Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.
You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed, for a few days, punished us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord, looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many be defiled by it,
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 1. Wherefore, seeing we also, etc. This conclusion is,…
1. Wherefore, seeing we also, etc. This conclusion is, as it were, an epilogue to the former chapter, by which he shows the end for which he gave a catalogue of the saints who excelled in faith under the Law, even that every one should be prepared to imitate them; and he calls a large multitude metaphorically a cloud, for he sets what is dense in opposition to what is thinly scattered. Had they been a few in number, yet they ought to have roused us by their example; but as they were a vast throng, they ought more powerfully to stimulate us.
He says that we are so surrounded by this dense throng, that wherever we turn our eyes many examples of faith immediately meet us. The word witnesses I do not take in a general sense, as though he called them the martyrs of God, and I apply it to the case before us, as though he had said that faith is sufficiently proved by their testimony, so that no doubt ought to be entertained; for the virtues of the saints are so many testimonies to confirm us, that we, relying on them as our guides and associates, ought to go onward to God with more alacrity.
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Let us lay aside every weight, or every burden, etc. As he refers to the likeness of a race, he bids us to be lightly equipped; for nothing more prevents haste than to be encumbered with burdens. Now there are various burdens which delay and impede our spiritual course, such as the love of this present life, the pleasures of the world, the lusts of the flesh, worldly cares, riches also and honors, and other things of this kind. Whosoever, then, would run in the course prescribed by Christ, must first disentangle himself from all these impediments, for we are already of ourselves more tardy than we ought to be, so no other causes of delay should be added.
We are not however bidden to cast away riches or other blessings of this life, except so far as they retard our course for Satan by these as by toils retains and impedes us.
Now, the metaphor of a race is often to be found in Scripture; but here it means not any kind of race, but a running contest, which is wont to call forth the greatest exertions. The import of what is said then is, that we are engaged in a contest, even in a race the most celebrated, that many witnesses stand around us, that the Son of God is the umpire who invites and exhorts us to secure the prize, and that therefore it would be most disgraceful for us to grow weary or inactive in the midst of our course. And at the same time the holy men whom he mentioned, are not only witnesses, but have been associates in the same race, who have beforehand shown the way to us; and yet he preferred calling them witnesses rather than runners, in order to intimate that they are not rivals, seeking to snatch from us the prize, but approves to applaud and hail our victory; and Christ also is not only the umpire, but also extends his hand to us, and supplies us with strength and energy; in short, he prepares and fits us to enter on our course, and by his power leads us on to the end of the race.
And the sin which does so easily beset us, or, stand around us, etc. This is the heaviest burden that impedes us. And he says that we are entangled, in order that we may know, that no one is fit to run except he has stripped off all toils and snares. He speaks not of outward, or, as they say, of actual sin, but of the very fountain, even concupiscence or lust, which so possesses every part of us, that we feel that we are on every side held by its snares.
Let us run with patience, etc. By this word patience, we are ever reminded of what the Apostle meant to be mainly regarded in faith, even that we are in spirit to seek the kingdom of God, which is invisible to the flesh, and exceeds all that our minds can comprehend; for they who are occupied in meditating on this kingdom can easily disregard all earthly things. He thus could not more effectually withdraw the Jews from their ceremonies, than by calling their attention to the real exercises of faith, by which they might learn that Christ’s kingdom is spiritual, and far superior to the elements of the world.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 For sin besiegeth us on all sides, so that…
For sin besiegeth us on all sides, so that we cannot escape out.
An applying of the former examples, whereby we ought to be stirred up to run the whole race, casting away all stops and impediments.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–15 1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with…
1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Ver. 1. With so great a cloud] Or, cluster of witnesses, whose depositions we should hearken to, and rest in. Justin Martyr confesseth of himself, that seeing the pious lives and patient sufferings of the saints, he concluded that this was the truth they professed, and sealed with their blood. These, in things imitable, are as the cloud that led Israel; but in things unwarrantable (for in many things we fail all) as the black of the cloud, which whoso followeth with the Egyptians, is like to be drowned as they.
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Let us lay aside every weight] ογκος, or burden, or swelth. He that runs in a race will not have a burden upon his back, or shut up himself in a straight jacket.
The sin which doth so easily beset us] ευπεοιστατος, or that sticks so close to us, or that troubles and puzzles us, or that curbs and girds us in, that we cannot run at liberty. Inordinate passions (saith one) come like foul weather, before we send for them; they often prevent all action of the will; but good affections are so overlaid with sin (which compasseth us about), that if we gather not wind under their wing (so ponderous the flesh is) they cannot mount up to purpose.
Let us run with patience] This seems to be a contradiction (as one observeth), for running is active, patience passive; but he that here runs without patience never gets to the end of the race; for in the race of God’s commandments, men have foul play; one rails, another stops him, &c.
The race] Gr. αγωνα, the strife race, for we must run and fight as we run, strive also to outstrip our fellow racers.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–15 The Spirit proceeds in this chapter in his exhortation…
The Spirit proceeds in this chapter in his exhortation or counsel unto duties worthy of the former doctrine of Christ, and suitable to the foregoing examples, enumerated Heb 11:1-40.
Wherefore seeing; he introduceth it with an illative particle, τοιγαρουν seeing all those worthies finished their course through faith, and received not the promise since made good to us, therefore is there something to be inferred.
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We also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses; we, I Paul, and you Hebrews, having enjoyed the better things provided by God for us, we are so much the more obliged; as also having such a multitude of witnesses of so vast worth and dignity, as all the Old Testament believers were, distilling, like a cloud, abundant influences, from their example, in doing and suffering for God, through faith, on our souls, to make us persevering in the faith to the end, as they did; and so compassing us about, as we cannot want either direction or encouragement to it, whenever we look into their histories for it.
Let us lay aside every weight; like the Grecian and Roman racers, who laid aside their cumbersome garments, so as they might more easily and lightly run their race; in allusion to which, it is the concern of every Christian to lay aside, or put away, all his worldly cumbrances, which would clog him in his race, his corrupt self, the world, &c., Mat 16:24; Luk 21:34; 1Ti 6:9-11; 2Ti 2:4.
And the sin which doth so easily beset us: the evil weight inward is the old man, the corrupt nature, which remaineth in every Christian, styled by Paul, the body of death, Rom 7:24; but especially each Christian’s own personal iniquity, which sticks and cleaves nearer to him than his garments, and which made David so careful about it, in Psa 18:23; that which is so compassing and clasping him about, that he is so far from running, he cannot move for it, 1Co 9:27; Col 3:5. This they are to mortify in them.
And let us run with patience the race that is set before us; how distant soever the goal is, which finisheth the race of a Christian’s life, yet the way passing to it, though it be troublesome and long, and being set to us by God himself, must be patiently, strenously, and constantly run, that they may obtain it, Psa 119:32,33; Lu 13:24; 1Co 9:24-27; Gal 5:7; Phi 3:13,14; 2Ti 4:7. The cloud of witnesses have so run it before them for their direction and encouragement.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15 As if our apostle had said, "Seeing we who…
As if our apostle had said, "Seeing we who are now called forth to suffer, have before us so many instances of the faithful, who like a cloud of witnesses have gone before us, and by the help of their faith conquered all impediments that lay in the way of their salvation, let us take encouragement from them to quit ourselves like men; and, as runners in a race, let us cast off all worldly encumbrances which will entangle us, and avoid all sin, especially a bosom corruption, which easily besets us, and as easily overcomes us, and let us run with patience and perserverance the race of Christianity set before us."
Note, 1. That the Old-Testament saints are here called witnesses, a cloud of witnesses, and a cloud encompassing us; they are witnesses of this grand truth, namely, that faith will carry believers safely through all that they may be called to do and suffer in the profession of the gospel; they are called a cloud of witnesses, partly for their number, there being a great multitude of them; partly, for their direction, there being a leading virtue in them.
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As there was a cloud that went before the children of Israel to lead them in the wilderness, so this cloud of witnesses leads us up and down in the wilderness of this world, in the darkest night of our sorrows and sufferings; and they are said to encompass us, because the scripture everywhere encompasses us with them, so that we can be in no suffering state or condition, be it never so sad, but we may turn our eye, and behold the face of some or other of these worthies looking upon us, and encouraging of us to patience and perseverance; and we are encompassed with such a cloud of witnesses, is a great aggravation of our sin.
Learn hence, That it is a special honour which God put upon his saints departed, especially such as suffered and died for the truth, that even after their death they are witnesses to faith and obedience in all generations: We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.
Note here, 1. Christianity is a race, a race set before us by God, and it is our duty faithfully and perseveringly to run it.
Note, 2. That in order to the running of this race, all impediments must be laid aside: Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us.
By every weight, is generally understood the world, its riches, honours, pleasures, preferments, which oftimes are a peculiar obstruction to constancy and perseverance in the profestion and practice of Christianity; this dead weight must be laid aside, by mortifying our hearts and affections towards the world, for it is inordinate love to these things which gives them their weight and encumbrance; where this grace is in its due exercise, the world cannot influence the mind into any disorder, nor make it unready for its race.
By the sin which doth so easily beset us, some understand all sin in general, others a bosom-beloved sin in special, others timorousness and fear in particular; all softness and tenderness, with respect to suffering. In the original words, rendered easily beset us, some think there is an allusion to the long garments worn in the eastern countries; which dangling about a man’s heels, unfit him for running a race. As a man that has a burden on his back,, or a long garment hanging down to his heels, is altogether unfit to run a race; so unready are they for the spiritual race, who are entangled with the love of the world, or with any sinful compliances.
Note, 3. That patience is a grace very necessary to enable a person to run the race of Christianity which God has set before him. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Such is the inevitableness and unavoidableness of the Christian’s trials, such the multiplicilty and varity of them, such the long duration and continuance of them, that there can be no perseverance without patience.
Note, 4. The way discovered, and the means declared, how and by which we attain this grace and patience, namely, by looking unto Jesus.
Learn hence, That looking unto, and beholding of Christ in looking unto, and beholding of Christ in his patience, is a notable mean to excite and stir us up to the practice and performance of our duty.
Note, 5. The special title given here to Christ, he is styled the author and finisher of faith in his people; he is deservedly styled the author of our faith, because his holy ordinances are special means of faith, and his Holy Spirit the producer of faith in the souls of his people, and his precious blood the purchaser of faith and all grace for his people.
And he is the finisher of our faith too, as well as the author of it, inasmuch as he has by his promise engaged to perfect what he has begun, Php 1:6 "Being confident of this very thing, that he that hath begun a good work in you will perform it, &c." And inasmuch as he doth by his intercession plead with the Father for the believer’s preservation in faith, and perseverance in holiness unto the end: I have prayed that thy faith fail not, Luk 22:32.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 Here observe what is the great duty which the…
Here observe what is the great duty which the apostle urges upon the Hebrews, and which he so much desires they would comply with, and that is, to lay aside every weight, and the sin that did so easily beset them, and run with patience the race set before them. The duty consists of two parts, the one preparatory, the other perfective.
I. Preparatory: Lay aside every weight, and the sin, etc. 1. Every weight, that is, all inordinate affection and concern for the body, and the present life and world. Inordinate care for the present life, or fondness for it, is a dead weight upon the soul, that pulls it down when it should ascend upwards, and pulls it back when it should press forward; it makes duty and difficulties harder and heavier than they would be. 2. The sin that doth so easily beset us; the sin that has the greatest advantage against us, by the circumstances we are in, our constitution, our company. This may mean either the damning sin of unbelief or rather the darling sin of the Jews, an over-fondness for their own dispensation. Let us lay aside all external and internal hindrances.
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II. Perfective: Run with patience the race that is set before us. The apostle speaks in the gymnastic style, taken from the Olympic and other exercises.
1. Christians have a race to run, a race of service and a race of sufferings, a course of active and passive obedience.
2. This race is set before them; it is marked out unto them, both by the word of God and the examples of the faithful servants of God, that cloud of witnesses with which they are compassed about. It is set out by proper limits and directions; the mark they run to, and the prize they run for, are set before them.
3. This race must be run with patience and perseverance. There will be need of patience to encounter the difficulties that lie in our way, of perseverance to resist all temptations to desist or turn aside. Faith and patience are the conquering graces, and therefore must be always cultivated and kept in lively exercise.
4. Christians have a greater example to animate and encourage them in their Christian course than any or all who have been mentioned before, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ: Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, Heb 12:2. Here observe,
(1.) What our Lord Jesus is to his people: he is the author and finisher of their faith - the beginning, perfecter, and rewarder of it. [1.] He is the author of their faith; not only the object, but the author. He is the great leader and precedent of our faith, he trusted in God; he is the purchaser of the Spirit of faith, the publisher of the rule of faith, the efficient cause of the grace of faith, and in all respects the author of our faith. [2.] He is the finisher of our faith; he is the fulfiller and the fulfilling of all scripture-promises and prophecies; he is the perfecter of the canon of scripture; he is the finisher of grace, and of the work of faith with power in the souls of his people; and he is the judge and the rewarder of their faith; he determines who they are that reach the mark, and from him, and in him, they have the prize.
(2.) What trials Christ met with in his race and course. [1.] He endured the contradiction of sinners against himself (Heb 12:3); he bore the opposition that they made to him, both in their words and behaviour. They were continually contradicting him, and crossing in upon his great designs; and though he could easily have both confuted and confounded them, and sometimes gave them a specimen of his power, yet he endured their evil manners with great patience. Their contradictions were levelled against Christ himself, against his person as God - man, against his authority, against his preaching, and yet he endured all. [2.] He endured the cross - all those sufferings that he met with in the world; for he took up his cross betimes, and was at length nailed to it, and endured a painful, ignominious, and accursed death, in which he was numbered with the transgressors, the vilest malefactors; yet all this he endured with invincible patience and resolution. [3.] He despised the shame. All the reproaches that were cast upon him, both in his life and at his death, he despised; he was infinitely above them; he knew his own innocency and excellency, and despised the ignorance and malice of his despisers.
(3.) What it was that supported the human soul of Christ under these unparalleled sufferings; and that was the joy that was set before him. He had something in view under all his sufferings, which was pleasant to him; he rejoiced to see that by his sufferings he should make satisfaction to the injured justice of God and give security to his honour and government, that he should make peace between God and man, that he should seal the covenant of grace and be the Mediator of it, that he should open a way of salvation to the chief of sinners, and that he should effectually save all those whom the Father had given him, and himself be the first-born among many brethren. This was the joy that was set before him.
(4.) The reward of his suffering: he has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Christ, as Mediator, is exalted to a station of the highest honour, of the greatest power and influence; he is at the right hand of the Father. Nothing passes between heaven and earth but by him; he does all that is done; he ever lives to make intercession for his people.
(5.) What is our duty with respect to this Jesus. We must, [1.] Look unto him; that is, we must set him continually before us as our example, and our great encouragement; we must look to him for direction, for assistance, and for acceptance, in all our sufferings. [2.] We must consider him, meditate much upon him, and reason with ourselves from his case to our own. We must analogize, as the word is; compare Christ's sufferings and ours; and we shall find that as his sufferings far exceeded ours, in the nature and measure of them, so his patience far excels ours, and is a perfect pattern for us to imitate.
(6.) The advantage we shall reap by thus doing: it will be a means to prevent our weariness and fainting (Heb 12:3): Lest you be weary and faint in your minds. Observe, [1.] There is a proneness in the best to grow weary and to faint under their trials and afflictions, especially when they prove heavy and of long continuance: this proceeds from the imperfections of grace and the remains of corruption. [2.] The best way to prevent this is to look unto Jesus, and to consider him. Faith and meditation will fetch in fresh supplies of strength, comfort, and courage; for he has assured them, if they suffer with him, they shall also reign with him: and this hope will be their helmet.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–15 Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about,...., As the…
Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about,...., As the Israelites were encompassed with the pillar of cloud, or with the clouds of glory in the wilderness, as the Jews say; See Gill on Co1 10:1, to which there may be an allusion, here, since it follows,
with so great a cloud of witnesses; or "martyrs", as the Old Testament saints, the instances of whose faith and patience are produced in the preceding chapter: these, some of them, were martyrs in the sense in which that word is commonly used; they suffered in the cause, and for the sake of true religion; and they all bore a noble testimony of God, and for him; and they received a testimony from him; and will be hereafter witnesses for, or against us, to whom they are examples of the above graces: and these may be compared to a "cloud", for the comfortable and reviving doctrines which they dropped; and for their refreshing examples in the heat of persecution; and for their guidance and direction in the ways of God; and more especially for their number, being like a thick cloud, and so many, that they compass about on every side, and are instructive every way. Hence the following things are inferred and urged,
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let us lay aside every weight; or burden; every sin, which is a weight and burden to a sensible sinner, and is an hinderance in running the Christian race; not only indwelling sin, but every actual transgression, and therefore to be laid aside; as a burden, it should be laid on Christ; as a sin, it should be abstained from, and put off, with respect to the former conversation: also worldly cares, riches, and honours, when immoderately pursued, are a weight depressing the mind to the earth, and a great hinderance in the work and service of God, and therefore to be laid aside; not that they are to be entirely rejected, and not cared for and used, but the heart should not be set upon them, or be over anxious about them: likewise the rites and ceremonies of Moses's law were a weight and burden, a yoke of bondage, and an intolerable one, and with which many believing Jews were entangled and pressed, and which were a great hinderance in the performance of evangelical worship; wherefore the exhortation to these Hebrews, to lay them aside, was very proper and pertinent, since they were useless and incommodious, and there had been a disannulling of them by Christ, because of their weakness and unprofitableness. Some observe, that the word here used signifies a tumour or swelling; and so may design the tumour of pride and vain glory, in outward privileges, and in a man's own righteousness, to which the Hebrews were much inclined; and which appears in an unwillingness to stoop to the cross, and bear afflictions for the sake of the Gospel; all which is a great enemy to powerful godliness, and therefore should be brought down, and laid aside. The Arabic version renders it, "every weight of luxury": all luxurious living, being prejudicial to real religion:
and the sin which doth so easily beset us; the Arabic version renders it, "easy to be committed"; meaning either the corruption of nature in general, which is always present, and puts upon doing evil, and hinders all the good it can; or rather some particular sin, as what is commonly called a man's constitution sin, or what he is most inclined to, and is most easily drawn into the commission of; or it may be the sin of unbelief is intended, that being opposite to the grace of faith, the apostle had been commending, in the preceding chapter, and he here exhorts to; and is a sin which easily insinuates itself, and prevails, and that sometimes under the notion of a virtue, as if it would be immodest, or presumptuous to believe; the arguments for it are apt to be readily and quickly embraced; but as every weight, so every sin may be designed: some reference may be had to Lam 1:14 where the church says, that her transgressions were "wreathed", "wreathed themselves", or wrapped themselves about her. The allusion seems to be to runners in a race, who throw off everything that encumbers, drop whatsoever is ponderous and weighty, run in light garments, and lay aside long ones, which entangle and hinder in running, as appears from the next clause, or inference.
And let us run with patience the race that is set before us. The stadium, or race plot, in which the Christian race is run, is this world; the prize run for is the heavenly glory; the mark to direct in it, is Christ; many are the runners, yet none but the overcomers have the prize; which being held by Christ, is given to them: this race is "set before" the saints; that is, by God; the way in which they are to run is marked out by him in his word; the troubles they shall meet with in it are appointed for them by him, in his counsels and purposes; the mark to direct them is set before them in the Gospel, even Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, whom they are to look unto; the length of their race is fixed for them, or how far, and how long they shall run; and the prize is determined for them, and will be given them, and which is held out for their encouragement, to have respect unto: and it becomes all the saints, and belongs to each, and everyone of them, to "run" this race; which includes both doing and suffering for Christ; it is a motion forward, a pressing towards the mark for the prize, a going from strength to strength, from one degree of grace to another; and to it swiftness and agility are necessary; and when it is performed aright, it is with readiness, willingness, and cheerfulness: it requires strength and courage, and a removal of all impediments, and should be done "with patience"; which is very necessary, because of the many exercises in the way; and because of the length of the race; and on account of the prize to be enjoyed, which is very desirable: the examples of the saints, and especially Christ, the forerunner, should move and animate unto it.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–15 Wherefore, being encompassed with a cloud - A great…
Wherefore, being encompassed with a cloud - A great multitude, tending upward with a holy swiftness. Of witnesses - Of the power of faith. Let us lay aside every weight - As all who run a race take care to do. Let us throw off whatever weighs us down, or damps the vigour of our Soul. And the sin which easily besetteth us - As doth the sin of our constitution, the sin of our education, the sin of our profession.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–15 Having so many incitements to holiness, patience, and
CHAPTER XII.
Having so many incitements to holiness, patience, and
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perseverance, we should lay aside every hinderance, and run
with patience the race that is set before us, taking our
blessed Lord for our example, 1-4.
These sufferings are to be considered as fatherly chastisements
from God, and to be patiently submitted to on account of the
benefits to be derived from them, 5-11.
They should take courage and go forward, 12, 13.
Directions to follow peace with all men, and to take heed that
they fall not from the grace of God, 14, 15.
References to the case of Esau, 16, 17.
The privileges of Christians, compared with those of the Jews,
by which the superior excellence of Christianity is shown,
18-24.
They must take care not to reject Jesus, who now addressed them
from heaven, and who was shortly to be their Judge, 25-27.
As they were called to receive a kingdom, they should have
grace, whereby they might serve God acceptably, 28, 29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XII.
Verse 1. Wherefore] This is an inference drawn from the examples produced in the preceding chapter, and on this account both should be read in connection.
Compassed about] Here is another allusion to the Olympic games: the agonistae, or contenders, were often greatly animated by the consideration that the eyes of the principal men of their country were fixed upon them; and by this they were induced to make the most extraordinary exertions.
Cloud of witnesses] νεφος μαρτυρων. Both the Greeks and Latins frequently use the term cloud, to express a great number of persons or things; so in Euripides, Phoeniss. ver. 257: νεφος ασπιδων πυκνον, a dense cloud of shields; and Statius, Thebiad., lib. ix., ver. 120: jaculantum nubes, a cloud of spearmen. The same metaphor frequently occurs.
Let us lay aside every weight] As those who ran in the Olympic races would throw aside every thing that might impede them in their course; so Christians, professing to go to heaven, must throw aside every thing that might hinder them in their Christian race. Whatever weighs down our hearts or affections to earth and sense is to be carefully avoided; for no man, with the love of the world in his heart, can ever reach the kingdom of heaven.
The sin which doth so easily beset] ευπεριστατον αμαρτιαν. The well circumstanced sin; that which has every thing in its favour, time, and place, and opportunity; the heart and the object; and a sin in which all these things frequently occur, and consequently the transgression is frequently committed. ευπεριστατος is derived from ευ, well, περι, about, and ιστημι I stand; the sin that stands well, or is favourably situated, ever surrounding the person and soliciting his acquiescence. What we term the easily besetting sin is the sin of our constitution, the sin of our trade, that in which our worldly honour, secular profit, and sensual gratification are most frequently felt and consulted. Some understand it of original sin, as that by which we are enveloped in body, soul, and spirit. Whatever it may be, the word gives us to understand that it is what meets us at every turn; that it is always presenting itself to us; that as a pair of compasses describe a circle by the revolution of one leg, while the other is at rest in the centre, so this, springing from that point of corruption within, called the carnal mind, surrounds us in every place; we are bounded by it, and often hemmed in on every side; it is a circular, well fortified wall, over which we must leap, or through which we must break. The man who is addicted to a particular species of sin (for every sinner has his way) is represented as a prisoner in this strong fortress.
In laying aside the weight, there is an allusion to the long garments worn in the eastern countries, which, if not laid aside or tucked up in the girdle, would greatly incommode the traveller, and utterly prevent a man from running a race. The easily besetting sin of the Hebrews was an aptness to be drawn aside from their attachment to the Gospel, for fear of persecution.
Let us run with patience the race] Τρεχωμεν τον προκειμενον ἡμιν αγωνα· Let us start, run on, and continue running, till we get to the goal. This figure is a favourite among the Greek writers; so Euripides, Alcest,, ver. 489: Ου τον δ' αγωνα πρωτον αν δραμοιμ' εγω· This is not the first race that I shall run. Id. Iphig. in Aulid., ver. 1456: Δεινους αγωνας δια σε κεινον δει δραμειν· He must run a hard race for thee. This is a race which is of infinite moment to us: the prize is ineffably great; and, if we lose it, it is not a simple loss, for the whole soul perishes.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 12, 15 Heb 12:1. By a bold but rhetorical figure, the…
Heb 12:1. By a bold but rhetorical figure, the apostle, in the beginning of this chapter, represents the patriarchs, judges, kings, prophets, and righteous men, whose faith he had celebrated in the preceding chapter, after having finished their own labours, combats, and sufferings with honour, as standing round and looking on the believing Hebrews while running the Christian race. He therefore exhorts them to exert themselves strenuously in the presence of such spectators. But, above all, to fix their attention on Jesus, whom also he represents as looking on, because his graces, virtues, and sufferings were far more remarkable, and far more worthy of imitation than those of the ancients, whose great actions he had celebrated. Wherefore seeing we also — Or even we. The apostle joins himself with these Hebrews, not only the better to insinuate the exhortation into their minds thereby, but also to intimate, that the strongest believers stand in need of the encouragement here given; are compassed about — Like combatants in the Grecian games; with so great a cloud — So great a multitude; of witnesses — Of the power of faith; even of all the saints of the Old Testament, who, as it were, stand looking on us in our striving, running, wrestling, and fighting; encouraging us in our duty, and ready to bear witness to our success with their applauses. Let us lay aside every weight — As all who run a race take care to do; let us throw off whatever weighs us down, or damps the vigour of our souls, especially all worldly afflictions and delights; all worldly hopes, fears, cares, and friendships; whatever would encumber us in running, would impede our progress, or draw us from our duty; and the sin which doth so easily beset us — Namely, the slavish fear of men, or of any loss or suffering that may befall us; or the sin of our constitution, the sin of our education, or that of our profession. The original expression is, literally, the sin which stands conveniently around us, or the well-circumstanced sin; which is well adapted to our circumstances and inclinations; consequently is easily committed; let us run with patience — And perseverance, as the word υπομονη also signifies; the race — Of Christian experience, duty, and suffering; that is set before us — And is necessary to be run by us before we can obtain the prize.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–15 Wherefore - In view of what has been said…
Wherefore - In view of what has been said in the previous chapter.
Seeing we also are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses - The apostle represents those to whom he had referred in the previous chapter, as looking on to witness the efforts which Christians make, and the manner in which they live. There is allusion here, doubtless, to the ancient games. A great multitude of spectators usually occupied the circular seats in the amphitheater, from which they could easily behold the combatants; see the notes on 1Co 9:24-27. In like manner, the apostle represents Christians as encompassed with the multitude of worthies to whom he had referred in the previous chapter. It cannot be fairly inferred from this that he means to say that all those ancient worthies were actually looking at the conduct of Christians, and saw their conflicts. It is a figurative representation, such as is common, and means that we ought to act as if they were in sight, and cheered us on. How far the spirits of the just who are departed from this world are permitted to behold what is done on earth - if at all - is not revealed in the Scriptures. The phrase, “a cloud of witnesses,” means many witnesses, or a number so great that they seem to be a cloud. The comparison of a multitude of persons to a cloud is common in the classic writers; see Homer II. 4:274, 23:133; Statius 1:340, and other instances adduced in Wetstein, in loc.; compare notes on 1Th 4:17.
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Let us lay aside every weight - The word rendered “weight” - ὄγκον ogkon - means what is crooked or hooked, and thence any thing that is attached or suspended by a hook that is, by its whole weight, and hence means weight; see “Passow.” It does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. The word is often used in the classic writers in the sense of swelling, tumour, pride. Its usual meaning is that of weight or burden, and there is allusion here, doubtless, to the runners in the games who were careful not to encumber themselves with anything that was heavy. Hence, their clothes were so made as not to impede their running, and hence, they were careful in their training not to overburden themselves with food, and in every way to remove what would be an impediment or hindrance. As applied to the racers it does not mean that they began to run with anything like a burden, and then threw it away - as persons sometimes aid their jumping by taking a stone in their hands to acquire increased momentum - but that they were careful not to allow anything that would be a weight or an encumbrance.
As applied to Christians it means that they should remove all which would obstruct their progress in the Christian course. Thus, it is fair to apply it to whatever would be an impediment in our efforts to win the crown of life. It is not the same thing in all persons. In one it may be pride; in another vanity; in another worldliness; in another a violent and almost ungovernable temper; in another a corrupt imagination; in another a heavy, leaden, insensible heart; in another some improper and unholy attachment. Whatever it may be, we are exhorted to lay it aside, and this general direction may be applied to anything which prevents our making the highest possible attainment in the divine life. Some persons would make much more progress if they would throw away many of their personal ornaments; some, if they would disencumber themselves of the heavy weight of gold which they are endeavoring to carry with them. So some very light objects, in themselves considered, become material encumbrances. Even a feather or a ring - such may be the fondness for these toys - may become such a weight that they will never make much progress toward the prize.
And the sin which doth so easily beset us - The word which is here rendered “easily beset” - εὐπερίστατον euperistaton - “euperistaton” - does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. It properly means, “standing well around;” and hence, denotes what is near, or at hand, or readily occurring. So Chrysostom explains it. Passow defines it as meaning “easy to encircle.” Tyndale renders it “the sin that hangeth on us.” Theodoret and others explain the word as if derived from περίστασις peristasis - a word which sometimes means affliction, peril - and hence, regard it as denoting what is full of peril, or the sin which so easily subjects one to calamity. Bloomfield supposes, in accordance with the opinion of Grotius, Crellius, Kype, Kuinoel, and others, that it means “the sin which especially winds around us, and hinders our course,” with allusion to the long Oriental garments. According to this, the meaning would be, that as a runner would be careful not to encumber himself with a garment which would be apt to wind around his legs in running, and hinder him, so it should be with the Christian, who especially ought to lay aside everything which resembles this; that is, all sin, which must impede his course. The former of these interpretations, however, is most commonly adopted, and best agrees with the established sense of the word. It will then mean that we are to lay aside every encumbrance, particularly or especially - for so the word καὶ kai “and,” should be rendered here “the sins to which we are most exposed.” Such sins are appropriately called “easily besetting sins.” They are those to which we are particularly liable. They are such sins as the following:
(1) Those to which we are particularly exposed by our natural temperament, or disposition. In some this is pride, in others indolence, or gaiety, or levity, or avarice, or ambition, or sensuality.
(2) Those in which we freely indulged before we became Christians. They will be likely to return with power, and we are far more likely from the laws of association, to fall into them than into any other. Thus, a man who has been intemperate is in special danger from that quarter; a man who has been an infidel, is in special danger of scepticism: one who has been avaricious, proud, frivolous, or ambitious, is in special danger, even after conversion, of again committing these sins.
(3) Sins to which we are exposed by our profession, by our relations to others, or by our situation in life. They whose condition will entitle them to associate with what are regarded as the more elevated classes of society, are in special danger of indulging in the methods of living, and of amusement that are common among them; they who are prospered in the world are in danger of losing the simplicity and spirituality of their religion; they who hold a civil office are in danger of becoming mere politicians, and of losing the very form and substance of piety.
(4) Sins to which we are exposed from some special weakness in our character. On some points we may be in no danger. We may be constitutionally so firm as not to be especially liable to certain forms of sin. But every man has one or more weak points in his character; and it is there that he is particularly exposed. A bow may be in the main very strong. All along its length there may be no danger of its giving way - save at one place where it has been made too thin, or where the material was defective - and if it ever breaks, it will of course be at that point. That is the point, therefore, which needs to be guarded and strengthened. So in reference to character. There is always some weak point which needs specially to be guarded, and our principal danger is there. Self-knowledge, so necessary in leading a holy life, consists much in searching out those weak points of character where we are most exposed; and our progress in the Christian course will be determined much by the fidelity with which we guard and strengthen them.
And let us run with patience the race that is set before us. - The word rendered “patience” rather means in this place, perseverance. We are to run the race without allowing ourselves to be hindered by any obstructions, and without giving out or fainting in the way. Encouraged by the example of the multitudes who have run the same race before us, and who are now looking out upon us from heaven, where they dwell, we are to persevere as they did to the end.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 15 Laying aside every weight;[1] i.e. all that may hinder…
Laying aside every weight;[1] i.e. all that may hinder us when we run in the way of virtue.--- To the fight proposed to us. In the Greek it is ore clear: let us run the proposed race. He compares the condition of Christians to those who run a race, who fight or strive for a prize in the Olympic games, who strip themselves, and make themselves as light as possible, the better to run and fight. (Witham) --- This Christian’s life is both a race and a combat. In baptism we enter the lists; therefore we must fight in running to Jesus Christ, for he is the term, the goal, and the prize. To run will, we must be as light and disengaged as possible; and the same if we hope to combat with success. We should look up to the battles fought by our captain, Jesus Christ, and contemplate the glory he now enjoys on that account; for this he means to share with us, if we imitate his virtues: let us then rejoice to suffer with our Captain (Greek: archegon ) here, and we shall be glorified with him hereafter.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Omne pondus, Greek: panta ogkon, omnen sarcinam.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Hebrews Chapter 12
Hebrews Chapter 12
The epistle now enters on the practical exhortation, that flow from its doctrinal instruction, with reference to the dangers peculiar to the Hebrew Christians-instruction suited throughout to inspire them with courage. Surrounded with a cloud of witnesses like these of chapter 11, who all declared the advantages of a life of faith in promises still unfulfilled, they ought to feel themselves impelled to follow their steps, running with patience the race set before them, and above all looking away from every difficulty [37] to Jesus, who had run the whole career of faith, sustained by the joy that was set before Him, and, having reached the goal, had taken His seat in glory at the right hand of God.
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This passage presents the Lord, not as He who bestows faith, but as He who has Himself run the whole career of faith. Others had traveled a part of the road, had surmounted some difficulties; the obedience and the perseverance of the Lord had been subjected to every trial of which human nature is susceptible. Men, the adversary, the being forsaken of God, everything was against Him. His disciples flee when He is in danger, His intimate friend betrays Him; He looks for some one to have compassion on Him and finds no one. The fathers (of whom we read in the previous chapter) trusted in God and were delivered, but as for Jesus. He was a worm, and no man;His throat was dry with crying. His love for us, His obedience to His Father, surmounted all. He carries off the victory by submission, and takes His seat in a glory exalted in proportion to the greatness of His abasement and obedience, the only just reward for having perfectly glorified God where He had been dishonoured by sin. The joy and the rewards that are set before us are never the motives of the walk of faith-we know this well with regard to Christ, but it is not the less true in our own case-they are the encouragement of those who walk in it.
