<p>13:20 <em>Now the God of peace, who brought from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, through the blood of an eternal covenant</em>- The idea of &quot;peace&quot; speaks of peace between believers as well as with God; and this would be the context provided by :19, where as noted there, Paul has in view the restoration of his relationship with the Jerusalem church. God is the author of peace both with Him and within His people on account of the blood, resurrection and covenant relationship of the Lord Jesus. &quot;<em>Our </em>Lord Jesus&quot; is another attempt to demonstrate that they had in common a joint acceptance of Jesus as &quot;Lord&quot;; even though it would seem many amongst the Hebrew Christians were losing that sense of His exaltation. The references to the Lord's resurrection, His blood and the eternal new covenant pave the way for the desire in :21 that God would continue working within them. For it was the Lord's death and resurrection which brought into effect the new covenant for those in Him, with its promise of the blessing of being spiritually transformed within.</p><p>&quot;In the blood of an eternal covenant&quot; (Gk., through the power of the blood) is a hard phrase to understand if we isolate it from the rest of the verse. The GNB gives the best general sense: &quot;God has raised from death our Lord Jesus, who is the Great Shepherd of the sheep as the result of his blood, by which the eternal covenant is sealed&quot;. The Lord's qualification as the supreme elder was on account of His death. The Abrahamic covenant is the new covenant of eternal inheritance (see on 9:15), but this was sealed, brought into operation for us and guaranteed, by the Lord's death. The connection between the covenant and God's people as sheep, shepherded by God through Messiah, is made clearly throughout Ezekiel 34. The sheep of Israel shall be led by the shepherd into an eternal covenant. This is true of all the Lord's sheep today as it will be for natural Israel in the last days.</p>