hearts, and render them proof against delusion. Christ is both our Altar and our Sacrifice; he sanctifies the gift. The Lord's supper is the feast of the gospel passover. Having showed that keeping to the Levitical law would, according to its own rules, keep men from the Christian altar, the apostle adds, Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp; go forth from the ceremonial law, from sin, from the world, and from ourselves. Living by faith in Christ, set apart to God through his blood, let us willingly separate from this evil world. Sin, sinners, nor death, will not suffer us to continue long here; therefore let us go forth now by faith and seek in Christ the rest and peace which this world cannot afford us. Let us bring our sacrifices to this altar, and to this our High Priest, and offer them up by him. The sacrifice of praise to God, we should offer always. In this are worship and prayer, as well as thanksgiving.