Jesus, then, who has attained the glory due to Him becomes an example to us in the sufferings through which He passed in attaining it; therefore we are neither to lose courage nor to grow weary. We have not yet, like Him, lost our lives in order to glorify God and to serve Him. The way in which the apostle engages them to disentangle themselves from every hindrance, whether sin or difficulty, is remarkable; as though they had nothing to do but to cast them off as useless weights. And in fact, when we look at Jesus, nothing is easier; when we are not looking at Him, nothing more impossible.
There are two things to be cast off: every weight, and the sin that would entangle our feet (for he speaks of one who is running in the race). The flesh, the human heart, is occupied with cares and difficulties; and the more we think of them, the more we are burdened by them. It is enticed by the object of its desires, it does not free itself from them. The conflict is with a heart that loves the thing against which we strive; we do not separate ourselves from it in thought. When looking at Jesus, the new man is active; there is a new object, which unburdens and detaches us from every other by means of a new creation which has its place in a new nature: and in Jesus Himself, to whom we look, there is a positive power which sets us free. It is by casting it all off in an absolute way that the thing is easy-by looking at that which fills the heart with other things, and occupies it in a different sphere, where a new object and a new nature act upon each other; and in that object there is a positive power which absorbs the heart and shuts out all objects that act merely on the old nature. What is felt to be a weight is easily cast off. Everything is judged of by its bearing on the object we aim at. If I run in a race and all my thought is the prize, a bag of gold is readily cast away. It is a weight. But we must look to Jesus. Only in Him can we cast off every hindrance easily and without reservation. We cannot combat sin by the flesh.
But there is another class of trials that come from without: they are not to be cast off, they must be borne. Christ, as we have seen, went through them. We have not like Him resisted even to the shedding of our blood rather than fail in faithfulness and obedience. Now God acts in these trials as a father. He chastises us. They come perhaps, as in the case of Job, from the enemy, but the hand and the wisdom of God are in them. He chastises those whom He loves. We must therefore neither despise the chastisement nor be discouraged by it. We must not despise it, for He does not chastise without a motive or a cause (moreover, it is God who does it); nor must we be discouraged, for He does it in love.
If we lose our life for the testimony of the Lord and in resisting sin, the warfare is ended; and this is not chastisement, but the glory of suffering with Christ. Death in this case is the negation of sin. He who has died is free from sin; he who has suffered in the flesh has done with sin. But up to that point, the flesh in practice (for we have a right to reckon ourselves dead) is not yet destroyed; and God knows how to unite the manifestation of the faithfulness of the new man, who suffers for the Lord, with the discipline by which the flesh is mortified. For example, Paul’s thorn in the flesh united these two things. It was painful to him in the exercise of his ministry, for it was something that tended to make him contemptible when preaching, and this he endured (for the Lord’s sake), but at the same time it kept his flesh in check.
Verse 9. Now we are subject to our natural parents who discipline us after their own will: how much more then to the Father of spirits, [38] who makes us partakers of His own holiness! Observe here the grace that is appealed to. We have seen how much the Hebrews needed warning-their tendency was to fail in the career of faith. The means of preventing this is doubtless not to spare warning, but yet to bring the soul fully into connection with grace. This alone can give strength and courage through confidence in God.
We are not come to Mount Sinai, to the law which makes demands on us, but to Sion, where God manifested His power in re-establishing Israel by His grace in the person of the elect king, when, as to the responsibility of the people, all was entirely lost, all relationship with God impossible on that footing, for the ark was lost; there was no longer a mercy-seat, no longer a throne of God among the people. Ichabod was written on Israel.
Therefore in speaking of holiness he says, God is active in love towards you, even in your very sufferings. It is He who has not only given free access to Himself, by the blood and by the presence of Christ in heaven for us, but who is continually occupied with all the details of your life; whose hand is in all your trials, who thinks unceasingly about you, in order to make you partakers of His holiness. This is not to require holiness on our part-necessary as it must ever be-it is in order to make us partakers of His own holiness. What immense and perfect grace! What a means! It is the means by which to enjoy God Himself perfectly.
Verse 11. God does not expect us to find these exercises of soul pleasant at the moment (they would not produce their effect if they were so): but afterwards, the will being broken, they produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The pride of man is brought down when he is obliged to submit to that which is contrary to his will. God also takes a larger (ever precious) place in his thoughts and in his life.
Verse 12. On the principle then of grace, the Hebrews are exhorted to encourage themselves in the path of faith, and to watch against the buddings of sin among them, whether in yielding to the desires of the flesh, or in giving up Christian privileges for something of the world. They were to walk so courageously that their evident joy and blessing (which is always a distinct testimony and one that triumphs over the enemy) should make the weak feel that it was their own assured portion also; and thus strength and healing would be administered to them instead of discouragement. The path of godliness as to circumstances was to be made easy, a beaten path to weak and lame souls; and they would feel more than stronger souls the comfort and value of such a path.
Grace, we have already said, is the motive given for this walk; but grace is here presented in a form that requires to be considered a little in detail.
We are not come, it says, to Mount Sinai. There the terrors of the majesty of God kept man at a distance. No one was to approach Him. Even Moses feared and trembled at the presence of Jehovah. This is not where the Christian is brought but, in contrast with such relationships as these with God, the whole millennial state in all its parts is developed; according however to the way in which these different parts are now known as things hoped for. We belong to it all; but evidently these things are not yet established. Let us name them: Sion; the heavenly Jerusalem; the angels and general assembly; the Church of the firstborn, whose names are inscribed in heaven; God the Judge of all; the spirits of the just made perfect; Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and finally, the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Sion we have ,spoken of as a principle. It is the intervention of sovereign grace (in the king) after the ruin, and in the midst of theruin, of Israel, re-establishing the people according to the counsels of God in glory, and their relationships with God Himself. It is the rest of God on the earth, the seat of the Messiah’s royal power. But, as we know, the extent of the earth is far from being the limits of the Lord’s inheritance. Sion on earth is Jehovah’s rest; it is not the city of the living God-the heavenly Jerusalem is that, the heavenly capital, so to speak of His kingdom, the city that has foundations, whose founder and builder is God Himself.
Having named Sion below, the author turns naturally to Jerusalem above; but this carries him into heaven, and he finds himself with all the people of God, in the midst of a multitude of angels, the great universal assembly [39] of the invisible world. There is however one peculiar object on which his eye rests in this marvelous and heavenly scene. It is the assembly of the firstborn whose names are inscribed in heaven. They were not born there, not indigenous like the angels, whom God preserved from falling. They are the objects of the counsels of God. It is not merely that they reach heaven: they are the glorious heirs and firstborn of God, according to His eternal counsels, in accordance with which they are registered in heaven. The assembly composed of the objects of grace, now called in Christ, belongs to heaven by grace. They are not the objects of the promises, who, not having received the fulfillment of the promises on earth, do not fail to enjoy them in heaven. They have the anticipation of no other country or citizenship than heaven. The promises were not addressed to them. They have no place on earth. Heaven is prepared for them by God Himself. Their names are inscribed there by Him. It is the highest place in heaven above the dealings of God in government, promise, and law on the earth. This leads the picture of glory on to God Himself. But (having, reached the highest point, that which is most excellent in grace) He is seen under another character, namely, as the Judge of all, as looking down from on high to judge all that is below. This introduces another class of these blessed inhabitants of the heavenly glory: those whom the righteous Judge owned as His before the heavenly assembly was revealed, the spirits of the just arrived at perfection. They had finished their course, they had overcome in conflict, they were waiting only for glory. They had been connected with the dealings of God on the earth, but-faithful before the time for its blessing was come-they had their rest and their portion in heaven.
It was the purpose of God nevertheless to bless the earth. He could not do so according to man’s responsibility: His people even were but as grass. He would therefore establish a new covenant with Israel a covenant of pardon, and according to which He would write the law in the hearts of His people. The Mediator of this covenant had already appeared and had done all that was required for its establishment. The saints among the Hebrews were come to the Mediator of the new covenant: blessing was thus prepared for the earth and secured to it.
Finally, the blood of Christ had been shed on earth, as that of Abel by Cain; but, instead of crying from the earth for vengeance, so that Cain became a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth (a striking type of the Jew, guilty of the death of Christ), it is grace that speaks; and the shed blood cries to obtain pardon and peace for those who shed it.
It will be observed that although speaking of the different paths of millennial blessing, with its foundations, all is given according to the present condition of things, before the coming of that time of blessing from God. We are in it as to our relationships; but the spirits of the just men of the Old Testament only are here spoken of, and only the Mediator of this new covenant: the covenant itself is not established. The blood cries, but the answer in earthly blessing has not yet come. This is easily understood. It is exactly according to the existing state of things, and even throws considerable light on the position of the Hebrew Christians and on the doctrine of the epistle. The important thing for them was, that they should not turn away from Him who spoke from heaven. It was with Him they had to do. We have seen them connected with all that went before, with the Lord’s testimony on earth; but in fact they had to do at that time with the Lord Himself as speaking from heaven. His voice then shook the earth; but now, speaking with the authority of grace and from heaven, He announced the dissolution of everything which the flesh could lean upon, or on which the creature could rest its hopes.
All that could be shaken should he dissolved. How much more fatal to turn away from Him that speaketh now, than from the commandments even of Sinai! This shaking of all things (whether here or in the analogous passage in 2 Peter) evidently goes beyond Judaism, but has a peculiar application to it. Judaism was the system and the frame of the relationships of God with men on earth according to the principle of responsibility on their part. All this was of the first creation, but its springs were poisoned; heaven, the seat of the enemy’s power, perverted and corrupted; the heart of man on earth was corrupt and rebellious. God will shake and change all things. The result will be a new creation in which righteousness shall dwell.
Meanwhile the first fruits of this new Creation were being formed; and in Christianity God was forming the heavenly part of the kingdom that cannot be moved; and Judaism-the centre of the earthly system and of human responsibility-was passing away. The apostle therefore announces the shaking of all things-that everything which exists as the present creation shall be set aside. With regard to the present fact he says only, “we receive a kingdom that cannot be moved;” and calls us to serve God with true piety, because our God is a consuming fire; not- as people say-God out of Christ, but our God. This is His character in holy majesty and in righteous judgment of evil.
Footnotes for Hebrews Chapter 12
37: It is not insensibility to them, but, when they are felt to be there, looking from them to Christ. This is the secret of faith. “Be careful for nothing” need not have been said, if nothing had been there calculated to awaken care. Abraham considered not his body now dead.
38: “Father of spirits” is simply in contrast with “fathers of our flesh.”
39: The word here translated “assembly” was that of all the states of Greece; that of the “firstborn” is the word for the assembly of citizens of any particular state.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 14
FOURTH SECTION
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A COMPREHENSIVE APPEAL, BASED ON THE PRECEDING RETROSPECT
I
In possession of such examples, and looking away to Jesus Himself, the readers must maintain, with steadfastness, the struggle that awaits them
Heb_12:1-3
1Wherefore, seeing we also are [let also us, being] compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us [om. let us] lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience [steadfastness] the race [contest,ἀγῶνα] 2that is set before us, Looking [away] unto Jesus the author [Leader] and finisher [Perfecter] of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the [a] cross, despising the shame [making light of shame], and is set down [hath sat down]1 at the right hand of the throne of God. 3For consider him that [hath] endured such contradiction of [ὑπό, by, from] sinners against himself,2 lest ye [in order that ye may not] be wearied and faint [ἐκλυόμενοι, relaxing, fainting] in your minds.
[Heb_12:1.—Τοιγαροῦν, therefore, weighty and impressive in classical Greek; τοι probably for τῷ, by this, γάρ, for, οὗν, then, now; the whole=for by this now, hence, therefore.—καὶ ἡμεῖς, let also us; ἡμεῖς, emphatic; in E. V., the emphasis partly given in the “we also.”—τοσοῦτον, etc., having so great a crowd of witnesses encompassing us, scil., like the spectators in the stadium, but μάρτυρες, having probably a double reference to their character as spectators, and as witnesses to the faith. The Greek word, like the English, has both meanings, and probably for the same reason, viz., that a witness must naturally have been a beholder of that to which he witnesses.—ὄγκον, bulk, weight, unnatural swelling or protuberance; and may refer primarily to unnatural bulk of the body itself; then to extraneous burdens.—εὐπερίστατον, probably easily placing itself around, easily besetting,—δἰ ὑπομονῆς, by means of steadfastness, through, in the midst of, steadfastness, hence taken adverbially, steadfastly, perseveringly.
Heb_12:2.—ἀφορῶντες, looking away, ἄρχηγόν, file-leader, captain (Heb_2:10), τελειωτήν, perfecter.—ἀντί, over against, in return for, in exchange for, hence here, in consideration of.—ὐπέμεινεν σταυρόν, endured a cross.—αἰσχύνης καταφρονήσας, making light of shame, not specifically, the shame of the cross, but shame taken abstractly.—κεκάθικεν, has sat down, and still holds his seat.
Heb_12:3.—ἀναλογίσασθε, not adequately rendered by English, consider (which is used elsewhere for κατανοῶ, etc.), and difficult to express in English; think over analogously, or by way of comparison; Beng.: “comparatione instituta cogitate;” τὸν ὑπομεμενηκότα, him who hath endured (Perf.); not merely suffered (πάσχειν), but stood under, abided.—ταῖς ψυχ. ἐκλυόμενοι. fainting in your souls.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_12:1. Therefore let also us.—Τοιγαροῦν (familiar in classical Greek, but in the N. T. confined to this passage and 1Th_4:8) connects with the preceding O. T. examples the following exhortation to like conduct: the exhortation being couched in imagery, and technical expressions drawn from the Grecian games, with whose usages the Jews were sufficiently familiar. The phrase νέφος μαρτύρων at the outset, containing an allusion to this imagery, although it is rendered distinct only by the more explicit reference which follows. The sum of the passage is this: The capital thought expressed by the verb τρέχωμεν is an exhortation to the race, while the two participial clauses with ἔχοντες and ἀποθέμενοι intimate, the former what we possess for our incitement in the enveloping cloud of witnesses, and the latter, what we must previously have done to our persons in order to facilitate our progress. Unquestionably, now, δἰ ὑπομονῆς attached to τρέχωμεν, as more specially characterizing the race, looks back to Heb_10:36, and alike the preëminence given to πίστις in Heb_12:2, and the τοιγαροῦν of Heb_12:1, show a clear reference to Hebrews 11. Yet all this does not require us, with Lün., to explain μάρτυρες exclusively of witnesses of faith. On the one hand, we must not overlook the fact, that the persons signalized in Hebrews 11 are designated as those who, on account of their faith, have received a good report, or testimony (not as those who have borne it), Heb_11:2; Heb_11:4-5; Heb_11:39; and on the other, we must remember that here, at Heb_12:2, the eyes of those running are turned to Jesus, as ἀρχηγός and τελειωτής of faith, and this in such a way that the ἀφορῶντες standing coordinate with ἔχοντες forms a second ground of exhortation to zeal in the race, and the ὑπομονή of Jesus is evolved from His history, thus brought into relation to the imagery of the stadium. The expositor, therefore, may be justified in taking the cloud of μαρτύρων, lifted above the earth, not, indeed, exclusively (with Bleek, De Wette, Thol., Bisp., etc.), but still primarily, as witnesses, or spectators of the struggle, and treat its meaning of witnesses of faith as not, indeed, properly combining itself with the former (with Del., Riehm, Alf.), nor again as entirely merged and lost in it. For the question is not at all one of mere spectators, but of sympathizing witnesses, witnesses who have been tried in a like conflict with our own, but have already reached the goal of perfection, and whose person and history are precisely on this account, patterns and incitements to us. The διά, with the Gen., with verbs of motion, serves to designate the continuance of the movement, the permanent and habitual character of the act (Bernhardy, p. 239). So here δἰ ὑπομονῆς as διὰ πίστεως, 2Co_5:7.
That easily besets us.—The word εὐπερίστατον is as an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον of doubtful signification. Carpz., Schultz, Stein explain it actively =seducing, enticing; but this sense cannot be established. The signification, easily changing= unstable, movable (Matthäi), is inappropriate. The absence of the object prevents our taking it actively; and since elsewhere all derivations from ἴστημι have either an intransitive or passive meaning, this word can scarcely constitute an exception. The passive meaning, however, easily got around, avoided, or easily encompassed=overcome (Chrys., etc.), is far-fetched, and unsuited to the context. The same is true of Ernesti’s explanation; eagerly encompassed and thronged, hence, universally prized and beloved. We must therefore go back to the middle signification, and may either, with John Gerh., Bl., De W., Lün., Riehm, etc., refer it to sin, like a garment closely and constantly encompassing and hindering the runner; or (with Anselm, Horneius, Calv., Grot., Ebr., Del., etc.) to the fact that it everywhere easily besets us, and subtly encompasses us, so as to hinder and obstruct our way. A recurrence to the noun περίστασις for the sense, easily involving us in evil, plunging us into danger, creating hinderances (Theophyl., Beng., and others), is totally unnecessary. Calv., Chemnitz, Seb. Schmidt, and others, refer the word too restrictedly to hereditary sin, implied also in Luther’s rendering, “which ever cleaves to us.” Bugenhagen renders more correctly, “semper oppugnans;” and in part, Œcolamp., who, however, reduces the force of his rendering peccatum quod nos proxime circumstat, by the added clause, “sive tenaciter nobis inhæret.” The rendering of Grynæus, “ad nos circumcingendos proclive,” reaches about the exact idea.—For giving to ὄγκος the figurative meaning of self-sufficiency, high-mindedness (Beng., and others), we have no warrant from the context.
Heb_12:2. The Leader and Perfecter of faith.—ʼΑρχηγός denotes not merely the originator, who works in us the beginning of faith (Chrys., Erasm., Lün., and the majority), but, as at Heb_2:10, the leader, marshaller, who, in the exhibition of patient and victorious faith, has preceded us, as a pattern and an aid, comp. Heb_2:13; Heb_3:2. “How were it possible that faith could not be predicated of Jesus? For between Him and His eternal and strictly divine life had His earthly life, having become by the power of sin and wrath a thick prison wall, placed itself as a wall of partition, which, until it was actually broken through and done away, was non-existent only to His far-reaching and transcending faith—for that faith, by virtue of which, even in the very midst of the darkness of utter desertion, He could still call God “His God!” So soon as we recognize in its terrible and deadly earnestness the self-abnegation of the eternal Son, we cannot wonder that, while that state continued, the author designates faith as the bond between Him and God” (Del.). The train of thought involves the idea that Jesus also, by enduring to the end, set forth and made manifest faith in its perfection (Riehm). It is not enough to say with Del. that Jesus, through affliction, entering into glory, has obtained for us ultimate salvation, styled, 1Pe_1:9, to τὸ τέλος τῆς πίστεως. When faith is ascribed to Jesus Christ it must, in His person, in accordance with His uniformly developed character (Heb_5:8-9), bear the stamp of perfection. Thus τελειωτής receives its usual transitive signification. And the sentiment may well be that in His display of faith Jesus also in His own person brought it to perfection (Theod., Beng., Bl., De W., Thol., Ebr., Bisp., etc.), and not merely that He brings it to perfection in us (Chrys., Lün., Del., etc.). Some, with Grot., take the idea of =τελειωτής, too narrowly, as referring to the Judge in the games (=βραβεύς).
For the joy that was set before him.—The joy refers not merely to the finished work of redemption, and the blessings it brings to men (Theodoret): it is the heavenly joy, the obtaining of which was to be the reward of Jesus’ suffering on the cross (Primas. and the most). This idea of ἀντί is demanded by the connection. From a misconception of it have arisen the renderings; “instead of the heavenly glory which He had as the preëxistent and premundane Logos (Pesh., Greg. Nazianz., Beza, etc.); or: “instead of the worldly joys and pleasures which it was in His power to enjoy” (Calv., Carpz., Stein, Bisp., etc.; or: “instead of that freedom from earthly suffering which, as the sinless One, He might have secured for himself” (Chrys., Calov, etc.).
Heb_12:3. For consider him, etc.—ʼΑναλογίζεσθαι expresses a consideration that compares and weighs. The hortatory ἀφορῶντες, looking away, which “implies the concentration of the wandering gaze into a single direction,” assigns the ground or condition of the preceding admonition; and this again now itself assumes the form of an exhortation. The words ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν are not (with Luth., Beng., etc.) to be connected with κάμητε, but with ἐκλυόμενοι (Bez., Bl., and the most), which would otherwise form an awkward and dragging close.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Without steadfastness of faith the goal is not to be attained. But this steadfastness shows itself not merely as the power of unfailing patience in suffering, and as unbending firmness in trials, but also, as courageous persistency in the noblest striving, and as unyielding exertion in struggling for the highest goal.
2. Since without such exertion, the Christian’s life-race cannot be happily terminated, it becomes the duty of self-preservation to divest ourselves of every thing which obstructs these endeavors, and hinders our progress to the goal. But that which most hinders our progress is sin, which partly cleaves to us by nature, as an oppressive burden, and a dragging fetter, and partly, whithersoever we turn, encounters us, and seeks to block up our way.
3. The most powerful incitement, and the surest means against that relaxing of effort which has its ground in spiritual feebleness, is an uninterrupted looking to Jesus, the perfected hero of faith, the greatest sufferer, the perfect conqueror, the theanthropic helper. “He has preceded us in the race of faith, and has opened the way, in commencing for us the struggle of faith. But He is also at the same time the perfecter of faith, infusing by His redemption into the believing combatants the power to achieve all and to bear off the victory.” Thus Von Gerlach, not incorrectly, and yet not exhaustively, for Jesus is a, pattern and helper in our race and conflict of faith, only in so far as in His own life He has wrought out and exhibited the personal living image of this course and conflict in its entire perfection. The idea that Jesus is to be regarded merely as an object, and not also as a subject, of faith, entirely destroys, when logically carried out, alike the reality of His history and the genuineness of His moral and religious perfection, and thus comes into direct conflict, not merely with the representations of the evangelists, as, for example, respecting our Saviour’s life of prayer, but also the entire conception and scope of our Epistle. For this in the very passage before us runs a parallel between our struggle with the adversaries of the Gospel and the struggles of the Redeemer, and also in the case of Jesus it regards His continuance in the conflict as the condition of his τελείωσις, which again harmonizes entirely with the representation given at Php_2:9 (comp. Thol.).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The witnesses, the enemies, and the auxiliaries of our conflict of faith.—The Christian’s course of life, a course of suffering, and a race for victory.—Jesus the archetype and prototype of believers who go through suffering to glory.—Steadfastness in faith, in its necessity, its difficulty, and its practicability.—What occasions us to faint, and what secures us against it.—The greatest sufferer is the most valiant hero. He who is most disciplined can best help others.—How they who are withdrawn from us still remain near to us.
Starke:—What noble incitements have we in our conflict of faith! Christ who has preceded us in it, and supplies us with all power for it; a cloud of witnesses of faith, who have set us an example in this conflict; and the benefit of this conflict, whose fruit is eternal bliss.—Sin must be borne as a life-long companion, even by the children of God, and they have therein an enemy on which they may exercise their spiritual knighthood.—Although sin cleaves to man, it is not the essence of man; hence in heaven the elect are perfect.—God Himself arranged the knightly combat and the place of the tournament; on this every Christian must plant himself, and display his deeds of Christian prowess.—In the work of salvation every thing depends on Jesus.—The best lightening of the burden of the cross is that thou look away from it unto Jesus.—If thou hast not joy in the world, rejoice in thy cross; speedily enough thou wilt attain to true joy and glory.—It is the nature of man to shrink from the cross; hence we need to arouse and incite ourselves to the bearing of the cross that is so useful to us.—If we are assailed on account of our right doing in Christ, we should console ourselves with the example of Christ, strengthen our courage, and remember that we shall be abundantly rewarded in heaven (Mat_5:11-12).—However much we may suffer for the name of Christ, Christ has still suffered far more for our sakes.
Rieger:—Faith does not sleep, but watches and runs; yet neither does it hasten; but it waits in patience, and thus the prescribed conflict is accomplished, extremes on both sides avoided, and the way of truth preserved.—Faith looks to Jesus Christ, and is thus drawn into his footsteps.
Hahn:—Presumption and timid unbelief are the two capital faults against which patience alone can aid by preserving us in true moderation, and in the middle path.
Heubner:—The true use of biblical types and patterns is not idle and unfruitful contemplation, but imitation.—Sin is the heaviest burden that drags us down to earth.—Christian virtue is a free, cheerful wrestling and running after the heavenly jewel. The spirit must be deaf to a certain shame; the bearing of such shame leads to the highest honor.—That which allures and misleads in sufferings is this, that we must allow ourselves to find pleasure in those who are sinful and unworthy.
Menken:—Walk like Jesus! and that thou mayest walk like Him, walk with Him; and thus-shalt thou walk to Him.
Harless (IHebrews Heb_12:5):—Wherein lies the courage of a true Christian?
Gerok:—The glorious cloud of witnesses about the throne of the Redeemer of the world: 1. their bloody wounds; 2. their glorious banner; 3. their heavenly crowns.
G. von Zetzschwitz (Testimonies of the good Shepherd, 1864):—Looking to Jesus is our comfort and victory in all conflicts and sufferings. For looking to Jesus involves 1. at the commencement of the struggle, looking immediately to the victorious issue: 2. if it continues long, seeing before us the highest model of patience; 3. recognizing in suffering itself a comforting seal of our Divine sonship.
Footnotes:
[1]Heb_12:2.—The Perf. κεκάθικεν has the sanction of all the uncials and most of the minusc., as against the Rec. ἐκάθισεν. [The Eng. ver. correctly, as to the sense, is set down].
[2]Heb_12:3.—The reading εἰς ἑαυτόν(instead of εἰς αὑτόν or εἰς αὑτόν, which is found in D***. K. L., and nearly all the minusc, is directly sustained by A. and the Vulg.; indirectly by the senseless plurals, εἰς ἑαυτούς.in D*. E*., Pesh. and Sin.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–15 Looking unto--literally, "Looking from afar" (see on Heb 11:26);…
Looking unto--literally, "Looking from afar" (see on Heb 11:26); fixing the eyes upon Jesus seated on the throne of God.
author--"Prince-leader." The same Greek is translated, "Captain (of salvation)," Heb 2:10; "Prince (of life)," Act 3:15. Going before us as the Originator of our faith, and the Leader whose matchless example we are to follow always. In this He is distinguished from all those examples of faith in Heb. 11:2-40. (Compare Co1 11:1). On His "faith" compare Heb 2:13; Heb 3:12. Believers have ever looked to Him (Heb 11:26; Heb 13:8).
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finisher--Greek, "Perfecter," referring to Heb 11:40.
of our faith--rather as Greek, "of the faith," including both His faith (as exhibited in what follows) and our faith. He fulfilled the ideal of faith Himself, and so, both as a vicarious offering and an example, He is the object of our faith.
for the joy . . . set before him--namely, of presently after sitting down at the right hand of the throne of God; including besides His own personal joy, the joy of sitting there as a Prince and Saviour, to give repentance and remission of sins. The coming joy disarmed of its sting the present pain.
cross . . . shame--the great stumbling-block to the Hebrews. "Despised," that is, disregarded.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 1. Wherefore—In view of the facts of the episode…
1. Wherefore—In view of the facts of the episode of chapter 11—the glories of faith and its champions. Let us resume the exhortation begun at Heb_10:19, interrupted by chap. 11, and from this point essentially continued through the remainder of the epistle.
We also—The also connecting the we with the sublime roll of worthies. We, and not the Judaists, are in their line; our faith is their faith.
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A cloud of witnesses— Lunemann denies that the witnesses are represented to be spectators, and so the passage does not, as many think, picture to us a figurative race-course in the campus, with a crowd of departed saints watching us from their high seats while we run the race of faith in which they were our predecessors. Undoubtedly, after the manner of Paul, the word witness, as noun or verb, is, in its different meanings, a reigning word here. The Greek word, obscured in our English translation, appears in Heb_11:2; Heb_11:4-5; Heb_11:39, where the heroes of faith are witnessed or attested by God. Here the witnessed become witnesses; those who were testified to now testify, namely, to the grandeur of the faith. The additional meaning of spectators, namely, of our race, by which they become not only testifiers to the faith, but watchers of our career of faith, is derived from the position assigned them in the picture. So that, triply, they are the witnessed to of God, the witnesses for faith, and the watching witnesses of our faith-course. We run the heavenly race under the eye of the heroes who are attested of God as heroes of the true faith. The word cloud is often used by Greek writers to figure a crowd of men; here, with allusion to the elevated position of the spectators in the heavens, as in a high gallery, around and above the racers.
Every weight—That would impede our fleetness. The Greek word ‘Ογκος denotes a swelling, especially of superfluous flesh; and this the ancient racer removed by fasting and exercise. It, therefore, very strikingly expresses any impediment, intrinsic to the person, to a rapid race. As the Greek word is also applied to the swell of a bombastic style, Bengel interprets here of spiritual pride. The Greek medical writers used the term for all burdening and enfeebling obesity, and recommended gymnastics as its remedy.
So easily beset us—The Greek adjective, ευπαριστατος, may signify either something standing around us, something placing itself around us, or something placed around us. It may figure sin as an enemy surrounding or meeting us whichever way we turn, or as a garment or personal appendage fitted about us. The ancient racer stripped himself of every unnecessary apparel. And so as weight refers to intrinsic and personal impediments, besetment may imply any extraneous surrounding hinderance. With (rather, through) patience—Energetic persistence. We are told (Heb_10:3) of the need of patience as an accompaniment, but here it is the main means or method of running the successful race. We are to put forth all our inherent energy, incited by the divinest motives.
The race—The whole heroic work of faith wrought by the heroes of chap. xi is here compressed into this one conception of race. The witnesses once ran the same race that we now run. Set (or, rather, Greek, lying) before us— The solemn task of our earthly probation.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–15 1–3. An exhortation to patient steadfastness
1–3. An exhortation to patient steadfastness
1. Wherefore] The Greek word is a very strong particle of inference not found elsewhere in the N. T. except in 1Th_4:8.
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seeing we also are compassed] The order of the Greek is “Let us also, seeing we are compassed with so great a cloud of witnesses … run with patience.”
a cloud] A classical Greek and Latin, as well as Hebrew, metaphor for a great multitude. Thus Homer speaks of “a cloud of foot-soldiers.” We have the same metaphor in Isa_60:8, “who are these who fly as clouds” (Heb.). Here, as St Clemens of Alexandria says, the cloud is imagined to be “holy and translucent.”
of witnesses] The word has not yet fully acquired its sense of “martyrs.” It here probably means “witnesses to the sincerity and the reward of faith.” The notion that they are also witnesses of our Christian race lies rather in the word περικείμενον, “surrounding us on all sides,” like the witnesses in a circus or a theatre (1Co_4:9).
let us lay aside every weight] Lit., “stripping off at once cumbrance of every kind.” The word “weight” was used, technically, in the language of athletes, to mean “superfluous flesh,” to be reduced by training. The training requisite to make the body supple and sinewy was severe and long-continued. Metaphorically the word comes to mean “pride,” “inflation.”
and the sin which doth so easily beset us] The six words “which doth so easily beset us” represent one Greek word, euperistaton, of which the meaning is uncertain, because it occurs nowhere else. It means literally “well standing round,” or “well stood around.” (1) If taken in the latter sense it is interpreted to mean (α) “thronged,” “eagerly encircled,” and so “much admired” or “much applauded,” and will thus put us on our guard against sins which are popular; or (β) “easily avoidable,” with reference to the verb peri-istaso, “avoid” (2Ti_2:16; Tit_3:9). The objections to these renderings are that the writer is thinking of private sins. More probably it is to be taken in the active sense, as in the A. V. and the R. V. of the sin which either (α) “presses closely about us to attack us;” or (β) which “closely clings (tenaciter inhaerens, Erasmus) to us” like an enfolding robe (statos chiton). The latter is almost certainly the true meaning, and is suggested by the participle apothemenoi, “stripping off” (comp. Eph_4:22). As an athlete lays aside every heavy or dragging article of dress, so we must strip away from us and throw aside the clinging robe of familiar sin. The metaphor is the same as that of the word apekdusasthai (Col_3:9), which is the parallel to apothesthai in Eph_4:22. The gay garment of sin may at first be lightly put on and lightly laid aside, but it afterwards becomes like the fabled shirt of Nessus eating into the bones as it were fire.
with patience] Endurance (hupomonç) characterised the faith of all these heroes and patriarchs, and he exhorts us to endure because Christ also endured the cross (hupomeinas).
the race that is set before us] One of the favourite metaphors of St Paul (Php_3:12-14; 1Co_9:24-25; 2Ti_4:7-8).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–15 (1) Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about.—Rather, Therefore…
(1) Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about.—Rather, Therefore let us also—since we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses—having put away all encumbrance and the sin . . . run with patient endurance the race that is set before us, looking, &c. (In so difficult a verse as this we need an exactness of translation which might not otherwise be desirable.) It is plain that the chief thought is, “Let us run our race with patient endurance, looking unto Jesus the Author . . . of our faith;” so that here again we have the thought which the writer is never weary of enforcing, the need of faith and patience for all who would inherit the promises. The connection is chiefly with the last verses of Hebrews 11, which are, indeed, a summary of the whole chapter. The purpose of God has been that those who throughout the past ages obtained witness of Him through their faith should not reach their consummation apart from us. To that consummation, then, let us press forward. Present to us in the view of Christ’s accomplished sacrifice, it is all future in regard of personal attainment. As those who have preceded us reached the goal, each one for himself, by faith and patient endurance, so must we. The thought of persevering effort crowned by a recompence of reward (Heb_6:12; Heb_6:18; Heb_10:35-39) very naturally suggested the imagery of the public games (by this time familiar even to Jews), to which St. Paul in his Epistles so frequently alludes. (See 1Co_4:9; 1Co_9:24-27; Php_3:12-14; 1Ti_6:12; 2Ti_4:7-8; comp. Heb_10:32-33.) In these passages are called up the various associations of the great national festivals of Greece—the severe discipline of the competitors, the intenseness of the struggle, the rewards, “the righteous judge,” the crowd of spectators. Most of these thoughts are present here (Heb_12:1-2; Heb_12:4), and new joints of comparison are added, so that the scene is brought vividly before our eyes. It has been often supposed that the word “witnesses” is used in the sense of spectators of the race. To an English reader this idea is very natural (as “witnesses” may simply mean beholders), but there is no such ambiguity in the Greek word (martyres). The Greek fathers rightly understood it to signify those who bear witness, and the chief point of doubt seems to have been whether the sense is general, or whether the word bears its later meaning—martyrs, who have borne testimony with their blood. Those who thus encompass us, a countless “host (a “cloud” of witnesses), have had witness borne to them through their faith, and in turn stand forth as witnesses to faith, bearing testimony to its power and works. One and all ‘they offer encouragement to us in our own contest of faith, and for this reason they are mentioned here. That the idea of the presence of spectators may be contained in the other words, “compassed about with so great a cloud,” is very possible; but no interpretation must be allowed to interfere with the chief thought—that the runner’s steadfast gaze is fixed on Him who has Himself traversed the course before us, and is now the Judge and Rewarder.
