<p>13:15- see on 1 Pet. 2:5.</p><p><em>Through him, therefore, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God; that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to His Name</em>- Mosaic sacrifice could never be continual; the whole nature of the rituals precluded that. But with such a priest as the Lord Jesus, we can continually offer the sacrifice of praise, rather than animals. The praise is for the certainty of our salvation and for the certainty of our forgiveness; for &quot;confession&quot; can mean just that, confession of sin. Our praise is for the forgiveness of sin confessed, celebrated in the peace offering.</p><p>The peace offering was offered with unleavened cakes as was the Passover. The bitterness of sin was to be ever remembered, amidst the joy of peace with God. The description of the peace offering as &ldquo;the sacrifice of thanksgiving&quot; is alluded to in Heb. 13:15: &quot;Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God&quot;- praise and thanks for our spiritual peace with God, our forgiveness through His grace.</p><p>True sacrifice is praise of God; thus Abraham's willingness to offer Isaac was &quot;praise&quot; (Gen. 22:5). Israel in their repentance &quot;will account our lips as calves&quot; (Hos. 14:3 LXX, RVmg.), i.e. as sacrifices. The &quot;fruit of the lips&quot; there was repentance. Which is why Paul says that we &quot;make confession to his name&quot; with the fruit of our lips (13:15 RV). Continually we should offer this sacrifice of praise (Heb. 13:15), the thankfulness that wells up from knowing we are forgiven, the joy born of regular, meaningful repentance. And we do this &quot;by&quot; or 'on account of' the sacrifice of Jesus for us, which enables this forgiveness and thereby repentance (Heb. 13:12,15). &quot;Continually&quot; in itself suggests that &quot;praise&quot; does not mean singing or musical expression. This &quot;sacrifice of praise&quot; is a quotation from Jer. 33:11, which describes our offering &quot;the sacrifice of praise... for his mercy&quot; at the beginning of the Kingdom. Praise will and does bring forth sacrifice / action. Yet &quot; praise&quot; here is the same Hebrew word translated &quot; thanksgiving&quot; ; and the sacrifice of thanksgiving was the peace offering, a commemoration of our free conscience and the peace of sin forgiven (Lev. 7:12-15). If we seriously confess our sins and believe in forgiveness, we should be experiencing a foretaste of the praise we will be offering at the start of the Kingdom, as we embark upon eternity. Our offering of this sacrifice of praise will be &quot;continual&quot; if we continually maintain a good conscience through the confession of our sins. This is surely a high standard to have placed before us: to <em>continually</em> confess our sins, to <em>continually</em> receive God's mercy, and therefore to live <em>continually</em> in a spirit of grateful praise. The way David praises God so ecstatically for immutable things and principles (e.g. His character) is a great example in this (e.g. Ps. 33:3-5); our tendency is to only seriously praise God when He resolves the unexpected crises of life.</p><p>The Name of God of itself elicits repentance. Faced with the wonder of who He is, we can&rsquo;t be passive to it. We realize and are convicted of our sin by the very reality of who He is, was and shall be. Heb. 13:15 speaks of the fruit of our lips, giving confession to His Name. The &ldquo;fruit of lips&rdquo; in Hos. 14:2 RVmg. to which the writer alludes is clearly enough, in the context, the confession of sin. And the context in Heb. 13:12 is that Christ&rsquo;s blood was shed to sanctify us. That declaration of the Name elicits a confession of sin, albeit in words of praise, to His Name. Mic. 6:9 has the same theme. When the Lord&rsquo;s voice calls to the city demanding repentance, &ldquo;the man of wisdom shall see perceive thy name&rdquo;- i.e. repent. We come to know God's Name in practice through the cycles of sin-repentance-forgiveness by God which we all pass through. It is through this process that we come to know the very essence of God's Name. Thus Is. 43:25 LXX: &quot;I am '&quot;I AM&quot;, who erases your iniquities&quot;. We come to know His Name, that it really <em>is</em> (&quot;I am&quot;) all about forgiveness and salvation of sinners. See on Eph. 3:15.</p>