Every weight.—The Greek word was sometimes used by Greek writers to denote the excessive size and weight of body which the athlete sought to reduce by means of training; but may also signify the encumbrance of any burden, unnecessary clothing, and the like. It is here best taken in a general sense, as denoting anything that encumbers, and thus renders the athlete less fitted for the race. In the interpretation we might perhaps, think of the pressure of earthly cares, were it not that the writer seems to have in mind the special dangers of the Hebrew Christians. The “divers and strange teachings” spoken of in Heb_13:9, in which would be included the Judaising practices which they were tempted to observe (such as St. Peter described as a “yoke” too heavy to be borne), will probably suit the figure best.
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And the sin which doth so easily beset us.—The last six words are the translation of a single adjective, which does not occur elsewhere. The Greek commentators, from whom we might expect some light cm. the phrase, seem to be entirely reduced to conjecture. Chrysostom, for example, adopts in various places two altogether different meanings, “sin which easily (or, completely) surrounds us,” “sin which is easily overcome.” To these Theophylact adds a third, “sin through which man is easily brought into danger.” The prevailing opinion amongst modern writers appears to be that the word signifies well (or, easily) surrounding; and that the writer is comparing sin with a garment—either a loosely fitting garment by which the runner becomes entangled and tripped up, or one that clings closely to him and thus impedes his ease of movement. This view of the meaning is taken in our earlier English versions, which either follow the Latin (Wiclif, “that standeth about us;” Rhemish, “that compasseth us”), or render the words, the sin that hangeth on, or, that hangeth so fast on. The sense is excellent, but it is very doubtful whether the Greek will admit of such a rendering. Though the exact word is not found elsewhere, there are words closely allied as to the meaning of which there is no doubt Analogy clearly points to the signification much admired (literally, well surrounded by an admiring crowd). It is not impossible that even with this meaning the words “lay aside” or put away (often applied to putting off clothing) might still suggest a garment; if so, the allusion might be to a runner who refused to put off a garment which the crowd admired, though such an encumbrance must cause him to fail of the prize. It is more likely that the writer speaks of sin generally as an obstacle to the race, which must be put aside if the runner is to contend at all. If we look at the later exhortations of the Epistle, we shall find repeated mention of the reproach which the followers of Christ must bear. Even in the history of Moses (Heb_11:26) there are words which suggest the thought. (See also Heb_10:33; Heb_13:13). So in the next verse we read of the cross of Jesus and the shame which He despised. Over against this “reproach” is set the sin which is sure to win man’s favour and applause—the sin of which we have read in Heb_10:26 (comp. Heb_11:25), which, seemingly harmless in its first approaches, will end in a “falling away from the living God.” The rendering with which the Authorised version has made us familiar is full of interest, but cannot (at all events as it is commonly understood) be an expression of the sense intended. Whatever view be taken of the one peculiar word, it does not seem possible that the phrase can point to what is known as a “besetting sin,” the sin which in the case of any one of us is proved to possess especial power.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 The exhortation, begun at Heb_10:19, but interrupted at Heb_11:1…
The exhortation, begun at Heb_10:19, but interrupted at Heb_11:1 by the chapter on faith, is now taken up again with increased force from the array of examples that have been adduced to support it. Observable in the Greek is the fine roll of the majestic and well-ordered phrases with which this chapter begins, as if the writer had felt the dignity of his subject, and the commanding power with which he can now approach it. Even the initiatory word toigaroun , rather than the usual oyen , or oun , or dio , adds to the effect.
Wherefore let us too ("we also," in the A.V, is wrongly placed), seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience (rather, endurance) the race that is sot before us. Christians, still "fighting the good fight of faith," are hero regarded under the image of athletes in the palaestra, contending for a prize. It is a favorite image with St. Paul, not only, we may suppose, because of its appropriateness, but also because of the probable appreciation of it by his readers in consequence of the general interest taken in the famous games. (cf. 1Co_9:24, etc.; 2Ti_4:7) The idea in this first verso is that of a race (trecwmen agwna). The word prokeimenon (tomenon hmin agwna) is the usual one in the ease of a contest appointed in public games, though, of course, otherwise applicable, as in Heb_6:18 and Heb_12:2. "Every weight" (ogkon panta), which we are to "lay aside," or rather put off from us (apoyesyai), means, probably, in the figure, any heavy accoutrement, or other encumbrance, which the runner might have about him. Some, indeed, take ogkon to denote "obesity a sense in which the word is sometimes used, as by Hippocrates, Diodorus, Aelian and think the allusion is to the training required of athletes for getting into condition. But the word apoyemenoi rather suggests as above. In the word amartian , that follows, the figure is dropped, so as to make evident what is meant, but still retained apparently in the epithet euperistaton . This word, which is found nowhere else either in biblical or classical Greek, has to be interpreted from its derivation, the analogy of similar words, and the context. The usual and most probable view is, deriving it from periistasyai , to understand "that which easily surrounds us" (equivalent to thlwv periistamenhn hmav). Thus Chrysostom: Euperistaton gaa pantoyen istamenh emprosyen, upisyen kai outwv hmav kataballousa (Chrysostom, "Hem." 2. on 2 Corinthians). Cf. perikeitai asyeneian . (Heb_5:2) It is true that other verbals, similarly derived from isthmi , or its compounds, are not active, but intransitive or passive; thus peristatov means "surrounded," not "surrounding; aperistatov means "unguarded," i.e. "not surrounded." Still, as such verbals derived from other verbs are often active, this may be so here, and thus have an intelligible sense in connection with the context. We may understand the figure of a race to be still kept in view, with regard to the runner not only laving aside encumbrances, but also stripping himself of his clothes, which would cling round him and impede his course. (The idea of close personal encirclement thus supposed to be expressed by auperistaton seems better to suit the figure, as also the governing verb apoyemenoi , than that preferred by Delitzsch; viz. of sin getting in our road as we run, as might surrounding obstacles in an actual race: "Peecata currentem et implicant ac supplantant, ut prorsus a cursu impediatur vel in medio subsistat ant corruat," Horneius, quoted by Delitzsch.) The application of the whole figure to Christian athletes is not hard to understand. The encumbrances to be laid aside by them, lest they should be weighted in their race, may include old associations, lingering Jewish prejudices, ties to the world, habits and customs which, whether or not in themselves blameless, might prove clogs and hindrances. Then the "easily besetting sin" would be all such as might cling to them personally, whether in the heart or in habits of life; which, if not got rid of, would be ever like an encircling and impeding robe, crippling alacrity and arresting speed. But further, as runners, however unencumbered for the race, require what in modern phrase is called pluck" to keep it up to the end, so with the Christian athlete; for there will always be danger of his flagging as his course goes on under trials and difficulties, and this especially in times of persecution. This further requirement is expressed by di upominhv , "with endurance," i.e. throughout to the end. Thus we have presented to us a grand conception of Christians being as athletes contending on the arena of this present world for the crown of immortality; and, as is expressed at the beginning of the verse, under the eager gaze of a vast multitude of unseen spectators, corresponding to those in the crowded seats, rising higher and higher, of an earthly amphitheatre. These unseen spectators are the innumerable saints before us, who have finished their course and are now at rest, but who are as it were in the air around us, watching us from above with sympathy. The word "cloud" (nefov), though applicable to any great multitude, is peculiarly appropriate here, as suggesting the idea of an aerial company. The word "witnesses," too (marturwn), though here most obviously to be understood in the sense of yeatai , i.e. witnesses of our contest, may be intended to convey also, as it certainly suggests to the mind, its other welt-known meaning that of witnesses to the faith, or martyrs. (cf. Act_22:13 Rev_2:13 Rev_11:3 Rev_17:6) So the Fathers generally understand it here. The saints before us, as they bore witness to God in life, so are conceived as witnesses also of our like witness now, awaiting the day when, "not without us," they shall be finally perfected.
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Vers. 1-3. The life of faith, and its supreme Exemplar.
In these verses the apostle gathers up the practical lesson to be derived from his historical demonstration of the power of faith contained in Hebrews 11. The figure of the passage is that of a race which the believer is required to run, the reference being doubtless to the foot-race in the Grecian games.
I THE CHRISTIAN RACE. (Ver. 1) Glance here at the points of analogy, or truths intended to be taught by this figure. The life of faith is:
1. An arduous struggle. "The righteous is with difficulty saved". (1Pe_4:18) The Christian calling is not a stroll or a saunter, but a race. It entails strenuous effort.
2. A struggle which involves fixedness of aim. It is "set before us." There is a goal to be kept in view, and a prize to be won; and there is, accordingly, a prescribed path of faith and duty.
3. A struggle which involves perseverance. The believer must "run with patience." He must not allow his ardor to decline. He must not desist until he finishes his course.
4. A struggle which will soon be over. "Yet a very little while," and the Christian shall have reached the goal, and won Christ.
5. A public spectacle. "We are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses." We run this race under the eye of God himself. Other spectators are the holy and the fallen angels, "the spirits of just men made perfect," our fellow-believers on earth, and the ungodly world around us.
II THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESSFUL RUNNING. (Ver. 1) The Olympic runner put off his flowing robes, and everything else that might impede his course. So the Christian is to "lay aside,
1. Weights. This word denotes whatever would put one to disadvantage in running, whether it be in itself innocent or not. Of course every evil passion is a weight, which can only clog the believer"s heavenward progress. But even that which is in itself lawful may become, if we abuse it, a heavy load. We may pervert a good gift of God into a dead weight. And some habit which is no hindrance at all to my Christian brother may have proved to be a great spiritual cumbrance to me. There is, e.g. , the weight of prosperity, of care, of sorrow; the weight of worldly business, of earthly ambition, of human affection. "The things which are seen" must not be allowed to lie heavy on the soul, if we would successfully run the Christian race.
2. Sin. This is the essential burden. It "easily besets us," i.e. cleaves to us, wraps itself round us like a cloak, clings to us as a parasitical plant to a tree. It is sin in general which the apostle characterizes as "easily besetting." The adjective in the original does not rotor to the particular sins, whatever these may be, to which individuals are most prone; although, of course, in taking home the exhortation to the conscience, this thought will naturally be suggested. The writer probably had in his mind just now (indeed, be never forgets it throughout this letter) the sin of apostasy the danger to which the Hebrew Christians were exposed of drifting back to Judaism, and thus of" falling away from the living God". (Heb_3:12) This sin, and all others, must be laid aside. If we do not renounce sin, we give up the race.
III ENCOURAGEMENTS TO PERSEVERE IN RUNNING. In the midst of affliction and weariness, as well as of powerful temptations to apostatize, how are our fainting hearts to be revived? Two great motives are presented.
1. The presence, as spectators, of the former heroes of faith. (Ver. 1) The Old Testament saints are "witnesses" now of the race which they once ran themselves. They not only testify to the power of faith; they are also spectators of the struggles and conflicts of their successors. The apostle"s language is not that merely of poetic imagination. He seems to say that "the spirits of just men made perfect" are cognizant of what is done upon the earth, and take an absorbing interest in it. We are to think of them as hovering over us in the heavens. They circle and crowd around us, tier upon tier, on both sides of the race-course. On the one side is the gallery of the saints before the Flood, that of the Hebrew Pilgrim Fathers, of the heroes of the Exodus, of the judges, and of the prophets; while on the other side is the gallery of the apostles, that of the Christian confessors and martyrs, of the missionaries of the Church, and of our own departed friends who have gone to glory. These spectators are a "great cloud multitudinous in number; they are radiant with the brightness of immortality; and, having themselves passed through the same experience as we, they keenly sympathize with us. We should therefore take heart, as we hear their heavenly greetings, and realize the fellowship with us which they claim.
2. The example of Jesus, the Leader and Perfecter of faith. (Vers. 2, 3) While gratefully conscious of the presence of the men of faith, we are to gaze fixedly only upon Jesus. The writer refers to the Savior here in his human nature, as the Pattern Man, and as our supreme Exemplar. His portrait is the grandest in the whole exhibition of the heroes of faith; indeed, none of those in Hebrews 11 can for a moment compare with it. This noblest picture is arranged in two divisions; we see Christ on the one side in his humiliation, and on the other in his exaltation. And the inscription set over it reads thus: "Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith." He is the Author, i.e. Captain, Prince, Head, or Leader, of all the men of faith. He exhibited, during his own earthly life, an absolutely perfect example of trust in God. By faith he waited at Nazareth, with his high destiny stirring in his heart, during thirty years. By faith he assumed the burden of the world"s sin. By faith he conquered Satan in the wilderness. By faith he performed the labors of his three years" active ministry. By faith he endured the agonies of Gethsemane, and the "gainsaying" (ver. 3) of Gabbatha, and the soul-darkness of Golgotha. Jesus did not "shrink back unto perdition," notwithstanding his unparalleled temptations. So he is also the Perfecter of faith;" for in him faith has had its perfect work. No other man will ever appear in our world equal to him as a specimen of faith. Therefore he is our great Model. The early Hebrew Christians were to "consider him." That very "cross" at which they stumbled, he "endured." If they were being treated by "sinners" (ver. 3) as renegades from the religion of Israel, much more had he been. Their sufferings and temptations were not nearly so dreadful as his. Seeing, then, that the Man Christ Jesus, for the sake of the eternal reward in store for him, persevered to the end in running his appointed race, why should any of his followers allow themselves to "wax weary, fainting in their souls"? It was his endurance of the cross that gave him his place "at the right hand of the throne of God;" and all who follow him as their Leader in the race of faith shall eventually sit with him upon his throne.
CONCLUSION.
1. Life or death depends upon whether or not we run the Christian race.
2. Christ will give us strength to run well, if we ask him.
3. He will crown us at the end, bestowing himself upon us as the Prize.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES. Vers. 1, 2. The Christian race.
"Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so, etc. The "wherefore" shows the connection of our text with the preceding chapter. There the writer has exhibited the power of faith in a host of illustrious examples. To the exercise of a like faith in the prosecution of the Christian race he now summons the Hebrew Christians.
I THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS HERE COMPARED TO A RACE. The Christian is represented as a runner competing for the prize; and the writer would arouse him to activity and perseverance by the example of those who have already triumphed, and are now hearing silent but eloquent testimony to the power of faith. The comparison of the Christian life to a race is appropriate and suggestive.
1. A race has its limitations, so has the Christian life. The racer may not run anywhere, but must pursue the course marked out for him. Beginning at the starting-point, he must pursue the definite course until he reach the goal. And in the Christian life "the race is set before us;" it is marked out by the Word of God, by the examples of the faithful who have finished their course, and we may ascertain it with unerring accuracy by marking the footprints of Jesus the great Leader and Perfecter of faith.
2. A race is characterized by intense activities, so is the Christian life. There is no room for sloth or indifference. The Divine life can be maintained only by constant diligence and strenuous effort; and it can be perfected only through conflict and suffering. Our progress in the Christian course is opposed by strong and subtle adversaries, and frequent and formidable difficulties. We have to battle with our foes and grapple with our difficulties, even while running the race that is set before us.
3. A race is characterized by brevity, so is the Christian life upon earth. The race we are running requires intense effort, but only for a short season; the goal will very soon be reached. The whole of our earthly life is but of short duration; and the time of this earnest race is still shorter. What is our life here to eternity? What is the period of effort on the course to the age of rest and reward?
II COMPLIANCE WITH CERTAIN CONDITIONS IS INDISPENSABLE TO SUCCESS IN THIS RACE.
1. We must lay aside every weightcast off everything that encumbers. The reference here is to things which in themselves are not positively sinful, customs and associations which in themselves are innocent, but which may wrap themselves tightly round our heart and impede our progress. "Intercourse and friendship," says Ebrard, "with old Jewish acquaintances, the relations formed by trade and merchandise, might be hindrances of this kind for the readers, and in such a case it was right, and is still right, to break entirely away from such relations, and to get rid of the fetters which they impose as soon as they threaten to become a snare, even though in themselves they should be innocent." Everything that would hinder us in running this race, every weight of cares, of interests, of attachments to the things pertaining only to this life, of relationships which are not favorable to advancement in the race, must be given up, abandoned.
2. We must lay aside the sin which doth so easily beset us," or, the sin which subtly encircles us. " With every one of us there is some sin to which we are especially prone; let us each take heed that we are not hindered in the race by reason of it. There is some weak point in the moral defenses of our nature where the tempter most easily obtains access; to this point, wherever it may be, special attention must be directed. With some it is an ungovernable temper; with others, a strong propensity to avarice; with others, etc. Let every man, by faithful self-examination and by prayer, ascertain his own besetting sin, and seek to be quite free from it.
3. We must run our race with patience. Not simply with patient endurance of the trials which may befall the runner, but with perseverance until the goal is reached. "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," but "he that endureth to the end the same shall be saved." "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." It is only "by patient continuance in well-doing" that "glory and honor and immortality" are won.
III IN THE PROSECUTION OF THIS RACE WE ARE SURROUNDED BY A GREAT HOST OF WITNESSES, OR TESTIFIERS. "We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses." Those who have preceded us in the life of faith in immense numbers surround us as witnesses to the power of faith, as testifiers by their example to the might of that principle by which we are called to run our course successfully, and war our warfare nobly, and do our life work faithfully. The writer would teach us to think often of this great cloud of witnesses, to meditate upon the noble lives and glorious deeds of the true men who have gone before us, that by the remembrance of their trials and triumphs we may arouse ourselves to greater diligence in running the race that is set before us. In them we see what trials can be borne, what victories won, what work accomplished, what characters built up, by faith. If by faith they overcame every difficulty, why should we be discouraged by the difficulties of our course? If by faith they conquered their many and mighty enemies, why should we dread to encounter our foes? If by faith, despite outward opposition and inner weakness, they came off victors in the fight and winners in the race, why should we despond and shrink from the contest? "Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses," etc.
IV IN THE PROSECUTION OF THIS RACE WE ARE SUSTAINED AND ANIMATED BY THE HIGHEST EXAMPLE THE PERFECT EXAMPLE. "Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith," etc. The idea of the writer is not that Jesus Christ is the Producer of faith in us and the Completer of the faith which he has organized. If we translate, "Looking unto the Leader and Perfecter of the faith, even Jesus," we shall perhaps the more readily apprehend the meaning of the text. In the long procession of heroes celebrated for their faith our Lord stands at the head; he is the Leader, and in him faith appears in full and perfected glory. And the text exhorts us to look to him as our great Exemplar, and to draw from him support and encouragement. The example of our Savior is especially sustaining and cheering, for the course he had to run was one of extreme difficulty and danger and suffering; yet he overcame, and finished his course with joy, and gained the highest honors. "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross," etc. (cf. Heb_1:3 Heb_2:9, Heb_2:10) In time of suffering, then, pursue your course "looking unto Jesus," the perfect Example of patience; and in the presence of Gethsemane and Calvary your sufferings will appear slight, and the calm face of the supreme Sufferer will impart patience and power unto you. In seasons of despondency, when faith is weak and your spirit sinks within you, look unto Jesus, and the trust which he exercised and the destiny he attained, and let the bright example brace your heart with courage. In times of exhaustion and weariness, when you faint because of the duties and difficulties of the way, look up to Jesus, and his example will raise and strengthen your powerless hands, and nerve your whole frame with new energy. And in seasons of temptation look unto him who" resisted unto blood, striving against sin," and yield not in the conflict, give no place to the tempter. Let this be our attitude, "looking unto Jesus." Let the eye of the soul be fixed upon him as our Pattern and Helper; so shall we finish our course with joy, and "receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away. W.J.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Ver. 1. The cloud of witnesses.
I THE NUMBER OF THE WITNESSES. From many ages, of both sexes, and in all positions of life. Our attention is called, not merely to a cloud, but to so great a cloud. Birds gather together in clouds. And the cloud may be so great as to compel notice. Whether we shall be impressed by the number of the witnesses depends altogether on the spirit in which we consider them. If we are ourselves of a believing disposition, we shall quickly recognize faith in the lives of others. We shall notice faith in the peculiarity of its beginnings, in the nobleness of its progress, and the certainty of its results. By its fruits we shall distinguish faith from credulity. Nor shall we think any the less of it because those who have it lack other elements of life which are valued by the world. Those who come together into so great a cloud of witnesses because they have faith will remain together. They will be found to have other qualities giving union. The figure here employed has already had its correspondence in the expression," Time would fail me to tell." The cloud of witnesses is but another way of saying that God"s true people, the believing host, the children of faithful Abraham, are as the stars of the sky for multitude, the sand by the sea-shore innumerable.
II THE AGREEMENT OF THE WITNESSES. They are not like witnesses in a court of justice, for there some are on one side and some on the other. All have the same story to tell. Faith came to them with a distinct imperative word. The course they took was not one that could be commended by reasons suited to the common understanding of men. Their life, to a certain extent, has been separate from men, and not infrequently men have opposed them. But always they have the same story to tell as to results. The way of the wicked perishes. It begins with self-indulgence and self-confidence, with the fear of man and after man"s wisdom, and so it goes on till the hour of exposure comes. But the way of the believer is out of darkness into light, out of the midst of difficulties and toils into a path where he can run with enlarged heart.
III THE MATTER OF THEIR TESTIMONY. They have to speak of God"s dealings, God"s guiding. Their lives are set before us as giving occasion to manifest the Divine character. Everywhere in Scripture just those things are recorded which through human lives show Divine working. The testimony of believers is ever valuable, just in proportion as they make it clear that it is not they who live, not they who work, but God, Christ, living and working in them.
IV THE MANNER OF THEIR TESTIMONY. It is given unconsciously. It is given out of the past and as we read it in the page of history. Abel, being dead, yet speaketh. It is Abel, dying because of his faith, who impresses us. Oftentimes in the proceedings of human justice that which helps most to a right decision is some silent witness, in the shape of a paper or a weapon, or some such article, the existence and position of which are incompatible with any but a certain conclusion. It has not been sworn, and it cannot be perjured; it says more than a thousand sworn witnesses can say. The great believers of old may be helpers of our faith, simply by our taking the trouble to consider what we know about them in the humble, earnest spirit of the seeker after truth.
V THE CONSEQUENT RESPONSIBILITY. It is a serious matter to be encompassed by this cloud of witnesses. They may rise up in judgment against us, whereas they were not given for this, but to help us into like precious faith. And as the world goes on the matter becomes more serious still. The cloud, large in the days of this writer, is immensely larger now. Luminous then, what a heart of light it now has, radiating forth its truth and encouragement for all who have eyes to see! Y.
The appointed struggle.
I THE FIGURE EMPLOYED. The particular form of it is unfamiliar, but the essence is familiar enough, and likely long to be so. We are led to think of the natural man, ambitious to triumph by virtue of physical or intellectual strength. His motive is self-regarding, yet it leads him to a measure of self-restraint; indeed, he will go extraordinary lengths in checking self-indulgence if only he may stand first when the struggle is done. A man may be very low in the scale of humanity and yet have the spirit of emulation in him very strong. Now, by this figure, men thirsting for fame and honor have their thoughts turned away from low aims to the highest aim a man can cherish; from aims that bring envy, waste of human faculties, and ultimate disappointment, to an aim which may bring to every man the richest, the most abiding of gains without the slightest loss to any brother man. While there is a stimulus in this exhortation for every Christian, it is specially directed to ambitious climbing, striving men. It tells them to relinquish purposes that at the very best can bring them only a corruptible crown, and bend their energies to the attainment of that divinely produced joy which is set before them even as it was before Jesus. We who are not engaged in the struggle set before us here need to ask what sort of a struggle we are engaged in, We are summoned from the lower to the higher.
II THE AIM PROPOSED TO US. The struggle is the thing mentioned, but behind the struggle stands that for which the struggle is engaged in. Each man, looking at possibilities through his natural eyes, has his own ideal of how to reward the exercised faculties of life. So many kinds of men, so many ideals. But God our Maker has also his ideal for the universal man. His purpose is that the whole man should win a victory. Not that the intellect should be victorious while the spiritual nature lies crushed and dishonored. Jesus had a joy set before him; so also have we. And even as the joy of this world"s successes lies at the end of a long and toilsome struggle, so it must be in the joy of spiritual success. We put struggles before ourselves in order to satisfy ambition; God puts a struggle before us to comply with a sense of duty. Here is the proposition of this arduous career put right before us in our onward path. Shall we accept it or shall we evade it? We cannot very well ignore it.
III PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS. We are to lay aside every weight. Wherein a weight consists is to be determined by its character in relation to the result of the struggle. The moment anything binders progress in spirituality it is to be forsaken. As to the easily besetting sin, perhaps that is best taken not as indicating something different from the weight, but in apposition to it. The variety of expression enforces the one paramount duty of putting aside everything, external and internal, which would tend to failure. The easily besetting sin is generally spoken of as being unbelief. But it is not enough to look at unbelief on its negative side; we must look at it positively as a state of the heart wherever it goes out after things that are seen, mere appearances, satisfactions of the fleshly appetite. Then, when obstacles are thrown off, we can patiently pursue our path. We shall need patience because there will be external obstacles a world not sympathizing with us, and indeed crossed and thwarted by us in our steady adherence to the course God has marked out. But the patience must be that quality which in the New Testament is specially dignified by the name "the patience of hope." The toil, the strain, the seasons of weariness and of special difficulty, must all be cheered by the well-grounded hope of ultimate victory. The dreadful thing in all struggles is when they end in failure. In the race run by the Christian all succeed. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15 Compassed about with so great a cloud
Heb_12:1-2
Compassed about with so great a cloud
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Great men:
The witnesses that God has set before the eyes of men are twofold, the witness of greatness and the witness of goodness, the witness of the hero and the witness of the saint.
To name these two together is at once to put the one far above the other. Without any argument we feel at once that the hero and the saint belong to different spheres, the hero to nature, the saint to religion; the hero to the earth, the saint to heaven if we examine what sort of a man we call great, we shall always find that it is one who leads his fellow-men. We do not call a man great simply for cleverness, nor for worldly success, the fruit of cleverness. Nor, again, do we call a man great for exceeding goodness, if he have nothing in him which makes that goodness a guide, and not merely a reverenced wonder to his fellows. A great man is he who stands out from others, not for some accidental difference, but for something which makes others follow his lead, acknowledge his power, accept his teachings, admire his course. Such a man will be sure to be marked with these characteristics; he will have a large mind, a strong conviction, and a firm will.
1. He must have a large mind to take in, and feel in full force the truths or the impulses which are dimly and dumbly moving in the minds of his fellow-men. This is the necessary condition of his being able to take the lead. In the great man all that is narrow and confined to himself is overpowered by what is large, what is shared and felt by thousands beside. He has room in his heart for many interests, for many impulses, for many aims; and he has that within him that shall comprehend and reconcile them all into one great purpose.
2. To this large soul he must add deep convictions. For he will be sure to meet with such obstacles as none but leaders ever meet. He will be aiming at that which is to last for centuries; but he will find straight in his path the passing passions of the day, roused to fiercer enmity by their own shallowness. Even when he is following the deep current, which none but himself is deep enough to feel, he will be stemming all the shallower currents which bear on their surface those that are living in his day. Hence it often happens that as long as he lives he sees no signs of success. He works his work; he sows his seed; but he never sees the harvest. What shall carry a man through all this? Nothing but faith. Be the great man a good man or a bad; be he like Elijah, a prophet and a faithful servant; or be he like Balaam, a prophet and a traitor, nothing can carry him through what he must often encounter but a deep conviction of the truth by which he lives; that truth, whatever it may be, of which he is the messenger.
3. The great man will need, besides a large heart and a deep conviction, a strong will. This is so indispensable a condition of greatness that we frequently fancy that strength of will is almost the whole of greatness, and are prone to admire that beyond all else that we see in a great man. And, indeed, if not the highest element in a great mans nature, it is yet the one which saves the others from downright degradation. What spectacle is more contemptible than clear knowledge combined with weakness? What character is more universally despised than that of a coward? So absolutely necessary is courage to all true service that we have been made by God with a natural admiration even of wicked courage, in order, no doubt, that we should learn early to put on a piece of armour which we cannot do without, and that even nature should assist us in the first element of our spiritual lesson. What is the crown that must be added to all these qualities to make the great man true to his own greatness? It is loyalty to his true Master. (Bp. Temple.)
The cloud of witnesses
I. THE WITNESSES. And what are the truths they bear witness to?
1. They bear witness to the fact that their confidence in God was not misplaced. A man may fail, but God never.
2. They bear witness to the sufficiency of Divine grace. They had no more natural goodness than we; but they overcame it all, and it was in the strength of the Lord they did so.
3. They bear witness to the faithfulness of God to His promises.
II. THE APOSTLES ADVICE.
1. We are to lay aside every weight. I need scarce name particular things. In some it is vanity, in others worldliness, in others unlawful pleasure, in others a violent temper, others unholy attachments. It is, in fact, whatever deadens thy soul, and holds thee back when thou shouldest be pressing forward to the skies.
2. We are to renounce the sin that doth so easily beset us. To beset, means to surround, and the sin that so easily besets us is that to which we are most liable. Very often, indeed mostly, it is that sin to which we were most given before our conversion: as when a breach is made in a wall, it is easier to effect another breach in that place, although it may be built up again, than where stone has never been dislodged. With different constitutions, and with different ages, there are different easily besetting sins. With youth it is often passion--evil desire. With age it is often fretfulness--peevishness. With the rich it is often pride and grasping of power; with the poor it is often repinings against providence. With the healthy it is often forgetfulness of God, and of their latter end; with the sick it is often rebellion against Him who lays on the rod.
3. We are also to run with patience the race set before us. If a thing take us a long time in doing, we are inclined to be impatient about it. Or, if the word may be more properly translated, perseverance. Then, if a journey is long, we are generally inclined to grow weary and loiter by the way. But if the road is long and dusty, we are to be patient. If the trial is severe, we are to be patient, and not allow our souls to be agitated. Sometimes the blessing we expect may be delayed, but we are to be patient in waiting for it. Sometimes our persecutions may be fierce indeed, but we are to be patient whilst we endure them. This grace is like the rivet that binds all the machinery together.
III. WE HAVE A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE SET BEFORE US. Looking unto Jesus. Christ endured the Cross, and He endured it patiently. (W. G.Pascoe.)
Good men in both worlds
I. THE GOOD THAT HAVE DEPARTED TO THE CELESTIAL WORLD.
1. They live.
2. They live in vast numbers. Cloud.
3. They live as spectators of their surviving brethren on earth. Witnesses. Though with the politics, commerce, and crafts of the world they have nothing to do, they are intensely alive to its spiritual interests and activities.
II. THE GOOD THAT ARE STILL LIVING ON THE EARTH.
1. Their life is like a racecourse. They both have their limitation, rules, intense activity, speedy termination.
2. Their life, to realise its end, requires great attention.
(1) There must be a divestment of all encumbrances.
(2) There must be a freeing oneself from besetting sin.
(3) There must be the exercise of great patience of soul in our efforts,
3. Their life should be salutarily influenced by the good who have departed. Wherefore, seeing, etc.
III. THE GLORIOUS REDEEMER OF THE GOOD IN BOTH WORLDS. Looking unto Jesus, dec. Christ is the chief example of human goodness.
1. He was pre-eminent as an example in the spirit that inspired Him. Self-oblivion.
2. Preeminent in the grandeur of soul with which He met unparalleled sufferings.
3. Pre-eminent in the exaltation which He ultimately met. (Homilist.)
Immortality
I. To any thoughtful and aspiring person, sensitive to fine influences, desirous of mental and moral advancement, eager for opportunities for culture or for usefulness, THERE IS ALWAYS A SENSE OF EXHILARATION IN FEELING HIMSELF CONNECTED WITH A VARIOUS, SPLENDID, WIDELY-EXTENDED, SOCIAL SYSTEM. It impels naturally to larger effort, gives expansiveness to the whole plan of life, furnishes incentives to nobler personal aspiration and hope. It dignifies, instead of dwarfing, the individual personality. It widens the whole horizon of thought and expectation, and makes one more sensible of both the responsibility and the privilege of life.
II. It is the privilege of the Christian to feel and know that he is associated NOT ONLY WITH SUCH SOCIETIES ON EARTH, BUT WITH VAST AND GLORIOUS AND PURE REALMS OF LIFE WHICH EYE HATH NOT YET SEEN, and of which there comes no whisper to us through the silent blue, yet with which our relations are already intimate, into which we are to pass at death, and in which we are to dwell thenceforth immortally. It cannot be said that there is a prophecy of this in human nature; but there is an instinct in human nature which prepares us for the reception of it when announced to us in the gospel. We can conceive of ourselves in any relation to others, imaginable--in any place on earth, in any position- but we cannot conceive of ourselves as non-existent.
III. THE MORE CLEARLY WE APPREHEND THESE HIGHER REALMS OF LIFE, THE MORE DEEPLY WE FEEL OUR PERSONAL AND VITAL RELATIONS TO THEM, THE MORE WILL THEY, BY THE INFLUENCE WHICH FALLS FROM THEM, ENRICH AND EXALT OUR DAILY LIFE.
1. For one thing they lessen the attraction of the world upon our minds and hearts. In our times this world seems to draw the spirit to itself, almost as the power of gravitation holds the body to the planet. Some months ago we had an ice storm. The gently descending rain froze as it fell, until it covered every tree and shrub with a raiment of brilliancy, as if it had been plaited in diamond and hung with diamond drops. It was superb to look upon, almost an apocalypse of natural beauty. Yet the very splendour broke the tree. The brilliant garniture overwhelmed that which was tender and vital in the shrub which it adorned. So it is with the great and splendid accumulations of wealth and the ornaments of pleasure that are so feverishly and anxiously sought. They destroy in us, often, by their very attainment, that which is finest and grandest in our spiritual nature. How shall we resist this encompassing influence? We cannot resist it by force of will; we might as well try to jump from the planet. We cannot extricate ourselves from the constant social influences which are around us, leading us to these results. We must somehow or other rise above it all. As long as we contemplate that into which we are to enter by and by, we are comparatively careless of that which is beneath. It ceases to make that masterful impression on our spirits which otherwise it had made, and which otherwise it must always make.
2. The contemplation of this superior life inspires, too, the noblest culture of character. As the sunshine of the morning lifts the mists, and reveal the landscape, and clothes it with a mantle of beauty, making the very rock burst into life and surround itself with verdure, so this influence from above, from the celestial realms which we have not reached, but toward which we are tending, and the gates of which Christ opens to us, disperses from the spirit what is malefic or obscure, and prints a new and vital beauty on it all.
3. This thought is also a vast incentive to the culture of power in us, of personal, moral, and intellectual power, for which there must be range in those circles of life which we are to join, if we are the disciples of the Divine Lord.
IV. Here, then, you see at once THE MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY OF SCEPTICAL THOUGHT, WHICH TENDS TO OBSCURE THIS VISION OF THE WORLD TO COME, and to make it signify a mere fancy, a mere dream of the worlds youth, which, as the race goes on, will more and more be dissipated, as the tinted clouds of morning disappear when the sun rides higher and higher to the meridian.
V. HERE IS THE GLORY OF THE GOSPEL. I do not find the most striking prophecies of the future life in any mere words of Scripture. I find them in the fact that He who had the power of miracle in His hands surrendered Himself to death, that afterward He might open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. There is the supreme glory of the celestial realms manifested to me by the agony of that death! The gospel is not simply a philosophy of religion, or a law of living. It is an apocalypse showing the heavens to us, and bringing thus its Divine benediction on every life. Here is the Divine mission of preaching; here is the beauty of every sacrament; here the glory of every Church. Here is the hidden meaning and blessedness which the thought of heaven brings in the events which seem most painful. So when our beloved friends pass from us; so when misfortunes come upon us; this thought of the higher life comes to cheer and comfort. (R. S. Storrs, D. D.)
The Christian runner in relation to his spectators
I. THE CHRISTIAN RUNNER IS AN OBJECT OF DEEP INTEREST TO HIS SPECTATORS.
1. The position of the spectators. They surround the Christian runner.
2. Their number. Vast.
II. THE CHRISTIAN RUNNER SHOULD PUT FORTH GREAT EFFORTS BECAUSE OF HIS SPECTATORS.
1. He should divest himself of every encumbrance. Ceremonialism, religious errors, business perplexities, fear of man, inveterate prejudices, sinful propensities.
2. He should avoid the sin to which he is most peculiarly prone.
Pride, covetousness, intemperance, evil-speaking, anger.
3. He should maintain great self-possession. Run with patience.
III. THE CHRISTIAN RUNNER HAS AN OBJECT BEFORE HIM, FROM WHICH HIS THOUGHTS SHOULD NOT BE DIVERTED by his spectators. Looking unto Jesus.
1. The work of Jesus.
2. The history of Jesus.
3. The exaltation of Jesus. (Homilist.)
The moral influence of departed saints:
The North American Indians believed that when the flowers faded in the forest and prairie their beauty passed into the rainbow: thus our kindred and companions, the joy and pride of our homes and churches, fade away; but, lifting our eyes, we see our lost ones blossom forth again in the holier beauty of the rainbow about the throne. The text reminds us that these exalted ones exercise towards us a morally helpful influence. We are not to think of our exalted brethren as forming in the midst of heaven a brilliant cloud, admirable in the eye of imagination, yet exercising no real practical influence over the earth; but as a cloud full of mystic rain and dew, imparting life and beauty to those who dwell on the earth. Our beatified friends become our moral helpers.
I. BY DIVERTING OUR ATTENTION FROM THIS TO THE ETERNAL WORLD. As the dove sent from the ark, returning no more, reminded Noah that a new world was blooming for him; so these departed ones who return no more, daily and powerfully remind us that another and brighter world is blooming for us beyond deaths cold flood, and in earnest we prepare to leave this storm-tossed ark. The cloud of witnesses cause us to look above the dust; gazing after their departing forms we find ourselves standing face to face with eternity, and thus acquire the seriousness, spirituality, and strength of the Christian character.
II. BY ENHANCING THE CHARM OF THE CELESTIAL WORLD. The departed saints humanise heaven, interpret it, render it more fascinating. It is true that the grand charm of the skies is the vision and fellowship of the glorious God, yet it is not less true that every saint who passes into paradise invests it with a fresh and powerful influence. Each crowned friend makes us understand heaven better, makes us prize it the more, makes us strive more ardently to reach its bright and wealthy plains.
III. BY INCREASING OUR SENSE OF SELF-RESPECT. Our departed ones are no longer before us in weariness and humiliation, but crowned with inconceivable and unfading splendours; and as we gaze upon them a new conception of our spiritual capacity takes possession of us--we feel that we belong to a race of conquerors and kings. It is said that the Kohei-noor diamond is only half its original size, the other half being in a distant country, where it was found in the possession of some one who used it as a common flint. Thus our churches, our families, are broken into two parts; one portion being exulted to the palace of the skies, the other fragment remaining in this lower realm, and used to ends apparently most commonplace and servile; yet we cannot contemplate the broken jewel, shining in the palace of the King, without thinking more highly of this other portion below, and watching it with intenser care lest its beauty should be dimmed, or its preciousness impaired, or its safety imperilled. Our celestial kinsmen minister to us, for they exalt our conception of the nature we possess, of the inheritance to which we are destined.
IV. BY GIVING US THE SENSE OF AN ABIDING SACRED PRESENCE. The Jewish legend relates that Joseph was saved by the spirit of his mother, when he was tempted to sin in the ]and of Egypt. This legend is founded in the truth that the powerful and blessed memory of our dead is a preservative against sin, a strengthening to virtue. And this is the precise idea of Paul in our text. We are surrounded, says he to his Hebrew brethren, by a great cloud of heroes; let us, under the eyes of these pure, noble, valiant spirits, act a worthy part; let us labour to be as pure, noble, valiant as they were. Thus again are the glorified ones our helpers; these beatified spectators put upon us a sweet constraint to walk as they also walked, so that we may triumph as they also triumphed.
V. BY THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THEIR SYMPATHY. Altered in many respects, the glorified saints have still the same hearts, and profoundly sympathise with us in all our upward struggles. The cloud about us is composed not of cold and curious spectators, but of warm and interested friends. Is not this fact a blessed help to us? The transfigured ones beckon us onward! upward! and the knowledge of this sympathy is to us in the day of tribulation a fountain of strength.
VI. BY STIMULATING OUR HOPE AND COURAGE. Again and again Satan almost paralyses us with his lofty vaunts of the might and majesty of evil. Sin rises before us so strong, so subtle, so mysterious and awful, that we are almost ready to surrender at discretion. The evil of our nature, the evil of the universe, seems well-nigh omnipotent. How fatal is this idea to our spiritual life! Nothing shatters this destructive imagination more than the triumphant death and exaltation of the saints. To see our brother on the crystal walls I our sister crowned with amaranth! our friends with the palm and diadem! how this reassures us! We feel that Satan is not omnipotent, that sin is not invincible, that suffering is not unconquerable. (W. L.Watkinson.)
Lay aside every weight
Weights and sins:
There is a regular series of thoughts in this clause, and in the one or two which follow it. If we would run well, we must run light; if we would run light, we must look to Christ. The central injunction is, Let us run with patience; the only way of doing that is the laying aside all weights and sins; and the only way of laying aside the weights and sins is, looking unto Jesus. Of course, the apostle does not mean some one special kind of transgression when he says, the sin which doth so easily beset us. He is speaking about sin generically--all manner of transgression. It is not, as we sometimes hear the words misquoted, that sin which doth most easily beset us. All sin is according to this passage a besetting sin.
I. THERE ARE HINDRANCES WHICH ARE NOT SINS. Sin is that which, by its very nature, in all circumstances, by whomsoever done, without regard to consequences, is a transgression of Gods law. A weight is that which, allowable in itself, perhaps a blessing, the exercise of a power which God has given us--is, for some reason, a hindrance in our running the heavenly race. The one word describes the action or habit by its inmost essence, the other describes it by its accidental consequences. Then, what are these weights? The first step in the answer to that question is to be taken by remembering that, according to the image of this text, we carry them about with us, and we are to put them away from ourselves. It is fair to say, then, that the whole class of weights are not so much external circumstances which may be turned to evil, as the feelings and habits of mind by which we abuse Gods great gifts and mercies, and turn that which was ordained to be for life into death. The renunciation that is spoken about is not so much the putting away from ourselves of certain things lying round about us that may become temptations, as the putting away of the dispositions within us which make these things temptations. It is an awful and mysterious power that which we all possess, of perverting the highest endowments, whether of soul or of circumstances, which God has given us, into the occasions for falling back in the Divine life. Just as men, by devilish ingenuity, can distil poison out of Gods fairest flowers, so we can do with everything that we have.
II. And now, if this be the explanation of what the apostle means by weights--legitimate things that hinder us in our course towards God--there comes this second consideration, IF WE WOULD RUN, WE MOST LAY THESE ASIDE. There are two ways by which this injunction of my text may be obeyed. The one is, by getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it; and the other is, that feeling ourselves to be weak, we take the prudent course of putting it utterly aside. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Weights
I. THE WEIGHTS--what are they?
1. The weight of unforgiven sin. How that hinders many. You have offended a father or teacher or friend--you have been guilty of disobedience or untruthfulness or dishonesty. How heavy it is! What a weight it is! If it has not been found out it lies like lead on your heart. How it hinders you in everything you put your hands to! Or the fault has been discovered, and you are in disgrace. Your dearest friends are displeased. You feel as if there were a great gulf between you and them. You are unhappy. You cannot get on with anything. You are just like one weighed down under a heavy burden. Whether it is work or play, company or solitude, there is a weight dragging you down in all. Now if it is so with sin as committed against man, what shall we say of sin as committed against God! How different your life would be if your sin were all forgiven; how different your worship would be; how different your work would be!
2. The weight of unsubdued sin. 1 shall try to explain what I mean by this. I shall suppose we are setting out on a long voyage. We have storms and contrary winds to contend with, and sometimes icebergs and dangerous rocks and opposing currents. But we have what is even worse than these. Some of the ships crew are mutinous. They will not obey orders. They try to set the other sailors up against the captain. They damage the ships machinery. They reverse the engines. They put out the fires. They do everything they can to provoke and hinder. And the consequence is, the ships progress is seriously interfered with. Sometimes she comes to a stand altogether. In any case the voyage is slow and uncomfortable, as compared with what it should have been. At times it seems as if all on board must go to the bottom. Now what is wanted is, that the mutineers should be subdued--changed into obedient and right-hearted seamen, or put in irons and kept from doing harm. So long as they are unsubdued they are a weight that seriously hinders. Now, is there no weight, no hindrance of this kind with you? Is there no stubborn will that disobeys, and must needs be broken if things are to get on at all? What of your temper that bursts into passion on the slightest provocation, and in words or looks or actions gets outlet to itself, in a way that may well alarm? What of your pride and vanity? What of your selfishness, that disregards others and is always seeking your own gratification and pleasure? What of secret sins which you try to conceal, but which are always growing stronger, and if unsubdued will go on as they are doing, burning like a fire within, and eating out your very heart and soul? So long as these have the power which they have now, every now and then getting the better of you, your life can neither be happy nor good.
3. The weight of evil habits. I do not refer so much here to single acts that are out and out bad and sinful. I refer more to things that may seem so far harmless at the beginning, but are apt to be repeated and to grow upon one, till they become habits, and rule him and hold him in chains. There is, for instance, the habit of procrastination--of putting off, instead of doing a thing at once. That grows terribly upon one, and becomes a hindrance of a very serious kind. There is the habit of drinking. There is the habit of idle and unprofitable reading, not to speak of what is positively bad. It consumes precious time, it takes away relish for prayer and for the Bible and all solid reading, it excites without doing any good, it takes away the heart from God. There is the habit of keeping company with unprofitable companions.
4. The last weight I shall mention is that of care. Perhaps this may seem not very much in your way, and more for your fathers and mothers. And yet I know even young hearts have their care--about lessons, and work otherwise, often not knowing what to do--with sorrows which are sometimes heavy and bitter enough. I am sure there are none of you who do not know something about these weights, and could tell how they hinder you in what is good. They will have much to do in making you the men and women that you shall be. And hence the great importance of looking at the matter, and that at once.
II. WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH THE WEIGHTS? Our text says they are to be laid aside--put off--cast away. Now the question is, how is this to be done? and to this question I have various answers to give.
1. By coming to Christ. The first weight to be got quit of is that of unforgiven sin, and like Christians burden, that can only be got rid of at the Cross.
2. By drawing power from Christ. It is just like a man with all the resources of the bank at his call. He can have no fear of wanting anything. Christ has all that any of us can need, and He has it for us. Faith is just leaning upon Christ--looking to Christ--drawing upon Christ for everything.
3. By prayer. When we feel our own weakness, what can we do but cry to the Strong for strength?
4. By effort. We have the battle to fight, not in our own strength, but in the strength which Jesus gives. Now I wish to call special attention before closing to this--that we are to lay aside every weight. There is to be no sparing. Everything that hinders must go. (J. H. Wilson, D. D.)
Spiritual weights:
Spiritual weights are of many descriptions. They may originate in the very senses. Life in the world, in the enjoyment of good things, in the pursuit of wealth and position, may grow to such unwieldy proportions that the Christian conscience has enough to do to vitalise the mass, and cannot energise it to a race. Then the play of the ordinary human affections and social human instincts is allowed such preponderance, that the man becomes gregarious, has so absorbed the opinions and prejudices and criticisms of his circle, that swift, decisive, forward motion is impossible. He lies, like a great hulk in the wash of worldly opinion, without helm or sail. Big, human-hearted he may be, but power of initiative or incentive has he none. But some will add to their faith, tradition. They must keep on with usages which had been put away--aye, and add mere ordinances of men. And now, clogged in every organ of the soul, they are ready to give up in despair. The superinduced mass of ceremonial, imparting no strength, is closing round the vitals of living faith and hindering its every movement. But in addition to habits of mind and life hindering men from spiritual progress, there are weights imposed by men on themselves, which hinder advance and enfeeble the soul. They have their money in so many ventures, they are pursuing at one time so many schemes, or they are so engrossed in the one or two to which they have given themselves up, that they have little or no time for serious thought. Yea, they cannot shift their thoughts out of the worldly rut when they have time. They must have distraction, pleasure, society, travel, to relieve the jaded mind. And it is not merely in business that men put on weights. Some live in a whirl of social engagements, others to exalt their sense of self-importance, or from nobler motives heap on public engagements; yea, not a few in this our time are crowding on the back of every day so many spiritual or religious engagements that the life of God in them is weighted in its advance. They are dwindling under the pressure, or, at all events, they are not growing in life and thought and will as they might grow. What are we to do? Throw all our engagements away? By no means. Steam would be a useless thing if it were not generated within an engine. It is by working on through the engines means that it becomes a power. And so the life of grace needs an environment of work and service through which to reveal its power. It must be embodied in deeds, and there is no lawful sphere in which grace may not shine. What I say is, that you may overload your engine and that you may overweight your grace. What is holding you down and keeping you back? Are you doing futile and unnecessary things--that is, things which, though innocent, are merely for self, apart from Christ? You cannot be wrong in putting them away. Are you doing too many things, so that you are distracted, and thus retarded? Remember that you are running the race of perfection, seeking entire likeness to Christ, and your very work will come to suffer if this religious dissipation go on. Rearrange, economise, lay aside every weight. (John Smith, M. A.)
The sin which cloth so easily beset us
The besetting sin
1. We have to strive against the whole body of sin, everything which is against the holy will of God, every evil inclination, all iniquity and profaneness, neglect and haughtiness, strife and wrath, passion and corruption, indolence and fraud, every evil motion, every impure thought, every base desire, every unseemly thought.
2. We have all, probably, some one besetting fault, which is our own special hindrance. Both of these we must learn by looking into ourselves. They vary in all. No two persons have exactly the same temptations, as no two minds are exactly alike. And so we ought not to judge of others, nor can we judge of ourselves by them. We must look into ourselves. We have, then, these two searches into ourselves to make: one into every part of ourselves; the other into that part of ourselves which is the weakest, and through which we most often fall. Of these, holy men recommend that we should begin with our besetting fault. For this there are many reasons. It lies, most likely, at the root of many other faults. It burrows under ground, as it were, and comes up at a distance, where we look not for it. It branches out into other faults; it twines round and kills some grace; it hides itself behind other faults or virtues; it puts itself forth in the midst of them. It colours every other fault; it interferes with, or overshadows or overlays every grace. But the more this one fault spreads, the more, if you uproot it, you will clear of the field of your conscience, the more will your heart become the good ground, which, freed from thorns, shall bear fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold, to life everlasting.
Thou hast, then, great reason to be most watchful to uproot thy besetting sin, because
1. It is the root of other sins, gives occasion to them, makes them as bad as they are, makes acts which would have no sin to be sinful, because they have this sin in them. And so, while thy besetting sin reigns in thy soul, it is the parent of many other sins; when it is destroyed many others die with it.
2. It is the sin which has most hold of thy mind, and so it is the cause why thou most often offendest God. It comes to thee oftenest, tempts thee most strongly, and where thou art the weakest and yieldest the most readily. It is called the besetting sin, because it continually besets thee--that is, it is always about thee, always on the watch for thee. It entangles thee at every step. More of a mans sins are done through his besetting sin than through all besides. It becomes his companion. He becomes so inured to it that he does not think of it as sin, or justifies it, or, at least, pleads to himself that his nature is weak and that he cannot help it. Nature is weak; but grace is strong, yea, almighty.
3. Then, too, it is the occasion of a mans worst sins, because a man yields his mind most to it, goes along with it, does it with pleasure. All sin is, to choose something else rather than God. But to choose a thing eagerly, with zest, taking delight in it against the wise love of God, this is the deadliest form of sin.
4. Then it will most likely be that, when not tempted in act, a man will be tempted to the thought of his besetting sin, both before and after. And so he acts his sin over again in thought, when he cannot in deed. Thus he may multiply his sin beyond all power of thought. Such, then, are grounds from the nature of the besetting sin itself, why thou shouldest earnestly and specially strive against it. It is thy deadliest enemy; that which most keeps thee from God, if unhappily thou art separated from Him; if not, still it is that which most offends Him, which hinders His love from flowing to thee and filling thee, which hinders thee from loving Him with thy whole heart. But then for thyself, too, it is thus that thou wilt have most courage to fight. It has been, no doubt, discouraging at some time to most of us that we could not become good all at once. Our garden, which we were to make clean, seemed full of weeds. They seemed to spring up fresh every day; how could we clean it? And so the weeds of our sins grew, as they would, left to themselves, with more luxuriant, foul rankness. It is said that one who thought thus, dreamed that He who had given him his garden to cleanse, came to him and asked him what he was doing. He said, I lost all hope of cleaning my garden, so I laid down to sleep. His Good Father said to him, Clean every day as much as thou coverest, where thou art lying, and all will be in time cleaned. So God speaks to us. Set about some one thing for Me; set thyself to get rid of some one sin for love of Me, to become in one thing more pleasing to Me, and I will be with thee; I will give thee victory in this; I will lead thee on from victory to victory, from strength to strength; thou shalt run and not be weary; thou shalt walk, and not be faint. By the same strength by which thou prevailest over thy first enemy, thou shalt prevail over the rest. IN human warfare, those who fight are tired even by their victory; in Divine warfare, they are strengthened.
For they fight not in human weakness, but in Divine strength; and My strength, He says, is made perfect in weakness. There is another good in fighting against thy besetting sin. Thou art gathered upon one point. Thou art striving with thy whole heart to please God in that point; thou wilt be asking for and using Gods grace for this. But therewith, secretly, thou wilt be transformed thyself. In learning to subdue one sin, thou wilt have been learning how, in time, to subdue all. Thou wilt have learnt the wiles of the enemy, the weakness of thy own heart, the force of outward temptations, the need to avoid, if thou canst, the outward occasion, but, in any case, the necessity of resisting in the first moment of assault. Thou wilt know, for thyself, the might which God gives thee when thou so resistest, the power of instant prayer. Thou wilt have felt the peril of tampering with sin, the value of watchfulness, the danger of security after thou hast conquered. Thou wilt have tasted the blessedness of gathering up thy whole mind to serve God, and giving thyself to Him morning by morning, to please Him in this, and not to displease Him. Thou wilt have known, in thine own soul, the value of obeying at once any suggestions which, by His Holy Spirit or in thy conscience, He giveth thee to avoid this or do that. (E. B.Pusey, D. D.)
Causes of propensity to peculiar vices
I. THE PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF OUR BIAS OR PROPENSITY TO SOME PARTICULAR VICE.
1. A propensity to particular sins may be complexional, derived from constitutional frame and temperament. Men are born with different propensities to pleasure, avarice, ambition, resentment, malice, envy, or the like. They may, indeed, by various methods be cultivated, and acquire vigour; but the seeds of them seem to be natural to the soil, and, in proportion to our neglect of them become still more difficult to be extirpated.
2. Another occasion of propensity to particular vices is, the power of custom or habit; which is commonly reputed a second nature, a kind of new nature ingrafted upon the former; and is often, in its influence and effects, not much inferior to it. It is to this principle, e.g., not to nature, that we may ascribe the vice of intemperance. Nature approves moderation; is disgusted and oppressed by excess. But custom leads men beyond the temperate limits marked out by nature into the extremes of intemperance; where, though nature denies them permanent pleasures, they form to themselves some that are fantastic, and subsist only in imagination. Another sin into which men are led by mere custom, and by nothing else, is the common practice of profaning the name of God.
3. Another occasion of a bias or inclination to some particular vice, may arise from our situation and condition of life. Every situation is exposed to some peculiar inconvenience; every condition of life to its own trials. Thus, affluence and poverty have each their respective inducements. And the same observation might be extended to the different periods of life, and to different professions and employments.
II. THE OBLIGATION INCUMBENT ON US, OF ENDEAVOURING TO CORRECT OR LAY IT ASIDE. The greater the propensity we feel in ourselves towards any culpable passion or failing, with the more care should we guard against it. It is in our power to maintain the authority of reason, to oppose the corruptions of our nature and the dominion of evil habits; to resist seducements from objects without, and temptations from passions within us. This is the proper work and business of religion: this the duty which God requires at our hands; and has therefore, undoubtedly, given us ability to perform. One great obstacle, indeed, to the correcting or guarding against the sin that most easily besets us, is the difficulty we often find in discovering and detecting it. Such likewise is the prepossession in our own favour, so flattering the glass that self-love holds before us, that this also prevents us from seeing our deformities, and marking the true features and complexion of the mind. Quick-sighted as we all are to the faults or foibles of others, we do not, or will not, with the same facility discern our own. Our passions are our apologists; they plead for our vices, and mislead our judgment. This may be a monition to us, to scrutinise with the strictest caution our own heart, to look well if there be any culpable inclination or passion lurking in it, that we may not be deceived by any flattering reports of our character made by self-partiality. To assist us in forming a Tight judgment of our conduct, and seeing it in a true light, the best method perhaps would be, to put ourselves as much as may be out of the question; to divest ourselves of all concern in it; and to suppose that we are passing judgment, not on ourselves, but on another person. (G. Carr, B.A.)
The besetting sin
I. THE BESETTING SIN IS A REALITY IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Every character has its weak points, just as every fort and every line of battle.
II. THE BESETTING SIN HAS VARIOUS OUTWARD FORMS. Just as some diseases in the human system manifest themselves at one place in one person, and at another place in another person, so sinfulness in the moral system comes to the surface at different points in different people. To one person the besetting sin may be uncleanness of imagination; to another, irritability of temper. It not infrequently happens that several forms of the besetting sin afflict the same person. In some form or another we all have a besetting sin; and it greatly interferes with both our happiness and our usefulness.
III. THE BESETTING SIN CAN BE OVERCOME.
1. Learn what our weak points are.
2. Pray every day for special help at the weak points.
3. Guard these points with special care.
4. Cultivate holiness in general.
5. There is great hope for those who are struggling for the mastery over besetting sins. (The Preachers Monthly.)
A besetting sin dulls spiritual perception
David Rittenhouse, of Pennsylvania, was a great astronomer. He was skilful in measuring the sizes of planets and determining the position of the stars. But he found that, such was the distance of the stars, a silk thread stretched across the glass of his telescope would entirely cover a star; and thus a silk fibre appeared to be larger in diameter than a star. Our sun is said to be 886,000 miles in diameter, and yet, seen from a distant star, could be covered, hidden behind a thread when that thread was stretched across the telescope. Just so we have seen some who never could behold the heavenly world. They always complained of dulness of vision when they looked in the heavenly direction. You might direct their eyes to the Star of Bethlehem through the telescope of faith and holy confidence; but, alas! there is a secret thread, a silken fibre, which, holding them in subserviency to the world, in some way obscures the light; and Jesus, the Star of Hope, is eclipsed, and their hope darkened. A very small sin, a very little self-gratification, may hide the light. To some, Jesus, as Saviour, appears very far off. He shall be seen where the heart lets nothing intervene.
The danger of impediments:
At Sidler Tchiflik three men sprang on to the train just as it was starting, and clung to the carriage-doors. The guard saw them, but dared not push them off for fear of killing them, yet could not venture to stop the train on account of the delay this would have caused. He therefore beckoned to the men to creep slowly along the side of the carriages after him. It was a terrible walk, and made my blood run cold to see it. The poor men were wet, benumbed, and awkward. Each had a bundle on his shoulder--one on a stick, one on a gun, one on a sword. As they crept slowly along, hanging on for their lives, first one bundle, then another, dropped off, till at last, after an agony of suspense, they were safely landed in a cattle-truck, having lost the very little all that they possessed. (Lady Brassey.)
The injury of a besetting sin:
The old proverb hath it, Heres talk of the Turk and the Pope, but tis my next neighbour that does me the most harm. It is neither popery nor infidelity that we have half so much cause to dread as our own besetting sins. We want more Protestants against sin, more Dissenters from carnal maxims, and more Nonconformists to the world. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Besetting sins
A mans besetting sin is the one that jumps with his inclinations. Does he love mirthfulness? Then he must be careful lest he runs into excessive levity and play the harlequin. He will be tempted to make jests of sacred things. A minister ought not to be a monk; but neither should he be a social comedian. Does a man love ease? Then he always interprets those providences in his own favour which allow him to shirk hard work and swing in his hammock. Does he love flattery and eclat? Then he is tempted to seek applause, and to imagine that he is serving God when he is only burning incense on the altar of self-worship. The worst enemy is the one which wears an honest disguise, Look out for selfishness. It is the old Adam lurking behind every hedge. It will always keep place with you if you give it the upper baud. Keep no league with it; for Christ will never abide in the same heart with that subtle and greedy tyrant. A Christian is never safe, never strong, never true to Christ, unless he is constantly collaring ever sinful and selfish passion, and forcing it into unconditional surrender. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
The deadly character of secret sin:
Canon Wilberforce said that one day, while walking in the Isle of Skye, he saw a magnificent specimen of the golden eagle, soaring upward. He halted, and watched its flight. Soon he observed by its movements that something was wrong. Presently it began to fall, and soon lay dead at his feet. Eager to know the reason of its death, he hastily examined it, and found no trace of gunshot wound; but he found that it held in its talons a small weasel, which, in its flight, was drawn near its body, and had sucked the life blood from the eagles breast. The same end befalls him who clings to some secret sin; sooner or later it will sap his life blood, and he falls. (C. W. Bibb.)
One sin the souls ruin
There was but one crack in the lantern, and the wind has found it out and blown out the candle. How great a mischief one unguarded point of character may cause us! (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The race that is set before us
The race to heaven
I. OUR COMMENCING THIS RACE.
1. It is not any race, but a particular one. The race set before us.
2. The introduction to this race is by regeneration (Joh_3:2; Joh_3:7).
3. We must lay aside every hindrance that would impede our progress.
II. OUR PROGRESS IN THIS RACE.
1. We must keep the course.
2. We must keep on in the way.
3. We must go on patiently under all difficulties.
4. We must keep the prize in view.
5. We must persevere to the end.
III. OUR FINISHING THIS RACE.
1. The certainty of having the prize.
2. The prize will be a glorious and enduring one.
3. The prize will be a just one. Crown of righteousness.
4. The honour connected with the bestowment of this crown. (The Evangelical Preacher.)
I. RELIGION IN ITS ENCOURAGEMENTS.
The race
1. Those who have departed from us are existing. Death is not annihilation.
2. The dead are in a state of conscious activity. These men are not asleep, but observe.
3. They are not far from us, for we are compassed about by them.
4. They observe our line of life--are witnesses.
II. RELIGION IN ITS ACTIVITIES.
1. Religion requires self-denial.
2. Religion requires the conquest of sin.
3. Religion required personal effort.
4. Religion requires patience.
5. Religion requires thought and attention.
III. RELIGION IN ITS MODEL.
1. Our model is regarded as the inspirer of Christian life--the author and finisher of our faith,--the originator in us of the life of God, which life can never be brought into maturity unless He becomes, by His gracious presence in the heart, its finisher.
2. Paul then refers to the Saviours object in His life of toil--the object of His model life, who for the joy, etc.
3. Finally, the apostle refers to the many sufferings, mental and physical, connected with His model life. (E. Lewis, B. A.)
The Christian race
I. THE RACE is one of
1. Christian knowledge.
2. Christian experience.
3. Christian duties.
4. Christian sufferings. The phrase implies
(1) Exertion.
(2) Progression.
(3) Perseverance.
II. THE DUTIES connected with it. Lay aside every weight--sin of every kind--but particularly
1. Attachment to the company with which formerly connected.
2. Love of the world, and inordinate attachment even to our lawful calling.
3. Improper fear of man; accommodation and compromise of the fear of God. And the besetting sin!
III. THE ENCOURAGEMENT afforded.
1. The cloud of witnesses. These are testifiers as well as spectators.
2. Jesus Himself. And He as an example also, who for the ,joy, &c. Can we be tempted or suffer as He did? And remember, we, too, shall sit down on His throne. (J. Summerfield, M. A.)
Stripping for the race
I. THE SPEED OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. Let us run. We must not sit still to be carried by the stream. We must not loiter and linger as children returning from a summers ramble. We must not even walk as men with measured step. The idea of a race is generally competition; here it is only concentration of purpose, singleness of aim, intensity. How earnest men are around us! Newton poring over his problems till the midnight wind sweeps over his pages the ashes of his long extinguished fire. Reynolds sitting, brush in hand, before his canvas for thirty-six hours together, summoning into life forms of beauty that seemed glad to come. Dryden composing in a single fortnight his ode for St. Cecilias Day. Buffon dragged from his beloved slumbers to his more beloved studies. And the beloved biographer, who records these traits, himself rising with the dawn to prepare for the demands of his charge. In a world like this, and with a theme like ours, we ought not to be languid, but devoted, eager, consumed with a holy love to God, and with a passion for the souls of men. Then should we make progress in the knowledge of the Word of God, and enter into the words of one of the greatest spiritual athletes that ever lived Php_3:14).
II. WE MUST RUN FREE OF WEIGHTS. There would be little difficulty in maintaining an ardent spirit if we were more faithful in dealing with the habits and indulgencies which cling around us and impede our steps. Thousands of Christians are like water-logged vessels. They cannot sink, but they are so saturated with inconsistencies, and worldliness, and permitted evil, that they can only be towed with difficulty into the celestial port. There is an old Dutch picture of a little child dropping a cherished toy from its bands; and, at first sight, its action seems unintelligible, until, at the corner of the picture, the eye is attracted to a white dove winging its flight towards the emptied outstretched hands. Similarly we are prepared to forego a good deal, when once we catch sight of the spiritual acquisitions which beckon to us. And this is the true way to reach consecration and surrender. Do not ever dwell on the giving-up side, but on the receiving side. Keep in mind the meaning of the old Hebrew word for consecration, to fill the hand. There will not be much trouble in getting men to empty their hands of wood, hay, and stubble, if they see that there is a chance of filling them with the treasures, which gleam from the faces or lives of others, or which call to them from the page of Scripture. The world pities us, because it sees only what we give up; but it would hold its sympathy if it could also see how much we receive--good measure, pressed down, and running over given into our bosoms.
III. WE MUST LAY ASIDE BESETTING SIN. Let us lay aside the sin which doth so closely cling to us (R.V.). We often refer to these words; but do we not misquote them in divorcing them from their context? We should read them as part of the great argument running through the previous chapter. That argument has been devoted to the theme of faith. And surely it is most natural to hold that the sin which so closely clings to us is nothing else than the sin of unbelief, which is the opposite pole to the faith so highly eulogised. If that be a correct exegesis, it sheds new light on unbelief. It is no longer an infirmity; it is a sin. Men sometimes carry about their doubts, as beggars a deformed or sickly child, to excite the sympathy of the benevolent. But surely there is a kind of unbelief which should not meet with sympathy, but rebuke. It is sin which needs to be repented, to be resisted, and to receive as sin the cleansing of Christ.
1. Let us remember that the course is set before us by our heavenly Father, who therefore knows all its roughnesses and straitnesses, and will make all grace abound toward us, sufficient for our need. To do His will is rest and heaven.
2. Let us look off unto Jesus. Away from past failure and success; away from human applause and blame; away from the gold pieces scattered on the path, and the flowers that line either side. Do not look now and again, but acquire the habit of looking always; so that it shall become natural to look up from every piece of daily work, from every room, however small, from every street, however crowded, to His calm face; just as the sojourner on the northern shores of Genevas lake is constantly prone to look up from any book or work on which the attention may have been engaged, to behold the splendour and glory of the noble range of snowcapped summits on the further shores. And if it seems hard to acquire this habitual attitude, trust the Holy Spirit to form it in your soul. Above all, remember that where you tread there your Lord trod once, combating your difficulties and sorrows, though without sin; and ere long you shall be where He is now. (F. B.Meyer, B. A.)
The race set before us:
Go ahead was only half of David Crocketts motto--and not the most important half. Be sure you are right precedes. The faster the ship goes ahead, the greater the danger, if there is not a good watch on the bow and a strong hand on the wheel. To run well is of importance; to start right is of prime importance. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, says the sacred writer. A great many men lose the prize by dropping out of the text altogether the clause which we have put in italics. Every man must find his own race before he begins to run. God has a work for every man that no other man can do quite as well; and he succeeds best who quickest finds what that work is, and sets himself to do it. Many a good writer has been spoiled to make an insolvent merchant; not a few good housekeepers to make execrable poets; now and then an execrable mechanic to make a poor preacher. A race has been set before me; and it is my duty to find out what that race is, and run it, and not waste life in regrets that I cannot run a different one, or lifes energies in unsuccessful attempts to do so.
Patient running
I remember once climbing a great Alpine peak. I was fagged and out of sorts, and the strain was considerable. I was not enjoying it, but I knew I should enjoy it at the top. I had not any spare energy to talk or look about, so I kept looking for a couple of hours at the heels of the guide, who was in front and above me. That is going with patience. It is the holding out till the next glimpse of light comes from above. It is the determination of the runner, when the afternoon sun is blinding his eyes, and the afternoon languor weighing upon him, that he wilt run on. (J. F. Ewing, M.A.)
Looking unto Jesus
Jesus the author and finisher of the Christians faith
I. The author and finisher of faith must be looked to as THE ONLY TEACHER OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINES.
II. The author and finisher of faith must be looked to as THE PREACHER AND EXEMPLAR OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY.
III. The author and finisher of faith must be looked to as THE ALONE PROCURER OF SALVATION. (H. J. Stevenson, M. A.)
Looking to Jesus, the secret of running well our Christian race
I. THE PERSON SET FORTH HERE IS JESUS; He, whose name is the light and glory of Scripture; whose coming and work formed the subject of ancient type, and symbol, and prophecy.
1. We are led to consider Him in His Divine nature and character.
2. The person set forth in the text is to be considered in His most gracious undertaking on behalf of men.
II. THE HABIT COMMENDED--Looking unto Jesus. This word expresses the mental posture, which the apostle would have all Christians maintain in relation to Jesus, their Saviour-God. It is not a single, unrepeated act that he wishes here to enforce, but a holy habit of soul. As the gaze of the mariner, steering his vessel through perilous seas, is perpetually fixed upon the compass, so we, voyaging to eternity through the treacherous waters of time, must have eye and heart centred on Christ, as the sole director of our progress. The word expresses a continuous and sustained action of the inner man. But it does more. It not only means looking, as the translation gives it, but looking off, or away. We are taught to look away from all else to Jesus only? Let the counter attraction be what it may, its power is to be resisted: its spell is to be broken, and the full gaze of the soul is to concentrate itself on Immanuel alone, Now, in the direction of the apostle, as thus expounded, I think we are called to note particularly three suggested thoughts.
1. The entire sufficiency of Christ to meet all human requirements.
2. It is the sad tendency of man, notwithstanding, to turn to other dependencies.
3. This tendency must be corrected, in order to Christs becoming all that He would be to any.
III. THE END CONTEMPLATED--that we may run well our Christian race; run it free from entanglement; run it with purity; run it with patience; run it with perseverance. Oh! is there anything that can compare with these objects in the estimation of a believer? We may well ask, then, how the looking unto Jesus will enable us to compass these objects; in other words, how it will secure that we shall run well our Christian race? And here the answer is threefold.
1. Looking to Jesus supplies the strongest motive to run well our Christian race; that is, love towards Himself. You know that fire and force are the effect of a supreme affection; how it makes light of difficulties, and changes leaden feet into feet of angel swiftness. Love lightens toil, and makes even waiting more than endurable.
2. Looking to Jesus furnishes all needful strength for running well our Christian race. This is the act on our part that appropriates it for our various occasions and exigencies; just as plants, by opening out their leaves, to them the organs of assimilation, imbibe the light and dew, and distribute sustenance through their entire structure, so we, by looking to Jesus, receive those communications of a spiritual kind, upon which the life of our souls and the vigour of our Christian walk depend.
3. Looking to Jesus brings before us the highest example of a successful runner in the Christian race. When you are in doubt, ask, What, in such a case, would my Master have done? (C. M. Merry, B. A.)
Looking unto Jesus
I. WHY?
1. The best beings in the universe encourage it.
(1) Angels.
(2) Redeemed in heaven.
(3) Holiest on earth.
2. Our own needs demand it. We want a Mediator, Example,
Friend, such as He is.
3. The great God enjoins it.
II. How?
1. By the study of His biography.
2. By communion with Christly souls.
3. By friendship with Himself.
III. WHEN?
1. At the beginning of the Christian life.
2. In all the encouragements and discouragements of life.
3. At death. (U. R. Thomas.)
The rule of the race
I. First, then, we are to look to Jesus as THE AUTHOR OF FAITH. The apostle would have us view the Lord Jesus as the starter of the race. When a foot-race began, the men were drawn up in a line, and they had to wait for a signal. Those who were in the race had to look to the starter; for the runner who should get first by a false start would not win, because he did not run according to the rules of the race. No man is crowned unless he strives lawfully. The starter was in his place, and the men stood all waiting and looking. Our word at starting in the Christian life is, Look unto Jesus.
1. We have to look to Jesus, first, by trusting in that which He has wrought for us. It is described in these words: Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame.
2. We also begin looking unto Jesus because of what He has wrought in us.
II. But now we must look to Jesus as THE FINISHER OF FAITH. As Jesus is at the commencement of the course, starting the runners, so He is at the end of the course, the rewarder of those who endure to the end. Those who would win in the great race must keep their eyes upon Him all along the course, even till they reach the winning-post.
1. You will be helped to look to Him when you remember that He is the finisher of your faith by what He has wrought for you; for the text saith,
He endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. You also shall have heaven, for He has it; you shall sit upon the throne, for He sits there.
2. We are helped to run to the end, not only by what Jesus has done for us, but by what Jesus is doing in us.
(1) You that are in the middle of the race, remember that Jesus sustains you. Every atom of your strength for running comes from your Lord. Look to Him for it.
(2) We are not only sustained by looking unto Jesus, but we are inspirited thereby. A sight of the exalted Leader fires the zeal of each believer, and makes him run like a roe or a young hart.
(3) Looking unto Jesus, you will get many a direction; for, as He sits at the winning-post, His very presence indicates the way.
(4) Look to Jesus, for by that look He draws you. The great magnet up yonder is drawing us towards itself. Christs cords of love give us speed.
III. Let us next consider our Lord Jesus as THE PATTERN OF OUR FAITH. Run, as Jesus ran, and look to Him as you run, that you may run like Him. How did our Lord pursue His course?
1. You will see this if you first note His motive: Who for the joy that was set before Him. The chief end of man is to glorify God; let it be my chief end, even as it was my Lords. Oh, that I might glorify Thee, my Creator, my Preserver, my Redeemer! To this end was I born, and for this end would I live in every action of my life. We cannot run the race set before us unless we feel thus.
2. Wherein are we to imitate Jesus?
(1) First, we are to copy His endurance. He endured the Cross. Ours is a trifling cross compared with that which pressed Him down; but He endured it. He took it up willingly, and carried it patiently.
(2) Imitate your Lord in His magnanimity. He endured the Cross, despising the shame. Shame is a cruel thing to many hearts. Our Lord shows us how to treat it. See, He puts His shoulder under the Cross; but He sets His foot upon the shame. He endures the one, but He despises the other.
(3) Our Saviour is to be imitated in His perseverance. For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down. He never stopped running till He could sit down at the right hand of the throne of God; and that is the only place where you may sit down.
IV. Lastly, our text sets before us Jesus as THE GOAL OF FAITH We are to run looking unto Jesus as the end that we should aim at. True faith neither goes away from Christ Jesus, nor takes a roundabout road to Jesus, nor so much as dreams of going beyond Jesus. Now, we are to run towards Him, looking unto Him. Looking to Jesus and running to Jesus will look well and run well together. The eyes outstrip the feet; but this also is well, for the feet will thus be made to move the faster. Look you that you may see more of Jesus. Let us run towards Jesus, that we may grow more like Him. It is one of the virtues of Jesus that He transforms into His own image those who look at Him. He photographs Himself upon all sensitive hearts. Run, that you may come nearer to Jesus. Seek after more near and dear fellowship with Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Looking unto Jesus
The word denotes the unfixing of the eye from other objects, and the fixing it upon Him; the turning away of your vision from other attractions, either without or within, and turning them to Jesus only. This is the true position for the soul; and according as we occupy this position, will be the growth of our peace, of our holiness, of our strength and zeal.
1. The eye thus fixed upon Him must, however, be no divided eye, partly fixed on others, partly on Him. Nothing above or beneath must divide your eye, or withdraw Him from your gaze.
2. Again, it must be no wandering eye, as if it might roam over every object in the universe, provided only He were among the number. He must be the great central fascination, on which the eye fixes itself, and to which it ever reverts if for a moment it is withdrawn. There is no other object worthy of our gaze, no other fitted to fill our souls.
3. Again, it must be no careless or unwilling eye. A forced gaze there cannot be; a careless gaze on an object so Divinely glorious, so infinitely attractive, seems altogether incredible when you consider to whom you are looking. On Him all heaven is gazing, and can you turn away? On Him the Father is looking and saying, Let thine eye rest where Mine is resting, and can you turn away, as if not satisfied with that which satisfies the Infinite Father?
I. IN LOOKING, WHAT DO WE SEE? We see one who is the brightness of the Fathers glory, and the express image of His person, the everlasting Son of the Father, yet, at the same time, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh--our kinsman, our brother. We see in Him God--God over all, yet an infant of days: God, yet a sorrowing man: God, yet a crucified criminal: God, yet a dying, buried man. The perfection of Godhead is in Him, yet the reality of manhood too. The infinite heart of God, yet the finite heart of man. Divine love, yet also human love. Condescending love as God, sympathising love as man. Paternal love as God, fraternal love as man. All excellency, all glory, all beauty, all perfection to be found in Him--unsearchable riches--for in Him it hath p]eased the Father that all fulness should dwell. But look a little deeper and what do you see? You see in this God-man, the Sin-bearer, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. You see in Him one clothed and furnished thus, as I have described Him, but clothed and furnished for the very purpose of being a fitting and sufficient sacrifice; the propitiation for our sins. We see in Him one who can take our very place, one who can stand where we should have stood before God, one who can bear what we should have borne, one who can endure what we should have endured.
II. IN LOOKING, HOW ARE WE AFFECTED? These things are not fitted merely to call up wonder; they go down into the very depths of our spiritual being, producing there the mightiest results, and effecting the most wondrous revelations and transformations.
1. In looking, the first thing that strikes us is the difference and contrast between our character and His. The first glimpse we get of Him makes us feel the extent of our sinfulness, our unlikeness to Him; and there is nothing so effectual for giving a sense of sin, or for deepening a sense of sin as this looking to the Holy One.
2. But then, in looking, a second thing that startles us is the full provision that is made in Him for meeting and for removing all these imperfections in us; so that the more that, in looking, we are troubled at the sight of our own hideous sinfulness, the more are our consciences pacified by the view which we get of His sin-bearing work as the Lamb without blemish and without spot--the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.
III. IN LOOKING, WHAT DO WE LEARN? We see in Jesus a model, and we begin to imitate Him. We see in Him the doer of the Fathers will, and we learn to do that will as He did it. We see in Him a willing sufferer for others, and we learn willingly to suffer. We see in Him a man that pleased not Himself, and we learn not to please ourselves. We see in Him a pattern of all meekness, and submissiveness, and gentleness, and kindness, and we learn from Him to be meek, and lowly, and gentle, and submissive, and kind, and humble--and thus it is that in looking to Him we are changed into His image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Thus it is that in looking away from other objects we are prevented from imbibing the evil influences to which they have too long subjected us; and in looking to Him we are brought under the efficacious power of higher, purer, nobler, diviner influences. But the great feature in which the apostle presents Christ to us is His faith. He showed us how to believe, and believe even on this earth where there is everything to tempt our faith and to cherish unbelief. He showed us how to live by faith upon the Father, even in a world like this, that has cast off the Father. Let us look to Him then and learn of Him, let us look to His footsteps and walk in them, following where He has led the way, and planting our feet where we find that His have been planted before us. (H. Boner, D. D.)
Looking unto Jesus:
Here is a young man carrying something through a crowded Eastern market-place, or bazaar. It is a vessel with water in it. Observe how earnest and intent his face is, and how he never allows his eye to wander for a moment to what is going on round him I His teacher has told him to carry the vessel full of water--full to the very brim, through the bazaar, and to bring it back without having spilled a drop. And now you see the young man returning, pleased and triumphant, because he has succeeded in obeying the command. Not a single drop has been lost. The old teacher praises him, and then asks him what he saw as he was passing through the bazaar. Saw! cries the young man, why, I saw nothing. How can that be? replies the teacher, for I know that the very time when you were in the bazaar the Sultan with some of his chief attendants went by. Well, that may be, said the young man; but how could I see anything, or anybody, when I had my eyes fixed upon the water the whole time, and could think of nothing but how to carry it without spilling, as you told me to do? Ah! said the teacher, now you can understand how we may be so entirely occupied with some work that God has given us to do, as to be quite unconscious of the sinful pleasures of the world, which strive to attract our attention as we are passing through them.
I. We regard the Lord Jesus AS OUR ONLY HOPE OF SALVATION. If we were standing on a wreck as it was settling down in the ocean, and a lifeboat were to come up alongside, what should we do? We should leave the wreck altogether--leave it behind us, look away from it, and jump into the lifeboat. Jesus Christ, then, is our only hope of salvation.
II. HE IS OUR ONLY EXAMPLE TO IMITATE. I have read somewhere of a traveller, who with his guide was crossing a high mountain in Switzerland. After journeying many miles, they came at last to a very dangerous pass, where just a little shelf of rock, and that partly worn away in places by the rain, ran round the face of a precipitous cliff, and was the only pathway by which they could possibly ascend to the top. Try to imagine their situation! Above them rose a steep rock, up the face of which no human being could climb, and below them was a precipice which went down straight, without a break, for nearly a thousand feet. And the travellers heart--though he was a courageous man--began to beat fast, and his head began to swim, until he was in danger of falling over and being killed. The guide seeing this, called out (I should tell you that the guide was walking in front), Do not look up or down, or you are a lost man. Look away from everything at me. Keep your eyes fixed on me, and where I set my foot, there do you place yours. The traveller obeyed this command; the dizziness and the fear went away; and both the men crossed safely over the terrible pass. This story has always reminded me of looking away unto Jesus, and of His leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.
III. HE IS THE ONLY BESTOWER OF ALL THE BLESSINGS WHICH WE ENJOY. Every good gift, and every perfect gift comes to us through Him. He is the channel which connects us with God. If we think a good thought, or do a good deed, it is owing to Christ. Shall we run negligently, as if we did not care much about it? No; we will run earnestly. Shall we give up when we have run part of the way? No; for it is he that endureth to the end that shall be saved, and it were better never to have begun at all, than to begin and then leave off. Shall we say, How hard, how tiresome it is to run this Christian race? No; for the Lord Jesus Christ is with us all the time, strengthening, encouraging, upholding us. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)
Looking unto Jesus
I. THE SPIRITUAL POSTURE IN WHICH CHRISTIANS ARE REQUIRED TO PLACE THEMSELVES.
1. Looking unto Jesus, in recognition of the relation of Jesus to us. As redeemed men this Jesus is all in all to us. He is called by various names: the last Adam, the Amen, the Alpha, the Omega, the Advocate, the Angel, our Apostle, Bread of Life, our Captain, our Chief Shepherd, the Chief Corner Stone, the Counsellor, the Day Spring, the Witness, the Great High Priest, the Head, the King, the Lamb, our Leader, our Life, our Light, the Star, the Morning Star, the Rock, the True Vine, the Way, the Word of God.
2. Looking unto Jesus, for direction from Jesus. He is our Master, and He appoints our services. He is our Teacher, He gives us our lessons. He is our Lord, He confers upon us all true honour and all real reward. He is our elder Brother; and acting the part of a Father. He provides for us, and He has charge of us.
3. Looking unto Jesus for the varied and constant help which He affords. Every name by which He is called represents some service which He is prepared to render to us, or is actually rendering us, or some particular aspect of some service. In truth, Christ is to you what you require Him to be, if you will only let Him be what you need Him to be.
4. Looking unto Jesus, in confident expectation of the fulfilment of all His promises. Looking, therefore, as an expectant of blessings. Well, this involves knowledge of His power and trust in it. Knowledge, too, of His veracity, and of His fidelity, and a corresponding confidence.
5. Looking unto Jesus for recognition and for sanction. Why is it that so many Christians are so miserable, so out of temper, so weak? You find the reason here: they are always looking for recognition and sanction from men, from the Church of God, from their fellow disciples, and sometimes where they never ought to look for it, from the men of this world. Do you see how this is forbidden by the text? You are not to live looking to the disciples, you are not to live looking to the Church for recognition and for sanction, but turning your eyes upwards you are to be in a position to say with Peter, Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee. The mere professor does not think of thus looking unto Jesus; he keeps looking entirely at himself. The hypocrite, too, dare not look unto Jesus--he dare not. He has impudence enough, but he dare not look unto Jesus. He keeps his eye away from the eye of the Master. The backslider, too, he temporarily has ceased to look upon Jesus.
6. Looking unto Jesus, moreover, as an object of love. Whom having not seen, ye love.
II. THE REASON FOR IT. Jesus is the author and finisher of faith. Every wise man has a reason for his conduct, and every good man a good reason. A Christian should be the most intelligent, and rational of his class. If he be looking unto Jesus, he ought to know the reason why. Why look unto Jesus? Why not to himself? Why not to the cloud of witnesses? Why not to his fellows in the race? Why look unto Jesus? The apostle gives the answer. Jesus is the author and finisher of faith.
1. In the first place Jesus occupies a singular position as it respects faith. He is the author, or prince of faith, being Himself the highest example of faith. Does it occur to you that when Christ bids you believe, He bids you do what He did? He was a believer. His human nature had in it the strongest possible faith, and on this account you may call Jesus the prince of faith. But He is the prince of faith in another sense.
2. We speak now of Christ as a man (not ignoring, however, His Divine nature), and we say of Him, that He is the author or prince of faith, because He is the first man who on this earth has maintained faith. The first Adam lost faith in God; and no man could set Adam the first up as a prince; but the second Adam maintained faith even in the severest trials, and, therefore, you may call Jesus the prince of faith.
3. Again, He is the prince of faith as leading us into faith. He goes before us in the path of faith, and as leading us into faith, and as guiding us into this path, He is the author, or the prince of faith. Then, as Himself continuing in faith to the end, He is the finisher. And as maintaining and consummating our faith He is also the finisher. Is our race faith? God commands that faith to Himself. He says, believe on Me. Is our race faith? God draws that faith more and more strongly to Himself. He can keep it, and He alone can maintain it. Therefore in running this race of faith, it is our manifest duty to run, looking unto Jesus the prince, mark, in all these respects, of faith. (S. Martin.)
Looking unto Jesus
I. WHY SHOULD WE LOOK TO JESUS?
1. Because He is the supremest object of human interest. When we remember everything that goes to make up what we may call the things of Christ, the preparation for His coming, and all that centred in Him, the various movements of the preceding generations, the symptomatic changes alike in the political and religious condition of men; then His own history, when He went about living His life, speaking His words, doing His work; and then what He has since been, the place He has taken in human regard, the influence He has exercised upon human life--what a wondrous series of interesting objects we meet with!
2. Because we find in Him the answer to the deepest needs of our souls.
3. Because He is the dearest object of human love.
II. WHERE SHALL WE SEE JESUS?
1. Look at Him in the scenes of His earthly career.
2. Look at Him in the place of His atoning death.
3. Look at Him on the throne of His triumphant mediation.
III. WHEN SHALL WE LOOK TO JESUS?
1. In the time of your temptation.
2. In the moment of penitence. By thy side He stands with an arm extended, and will take thee back to His bosom and His love.
3. In the hour of need. That is every hour, for every hour am I needy, and always do I require that Saviour to be near. (L. D. Bevan.)
Looking unto Jesus:
The expression before us is one of the pithy golden sayings which stand out here and there on the face of the New Testament, and demand special attention. It is like to me to live is Christ, Christ is all and in all, Christ who is our life, He is our peace, I live by the faith of the Son of God. To each and all of these sayings one common remark applies. They contain far more than a careless eye can see on the surface. But the grand question which rises out of the text is this: What is that we are to look at in Jesus?
I. First and foremost, if we would look rightly to Jesus, we must look daily at His DEATH, as the only source of inward peace. We all need peace. Now there is only one source of peace revealed in Scripture, and that is the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and the atonement which He has made for sin by that vicarious death on the Cross. To obtain a portion in that great peace, we have only to look by faith to Jesus, as our substitute and Redeemer.
II. In the second place, if we would look rightly to Jesus, we must look daily to His LIFE OF INTERCESSION, in heaven, as our principal provision of strength and help. While we are fighting Amalek in the valley below, one greater than Moses is holding up His hands for us in heaven, and through His intercession we shall prevail.
III. In the third place, if we would look rightly to Jesus, we must look at His EXAMPLE as our chief standard of holy living. We must all feel, I suspect, and often feel, how hard it is to regulate our daily lives by mere rules and regulations. But surely it would cut many a knot and solve many a problem if we could cultivate the habit of studying the daily behaviour of our Lord as recorded in the four Gospels, and striving to shape our own behaviour by its pattern. We may well be humbled when we think how unlike the best of us are to our example, and what poor blurred copies of His character we show to mankind. Like careless children at school we are content to copy those around us with all their faults, and do not look constantly at the only faultless copy, the One perfect man in whom even Satan could find nothing. But one thing at any rate we must all admit. If Christians during the last eighteen centuries had been more like Christ, the Church would certainly have been far more beautiful, and probably have done far more good to the world.
IV. Fourthly, and lastly, if we would look to Jesus rightly, we must look forward to His SECOND ADVENT, AS THE TRUEST FOUNTAIN OF HOPE AND CONSOLATION. That the early Christians were always looking forward to a second coming of their risen Master, is a fact beyond all controversy. In all their trials and persecutions, under Roman Emperors and heathen rulers, they cheered one another with the thought that their own King would soon come again, and plead their cause. It ought to be the consolation of Christians in these latter days as much as it was in primitive times. (Bishop Ryle.)
A life-motto:
The great object on which we are to fix our gaze, all through life is--Jesus. It is with Him, above all else, that we must have to do.
1. Looking unto Jesus, we are to trust Him as our Saviour. The first thing we want is a Saviour. I once saw a ship at sea, off the east coast of Scotland, in a storm. Her sails were torn to tatters, her masts were broken, her anchor was dragging. It needed no signal of distress, for it was within sight of the shore. We could hardly keep our feet out of doors. The wind blew a hurricane and the rain pelted. Those of us who could, got into the shelter of the pier, and, glass in hand, watched the movements of the hard-pressed sloop. The lifeboat was launched and pushed through the surf, and after being carried past the vessel once and again, at length got alongside of those who so much needed help. That lifeboat came to them as a saviour. And how were they saved? By trusting it. But perhaps some of you say, What has all this to do with looking unto Jesus? The text is about looking, not trusting. Well, but looking means trusting. A poor but respectable widow once called on me in great distress. She had fallen behind with her rent, and her landlord had threatened to sell every article of furniture she had, and to turn her and her children to the street. I told her I would see to the matter, and that she might look to me for her rent. She went joyfully home, and I can suppose her children to have said to her, Mother, how are you looking so happy? Have you got the money? No, she answers, but it is all right. The minister said I might look to him for the rent, and I know it is as sure as if I had the money in my hand. That just means--she trusted me for it. The looking and the trusting were one and the same thing. Now, the Lord Jesus bids you look to Him--away from all else--away from your own doing or deserving- away from the godliest and best friends you have. He says, None of them can save you. He says, Look unto Me and be saved: for I am God.
2. Looking unto Jesus--we are to copy Him as our pattern. Now in the chapter before that from which our text is taken (chap. 11.), you have a wonderful list of worthies. It is just like a portrait-gallery, containing the likenesses of some of the best men the world ever saw. And as you read the descriptions you might ask, May we take these as our pattern? Well, so far, and yet only so far. They were not perfect patterns, and so are not safe to be followed in everything. And so the writer points away from them all, and as it were, says, Do not stop at these. Do not be content to copy these. I can give you better than any of them all--a higher, safer, surer guide. You cannot keep too close to Him. You cannot copy Him too exactly. In the smallest things as in the greatest, seek to be what He was, to do what He did, to follow in His footsteps.
3. Looking unto Jesus -we are to lean upon Him as our strength. Perhaps you say, It must be very difficult to be what Christ was--to do what Christ did. He was so good and I am so evil: He was so strong and I am so weak: He was so bold and I am so cowardly. Indeed, it seems impossible. I do not see how it could ever be. But if He were to give you His strength, it would not be so difficult, would it? Sometimes when I have been coming home late at night, after a long days work, I have felt very tired, and the uphill parts of the road seemed very long and very steep. But a friend came alongside, and when I put my arm into his, and had his support and his company, the tiredness left me, and I could have walked half a dozen of miles, and sometimes did walk backwards and forwards for a good half hour. His arm and his company were strength to me. That is what Jesus does. He says, Lean on Me! Lean hard! He, as it were, lets you put your arm into His. He lets you draw upon His strength. (J. H. Wilson, D. D.)
Looking to Jesus
I. UNDER WHAT ASPECTS ARE WE TO LOOK TO JESUS?
1. Saviour.
2. Master.
3. Example.
II. IN WHAT SCENES ARE WE TO LOOK TO JESUS?
1. Common duty.
2. Times of temptation.
3. Difficulties.
4. Means of grace.
III. WHAT SORT OF LOOKS THEY SHOULD BE?
1. Trustful.
2. Obedient.
3. Loving. (The Weekly Pulpit.)
Advantages obtained by looking unto Jesus
1. The first of these is peace; peace with God, and peace in the conscience. True peace comes from God the Father, through the blood of Jesus; and can only be enjoyed by looking unto Him.
2. Humiliation is another advantage derived from looking to Jesus. The heart of man is naturally proud; and will never be effectually humbled, but by a believing contemplation of the greatest example of humility that ever appeared in the world. That humiliation, especially, which becomes us as rebellious creatures, will be best promoted by looking at a suffering Saviour, bending under the load of our guilt in the garden and on the Cross. Who can make a mock at sin, that beholds the awful severity of God in punishing it in the person of His innocent Son, our Surety? Who can be proud, when he sees the Lord of all, destitute of a place where to lay His head, and enduring poverty and shame for our sakes?
3. This also affords the best lesson of patience; and for this purpose particularly, we are exhorted, in the text, to look to Jesus; for, it is added, He endured the Cross, despising the shame. If we would be Christians indeed, we must arm ourselves with the same mind (1Pe_4:1); and, according to His direction, deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him (Mat_16:24).
4. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and the most powerful principle of gospel holiness. But how shall this be obtained? We answer, By looking unto Jesus. We love Him, because He first loved us (1Jn_4:19). The love of our brother is closely connected with the love of God; the former can never exist without the latter, and always accompanies it. Looking to Jesus, the Friend of sinners, who came to seek and to save the lost, who went about doing good, is the most effectual means of curing the selfishness of our hearts, of softening the asperity of our tempers, and of exciting compassion and benevolence in our souls, towards all our fellow-men.
5. Looking to Jesus is the best expedient to destroy our inordinate regard to this present world. Christ was dead to it, and separate from it; and He says to His followers, Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world (Joh_17:16). A glance of His glory, and a sense of interest in His favour, will make us indifferent alike to its smiles and its frowns; and all the glittering objects that men pursue with such avidity, will appear as unworthy of our affections as the painted toys of children.
6. There is one more advantage to be expected from looking to Jesus; an advantage of such magnitude, that we may challenge the universe to equal it, and that is, ability to meet death with calmness and joy. Here is a triumph peculiar to the gospel; a triumph far superior to those of kings and conquerors; a triumph over the king of terrors. Looking to Jesus, who has borne the whole of the punishment due to our sins, we are no longer to consider it as penal; this is the sting of death, which He has extracted (2Ti_1:10). (G. Barrier.)
The necessity of looking to Christ:
The reason why the men of the world think so little of Christ is, they do not look at Him. Their backs being turned to the sun, they can see only their own shadows, and are, therefore, wholly taken up with themselves. While the true disciple, looking only upward, sees nothing but his Saviour, and learns to forget himself. (E. Payson.)
The inspiration of a good leader:
News had come from the left that Winters Brigade near the river was giving way. Stonewall Jackson rode down to see what it meant. As he passed on the brink of the ravine his eye caught the scene, and reining up in a moment, be said, Colonel, you seem to have trouble down there. Then he dashed on. He found that his old brigade had yielded slightly to overwhelming pressure. Galloping up, he was received with a cheer, and calling out at the top of his voice, The Stonewall Brigade never retreats: follow me! led them back to their original line. (H. O. Mackey.)
Jesus and faith:
Is your faith strong? a Christian man was asked a few days before his death. No, but my Jesus is, was his reply.
Deliverance by looking to Jesus
A lady had a dream, in which she fancied herself at the bottom of a deep pit. She looked round to see if there were any way of getting out; but in vain. Presently, looking upward, she saw in that part of the heavens immediately above the mouth of the pit a beautiful bright star. Steadily gazing at it, she felt herself to be gradually lifted upward. She looked down to ascertain how it was, and immediately found herself at the bottom of the pit. Again her eye caught sight of the star, and again she felt herself ascending. She had reached a considerable height. Still desirous of an explanation of so strange a phenomenon, she turned her eye downward, and fell to the bottom with fearful violence. On recovering from the effect of the shock, she bethought herself as to the meaning of it all, and once again turned her eye to the star, still shining so brightly above, and yet once again felt herself borne upward. Steadily did she keep her eye upon its light, till, at length, she found herself out of the horrible pit, and her feet safely planted on the solid ground above. It taught her the lesson, that, in the hour of danger and trouble, deliverance is to be found, and found only, by looking unto Jesus. (T. Guthrie.)
Look to Christ rather that to experiences
Have you got it? is a question often asked now. I remember being asked this, and I could not help replying, I have got Him, and with Him all the its. God does not give us Christ piecemeal, but wholly. We have a whole Christ, or no Christ. Now, while God does not give us a single blessing apart from Christ, yet in and with Him we have all spiritual blessings. As a matter of fact that is true to every believer, but as matter of experience it is not always so. I have lost my peace, groaned a saint one day. We replied, Have you lost your Saviour? Oh, no! Well, then, He is our peace. I forgot that. Just so, lose sight of Christ, and away go your feelings; and the way not to get your feelings back is to look for them, the way to get them is not to look for them, but to look to Him. Remember there is in Christ for you a fulness of acceptance, therefore do not doubt Him; there is fulness of peace, therefore trust Him; there is fulness of life, therefore abide in Him; there is fulness of blessing, therefore delight in Him; there is fulness of power, therefore wait upon Him; there is ful-ness of grace, therefore receive from Him; there is fulness of love, therefore be taken up with Him; there is fulness of teaching, therefore learn of Him; there is fulness of joy, therefore rejoice in Him; there is fulness of fulness in Him, therefore be full in Him; there is fulness of riches, therefore count upon Him; there is fulness of strength, therefore lean upon Him; there is fulness of light, therefore walk with Him; and there is fulness of energy, therefore be subject to Him. (T. E. Marsh.)
Looking to Jesus:
The painter who undertakes to copy some masterpiece of art, sits down before it, sketches the outline upon his own canvas, reproduces the colouring of the model, adds item by item to his picture, constantly looking upon the original, noting its qualities and the deficiencies of his work, till, by scrupulous care and untiring endeavour, he has produced a facsimile of the original. The Christians work is kindred. He has a better model, even Christ; but a harder task, for his canvas is treacherous and his work is life long.
Looking unto Jesus
Two boys were playing in the snow one day, when one said to the other, Let us see who can make the straightest path in the snow. His companion readily accepted the proposition, and they started. One boy fixed his eyes on a tree, and walked along without taking them off the object selected. The other boy set his eyes on the tree also, and, when he had gone a short distance, he turned, and looked back to see how true his course was. He went a little distance farther, and again turned to look over his steps. When they arrived at their stopping place, each halted and looked back. One path was true as an arrow, while the other ran in a zigzag course. How did you get your path so true? asked the boy who had made the crooked steps. Why, said the other boy, I just set my eyes on the tree, and kept them there until I got to the end; while you stopped and looked back, and wandered out of your course. Just so is the Christian life. If we fix the eyes of our hope, our trust, and our faith upon Jesus Christ, and keep them continually fastened thereon, we will at last land at the desired haven, with flowers of immortal victory at our feet. (C. W.Bibb.)
Jesus the only sight for the dying
The scene opens in a dark and silent chamber. Doctor Franklin is lying on his deathbed. For weeks and weeks he has been prostrate with disease. That active mind, which so long had been occupied with things of earth, was busied now with higher and nobler contemplations. He bids the nurse go down and bring a picture which he named, and fasten it on the wall opposite his bed, that he might look upon it when he pleased. And what think you that picture was? Some ancient historic heirloom, which he dearly prized? Some scene of stirring interest, in which he, the great philosopher of his age, had borne a conspicuous part? No! It was a picture of our blessed Saviour on the Cross; and Doctor Franklin, whom many, in these evil days, have desired to make an infidel outright, died while gazing upon it with wistful eyes, his whole countenance lighted up with a sweet and placid smile. Poor and pitiable are the hopes of the moralist or the philosopher who does not look to Christ Jesus as his Redeemer.
The Author and Finisher of our faith
The Commander of the faithful:
Consider the remarkable aspects and relationships in reference to our faith in which Christ is here set forth.
I. FIRST WE HAVE HIM AS LEADER AND COMMANDER OF THE GREAT ARMY OF THE FAITHFUL, JESUS, THE AUTHOR OF OUR FAITH. Christ is here represented, not so much as one who begins faith in mens hearts, but as the Leader of all the long procession of those who live by faith. True, the heroes whose names are enrolled in the glorious catalogue of the preceding chapter were before Him in time. But the commander may march in the centre, as well as in the van, and even in order of time; He is the Beginner or Leader, inasmuch as He is the first who ever lived a perfect life of faith. We do not give sufficient prominence in our thoughts of Christs earthly life, to this aspect of it--that it was one of faith. He is our pattern in this as in all that belongs to humanity. His life was a life of faith, whose breath was prayer. For faith is dependence upon God, and surely never did human being so utterly hang upon the Father, nor submit himself so absolutely to be moulded and determined by Him, nor yield his will up so completely to that will. Faith is communion, and surely never did a spirit dwell so unbrokenly, in such deep and constant realisation of a Divine presence and a Divine sustaining, as did that Christ who could say the Father hath not left Me alone, for I do always the things that please Him. Faith is the vivid realisation of the unseen; and surely never was there a life lived amidst the shows and illusions of time which so manifestly and transparently was all passed in the vivid consciousness of that unseen world, as was the life of that Son of Man, who, in the midst of all earths engagements, could call Himself the Son of Man which is in heaven. Faith is a life of assured confidence of an unseen hope, and surely never was there a life which was so entirely dominated by that unseen hope as His life, who, For the joy that was set, &c.
II. THERE IS ADDED A VERY SIGNIFICANT EXPRESSION, WHICH LEADS US TO CONSIDER CHRIST NEXT AS BEING SET FORTH HERE AS THE FINISHER, OR PERFECTER, OF FAITH. It would be a very poor affair if all we had to say to men was: There is a beautiful example; follow it! Copybooks are all very well, but you want something more than copybooks, A so-called Christianity that has nothing more to say about Jesus Christ than that He is the perfect example of all human excellences, and of faith too, is not the one for a poor man that has found out the plague of his own heart, and the weakness of his own will. He wants something that will come a great deal closer to him than that. And so my text tells us that Jesus is not only the Leader of faith, but the Perfecter of it too. He will set you the pattern, and then, if you will let Him, He will come into your hearts, and make you able to copy the pattern. He will perfect faith by the implanting in your hearts of His own spirit and His own life. He will lead our faith to sovereign power in our lives, if we will only let Him do it, by another way, too--by the path of discipline and of sorrow; drawing away our hearts from earthly things and fixing them upon Himself; making the world dark that the sky above may be brighter, and revealing Himself to our loneliness as the all-sufficient companion. So He perfects our faith. And He will do it in another way too, by the rewards and blessings which He will give to the imperfect and tentative exercise of our confidence, over-answering our petitions, and flooding us with more than we expected when we tremulously tried to trust on Him; and so inducing us to be bolder in our confidence, and to venture further afield. Thus, He draws us further out into the great sea of His love. And not only so, but in another aspect that dear Lord is the Perfecter of our faith, inasmuch as He gives to our faith at the last that which is its aim and end. A thing is perfected when it either reaches its highest degree, or when it attains its object. And so Christ is the Perfecter of our faith, not only in the sense that He raises and educates it up to its loftiest form, but also that He bestows upon it at the last that which is, as Peter says, its end, or perfecting, even the salvation of our souls. And in this aspect we may almost take the word Perfecter here to be equivalent to that of the other idea of rewarder. Our faith is perfected when the unseen things are unveiled, when the communion with God is complete, when we shall see Christ as He is, and clasp Him in the close embrace of heaven, and when the crown of life is bestowed which He has promised to them that love Him.
III. THAT LEADS ME TO SAY ONE LAST WORD ABOUT THAT LOOKING TO JESUS WHICH IS THE INDISPENSABLE CONDITION OF RUNNING THE RACE THAT IS SET BEFORE US. It must be a believing look. It must be a loving look. The occupation of heart and mind with Jesus Christ is the secret of practical Christianity. It is an education to love Him and live with Him. Transformation comes by beholding. The eye that looks upon the light has an image of the light formed upon its ball, and the man that looks to Christ gets like Christ, and beauty born of that gaze shall pass into his face. Look to Him as the sustainer of your faith. In your feebleness, when life is low, when hope is almost dead, when temptations are tyrannous and strong, think of Him, and think in trust. Look to Him as your rewarder, and be of good cheer, and let the prospect of that great crown stimulate and sustain and lift you above the ills and the sorrows of life. And last of all, there is an untranslated preposition in one of the words of my text to which, perhaps, it is not straining too much to give emphasis. The full rendering of the expression looking is looking away. That points to the need of looking off from something else, that we may look up to Him. It always takes a resolute effort fixedly to contemplate, and to bring heart and mind really into contact with unseen things and unseen persons. And it takes a very strenuous effort to bring the unseen Christ before the mind habitually, and so as to produce effects in the life. You cannot see the stars when you are walking down a town street, and the gas-lamps are lit. All those violet depths and calm abysses and blazing worlds are concealed from you by the glare at your side--sulphurous and stinking. So, my brother, if you want to see into the depths and the heights, to see the great white throne and the Christ on it who helps you to fight, you have to go out unto Him beyond the camp, and leave all its dazzling lights behind you. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
For the joy that was set before Him
Christs joy in living
I want to speak to you of the joyfulness of Christ Jesus, and of the genius of Christianity as resulting from this fact; and I speak, being conscious of the great misconception which has flowed, for at least a thousand years, down through the Church, and which has clouded the public sentiment of the Christian community to this hour--namely, that Christ was a sufferer through life, and that sorrow is the distinguishing characteristic of the Saviours experience; and that although there are gleams of joy in the Christian life, all who enter upon it must enter upon it with a distinct understanding that its characteristic element is sorrowfulness, or cross-bearing. Now, I aver that it happens to no individual in his lifetime to experience so much joy as was compressed into the life of Jesus Christ; and a very slight examination of His history would make it incontrovertible. You will bear in mind that He was born a Hebrew peasant, but that He was of a lineage very noble. In His veins ran the best blood of the Jewish nation. He was a favourite from the beginning; for blood told then in the estimation of men as much as it has ever done. You will observe that Christ had the ordinary experience which men have, of being a child, and of being loved by His father and mother and His brothers and sisters. He went through all the experiences of babyhood, of early boyhood, of youth, and came into full-orbed manhood without any moral disturbance of which we are aware--without any convulsion that threw Him out of the ordinary experience of a pleasant household, and entered upon His public ministration when He was about twenty-seven years old, dying at about thirty. Now, you will observe that when Christ entered upon His ministry the first step He took in it was toward social joy; for after the temptation in the wilderness He went north and joined His parents, and in Cana of Galilee attended a wedding. The first miracle that He ever performed was to help carry on a three-days social entertainment. That does not look much like His being a Man of Sorrows. John, His cousin, came neither eating nor drinking. He disdained amenities. He threw himself like a judgment-bolt into the face of rulers. He cut right and left, without mercy, saying Peace to the perfect, and woe to the imperfect. That was his career. Christ began immediately after him. Instead of dwelling in the wilderness, He went into populous cities. Instead of going away from all social intercourse, He participated in the highest festivity known to the ordinary life of a Jew--namely, a wedding service; and afterwards He lived in such social habits that the charge against Him was that He made Himself common with common folks, and that He was a glutton and a wine-bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners. No such allegation as that could be made against an ascetic. But setting aside all this, which lies upon the very surface of the text, look at the career of the Saviour in another point of view. So soon as He entered upon His course as a public minister, He showed great aptness in teaching. Concomitant with this experience was another--that which was connected with the performance of His miracles of mercy. Now, is there any joy greater than that which is experienced by one person when he helps another person? He was not a stone man; He was a living soul, as full of sensibility and fire as the heart of God. Consider that He did these things every morning, every noon, and every evening. Consider that there were so many such cases that they could not be registered by name. And do you tell me that in the blessed work of teaching and mercy which He was carrying on, Jesus was not a joyful man? Why, such an idea is false to nature, as it is false to grace. But we have a more decided case yet. We perceive that He was of a nature such that He drew to Him good-livers. He did not disdain luxury: He partook of it. He did not disdain high society: He went into it, just as readily and familiarly as to the peasant s cottage, or to the abode of the poor and sick. He was a man among men; and if He looked up His look was radiant, while i[ He looked down His look was light-bearing. He could not touch any side of human nature that His soul did not go out in sympathy with it. Now the attractiveness of the Saviour was Such that these men wanted Him, and called for Him. But no man who spreads a good table, and invites folks to dine with him, goes hunting for misanthropes. But that the rich men of His day did want Christ there is irrefutable evidence to prove. This shows that His bearing was sweet and attractive. And wherever He went where people were, He shed joy and happiness upon them. You will now ask, What about the passion? What about the forty days? Those are the very days over which the text goes. I think the joy was an awful joy; but I believe that Jesus Christ was never so joyful as during the mighty mystery of those forty days. Let us come to it step by step through experiences such as we have ourselves. When a man does a heroic action at some cost to himself, he knows that though it costs it counts. The highest reaches that any man ever has of joy in this world are those which he has through the ministration of grief and of sorrow. When those persons who went to the stake for their faith, and sang and rejoiced as the fire blazed about them, and sent out from their pulpit of flame joyous songs of hope, do you suppose they were sufferers? There is an ecstasy in a mans soul at such a time which so affects his nervous system as to lift him above suffering. I do not doubt that there have been crowned hours when that martyr to the liberty of Hungary, Kossuth, though an exile, poor and alone, was not unhappy. I know that sometimes when men are misrepresented, and derided, and scoffed at, and kennels and sewers are opened upon them, there is a serene height into which they rise, where no one can any more touch them with sorrow than the fowlers shot can touch the eagle that soars just under the sun. And do you suppose the Saviour knew what He suffered when, for the joy that was set before Him--the redemption of the world; an eternity of blessedness for the myriads upon myriads that should find life in His outpouring life; and the glory of the Godhead--He endured the Cross? Do not you suppose that this joy that He saw in the future made Him a man of joy, and not of sorrow? He is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For what? To do what the morning does--pour light over darkness. To do what the dews do--cool the parchedplants after a fervid day when they are well-nigh wilted. He sits there to bring sons and daughters home to glory. Where the father and mother have waited expectant for the dear children that have been long away to come home, does joy beat upon the instrument of the soul when they do come? and do you suppose that Christ, sitting on the eternal threshold, and seeing sons and daughters coming home to glory through His instrumentality, does not experience joy? He said in the hour of His deepest darkness, Peace I give you-My peace. If in the very acme and midnight of His suffering He had so much peace that He could divide it and share it with His disciples, do you not suppose that now, a Prince of Peace, He is also a Prince of Joy? (H. W. Beecher.)
The wiliness to the sustaining principle
I. Life is a journey; BUT LIFE IS SOMETHING MORE. Life is a work. It is the great opportunity for the artist who is toiling, by Divine assistance, at the world outside him; because, first, he is toiling at his own Soul. The Man of Sorrows--it is a strange paradox, but it is a fact--the Man of Sorrows supplies us with the sustaining principle, anticipated joy. Joy has a depth and a stillness far beyond mere merriment. Joy has a moral force, because it rises out of and combines real and constituent spiritual elements, loftier, more enduring than pleasure; it draws its life and gathers its strength from the most vigorous and the most varied faculties of our nature. Joy! It co-ordinates and harmonises all rays of moral glory; it has the sweetness and freshness of the music of Mendelssohn; it touches with the chromatic tenderness of Spohr; it unites the depth and splendour of the colouring of Titian, and the refinement and severity of Francias Christ. Joy! and the crucifix! Yes, it has its roots, remember, in a rugged soil. Travellers in the Tyrol, so an able writer tells us, noticed in the distance the crest of the mountains cinctured with a girdle of vivid blue. Was it a mirage, a magic deception, worked up by the mist and the light and the winds? Would it pause at the approach of invading footsteps, or would it--as all beautiful things in this low world--would it fade and be gone? They drew on, and found it not fainter, but clearer, not vanished, not gone, no trick of the sunlight, no passing effect of the cloud; it was a belt of vivid gentians, drawing strength from the rugged rock and unsympathising stone, taking the light and outfacing the heavens with the intensity of its burning blue. Now such is the joy of the spirit. Beautiful; not vanishing, but vigorous; anticipating what it knows to be certain, the final victory of truth and righteousness, having, therefore, its roots in eternal things. This, too, this is preached from the Cross; hence, my brothers, what looks like a streak of sunlight on the unrestful ocean becomes a stimulating and sustaining principle in the labour of life.
II. This, then, may become the stimulating principle of a persevering life, and the question is, HOW CAN IT BE LEARNED? The answer is found in the twofold aspect of the Cross.
1. If we catalogue the various departments of the subject-matter of our Redeemers joy, we find in the Cross a revelation. It reveals the mystery of the Atonement. But a mystery it is, beautiful, wonderful, bringing life out of death, as spring flowers are the children of the winter, and forming the subject-matter Of our Redeemers joy.
2. And the Cross is an example. Speaking morally, it springs directly out of the self-sacrificing temper, gains, in fact, its unselfish colouring there, teaches us what is the temper, the prevailing atmosphere needful for a useful life. We know of no self-denial so personal to ourselves, so complete and lasting, as the self-denial of the Cross; and we read in the joy of the Conqueror not only the principle which stimulates His endeavour, but also the evidence of His love. He had a delight, indeed, not, to use a modern phrase, in influencing the masses, but in saving you and me.
3. And another subject-matter of that joy--we dare to say it, because His apostle taught us to do so--was the crowning in Himself of human perfection--the vindication of goodness. Goodness! the greatness of doing what you ought to do; goodness, the greatness of loyalty amid sorrow. This, the highest height of all human excellencies, is crowned on the throne of the Crucified, in the person of Him who liveth and was dead.
III. WHAT THEN, WE ASK, ARE THOSE OPPOSING FORCES WHICH THIS PRINCIPLE IS REQUIRED TO BREAK AND CONQUER?
1. There is a force, fierce as an unfettered animal, wild as the wind, strong as the storm; it springs from the fever and fret of a restless heart needing and finding no satisfaction. Call it taedium vitae; call it ennui; call it a lazy weariness of spirit in the overworked toiler for this world, or in the blasé idler--whatever you call it, it is that mortal sickness of the human spirit, worn out with a life of unsatisfied desire, with the knowledge that riches and pleasure cannot gain for it a salvation or win for it a rest--possessions only of those who hold the hope of a future, itself the first dawning of supernatural joy.
2. We have another force in the pressure of the present. It surely comes to all either in failure of health, or overwork, or bewildering anxiety, or heartbreaking bereavement, or change of circumstances, or fading of dreams, or parting from others; it is felt in bereavement that has broken you, sorrow that has subdued you, change of circumstances, loss of fortune, forgetfulness of friends, disbelief in you by those whom you believed in, and, what is infinitely worse, disbelief in them when you have found them wanting, and the sad remembrance that you expected too much, and have been accordingly the victim of disappointment not undeserved. It may produce despondency; it may eventuate in a life of miserable murmuring and habitual discontent; or it may be made to yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who apply the stimulating and sustaining principle.
3. And there is personal and spiritual and accomplished sin. Have you not felt the fierceness of desire, and the difficulty of its domination? Oh, it is when you get to the Crucified you see in the Atonement the way to penitence, the possibility of pardon, the path of peace.
4. And religious perplexity. You are in an age when Christianity is attacked with pitiless severity; you need fear no argument against the truth shaking your faith, though it assail your intellect, if the spiritual conditions are fulfilled; but the strength of your stand on the side of the Crucified is not the strength of your degree at Oxford or Cambridge, it is not the power of your intellect; it rests and will rest on moral grounds. Are you trying to do your duty? Are you living in communion with your Creator? Then you are in the way to keep alive a sustaining principle which will breast the religious difficulty of this great, and, I add it, of this bad time. If, yes, if we are to avoid the curse of Meroz, it is by the hope of a future, and the joy in God that we need to be stimulated, that we need to be sustained in coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty.
IV. YES, THE CONDITIONS OF PRESERVING SUCH A PRINCIPLE ARE NOT FAR TO FIND. On the Cross we have our example; in us it is a gift of the Holy Ghost sent by our ascended Master; and it is a fruit of the Spirit in its relation to God; it depends for its energy upon our faithfulness; it is not so much the quiet joy from an accomplished fact as the larger, bracing joy of anticipated victory; and it is preserved bright and sustaining in those who willingly make sacrifices for truth and duty. The sea sets onward through the Straits of Messina with a heaving swell, smooth, yet unflagging, even when the winds are silent and the skies are clear; the Tiber rushes onward, mad and swollen, century after century, by the Sylvans Cave; now like the restful, now like the restless waters, human waves unnumbered of the rising and falling peoples have swept over the hills and plains of Italy, have passed and disappeared; civilisations many, dim or brilliant, across the histories of Greece, of Syria, of the twilight East, have danced into the sunlight and died into the shade; but, in storm or summer stillness Soracte has towered above the dim Campagna and the Sabine Mountains, calm and stately and crowned with snow; and amid all human agonies and the tragedies of the peoples, the giants of the Abarim, folding round them their draperies of purple, have watched the starlight, or wrapped in their robes of roseate brilliance, have reckoned with the dawn. So human passions, troubles, sins, may flow onward in wild current, but principles, supernatural principles, stand firm. (Canon Knox Little.)
Joy triumphing
I. THE JOY OF OBEDIENCE. Can we understand this--a joy in doing anothers will, not our own? Yes--and no. As we naturally are we cannot take such a thing in--we want to do what we please--we fret at having any restraint put on us. And yet in proportion as we learn to love God through Jesus Christ, we learn to know what it is to be quite at Gods bidding, and yet to be in perfect freedom.
II. THE JOY OF LOVE. If it be asked, whom He so dearly loved that it was an intense joy to show His love to them, the answer is sinners; for them He came into the world: unlovely objects--lovers of their own will--sheep who had strayed out of a safe fold into a waste howling wilderness; yet in our unloveliness, and wandering, and wilfulness, though He grieved at it, He loved us.
III. THE JOY OF HELP. He knew that His own would not receive Him, yet to feel that His help was open to whosoever will--that He was coming to bring pardon and deliverance and life even to the unthankful--was a joy that outwent the cold manger and the homeless wanderings and the spiteful conspiracies and the bitter Cross--the intense joy of helping the helpless.
IV. THE JOY OF VICTORY. He knew how He should meet the unconquered foe, Death, and by yielding awhile before him, turn and rout him all the more gloriously. He knew that for those sinners whom He so dearly loved, there would henceforth be but a crippled foe to be bruised under their feet shortly; and the chains of bondage struck off, that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin. He foresaw all this, and He heard by anticipation the notes, Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and the still more distant ones, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He girded Himself for the struggle as already a conqueror. (John Kempthorne, M. A.)
The Commanders conflict and triumph
I. FIRST, THE COMMANDERS CONFLICT: Who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame. Now, there are three points about our Lords work set forth in thence three clauses, all of them somewhat unlike the ordinary tone in which it is spoken of. We have the motive of His sufferings presented as being an unseen reward for Himself, which He brought vividly before Him by the exercise of His faith. We have His sufferings presented, not in reference to their saving power, but solely as being an illustration of His heroic patient endurance. And we have the contumely and shame of His death presented, not as showing to us His willing self-abasement and His loving lowliness, but as revealing to us the scorn with which He looked upon all hindrances that would bar His path and shake His resolute will.
II. THE COMMANDERS TRIUMPH, AND OUR SHARE IN IT. Who is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. That sitting expresses rest, as from a finished and perfect work; a rest which is not inactivity; dominion extending over all the universe, and judgment. These three, rest, dominion, judgment, are the prerogatives of the Man Jesus. That is what He won by His bloody passion and sacrifice. And now what has that to do with us? We are to think of this triumph of the Commander as being, first of all, a revelation and a prophecy for us. A revelation and a prophecy. Nobody knows anything about the future life except by means of Jesus Christ. In His exaltation to the throne a new hope dawns on humanity. If we believe that the Man Jesus sits on the throne of the universe, we have a new conception of what is possible for humanity. If a perfect human nature has entered into the participation of the Divine, our natures too may be perfect, and what He is and where He is, there, too, we may hope to come. And, still further, Christs triumphal entrance into the heavens is not only prophecy of ours, but it is power to fulfil its own prophecy. He has gone up on high, sitting at the right hand of the throne of God to work for us. His work is not done. He works for us, with us, and in us, as Lord of providence and King of grace, sustaining and upholding us in all our weakness, and tending the smoky flame of our dim faith till it bursts into clear radiance. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The joy of Jesus:
Everything exists for an end--has its place in Gods wide world, and is intended to answer some purpose, to accomplish some end. Every rational being has an object set before it. The creatures that are not rational live and exist for an end, but the end is not set before them. The end is ever before their Creator, and Master, and Ruler; but the end is not set before them. They have not eyes to see it; they have no powers, or faculties with which to pursue it; but every rational being has an object set before it. And it is important for us very often to ask, for what end were we made? and for what end have we been redeemed? In a state of prior existence our Redeemer had, as it respects this world, an object before Him, and that object He came, as you know, into this world to pursue. In the words before us is one view of the goal to which our Saviour ran, or of the prize for which His course was pursued. It is called the joy--that is, the cause and the occasion of the joy, who, for the joy that was set before Him.
I. Let us ask, WHAT IS THIS JOY--the joy that was set before Jesus Christ? God speaks of this in the whispers of prophecy; and according to prophecy the joy set before Jesus was the joy of bruising the serpents head; it was the joy of gathering together a scattered people; it was the joy of imparting knowledge to the ignorant upon the highest subjects; it was the joy of forming a perfect and everlasting kingdom out of lifeless and rebel souls. God exhibits it, too, in the pictures of the Levitical dispensation. It is the joy of pardoning the guilty, and of purifying the unclean; it is the joy of elevating those who have been cast down and downtrodden; it is the joy of educating those whose nature has been bruised and crushed. Jesus, too, Himself speaks of it. He speaks of it in parable. He likens it to the joy of a shepherd when having sought the lost sheep he has found it; and to the joy of a woman, who having missed treasure discovers it again; and to the joy of the father of a prodigal who is permitted to receive that prodigal in true penitence back again to his heart and to his home.
1. It was the blessedness of redeemed men. And what is their joy? It is the joy of coming out of darkness into light; it is the joy of passing from death, and from a death of which they are conscious, into life; it is the joy of coming out of wretched ignorance into sure and certain knowledge; it is the joy of rising from a state of distrust into a condition of confidence and faith; it is the joy of being converted from enmity, and alienation, and indifference towards God, into filial love.
2. The joy which redeemed men may diffuse, as well as the joy which they inherit. Ye are the salt of the earth, said Christ, and Ye are the light of the world. God alone can tell the blessedness which one redeemed man may be the means of communicating into others. How many tears may the hand of a true Christian wipe away?
3. The joy which the redemption of every sinner gives to the unfallen creation of God.
4. The joy of Jesus was the joy of God Himself in the salvation of the lost.
5. The joy set before Jesus was the joy which must be awakened in Jesus as the means of diffusing and spreading so much blessedness. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied. His joy was the joy too of being recognised as the great Joy Giver to a number of men which no man can number; and the joy of working out, even to its consummation, the greatest and most glorious work of Jehovah.
II. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JOY OF JESUS. It is the joy of love--not the joy of the miser; not the joy of the spendthrift; not the joy of the lover of sinful pleasure; not the joy of the unlawfully ambitious--it is the joy of the benefactor, it is the joy of the mother; and while it is the joy of love, it is the joy of that extraordinary variety of love which inspired men call grace--the strongest form, the most beauteous form, the divinest form. It is the joy of holiness, too, and of perfect goodness.
III. Let me remind you THAT SUCH BLESSEDNESS IS WON FOR YOU. The foundation of joy Jesus has laid; will you build upon it? or will you neglect the foundation? Will you neglect to build upon the foundation which this Jesus has laid for you? If you thus neglect to build, see, you are reflecting upon Him. You are bringing clouds upon His wisdom, His love, on His power. Or you are reflecting upon the foundation? You treat the foundation as though it were either unnecessary, or as though it were not worthy of your building upon it. What blessedness may be enjoyed by you and what blessedness may be spread by you! You can spread Divine joy--will you? Will you make the joy of others your goal? Archbishop Leighton has said somewhere, It is a strange folly in multitudes of us to set ourselves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the gospel. The merchant sails, not merely that he may sail, but for traffic; and he traffics, not simply for traffic, but that he may be rich. The husbandman ploughs, not merely to keep himself busy, and with no further end, but ploughs that he may sow; and he sows, not for sowing sake, but sows that he may reap, and reap with advantage. And shall we do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlessly--hear only to hear, and look no further? This is indeed a great vanity and a great misery, to lose the labour and gain nothing by that which duly used would be of all others most advantageous and gainful; and yet, he says, all meetings for religious purposes are full of this. Well, now, we have heard in a few brief words a little of the joy which Christ set before Himself--and I ask, have we all a mark? Have we an end? Is my life and yours a race with a goal, and a prize and a judge, and a cloud of witnesses? Is it so? Is there a joy set before us? If there be a joy set before us, who has set it before us? And what is it? If your joy be Christs joy, and you make it your goal, and your prize, and if you run your race with patience, the day will soon come when you shall find yourselves not worn and weary on the course, but sweetly resting at the goal; and the day, too, will come when your feeble hands shall grasp the prize--your hands stretched out by the impulse of a heart filled with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. (S. Martin.)
Christs prospective joy:
Just as the sculptor, before he begins to chip the marble into shape, sees with his minds eye the figure which is first conceived by his genius and then fashioned by his skill--so with our Divine Redeemer. He from eternity, before man was created, beheld him coming into being, placed on his own footing, falling, redeemed, saved. And, as the result of His atoning work, there rises up, through His Spirit, the fulfilment of His own ideal, a new creation, a living Church. (C. Clemance. D. D.)
Christs joy varied as the relationship He sustains to men
May we not safely say that the joy will be as varied as the relationship which our Saviour bears to us? It will be the joy of the Sufferer whose agony is forgotten in the abundance of bliss--the joy of the Sower in reaping the abundance of the harvest--the joy of the Shepherd in seeing all the sheep as one flock, safe for ever in the heavenly fold--the joy of the Friend in seeing all His friends by His side in a union with Him and with each other that no misapprehension shall ever mar, and no sin shall ever stain--it will be the joy of the Warrior when the battle is over, when every enemy is still as a stone, and the summons to fight is exchanged for victorious rest--it will be the joy of the Leader, who has brought all His host into the promised land--it will be the joy of the Mediator, who has discharged His trust and surrendered it to the Father, saying Of those whom Thou hast given Me I have lost none--it will be the joy of the King who is to reign for ever over a kingdom in which revolt has been made impossible through the achievements of almighty grace--it will be the joy of the Redeemer when the redemption is complete, fulfilling His longings and His prayers--it will be the joy of the Firstborn Son at seeing every member of the new-born family safe in a happy home, which no sin can disturb and no death invade--it will be the joy of the Son of Man in witnessing the ideal of human perfection--it will be the joy of the Son of God, as to principalities and powers in heavenly places He reveals through a glorified Church the manifold wisdom of God, showing to worlds on worlds what infinite love devised and Infinite Power achieved! (C. Clemance. D. D.)
Endured the Cross
The Cross carried, and the shame despised by Jesus
I. WHAT WAS THE CROSS WHICH JESUS CHRIST ENDURED? Was not the whole life of Jesus cross-bearing from the beginning to the end? But there were three things which may emphatically be called the Cross of Christ.
1. His being made sin for us. God did not make Jesus sinful; but God treated Jesus Christ as though He were a sinner. Herein was a Cross.
2. Jesus was wounded by God for transgression, and bruised for iniquity.
3. Jesus Christs dying as a notorious malefactor, and thus dying for the ungodly was another part of His Cross.
II. WHAT WAS THE SHAME WHICH HE DESPISED? This was disgrace, reproach, with the passions and emotions which they are supposed to awaken, and which in all purity and power they did awaken in the human nature of your Saviour.
III. BUT WHAT WAS THE MANNER AND SPIRIT OF HIS ENDURANCE AND OF HIS CONTEMPT? For this chiefly is the point. Observe, He endured the Cross. He felt the Cross to be a Cross. He felt it as a man. Do not overlook the complete humanity of your Redeemer. He felt His Cross more than we could have felt it could we have carried it. Sinfulness blunts the susceptibilities of our nature: purity and holiness keep the pores of the spirit open. This was the case with Christ. He endured the Cross in its full weight. He looked at the Cross as it was presented to Him, and He lifted it, and sustained on His own shoulder its full weight; and I would say to you if you want to get any good out of cross-bearing, always let the full weight of it come upon your shoulder. I do not say let the full weight of it come upon your shoulder, you being unstrengthened by the Almighty power; but I say, use no artifice to escape the pressure of any trouble that God sends you. When God sends a trouble to you, let it come down upon you as He sends it, and employ no artifices to reduce its pressure. Jesus endured the Cross in its full weight, and he endured the Cross to the very end. He took it up, and to the close of life He carried it; but He endured it courageously, patiently, cheerfully, and effectually. Despising the shame. Jesus felt the shame. Did His cheek never redden, think you, or His lip never quiver when reviled? Was there no blush upon His cheek when men called Him a Sabbath-breaker, and a blasphemer, and said that He cast out devils by the prince of devils? Often, doubtless, did that cheek redden and that lip quiver, tie felt the shame: and, mark, to despise being despised is about the hardest thing in life. Why do you find some sincere Christians continuing in certain ecclesiastical connections into which their convictions would never lead them, and in which their convictions do not keep them? Because they cannot despise being despised. You may account for the anomalous position of hundreds of Christs disciples by this very circumstance--they have not learned, even from the Great Teacher of this hard lesson, to despise the shame; they have not learned to despise being despised. The shame was never seen to hinder Christ from saying a true word, or from doing a right thing. Now all this is the more remarkable because of three circumstances. First, Christs clear foresight of the Cross and of the shame. He saw both before Him, yet He yielded Himself to endure them. Secondly, His full appreciation of the Cross and the shame. And, thirdly, His deep and quick sensitiveness towards all cross-bearing and towards all shame. Now, bearing these things in mind, Christs enduring the Cross and despising the shame becomes exceedingly wonderful as they appear in our Saviours life. Having expounded the text, let us use the truths it contains for practical purposes. Observe, then, that this text exhibits something done in which you may find rest and peace. Jesus has endured the Cross; Jesus has despised the shame. Your cross which you could not endure He has endured; the shame which you never could have borne, and which would have overwhelmed you, He so bore as to despise it. And He asks you to believe this, and to act accordingly. He would not have you go about carrying the cross, say, of your own guilt. You are not to carry that cross. You have your cross to carry, but this is not yours. But, further, the text suggests that there is something yet to be done--a very different thing from the something done; but still there is something to be done. Every man is called to carry a cross, but not every man the same cross; nor is every shoulder equally sensitive or equally strong. Troubles vary, and the pressure of the same troubles is different upon different individuals-and you know why. The reason is to be found in temperament, in disposition, in the state of the body, in the condition of the spirit, in the character, in the pursuits, and in the circumstances of a man. But we all have our cross and our shame; and I have now to ask you, do we endure the cross? Do we despise the shame? (S. Martin.)
The Saviours endurance and joy:
There are two ways in which the history of Bible saints ought to stimulate our faith and courage. This purpose they serve when presented to our minds as examples. They prove that the truths which the Bible teaches are not airy fancies or musty theories, which cannot be reduced into practice, and shrink from the fiery tests of every-day life. The force of example is a thought which long ago has been coined into a proverb. The ancient Romans were accustomed to place the busts of famous ancestors in the vestibules of their houses, in order to remind young people, as they passed to and fro, of the noble deeds of those ancestors, and fire them with the laudable ambition to excel in wisdom, goodness, and valour. The life of a hero has been known to colour the spirit of an age. The life of Napoleon Buonaparte has kindled the love of military glory in many a youthful heart; the touching story of Howards labours has moved many a man to deeds of charity and kindness.
I. CONSIDER THE SEVERE ORDEAL, THROUGH WHICH HE PASSED. The atoning sorrows of Christ came from several sources or directions.
1. Strange as it may appear, much of the pain and grief came from human malice and opposition. I say strange, for one would have concluded that all the sympathy and help of men would most certainly be enlisted on His side, as soon as they were told that to save their souls was His gracious object.
2. Another element in the sufferings of Jesus was the malicious opposition of the devil and his angels. As a Divine Being, of course these rebellious creatures were subject to His power and could do Him no harm. But in condescending to assume human nature, and undertaking to work out the plan of salvation, Christ voluntarily exposed Himself to the power of these malignant spirits.
3. But the chief source of the Redeemers suffering was the wrath of His Father. As the fire which consumed the sacrifices laid upon Jewish altars came down from heaven, so the holy fire that consumed the sacrifice offered upon the altar of Calvary descended from God the Father. But although the Fathers wrath was not vindictive in its nature, and rested not on personal but public grounds, it pressed with fearful weight upon the Saviour. With the smile of His Father shining into His soul, and lighting up therein an abiding summer, Christ could have braved any trial to which He might be summoned without a moan or murmur. But why those shrinkings in Gethsemane from the task that was assigned Him? If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. That cup contained ingredients so bitter that none but God could have compounded them.
II. CONSIDER, AGAIN, THE SPIRIT HE DISPLAYED. It is true He did not covet suffering. He made no virtue of endurance. His courage was apparent through the whole course of His public life, but not with such a splendour of manifestation as in His dying hour. Some plants when pressed display more of their colours, and diffuse more of their fragrance. The diamond when broken into splinters glitters all the more; and despite the dishonours that gather so thickly around the Cross of Emmanuel, the lustre of His courage burst through the gloom, and shone with unwonted power. And if you seek the highest pattern of serene patience and fortitude, it is to the sufferer that hangs on the Cross of Calvary we point you.
III. CONSIDER, AGAIN, THE MOTIVE WHICH SUSTAINED HIM. Who for the joy that was set before Him. (J. H. Morgan)
Despising the shame
The shameful Sufferer
I. THE SHAMEFUL SUFFERER. The text speaks of shame, and therefore before entering upon suffering, I shall endeavour to say a word or two upon the shame. Perhaps there is nothing which men so much abhor as shame. We find that death itself has often been preferable in the minds of men to shame; and even the most wicked and callous-hearted have dreaded the shame and contempt of their fellow-creatures far more than any tortures to which they could have been exposed. It is well known that criminals and malefactors have often had a greater fear of public contempt than of aught else. In the Saviours case, shame would be peculiarly shameful; the nobler a mans nature, the more readily does he perceive the slightest contempt, and the more acutely does he feel it. The eye that hath faced the sun cannot endure darkness without a tear. But Christ who was more than noble, matchlessly noble, something more than of a royal race, for Him to be shamed and mocked must have been dreadful indeed.
Besides, some minds are of such a delicate and sensitive disposition that they feel things far more than others. He loved with all His soul; His strong passionate heart was fixed upon the welfare of the human race; and to be mocked by those for whom He died, to be spit upon by the creatures whom He came to save, to come unto His own, and to find that His own received Him not, but actually cast Him out, this was pain indeed.
1. And behold the Saviours shame in His shameful accusation. He in whom was no sin, and who had done no ill, was charged with sin of the blackest kind. He was first arraigned before the Sanhedrim on no less a charge than that of blasphemy. Could He blaspheme? No. And it is just because it was so contrary to His character that He felt the accusation. Nor did this content them. Having charged Him with breaking the first table, they then charged Him with violating the second: they said He was guilty of sedition; they declared that He was a traitor to the government of Caesar, that He stirred up the people, declaring that He Himself was a king. What would you think, good citizens and good Christians, if you were charged with such a crime as this? Ah! but your Master had to endure this as well as the other. He despised the shameful indictments, and was numbered with the transgressors.
2. Christ not only endured shameful accusation, but He endured shameful mocking. When Christ was taken away to Herod, Herod set Him at nought. The original word signifies made nothing of Him. It is an amazing thing to find that man should make nothing of the Son of God, who is all in all.
3. He endured a shameful death. But this is the death of a villain, of a murderer, of an assassin--a death painfully protracted, one which cannot be equalled in all inventions of human cruelty for suffering and ignominy. Christ Himself endured this. Remember, too, that in the Saviours case there were special aggravations of this shame. He had to carry His own Cross; He was crucified, too, at the common place of execution, Calvary, analogous to our ancient Tyburn, or our present Old Bailey. He was put to death, too, at a time when Jerusalem was full of people. It was at the feast of the passover, when the crowd had greatly increased, and when the representatives of all nations would be present to behold the spectacle. Was ever shame like this?
II. His GLORIOUS MOTIVE. What was that which made Jesus speak like this?--For the joy that was set before Him.
III. I WILL TRY AND HOLD THE SAVIOUR UP FOR OUR IMITATION. Christian men! if Christ endured all this merely for the joy of saving you, will you be ashamed of bearing anything for Christ? Are there any of you who feel that if you follow Christ you must lose by it--lose your station, or lose your reputation? Will you be laughed at if you leave the world and follow Jesus? Oh! and will you turn aside because of these little things, when He would not turn aside, though all the world mocked Him, till He could say, It is finished. (C. H. Surgeon.)
Despise the shame!
Learn the practical wisdom of minimising the hindrances to your Christian career, pulling them down to their true smallness. Do not let them come to you and impose upon you with the notion that they are big and formidable. The most of them are only white sheets, and a rustic boor behind them, like a vulgar ghost. You go up to them and they will be small immediately! Despise the shame! and it disappears. And how is that to be done? In two ways. Go up the mountain, and the things in the plain will look very small; the higher you rise the more insignificant they will seem. Hold fellowship with God, and live up beside your Master, and the threatening foes here will seem very, very unformidable. Another way is--pull up the curtain, and gaze on what is behind it. The low foot-hills that lie at the base of some Alpine country may look high when seen from the plain, as long as the snowy summits are wrapped in mist, but when a little puff of wind comes and clears away the fog from the lofty peaks, nobody looks at the little green hills in front. So the worlds hindrances, and the worlds difficulties and cares, they look very lofty till the cloud lifts. And when we see the great white summits, everything lower does not seem so very high after all. Look to Jesus, and that will dwarf the difficulties. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Is set down on the right hand
Jesus enthroned
I. Let us look at the fact here presented to us--or at THE POSITION ASSIGNED TO JESUS CHRIST. He is said to be seated at the right hand of the throne of God. A place at the right hand of any person in authority and power is employed by the Sacred Writers to represent a position of high honour. It may be that you have a tendency to look chiefly to the Cross of Christ. Yon may be yourselves the children of sorrow, and often in affliction. Your own cross may be exceedingly heavy; it may tremendously oppress you; and your temperament and your natural disposition combining with your circumstances may lead you to look chiefly at the Cross of Christ. Believe that your Lord died and was buried; but do not keep your eyes fixed on the Cross and on the sepulchre, for He is not now on that Cross; He is not now in that sepulchre. And you in your thoughts of Christ, and in your feelings about Christ, are not to be merely crucified with Him, and dead with Him, but you must be risen with Christ, your affections being fixed on Christ as above. He dwells in the midst of the highest manifestations of Deity. He is worshipped in heaven with God--as God. His name is associated as no other name with that of Jehovah.He has Divine authority; and He has also Almighty power. Although distinct from Jehovah, He is and He appears to be one with Jehovah--one as an object of reverence, of fear, and of love--one in His administration of universal government. Thus is He seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
II. NOW SEE THE USE WHICH WE CHRISTIANS ARE TO MAKE OF THE KNOWLEDGE THAT JESUS IS IN THIS POSITION.
1. Here is a fountain of joy from which Christians may drink sacred pleasure. Jesus is set down at the right hand of the throne of God--then His work of atonement is finished; then His sacrifice is accepted; then His humiliation is terminated; then His sorrows are for ever fled away. We joy in this for His own sake. The Cross of Christ was a real cross to Him. When He is said to suffer, He did suffer. His soul was really troubled, and His spirit was exceedingly sorrowful. And now that He wears a crown, He feels to wear a Crown. But we may joy in this also for the Churchs sake--for just as Jesus carried the Cross to bless the Church, so does He wearthe crown to bless the Church. And we may joy in the coronation of Jesus for the sake of our individual well-being. We who trust our Saviour have a personal connection with His Cross; and we have a personal connection with His crown. And further, we may joy in this fact for the worlds sake. He has ascended on high and received gifts for men, even for the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell among them.
2. But here, too, is a motive to patience, and much help in cherishing patience. The course of the disciple is in some respects parallel with that of the Master. Like Christs, it is a fixed and definite course. And it is a course in which there are many hindrances to be laid aside and sorrows to be borne. But it is a course to which there is an appointed goal, and a course in which the goal as a rule may be seen. It is a course, further, which makes large demands upon patience. Hence the injunction to run with patience the race which is set before us. But now, just see how the position of Jesus bears upon the cultivation of patience. Jesus is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Once He was running His race on this earth: now He is set down. Now He has no need of patience--He is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. And if you run, if you wait, if you be patient, you will one day sit down with Him on His throne, even as He is seated on His Fathers throne.
3. And there is just one other thought which we would suggest to you. No forerunners helped Jesus--not one. He had not a being to look to who had run in any respect a similar course, and reached His goal--not one. There was the Father above Him, but the Father had not become man. He had not been a man of sorrows. There we angels ministering to Him, but no angels in the skies had attempted to do what Jesus had come to do. (S. Martin.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 1–4. So great a cloud of witnesses. The vast…
1–4. So great a cloud of witnesses. The vast cloud of witnesses named in chapter 11, who testify by their lives to the power of faith. Let us lay aside every weight. Every hindrance. The figure used is that of the Greek foot races in the games then practiced in every province of the Roman Empire, including Palestine. Before running the runner laid off every weight. And the sin which doth so easily beset us. Our besetting sin, whatever it may be. In the case of these Hebrew Christians the context shows that the besetting sin was unbelief. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Run the Christian race with steadfast perseverance.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 9 It is necessary to the understanding of this chapter…
PERSUASION TO STEADFASTNESS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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It is necessary to the understanding of this chapter that we keep in mind the persecutions and sufferings which were straining the allegiance of the Christian Jews. These were peculiarly distressing at a time when they were also exposed to the solicitations and temptations of the unbelieving Jews.
Heb_12:1. Cloud.—Familiar metaphor for a great multitude. Witnesses.—Who in varied spheres illustrate, and testify to, the power of faith to win spiritual triumphs. There is possibly in the mind of the writer, and suggesting his figure, the scene of the Roman or Grecian public games, in which the combatants are watched by multitudes of spectators. Compare 1Co_4:9. The idea of “witnesses” as those who cheer by their testimony is however to be preferred. Every weight.—R.V. margin, “all cumbrance.” Farrar, “stripping off at once cumbrance of every kind”: the word “weight” was used, technically, in the language of athletes, to mean “superfluous flesh,” to be reduced by training. ὄγκος means “swelling,” “weight,” and then, morally, “pride,” “inflation.” The writer, no doubt, had in mind the special dangers of the Hebrew Christians. The “divers and strange teachings,” spoken of in Heb_13:9, in which would be included the Judaising practices which they were tempted to observe, will probably suit the figure best. Which doth so easily beset us.—These words form the translation of a single Greek word, εὐπερίστατον. It is a form of a verb which means to “stand round us”; so the meaning may be “closely clings.” The precise reference of the writer is not to particular and individual sins, but to the sin of apostasy which at that time beset all Christian Jews. Moulton says, “The prevailing opinion amongst modern writers appears to be that the word signifies well (or easily) surrounding; and that the writer is comparing sin with a garment—either a loosely fitting garment by which the runner becomes entangled and is tripped up, or one that clings closely to him and thus impedes his ease of movement.” But Moulton prefers the suggestion of words that are analogous to this one, and that would lead us to render “much admired”; lit. “well surrounded by an admiring crowd.” Anyway, the ordinary associations of the term “besetting sin” are not suitable here. Stuart paraphrases the verse thus: “Since so many illustratious patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs, who preceded us, have exercised faith, persevered in it, and obtained the rewards consequent upon it, let us, in like manner, rejecting every solicitation to renounce our hopes and our holy religion, persevere in the belief, and in the duties, which the gospel requires.”
Heb_12:2. Looking.—More precisely “looking off,” “looking away.” It implies “the concentration of the wandering gaze in a single direction.” Author.—ἀρχηγόν: see Heb_2:10. Leader, Imitator, Captain, Prince, Bringer-on. He who introduced the new religion. Finisher.—τελειωτήν. The one who has Himself reached the goal for which we are striving. There is a guarantee in His having completed the race (1Pe_1:9).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_12:1-2
The Inspiration of Noble Examples.—The “cloud of witnesses” is manifestly that list of noble and heroic men and women which has been given in chap. 11, together with that further list which has been suggested by brief allusion. The good men and true who have lived, laboured, and suffered in the past should always appear to us as a “great cloud of witnesses”: in their witnessing is found (in one sense) their immortality. Any goodness gained, any moral triumphs won, never die, in the sense of losing their moral influence on humanity. Every good lifts the race to a higher level.
“Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
“Those who thus encompass us, a countless host, have had witness borne to them through their faith, and in turn stand forth as witnesses to faith, bearing testimony to its power and works. One and all they offer encouragement to us in our own contest of faith.” The picture which the writer brings before us is that of the great public games of his day. We are those who have to fight the spiritual fight, and to run the Christian race, and we may well be inspired to all holy energy, persistency, and self-restraint, as we note the severe discipline of these competitors, the intensity of their struggle, the delight in their victory, and the glory of their rewards. Some, however, see in the “cloud of witnesses” the vast crowding mass of spectators in the amphitheatre, who watch the combatants and the racers, and inspire them to heroic efforts by their loud acclaim. The previous suggestion may be preferred as more precisely connecting this chapter with the previous one.
I. The cloud of witnesses.—Setting before us the long roll of godly men who have lived through the ages, there are two things we can see in them which may well inspire us.
1. They were men who mastered their circumstances in loyalty to God. But nobody ever yet mastered his circumstances until he had mastered himself. When once that is done, the mastery of circumstances becomes an easy thing. The circumstances of our life never are “according to our mind.” They are largely created by wills which conflict with ours, and by events that are wholly beyond our control. What is inspiring in the Old Testament heroes is this—they did not master their circumstances in any mere forcing of their own will and pleasure, but in loyally furthering the will of God as they knew it. And that is the highest law for the ruling of our lives. Circumstances will eventually master any man whose only idea is to make his will rule them. Circumstances never can eventually master any man whose one idea is, to make God’s will rule them.
2. They were men who fulfilled their life-mission in devotion to God. On an Irish tombstone, erected to the memory of a devoted lady, whose life was a service to the children and the poor, is inscribed these words: “She had a work to do, and she did it.” That might be said of the Old Testament saints. The recognition of a Divine commission ennobles a life. And such recognition should come to us all. If God “calls us by His grace into the fellowship of His Son,” we may be absolutely sure that He calls us by His grace into some special form of work for His Son, and endows us with the gifts for the work, and brings round to us the sphere in which the work can be done. Every man that watches for it in a spirit of willingness will find his work set before him; and he may be inspired, by the old saints, to fulfil it in absolute devotion to God. He will be ennobled by the sense of having a trust. What may be the inspiring power of the Old Testament wrestlers in the fight, and runners in the race, should also be felt as the power of those saintly and heroic souls who have come into our personal knowledge. They are our inspiring “cloud of witnesses.”
II. The one sublime Witness.—“Looking unto Jesus.” The writer seems to have designed to say something more precise than appears in our English translation. He seems to have meant this: “Look at that long roll of noble souls, and see what triumphs they gained through their loyalty and devotion to God; but do not fix all your thought on them. Get all the inspiration that you can from them; and then look off, look away from them—look unto Jesus, who, in mastery of circumstances, in loyalty to God, in fulfilment of His life-mission, and in devotion to God, is altogether and easily their Head, their Captain. Talk about the practical life of faith which the old heroes lived; here is a practical life of faith in every way more perfect, more complete, more nobly toned, more triumphant, more inspiring. Here is the Author, the Head, the First, of men of faith; here is the Finisher: for nobody will ever live a nobler life of faith, a life that shall surpass His.” Fix attention on three things concerning this absolute model of faith:
1. He endured the cross, despising, mastering, rising above, the shame.
2. His faith in the issue of His enduring brought Him present joy. “For the joy that was set before Him.”
3. His persistent and triumphant faith brought round to Him the Divine recognition and reward. “And hath sat down at the right hand of God.” There is this additional inspiration in the example of the Lord Jesus—that we can apprehend the Divine future reward with which His life of faith was sealed. We cannot pass in thought with the heroes of the Old Testament into the life beyond, and so estimate, inspiringly, their final rewards. We can only see how rewards came in their heart-joy in God, and in their good influence in their generation. But the New Testament Scriptures labour to help us in the apprehension of the glory and reward which Christ has won, and they hold out before us the hope of gaining that “crown of life” which our Lord Jesus has. So Jesus, the sublime witness to the practical life of faith, leads on the double train of heroic souls, from the old age and new, who believed God, and in their faith gained the great life-victory.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_12:1. Besetting Sins.—Precision of thinking may prevent our saying that the writer had in his mind precisely what we mean by “besetting sins,” but to take his words with our own associations will not put us out of harmony with his thought, or with his teaching. If a man speaks harshly concerning the failings and infirmities of other people, we may be quite sure that he either does not know himself, or has a distorted vision which allows him to see only what he wishes to see. By reason of natural or acquired frailties of disposition, character, and habit, every man finds great difficulty in living through the godly life. In the great Christian life-conflict, as in times of national warfare, there are some battles, and much continuous, skirmishing, guerilla work. The battle-times are special temptations and trials. The continuous warfare is represented by the daily dealing with besetting sins.
I. All of us have some evil disposition, tendency, or influence, which may properly be called our “besetting sin.”—Usually, because of its subtle and disguised character, it is difficult for us to find it. Very often we are strangely surprised to find that it is the very thing of which we most readily and most harshly accuse others.
1. Some are directly related to our fallen nature,—as hereditary drunkenness, gluttony, and sensuality; as that love of bloody sports which was so dreadful a feature in Pagan human nature, and which reappears in our day in the strange love of reading about murders, and the fascination of novels containing sensational horrors.
2. Some result from defective moral training, which has failed to deal wisely and effectively with the first signs of evil in child-life,—as vanity, affectation of superiority, idleness, procrastination, cruelty, etc.
3. Some result from the union of fallen nature with outward temptation, e.g. pride, unforgivingness, self-conceit, readiness to take offence. With some knowledge of our real selves, we could not fail to pray, with the psalmist, “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.”
II. Our besetting sins must exert a most injurious influence on our Christian lives.—A man may be smitten down by a great temptation, and find recovering power, and rise again, shaking off the evil, and becoming henceforth the better for the humbling experience. But the danger of our little falls, through our besetting sins, lies in their so seldom awaking us, and arousing us to exert our recuperative energies. Besetting sins wear away, as the waters wear the stones.
III. Besetting sins demand our watchful attention and our persistent effort.—This we feel increasingly with the growing years. The experience of life gradually persuades us that we cannot hope to entirely uproot them. (The Diabolians will persist in lurking in some little-known corners of Mansoul.) What we can do we must do, and keep on doing—we can watch for and crush their opportunities. This we shall never thoroughly do until we can see our besetment to be sin.
Looking off unto Jesus.—In the old Grecian games it was necessary to keep the eye of the runner fixed on the goal. So we must turn our attention from everything else and fix it on Christ, if we would run well the Christian race.
I. Under what apprehensions of Him are we to look to Christ?—
1. As Saviour. Illustrate by the figures, “Alpha and Omega”; ransom; opened prison; slave given his freedom. The look should be one of gratitude.
2. As Master. Illustrate by figures, captain leading army; king; Joshua seeing “Captain of host”; St. Paul receiving orders from the glorified Jesus. The look should be one of obedience.
3. Example: Jesus is the model of a man dwelt in by the Spirit of God. Imitation needs the presence of a model.
II. In what scenes are we to look to Jesus?—
1. Common duty. Christ’s image can be reflected in a little pool even better than in a great lake.
2. Times of temptation.
3. Times of difficulty. Imagine Moses anxiously looking every morning, the first thing, to see whether the pillar-cloud had moved.
4. Means of grace. What is ever brought to mind by the church steeples pointing upwards.
III. What sort of looks should they be?—
1. Trustful. A man on a height looks up, not down.
2. Obedient. The proper spirit of servants.
3. Loving, as to our mother or our dearest friend. We shall look to Christ the better, the better we come to know Him. Know Him worthily, and we shall look off to Him altogether.
Weights and Sins.—There is a regular series of thoughts in this clause. If we would run well, we must run light; and if we would run light, we must look to Christ. The central injunction is, “Let us run with patience”; the only way of doing that is the “laying aside all weights and sin”; and the only way of laying aside the weights and sins is “looking unto Jesus.” The “sin which doth so easily beset us” is sin generically. All sin is a besetting sin. It is the characteristic of every kind of transgression, that it circles us round about, that it is always lying in wait and lurking for us. Every “weight” is distinct from “sin.” We, as racers, must throw aside the garment that wraps us round—that is to say, “the sin that easily besets us”; and then, besides that, we must lay aside everything else which weights us for the race—that is to say, certain habits or tendencies within us.
I. There are hindrances which are not sins.—Sin is a transgression of God’s law; a “weight” is that which, allowable in itself, is, for some reason, a hindrance and impediment in our running the heavenly race. Sin is sin, whosoever does it; but weights may be weights to me, and not weights to you. What are these weights? We carry them about with us, and we are to put them away from ourselves. They are the feelings and habits of mind by which we abuse God’s great gifts and mercies. We are to put away the dispositions within us which make things temptations. It is an awful and mysterious power that we all possess of perverting the highest endowments, whether of soul or of circumstances, which God has given us, into the occasions for faltering and falling back in the Divine life. Every blessing, every gladness, every possession, external to us, and every faculty and attribute within us, we turn into heavy weights that drag us down to this low spot of earth.
II. If we would run, we must lay these weights aside.—The whole of the Christian’s course is a fight. We carry with us a double nature. Because of that conflict, it follows that, if ever there is to be a positive progress in the Christian race, it must be accompanied and made possible by the negative process of casting away and losing much that interferes with it. There is no spiritual life without dying; there is no spiritual growth without putting off “the old man with his affections and lusts.” How is this laying aside to be performed?
1. By getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it.
2. By taking the prudent course of putting it utterly aside. There are many duties which, by our own sinfulness, we make weights, and we dare not, and we cannot if we would, lay them aside,—a man’s calling or domestic ties. The duties that in our weakness become impediments and weights we must not leave. There is a large field for misconception and misapplication in the settlement of the practical question, Which of my weights arise from circumstances that I dare not seek to alter, and which of them from circumstances that I dare not leave unaltered? There is a large margin left for the play of honesty of purpose, and plain common sense, in the fitting of general maxims to the shifting and complicated details of an individual life. But no laws can be laid down to save us that trouble.
III. This laying aside of every weight is only possible by looking to Christ.—Some people suppose that when they have laid aside a weight, conquered a hindrance, given up some bad habit, they have done a meritorious thing. We are, no doubt, strengthened by the very act; but then it is of no use at all except in so far as it makes us better fitted for the positive progress which is to come after it. The racer puts aside his garments that he may run. We empty our hearts that Christ may fill them. And Christ must have begun to fill them before we can empty them. “Looking to Jesus” is the only means of thorough-going, absolute self-denial. All other surrender than that which is based upon love to Him, and faith in Him, is but surface work, and drives the subtle disease to the vitals. If you would lay aside every weight, you must look to Christ, and let His love flow into your soul. Then self-denial will not be self-denial. It will be blessing and joy, sweet and easy. Whatever you give up for Christ you get back from Christ, better, more beautiful, more blessed, hallowed to its inmost core, a joy and a possession for ever.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Cloud of Witnesses.—They are “a cloud” like that background of one of Raffaelle’s great pictures, which, at first sight, seems only a bright mist, and looked at more closely is all full of calm, angel faces.—Ibid.
Heb_12:1-2. The Christian Race.—This passage is, in the main, an exhortation to that steadfast pursuit of the Christian ideal to which we are all bound by our upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. Nor is there any doubt that its leading image is that of a race such as the athletes of classical times used to run; possibly the race that was in the writer’s mind was one of those that were run in the vast Roman amphitheatres, in which the spectators sat in seats that rose tier above tier, so that to the runners, swiftly flashing by, their white faces and many-coloured robes would look like an illuminated “cloud” stooping from the sky.
I. How are we to prepare ourselves for the Christian race?—By “laying” or putting “aside”; by stripping off, by getting quit of, “every weight,” or better, “all encumbrance,” all that would hinder or impede us, “and the sin that surrounds us,” or, as the English Version has it, “the sin that doth so easily beset us.” As to the first phrase, we need not limit ourselves to the acts of the athlete, and what they may suggest. “Every weight,” “all encumbrance,” cannot mean less than this—that we are to lay aside whatever impedes us, whatever would hamper or delay us, from whatever cause, in whatever way. The second clause is more difficult. It seems as if “the sin that doth so easily beset us” must be our most besetting sin, the sin to which we are most inclined by our personal make, temperament, habit, and into whose hindering and degrading clutches we are most apt to fall. But the simple fact is, that our eight words, “the sin that doth most easily beset us,” are a translation, or a paraphrase, of only three Greek words, which might be translated by “the circumambient sin.” What the writer meant to convey was, that, in addition to all other encumbrances, all else which is adverse to the Christian life, we must lay aside the ruling sin of the age, the sin which is in the very air of our time, which besets or surrounds us like an atmosphere—the sin which, as everybody shares it, we may half persuade ourselves is not a sin at all, or is not a sin so deadly that it need be very strenuously opposed or renounced. It is a popular sin which the inspired writer had in his eye—probably that “fear of persecution” about which he, again and again, warns his readers. These common and admired sins of the time, sins which we can readily excuse to ourselves, which make men, in some sense, think better of us and associate with us on easier terms, which at all events gain for us a more peaceful and quiet life, are among the most dangerous, because the most subtle and plausible, sins; they are among the most fatal hindrances to our advance in the spiritual life; and the temptations to them offer us our noblest opportunities for serving God and man. And these sins are as active, as potent, as fatal, to-day as they ever where.
II. If we ask, How are we to run this race? the answer is, With “patient endurance,” with cheerful constancy, with a resolute and ever-renewed exertion of our whole strength, with an unflagging and whole-hearted devotion which will shrink from no trial, succumb to no temptation.
III. In running this race, we are encouraged by the example and testimony of a great cloud of witnesses. For the writer of this epistle the cloud was composed of the heroic men and women whose famous achievements he had summarised in the previous chapter, from the father of the faithful downward. But in what sense were they witnesses? Are they the interested and approving spectators of our exploits? Or are they, rather, witnesses and martyrs to the truth, and to the God in whom we believe—witnesses in whose lives we may see our own experiences reflected, and from whose lips we may gather consolation and encouragement? How does their presence help us? By stimulating us to a keener emulation, a braver effort, a stronger determination to win, because they are looking on; or by furnishing us with guidance, counsel, courage, hope, as we remember how much they endured, what perils and defects they surmounted, and how gloriously they conquered at last, and how richly they were rewarded? If we must choose between these interpretations, we choose the latter. But we need not choose; we may accept both motives, in so far as they are good and helpful motives; for all things are ours, all motives, aids, encouragements, to that strenuous and continuous effort by which alone we can rise into the life eternal, and receive its crown. There is no kind of reading by which we profit more than the biographies of men who were genuinely or greatly good. But of all biographies those which are the most helpful to us are those which we find in the Bible, when once we have learned that the men whose lives are recorded there were men of like passions with ourselves, and that their faults and sins are recorded for our warning and instruction, not that we may justify them, or allow ourselves in them; for these biographies were written by men who had a special eye for the trials of faith and the triumphs of righteousness.
IV. If we ask, How may we win? how may we best assure ourselves of winning this race, of ultimately obtaining that perfect ideal of character which has been set before us?—the answer is, By “looking unto Jesus.” In the imperial games the goal was placed in front of the emperor’s seat. And the image of this verse seems to be, that that victorious athlete and champion, Jesus Christ, after having run the race as it had never been run before, and reached the goal in face of such opposition and under the pressure of such a burden as man never before endured, had been called up by the Imperator to sit on His right hand, and to adjudge the prize in all races that should be thereafter run. Because He sits high above the goal, because He is to judge the strife, and His hand is to confer the wreath of victory, we are to look to Him as we run; nay, as the Greek verb implies, looking away from all others, or else, we are to look only to Him. There is to be a deliberate and energetic concentration of our whole power and aspiration on Him. We are to concentrate our thoughts on Christ, because He is “the Author and Perfecter of faith”—not only of our faith, but of faith. To this writer faith is a principle, not a creed—not a system of co-ordinated beliefs, but a condition and adventure of the soul, or a life of which this condition is the animating and inspiring motive. When he speaks of Jesus as “the Author and Perfecter” of this faith, he may mean—
1. That even the great cloud of witnesses, from the father of the faithful down to the last of his children who had “wrought righteousness,” owed their faith to Jesus Christ, the everlasting Word, by whom all things were made and all men redeemed.
2. That in Jesus this Divine principle of life first received its full incarnation, that in Him this ideal was first perfectedly realised.
3. And that, if we are to live a life of faith, He must both originate this life in us and complete it. How confidently we may look to Him for all the grace and help we need, we learn from the next clause of the verse: “who, for the joy set before Him, endured a cross, despising shame.” “The joy of the Saviour was the salvation of mankind” (Theodoret). Even the cruel and shameful burden of “a cross” could not abate His zeal nor rob Him of the prize; nor could the shame of it daunt His courage or turn Him from His aim. And what was His cross but the sense and burden of our sin? What the shame which He despised but our shame in that, seeing the very Ideal of virtue and righteousness, we did not recognise it, did not love and desire it; nay, hated it, and, so far as we could, banished it from the world? He who endured all this for us, and from us, can He withhold His sympathy and aid when, instead of opposing and rejecting Him, we set out on the very course He trod, press forward in it under manifold weaknesses and discouragements, looking steadfastly to Him for guidance, sympathy, and grace?—S. Cox, D.D.
Plodding through the Uneventful.—It is a great deal easier to be up to the occasion in some shining moment of a man’s life, when he knows that a supreme hour has come, than it is to keep that high tone when plodding over all the dreary plateau of uneventful, monotonous travel and dull duties. It is easier to run fast for a minute than to grind along the dusty road for a day. We have all a few moments in life of hard, glorious running; but we have days and years of walking—the uneventful discharge of small duties.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Heb_12:2. The Saviour rejoicing to suffer for Mankind.—The apostle Paul frequently illustrates the position and prospects of Christians by a reference to the social customs existing among the persons to whom his writings were addressed. Here is a reference to “the games.” Spiritually applied, the Christians addressed are regarded as the spectators; the departed saints; and the Lord Jesus, once a successful candidate, and now the Arbiter at the goal, by whom the reward is to be adjudged and bestowed.
I. The humiliation and suffering to which the Lord Jesus Christ submitted.—
1. In their nature. “The cross” signifies death by crucifixion. “The shame,” of being deserted by the Father, being accursed and outcast, of bearing the guilt of millions, and the wrath for those sins.
2. The spirit in which they were encountered and borne. “Endured” with resignation and fortitude; “despised the shame.” He delights in the scorching of the fire, and He scorns the woe.
II. The prospects, by the pleasurable contemplation of which, amidst His humiliation and shame, the Lord Jesus Christ was animated.—
1. The ordained mediatorial results by which the joy of the Lord Jesus was actually inspired. He was to enter through His sufferings into pre-eminent personal elevation and glory. By His humiliation and sufferings He vindicated the government and character of the Godhead, and secured the redemption and happiness for unnumbered multitudes of mankind.
2. The inherent characteristics by which the joy of the Lord Jesus, so inspired, was distinguished.
(1) The purity of His joy. Absolutely unsullied.
(2) The vastness. Its extent cannot be measured or fathomed. His joy, like His love, passeth knowledge.
(3) The perpetuity. Never fade.
(4) The diffusiveness. The fulness of His joy sends forth streams to the angels and the spirits of the just made perfect.
III. The influence which the pleasure of the Lord Jesus, so excited and constituted, ought to have upon His people.—
1. They ought to rejoice with Him in His joy. We ought to congratulate our Lord Jesus on the pleasure arising from His mediatorial work. Exult with Him, and for His sake.
2. They ought to accord to Him the entire surrender and devotedness of their hearts. If the majesty and splendour of His celestial glory are now continually employed for our welfare, is there not a solemn and resistless call upon our unreserved practical dedication to His will?
3. They should bear their own afflictions and sorrows in imitation of His example. Mental resignation and fortitude, and in holy contempt of what He had to suffer—thus He endured; and here is our obligation too.
4. They should habitually anticipate the period when they shall meet their Redeemer in the world of joy where now He dwells. The eye of faith can detect Him standing by the goal, holding out not the crown of fading laurel, but the incorruptible crown of life. Endeavour to participate in the spirit of this high and noble feeling.—J. Parsons.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Heb_12:1. Laying Aside our Weights.—It was on the confines of the desert, amid sterile and almost inaccessible rocks, that Ben Achmet, the Dervise, led a life of austerity and devotion. A cave in the rocks was his dwelling. Roots and fruits, the scanty product of the inhospitable region he inhabited, satisfied his hunger, and the fountain that bubbled up from the lower part of a neighbouring cliff slaked his thirst. He had formerly been a priest in a magnificent mosque, and scrupulously conducted the ceremonies of the Mohammedan faith; but disgusted with the hypocrisy and injustice of those around him, he abandoned the mosque and his authority as a priest, betaking himself to the desert, to spend his days as an anchorite, in sanctity, self-denial, and devotion. Years rolled over the head of Ben Achmet, and the fame of his sanctity spread abroad. In seasons of drought he supplied the traveller of the desert with water from his little well. In times of pestilence he left his solitary abode to attend the sick and comfort the dying in the villages that were scattered around, and often did he stanch the blood of the wounded Arab, and heal him of his wounds. His fame was spread abroad; his name inspired veneration; and the plundering Bedouin gave up his booty at the command of Ben Achmet, the Dervise. Akaba was an Arabian robber; he had a band of lawless men under his command ready to do his bidding, large numbers of slaves, and a treasure house well stored with his ill-gotten wealth. The sanctity of Ben Achmet arrested his attention; his conscience smote him on account of his guilt, and he longed to be as famed for his devotion as he had been for his crimes. He sought the abode of the Dervise, and told him his desires. “Ben Achmet,” said he, “I have five hundred cimeters ready to obey me, numbers of slaves at my command, and a goodly treasure-house filled with riches; tell me how to add to these the hope of a happy immortality?” Ben Achmet led him to a neighbouring cliff that was steep, rugged, and high; and pointing to three large stones that lay near together, he told him to lift them from the ground, and to follow him up the cliff. Akaba, laden with the stones, could scarcely move; to ascend the cliff with them was impossible. “I cannot follow thee, Ben Achmet,” said he, “with these burdens.” “Then cast down one of them,” replied the Dervise, “and hasten after me.” Akaba dropped a stone, but still found himself too heavily encumbered to proceed. “I tell thee it is impossible,” cried the robber chieftain; “thou thyself couldst not proceed a step with such a load.” “Let go another stone, then,” said Ben Achmet. Akaba readily dropped another stone, and, with great difficulty, clambered the cliff for a while, till, exhausted with the effort, he again cried out that he could come no farther. Ben Achmet directed him to drop the last stone; and, no sooner had he done this, than he mounted with ease, and soon stood with his conductor on the summit of the cliff. “Son,” said Ben Achmet, “thou hast three burdens which hinder thee in thy way to a better world. Disband thy troop of lawless plunderers, set thy captive slaves at liberty, and restore thy ill-gotten wealth to its owners; it is easier for Akaba to ascend this cliff with the stones that lie at its foot, than for him to journey onward to a better world with power, pleasure, and riches in his possession.”
The Ancient Grecian Games.—The great religious festivals of Judaism served to unite the nation, and to meet the longing for pleasurable excitement which we find in a greater or less degree in every nation. They help us also to realise the serious and religious character of the Jewish people. They had no public games; and only in the late degenerate days of Roman dominion were gymnasia and theatres established among them. The apostle Paul tarried some time in the city of Corinth, and founded there a large, prosperous, and influential Christian Church; while residing in that city, there can be no doubt the great games were held on the adjoining isthmus, which were known as the Isthmian Games, and celebrated every other year. We cannot imagine that Paul went to them, for they must have been scenes of wild rioting and vice, too much like those witnessed now on our race-courses; but he would know all about them; and they would be for a time quite the common excitement in Corinth. Certainly, in Paul’s later writings, we find many allusions to these games; they seem to have seized on his imagination, and set him thinking how much there was like them in a Christian course. That also seemed to him a race, and he longed “so to run that he might attain.” That also seemed to him a battle; and when he came to its close, he could say, “I have fought a good fight.” The principal passages in which figures taken from the scenes of these games are found, are: 1Co_4:9; 1Co_9:24-27; Php_3:13-14; 1Th_2:19-20; 1Ti_4:8; 1Ti_6:12; 2Ti_2:5; 2Ti_4:7-8; Heb_10:32-33; Heb_12:1; Heb_2:1. The company of spectators was exceedingly large, people attending from all the district round; the competitors were urged and excited by their shouts and praises. In the Roman amphitheatres the audiences decided whether a defeated gladiator was to die by turning down their thumbs.
2. The competitors underwent previous and careful training, for at least ten months; keeping under the body, bringing it into subjection, and cultivating skill in the use of weapons, or the art of running.
3. Very stringent laws were fixed for conducting the contests, and they must be carried on in the prescribed way. A man would not be crowned unless he strove lawfully.
4. The contests were divided into two classes,—the pancratium, consisting of boxing and wrestling; and the pentathlon, consisting of leaping, running, quoiting, and hurling. In some games poetical and oratorical contests were introduced.
5. The actual reward was only a crown of pine or ivy leaves; but the victor was set in high honour, his name, and that of his father and country, were proclaimed by a herald to the vast assembly; and he was borne to his native city in triumph. Sometimes a pillar was erected on which the record of his victory was placed. From the rewards given at these games, the figures of Rev_3:12, etc., are taken.
Heb_12:2. Looking unto Jesus.—That conveys the idea of rigid shutting out of other things in order that one supreme light may fill the eye and gladden the soul. If you do not carefully drop black curtains round the little chamber, and exclude all side lights as well as all other objects from the field of vision, there will be no clear impression of the beloved face made upon the sensitive plate. It must be in the darkness that the image is transferred to the heart.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Captain and Perfecter of Faith.—In some notes on New Testament passages, Principal David Brown, in the Expositor, gives a new turn of thought to the familiar phrase, “the Author and Finisher [Perfecter, R.V.] of our faith.” He rejects the word “our,” and would translate, “the Captain and Perfecter of ‘faith.’ ” The passage, he maintains, teaches, not that Jesus is the Author and Completer of “our own” faith, but of the “life of faith.” In other words, He is the model believer. It is claimed that the very next verse brings out this idea. The “joy” was conditioned on the triumph of faith in enduring suffering. So the entire course of Christ’s temptation is a test and victory of faith. At the cross one said, “He trusted in God that He would deliver Him,” etc. Thus Christ is the “Leader and Conductor” of the army of believers, for He is Himself the most shining example of faith. This is a fresh light upon an old text.
Joy of Christ in Redemption.—It was a sad and fearful sight which that noble-minded girl, Grace Darling, and her old father saw, when the grey light began to make things visible across that stormy sea. The wild, broken clouds, the rear-guard of the tempest, were moving slowly and as it were grudgingly away; the fierce winds were sweeping in gusts across the sky; and the waves, lashed into foam by the midnight storm that had been raging, were breaking in sheets of spray over the miserable remnant of the crew who still clung to the wreck. As each breaker poured its torrent over it, the girl and her father could see the numbers thinned, and one after another swept away, to struggle for a few moments in the boiling and whirling eddies, and then “sink like lead in the mighty waters.” Will a boat live in such a sea? Can it be managed? They at all events will try. Their little boat is skilfully pushed off from the lighthouse, and, forced forward by the strength of love, it is soon under the wreck, and filled with those who have lowered themselves into it. A little while and the deeply laden boat has reached the lighthouse and deposited its rescued passengers in safety. Another effort and another, and they are all safe. Oh, how did their generous hearts glow with joy when they looked around on those who, but for their courage and skill and self-devotion, had been lifeless corpses in the ocean I How did their hearts burn within them as they saw the shivering sailors cowering over the fire and thawing their almost frozen limbs! What will be His joy who saw from His throne in the heavens a shipwrecked world with its millions who, but for Him, must have perished, who left His glory and with a strong hand spoiled the raging powers of darkness of their prey, and gathered from the wreck the mighty remnant!—Canon Champneys.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 When I was at Athens, Greece, in 1895, they…
ARGUMENT 16
THE KINGDOM AND STADIUM
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When I was at Athens, Greece, in 1895, they were busy repairing the old Stadium, after an iterregnum of fifteen hundred years. In the apostolic age the Olympic games celebrated in this Stadium had worldwide notice. They took place at the end of every quadriennium, attracting the attention of all nations. The contestants diligently labored and passed through all sorts of gymnastic exercises four solid years preparatory for these games, the racers carrying weights which they laid aside to run, wrestle and box in the Stadium. Time was measured by these Olympiads, and the year named in honor of the victor. Hence the great prominence of the Olympic races in the Pauline Epistles.
1. “Cloud of witnesses” refers to the faith brigade given in the preceding catalogue. How cheering to the apostolic saints to contemplate this cloud of heroes and martyrs! But we have the same cloud augmented by two hundred millions of Christian martyrs. Hence we certainly have an inspiring spectacle. Regeneration brings us through the gate of confession into the kingdom of grace. Heaven is still a long way off. If we ever get there we must run through the Stadium, under the inspection of multiplied millions of saints, angels and devils. The Athenium Stadium here alluded to is about a thousand yards long, terminating in an amphitheater, seating one hundred thousand spectators besides the multiplied myriads viewing the scene from Mount Hymettus, which overshadows the Stadium. This gospel metaphor is intensified by the renewing of the amphitheater and the reopening of the Olympic games, April, 1896. What a fatal mistake when you get converted to sit down at the gate, incurring the constant temptations by Satan to go back and enjoy the flesh-pots of Egypt! The sad effects of an emasculated Gospel preached by an unsanctified ministry is to leave converted people just inside of the gate. Soon attracted by Satan’s phantasmagoria, they slip out and participate in his pleasures. The avenger of blood gets on their track and chases them. Again they run to the gate and cry so pitifully that the Lord lets them in. Instead of moving right on, they still loiter about the gate, yield to temptation, slip out and take the devil’s bait. Again the bloody avenger chases them, and with greater difficulty than before, because they have gone further off, by the hardest effort they make the gate, crying so pitifully and promising so fairly that a merciful Savior takes them back. Again they linger about the gate as formerly, get out and this time becoming more venturesome than ever, wander far away. The third time the avenger of blood gets oil their track. So great is the space intervening between them and the gates, he heads them off, overtakes them, hewing them to pieces without mercy. We see in this verse an indispensable preparation, absolutely necessary to the heavenly racer, i.e., laying aside every weight and the besetting sins. The participle here is in the aorist tense, showing its instantaneity. It was impossible for an Olympic racer to win the prize unless he were utterly disencumbered. Entire consecration turns over everything we possess to God, thus completely divesting us of every ounce, so we are light as a bird of paradise, on celestial pinion, darting through the air. The Greek adjective euperistaton is from eu, good; peri, around; isteemai, to stand; hence it means the sin always standing round you and sticking close to you. Here the Holy Spirit is addressing the citizens of the kingdom, whose actual sins have all been left in the devil’s country, whence they came. Therefore, in harmony with the Greek definition of this word, we see it can be none other than the original inbred sin, which still inheres in the hearts of the regenerate. Hence we see, beyond the possibility of cavil, that entire consecration, disencumbering you of every burden, and complete sanctification, eradicating all besetting, i.e., inbred, sin, constitute the indispensable qualifications for the heavenly racer. Just as it was impossible for the Olympic racer to win a prize in the Athenian Stadium without these preparations, so it is absolutely nonsensical for the Christian to flatter himself that he shall wear a crown in heaven unless he consecrates all to God, gets wholly sanctified from all besetting sin, and then runs with patience the race set before him.
2. “Looking unto Jesus, the Beginner and Perfector of the faith.” Jesus begins our faith in regeneration and perfects our faith in sanctification. Hence, with a faith not only begun but perfected, we are to run this race, keeping our eyes on Jesus. So long as we keep our eyes on Him He keeps His hand on us, giving us all the help we need successfully to run the heavenly race. Meanwhile we are constantly inspired, energized and indefatigably electrified by His own heroic example; when He braved the rage of men and devils, stormed the bloody tide of Cavalry, thus triumphing over all of His enemies, and becoming our glorified Mediatorial King at God’s right hand.
3. This verse continues the thrilling exhortation to us, constantly to contemplate and emulate the heroic example of the Great Captain of our salvation, lest our hearts fail, our courage flicker and we again take on Satan’s blues.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith.
Heb 12:1
The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith.
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I. Certainly it cannot be denied, that if we surrender our hearts to Christ and obey God, we shall be in the number of the few. So it has been in every age; so it will be to the end of time. It is hard, indeed, to find a man who gives himself up honestly to his Saviour. Nay, it would seem that as Christianity spreads, its fruit becomes less, or at least does not increase with its growth. It seems as if a certain portion of truth were in the world, a certain number of the elect in the Church, and as you increased its territory, you scattered the remnant to and fro, and made them seem fewer, and made them feel more desolate. Even when they know each other they may not form an exclusive communion together. There is no Invisible Church yet formed; it is but a name as yet, a name given to those who are hidden and known to God only, and as yet but half formed, the unripe and gradually ripening fruit which grows on the stem of the Church Invisible. As well might we attempt to foretell the blossoms which will at length turn to account and ripen for the gathering, and then, counting up all these, and joining them together in our minds, call them by the name of a tree, as attempt now to associate in one the true elect of God. They are scattered about amid the leaves of the mystical vine which is seen, and receive their nurture from its trunk and branches.
II. Do what he will, Satan cannot quench or darken the light of the Church. He may encrust it with his own evil creations, but even opaque bodies transmit rays, and Truth shines with its own heavenly lustre, though under a bushel. The scattered witnesses become, in the language of the text, "a cloud," like the Milky Way in the heavens. We have, in Scripture, the records of those who lived and died by faith in the old time, and nothing can deprive us of them. We find that we are not solitary; that others before us have been in our very condition, have had our feelings, undergone our trials, and laboured for the prize which we are seeking. This is why it is a Christian’s characteristic to look back upon former times. The man of this world lives in the present, or speculates about the future; but faith rests upon the past, and is content. It makes the past the mirror of the future. What a world of sympathy and comfort is thus opened to us in the communion of saints. The heathen, who sought truth most earnestly, fainted for want of companions; every one stood by himself. But Christ has "gathered together the children of God that were scattered abroad," and brought them near to each other in every time and place. One living saint, though there be but one, is a pledge of the whole Church Invisible.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iii., p. 236.
Weights and Sins.
I. There are hindrances which are not sins. A "weight" is that which, allowable in itself—legitimate, perhaps a blessing, the exercise of a power which God has given us—is, for some reason, a hindrance and impediment in our running the heavenly race. The one word describes the action or habit in its inmost essence; the other describes it by its accidental consequences. Sin is sin, in whatever degree it is done; but weights may be weights when they are in excess, and helps, not hindrances, when they are in moderation. The one is a legitimate thing, turned to a false use; the other is always, and everywhere, and by whomsoever performed, a transgression of God’s law. The renunciation that is spoken of is not so much the putting away from ourselves of certain things lying round about us, that may become temptations, as the putting away of the dispositions within us which make these things temptations.
II. If we would run we must lay weights aside. The whole of the Christian’s course is a fight. Because of that conflict, it follows, that if ever there is to be a positive progress in the Christian race, it must be accompanied and made possible by the negative process of casting away and losing much that interferes with it. There are two ways in which the injunction of the text may be obeyed. (1) The one is, by getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it; (2) the other is, to take the prudent course of putting it entirely aside.
III. The laying aside of every weight is only possible by looking to Christ. We empty our hearts; but the empty heart is dull and cold and dark; we empty our hearts that Christ may fill them. Just as the old leaves drop naturally from the tree when the new buds of spring begin to put themselves out, so the new affections come and dwell in the heart, and expel the old.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, vol. i., p. 259.
The Cloud of Witnesses.
I. Christian life is here compared to a race. The fitness of this comparison will appear in the following facts: (1) Christian life is not the ordinary human life. (2) In living out the Christian life exertions and endeavours are necessary. (3) For entrance upon Christian life a great change is needful. (4) The consummation of the Christian’s life is singular. There is a racer’s crown for the Christian.
II. These are the truths which justify the figure; but they are not the truths specially presented in the text: these are (1) that Christian life is not, as a life of faith, new; it has its witnesses from all past time. (2) The Christian life is not solitary; its witnesses are a cloud. (3) Christian life is not easy; it has its hardships and difficulties. (4) Christian life is continuous; it has its starting-point and its goal. (5) Christian life is not unaided; it has its subordinate aids and helps, besides the helper God.
S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble, p. 151.
Our Life a Race.
Life is of necessity a race, and we are commanded to make it a Christian race; such a race as Christianity will approve, and the Author of Christianity will reward with an imperishable crown. I notice—
I. That in order to this it must be run with a view to a proper object. (1) In judging of what ought to be the great aim and ambition of our life, it will be admitted, as an axiomatic truth, that it ought to be the very highest aim of which we are capable. (2) One consequence of this is, that anything which addresses itself only to a part of our being cannot be the proper aim of our life; we must take in the whole. Christianity proposes a prize which is worthy of all our efforts, which may well stand at the end of our life-race, and inflame the runners with a holy and boundless ambition.
II. The second thing necessary to make our life a Christian race is that we run in the right path. In every race there is a course marked out. It is not left to the runner to prescribe for himself in this matter. He must keep to the course, or he forfeits the very possibility of gaining the prize. There are two marks by which we may know the Christian’s way. (1) The first is faith; (2) the second is loving obedience.
III. The third thing necessary to make our life-race a Christian race, is that we run in a right manner and spirit. The Apostle tells us that we must so run as to obtain; everything as regards comfort, progress and success will depend on the manner and spirit in which we run. (1) We must strip ourselves of every unnecessary encumbrance. (2) We must have concentration of purpose. (3) We must run in a spirit of dependence on our God. Note one or two remarks by way of encouragement. (1) It is surely a great encouragement that Divine help is promised. (2) It is a great encouragement that we are running in the view of so many onlookers, all concerned for our progress, and deeply interested in our success. This was one of the grand animating circumstances in the national contests of ancient times. The runner was conscious that the eyes of his assembled countrymen were upon him. The nation was present to behold. The consciousness of this could not fail to be the inspiration of all; it widened the glory of victory and deepened the shame of defeat. Is it not the same in the Christian race? The witnesses here are all the best and greatest in the universe. (3) The unspeakable value of the prize is another encouragement which we cannot overlook. Well might the Apostle say, "I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."
A. L. Simpson, The Upward Path, p. 81.
The Christian Race.
I. The writer has been taking his readers through the splendid battle roll of the heroes of faith. His object in doing so had been twofold: he wished to show them that in becoming Christians they had introduced no discontinuity into their religious life; had nowise forfeited their religious inheritance in the grand historic past of which, as patriots, they had a right to be so proud. But far more he desired to show, that not a few souls in this sad and wicked world had been pure and good; that there had been some, even in Sardis, who had not defiled their robes; that the views of those who would fain persuade us that apparent saintship is nothing but perfected hypocrisy are not merely cynical, but false. It is of memorable importance for us to know that the task set before us is not beyond the powers of any one of us; that any attempt to regard it as beyond our powers is a device of the justice and love of God. God has set a goal before us; He has bidden us run a race, and that race we can run, and that goal we can attain, not by our own strength, but by the strength which God gives us.
II. In order to run the race we must lay aside every weight. The word rendered "weight" is a technical, an athletic, a gymnastic word; it means, strictly speaking, superfluous flesh. We must strip off every encumbrance; yes, and the sin which doth so easily beset us. Here you have the very heart of the matter. You must retain nothing that impedes the race of God; you must make no truce with Canaan, you must plead for no Zoar of your own; you must leave the guilty city, and cast upon it no backward glance. If there be one point in which you are specially weak against the assaults of Satan; if you know that there is one sin to whose assaults you are specially prone, it is that sin which, as Dante said, will destroy your soul; that conquered, all others follow it; that victorious, all others partake of its victory.
F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 289.
References: Heb 12:1.—G. Salmon, Sermons in Trinity College, Dublin, p. 1; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 55; S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble, p. 151; Expositor, 1st series, vol. v., p. 149; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons, p. 227; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 198; Ibid., 4th series, vol. i., p. 96; T. De Witt Talmage, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 70; J. B. Brown, Ibid., vol. vii., pp. 369, 392; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. viii., p. 501; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 124; vol. x., p. 299; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. viii., p. 57; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 88.
Heb 12:1-2
The Exemplar of Faith.
I. The cloud of witnesses is not the object on which our heart is fixed. They testify of faith, and we cherish their memory with gratitude, and walk with a firmer step because of the music of their lives. Our eye, however, is fixed, not on them, not on many, but on One; not on the army, but the Leader; not on the servants, but the Lord. We see Jesus only, and from Him we derive our true strength, even as He is our light of life. There are many witnesses, and yet Jesus is the only true and faithful Witness. His example is the great motive of our obedience of faith. Jesus walked by faith. He, who in the eternal counsel undertook our salvation in obedience to the Father’s will, entered, by His Incarnation, on the path of faith. Herein is the very power and efficacy of the obedience of Jesus; that it is the voluntary condescension and obedience of the Son of God; that it is a true and real obedience, submission, dependence, struggle, suffering; that it is the obedience of faith.
II. Jesus believed. He is the Author and Finisher of faith—the only perfect, all-sided embodiment of faith. Since without faith it is impossible to please God, and since Jesus always and perfectly pleased the Father; since faith is the very root and spirit of obedience, and Jesus was the servant of the Lord, who finished the God-given work, Jesus was perfect in faith. The whole realm of faith was traversed by Him; He ascended the whole scale, from the lowest to the highest step; He endured and He conquered all things.
III. The Christian life is a race, and hence constancy, steadfastness, perseverance, are absolutely necessary. "Lay aside useless and hurtful things; leave them behind," says the Apostle. It is easy, when we look unto Jesus; but impossible unless our thoughts and affections are centred on Christ, unless we behold Him as our Lord and Bridegroom, our Strength and Joy. This is the only method of the New Covenant.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 352.
The Communion of Saints.
The Christian Church has for many generations set apart a day for the observance of the Feast of All Saints; and its eve, celebrated in poetry, in games, by wild and graceful superstitions, and bearing in its practices traces of heathen faiths and legend, has been called All Hallows’ Eve. The Feast was originally set up to put an end to the excessive multiplication of Saints’ Days. These grew so rapidly, each nation wishing to honour its own special saints, that more than half the days in each month were turned into holidays. Work was neglected, and laziness seemed in danger of developing into a virtue. The Roman Church then threw the veneration and love of all these holy persons into one festival, instead of many, and the day was called the Feast of All Saints. The festival finally became the poetic form in which the doctrine of the communion of saints was enshrined.
I. This faith tells us that we are never alone. The very ground of it is that in the midst of this vast world of being, supporting its existence and pervading it, touching it at all points, and conscious of the life of every soul in it, is God, our Father, at once the vital principle by which each several being—to borrow an illustration from science—spins on its individual poles, and the ether in which independently it moves. He knows every thought; He feels every sorrow and joy; He supports with all the force of law every effort towards goodness, that is, towards union with the eternal, with the universe; He makes us feel, when we are in evil thought or act, our contradiction to the whole universe, our apartness from Him, till at last we yield ourselves to goodness only, and are consciously at one with Him.
II. And, secondly, it is not only God who, according to this idea, is present with us for solace and for power, but also all the noble dead—all who live in God, and through the unity of His pervading Spirit are interwoven with us in the infinite web of immortal communion. Jesus is the Lover of our soul, and so are all the holy and loving souls who live in the eternal world. He is the nearest and the most conquering in His love and in His communion. But yet there are some whom we have known and loved on earth who have to us a relationship of union, not so powerful in love, but nearer in human bonds. These are ours, and the tie between us, though they are not seen, is closer even than it was on earth. What is its ground? Where is its strength rooted? In the truth of the Communion of Saints.
III. Finally, there are two things more to say. One is, that all the joy and comfort of this doctrine depend on our becoming pure in heart, holy in word and deed. Communion with God is known through holiness. The pure in heart see God. Communion with humanity in God is known by love. And there is no other way in the world by which we can believe in God and believe in man. And, secondly, when we think of this vast assemblage, all united in a communion of gentleness, we understand that the last and highest range of human nature is not knowledge or power, but holiness held in love.
S. A. Brooke, The Unity of God and Man, p. 61.
The Christian Race.
I. The Race. It is the old race from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, from ruin to regeneracy, from sin to full salvation. Sometimes it is called a journey. Even that is a figure full of interest, as denoting a purpose, a progress, an end. But here it rises to its full strength, to its full dignity, and is called a race. A race, if it is at all worthy of the name, is a straining from beginning to end. Let no man think that the Christian life is easy. When things get so low with any one that the strenuous imagery of this passage seems to have no application, that man has no evidence, or he can have very little, and that most precarious, that he is a runner at all.
II. The runners—who are they? Two things are found in all the runners who run and strive lawfully for this great mastery, for this great prize. And they are (1) that all the runners shall begin at the Christian beginning, where all workers, all warriors, all runners, do begin, who enter upon this earnest and grand life. And where is that? They must begin with repentance; they must begin with faith; they must begin, in one word, with the Lord Jesus Christ. (2) Then the other thing is this, that, while beginning thus at the true beginning, they must also seek nothing less than the true end—the high, Christian end. And what is that? The last and noblest end of all Christian life, is the image of Christ, purity, perfection, the full perfection of our nature, conformity in all things to the Master’s will; that is the end, perfect peace, perfect knowledge, perfect love, perfect obedience.
III. The Impediments. These exist in every case; no runner is without them. They are to be laid aside. All that hinders, weights or sins, whatever they may be, be they constitutional, or be they superinduced, if they hinder they are to be laid aside by us.
IV. The Witnesses. There are spectators of the race. There is a watching from the skies: there is an earnest waiting of the glorified Church. What we think of as most shadowy, is in fact most real. What we think of as most distant, is sometimes really most near. What a motive is thus derived to promote our diligence while we are here as runners, and ere we have yet won our crown! If we lose it, it will be in sight of them all. Those whom you have never seen will see you; will see you stumble, will see you fall, will see you cease from running any more, while another takes your crown.
V. The Goal. The goal is at the end of the race. The goal in this case is the person of Christ, "looking unto Jesus." This is the goal, the presence, the approbation of Christ. His presence satisfies that illustrious company. It is His light that covers them all with glory; it is His approbation that thrills them all with joy; it will be at His feet that they will cast their crowns at the last day.
A. Raleigh, Penny Pulpit, 3938.
References: Heb 12:1, Heb 12:2.—E. L. Hull, Sermons, 3rd series, p. 144; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 133; E. B. Pusey, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii., p. 130; Bishop M. Simpson, Sermons, p. 405.
Heb 12:2
I. If man is to become good, it is, above all, needful that he should learn to hate evil; and to hate it, not alone because of its uselessness or inexpediency, but because of its inherent badness. Now here a look at the Cross of Jesus supplies the need. To those who will only open their eyes to see, in the sufferings and death of the holy Jesus, the terrible result of man’s sin, looking to the cross supplies a motive for loathing and forsaking sin, such as whole volumes of moral teaching could never produce. "Looking unto Jesus" supplies man with that most irresistible of all motive impulses, the motive impulse of love.
II. And this brings me to a farther influence resulting from this upward look. I mean, that process of assimilation which is brought about by intensely beholding those whom we intensely love.
III. But if thus, from feelings of gratitude, and by a process of assimilation we become like Jesus, and love to obey His example, what must follow? Why, necessarily this: we shall be ready, like Him, to deny ourselves for the sake of our fellow-men. In other words, that vital element of goodness—self-sacrifice for the sake of our fellow-men—will become daily more and more the principle of our life work.
IV. Looking to Jesus has the power to make us persevere in welldoing. He, unto whom we are looking, knew all things. He was able to reconcile discrepancies, and to solve mysteries which baffle our finite minds. The perpetuation of these difficulties may be, for the present, a part of our probation. It matters not, enough for us to have before us the example of One who, knowing the meaning of what to us is inscrutable, showed us how a Christian ought to work by working even to the death Himself.
Bishop of Meath, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, June 2nd, 1881.
Heb 12:2
Self-Contemplation.
Instead of looking off to Jesus, and thinking little of ourselves, it is at present thought necessary, among the mixed multitude of religionists, to examine the heart with the view of ascertaining whether it is in a spiritual state or no.
I. This modern system certainly does disparage the revealed doctrines of the Gospel, however its more moderate advocates may shrink from admitting it. Considering a certain state of heart to be the main thing to be aimed at, they avowedly make the "truth as it is in Jesus," the definite creed of the Church, secondary in their teaching and profession. This system tends to obliterate the great objects brought to light in the Gospel, and to darken the eye of faith.
II. On the other hand, the necessity of obedience in order to salvation does not suffer less from the upholders of this modern system than the articles of the creed. Instead of viewing works as the concomitant development and evidence, as well as the subsequent result of faith, they lay all the stress upon the direct creation in their minds of faith and spiritual-mindedness, which they consider to consist in certain emotions and desires, because they can form abstractedly no better or truer notion of these qualities.
III. Is it too much to say that, instead of attempting to harmonise Scripture with Scripture, much less referring to antiquity to enable them to do so, they either drop altogether or explain away whole portions of the Bible—and those most sacred ones? Is not the rich and varied revelation of our merciful Lord practically reduced to a few chapters of St. Paul’s Epistles, whether rightly or perversely understood?
IV. The immediate tendency of these opinions is to undervalue ordinances as well as doctrines.
V. The foregoing remarks go to show the utterly unevangelical character of the system in question. Considered as the characteristic of a school, the principles in question are anti-Christian; for they destroy all positive doctrine, all ordinances, all good works; they foster pride, invite hypocrisy, discourage the weak, and deceive most fatally, while they profess to be the special antidotes to self-deception.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. ii., p. 163.
Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith.
I. Author of our faith. Faith begins often in deep, impenetrable secrecy, not within the sphere of personal observation. The soul does not observe its own faith at first, for a while; it is hardly within the sphere of personal consciousness, except fitfully. So it begins, and, like every living thing—I mean, of course, in the beginning, it is delicate, tender, frail, easily hurt and wounded, and, commonly speaking, easily destroyed. Remember that Jesus Christ is the Author of your faith, little though it seems. We should try to judge of things in ourselves and others, not as they seem, but as they are. Faith is faith, and Christ its Author, whatever accidents, hindrances, human imperfections, rolling wheels, dusty whirlwinds, and biting east winds may be about it; and faith has a power of living on, of rising up, of resisting attack, of making a channel for its own life, clarifying as it flows, the power given to it by its Author the very power of His own faith and His own life, by which He, for Himself and for us, overcame the whole world, and at last ascended up to heaven. A wonderful consummation, a wonderful encouragement, that lets in the simple truth that Christ is the Author of our faith.
II. Now, observe, Christ is also the Finisher of our faith. As soon as it is begun, His whole discipline is with a view to its perfecting. There is, of course, a sense in which our faith and religious life never can be ended; it will remain with us and in us for evermore. We shall have it in heaven, of course, if we believe the word of God, and have it on the earth, and we shall trust in the providence of heaven—for heaven will have a providence—just as we trust in the providence of God on the earth. And we shall obey His commands without the misgivings and imperfections of service that attach to our obedience below. But this earthly time is in many ways a time by itself. We sometimes have occasion to say, because it is true, looking upon life as a continued moral progress, that death is but a circumstance, and that it marks a particular stage in the grand evolution of things. That is true, but it is equally true that death is a grand crisis. The life process is then so far complete. One epoch of it has been finished: the probationary epoch. The growing of earth is all done. There are endless diversities in the spiritual experience of believers in coming along their ten thousand divers roads to the one grand meeting-place in perfect holiness in heaven. There are many emblems used in Scripture to describe the work of progressive sanctification, and we have to remember that the Finisher is working His one great work by means of all the various methods, and that it will be the worse for us if we insist upon putting the whole of the meaning into any one. The one thing we have to remember is this, that the Finisher is at work in all, if not in the actual finishing work itself, yet in the preparatory work, which is just as important.
A. Raleigh, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 327.
Heb 12:2
Christian Joy.
I. What was the cause of the Saviour’s joy? (1) It was the joy of redemption. (2) It was the joy of union. It was the sense that He would be united with you and me; that was the joy of Jesus Christ. (3) It was joy supremely for the glory of God; that was His joy. It was the passion of His life; it bore Him through the desolation of His death.
II. What is the power of joy? (1) It is the power of exaltation. (2) It is a principle of expansion. Joy is an expansive power—the joy of God. Just because it is "of God," because it is a part out of that great broad life of our Creator, it expands the heart of the creature. What is one of the sorrows and degradations of life? Why, that we are so narrow-minded that we take narrow views of the great questions of human life. Was there ever a heart so big as the great heart of Jesus? That heart opened out to, and embraced the whole family of, poor, weak mankind. (3) It is a principle of strength. It prevents us from falling down into the mire and clay, into the darkness and sadness of sorrow. Joy raises us above the world, for it opens out what some men would call an imaginary, but what I dare to call a real, though spiritual, world.
III. Why may we have joy? Because we are immortal. If we were mortal, then, indeed, there would be sorrow. What we want is a deepening sense of immortality. The sense of life is blessedness. (1) I joy because my Christian life implies also a completeness of final union—final union with all that is holy, and beautiful, and good. (2) There is further reason for our joy—a reason not despicable in a life of labour—we joy because "there remaineth a rest for the people of God." (3) It is a life of joy because of the abundance of grace. He came that grace might be abundant; and so it is, and the duty of Christians is the duty of cheerfulness and thanksgiving.
J. W. Knox Little, Characteristics and Motives of the Christian Life, p. 118.
Heb 12:2
Let us notice—
I. What Christ endured.
II. Why He endured it.
III. The lessons that endurance teaches.
I. The sorrows of Jesus. What Christ endured—crucifixion. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Jesus laid down His life for His foes! Christ had endured much for mankind before He suffered on the Holy Rood. But His other pains and sorrows fade away before the agonies of His crucifixion, even as the stars turn pale and then vanish before the overpowering light of the sun. He endured for the joy of saving souls; endured, not with the dogged callousness of the Stoic who despises his fellow-creatures, but by reason of a love that triumphed over every feeling of pain, of shame, and of sorrow. For the joy that was set before Him He endured all this.
II. Why Christ suffered; why Christ endured it. It was for the joy that was set before Him, and that joy consisted in doing good to others. It was because by this suffering Jesus redeemed mankind. It was to save men from the punishment and the power of sin. Like all true heroes, Jesus was preeminently unselfish. He had nothing to gain save the love of humanity. His joy was purely unselfish. He suffered, not to gain wealth, or renown, or power, but simply and solely to redeem mankind, to carry out to the last that obedience to the Father by which the many are made righteous. He suffered because He was obedient to the voice of conscience. There was nothing of the ascetic in Jesus. An ascetic voluntarily, purposely, goes out of the way to make himself miserable. Not so Jesus. He was preeminently the Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. But all His sorrows met Him in the path of duty. He heroically endured the shame and ignominy of the Crucifixion (a more degrading death than hanging with us), despising its shame, for the joy that was set before Him—the joy of redeeming the world.
III. The lessons of endurance. It teaches professing Christians to be ready to endure the cross of self-denial, and despise the shame that the world heaps on the faithful disciple of the Lord. It appeals to every sinner, with matchless eloquence, to be a follower of the self-denying Jesus. Plato and Socrates were noble leaders for Athens in the paths of virtue, but Athens perished. She could not be saved by her one or two great men, for the mass of the people were utterly corrupt. So, too, the greatness of our fatherland depends not on one or two great men, but on the masses being brought to Jesus Christ and led to take up the cross of self-denial for His sake.
F. W. Aveling, Christian World Pulpit, Dec. 21st, 1892.
References: Heb 12:2.—A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart, pp. 77, 91; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 236; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 180; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. ii., p. 207; Bishop Ryle, Church of England Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 142; A. Raleigh, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 495; R. Tuck, Ibid., vol. v., p. 132; H. Wonnacott, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 392; W. Page, Ibid., vol. xxv., p 374; L. D. Bevan, Ibid., vol. xxx., p. 200; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84.
Heb 12:3
I. St. Paul, in the verses of our text, gives us a plain, serious reason for frequent meditation upon Christ’s sufferings. It is not that we may learn to see how far human cruelty and intolerance can go; it is not that we may pride ourselves on being at least better than the savages who nailed the Saviour to the tree; it is not that we may congratulate ourselves on living in more civilised times; it is not for any reason which might turn our eyes away from Christ as the Life and the Light of men; but it is for this: "Consider Him, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds."
II. Christ’s life, then, as the pattern life, is what is set before us here. Consider Him, for as He did, so must ye strive to do. The death and passion of the Son of God is the standard by which to measure any efforts of ours. There is a voice within us which tells us that in holiness and the faithful following of Christ there is, indeed, infinite happiness; that victory over evil is a triumph that is infinitely desirable; that it is far better to strive for what is noble and good, than to succumb to what is little and vile. But when these positions are to be carried out into practice, when our convictions are to be acted on every hour, when there is a countless host of disturbing influences at work, busy in their efforts to unbalance our minds and to lead us astray, then the great danger is lest we should say the lifelong struggle is too hard, the constant watchfulness required of us is too great a strain. It is in considering Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself that we shall learn—by slow degrees, but we shall learn—not to be weary or faint in our minds.
A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons, p. 119.
References: Heb 12:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1073; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 232; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 175; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 58; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., pi 83.
Heb 12:3-13
I. Chastisement is sent by fatherly love. There, where we are most sensitive, God touches us. The thorn in the flesh is something which we fancy we cannot bear if it were to be lifelong. We have emerged, as it were, out of a dark tunnel, and fancy that the rest of our journey will be amid sunlit fields. We have achieved steep and rugged ascents, and imagine the period of great and exhausting exertion is over. The trial deepest and sorest seems to leave us for a while, yet it returns again.
II. "Afterwards." Does not this world search and try us? God forbid that we should forget the chastening of the Lord, that we should "get over" sorrow, or be comforted like the world. Now is our afterwards, peace and godliness today—by reason of yesterday’s sorrow and trial.
III. The cross of Christ is despised and hated, not merely by self-righteous Jews and wise and worldly Greeks, but within the professing Church the Apostle weeps over many who are enemies of the cross of Christ, not of the doctrine that Christ died instead of sinners, but of the teaching that we have been crucified with Him and have been planted in the likeness of His death; that we have been saved, and are being saved, not from death, but out of death; that, dying daily the painful death by crucifixion, we live the spiritual resurrection life together with and in Christ. By affliction and the inward crucifixion we learn to seek our true life, treasure, strength, and joy, not in earthly affections, possessions, pursuits, and attainments, however good and noble, but in Him who is at the right hand of God; and the end will be glory.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 371.
Heb 12:4
It belongs to a good man to strive against sin. It sounds like a contradiction, indeed, for how should a good man have any sin to strive against? Nevertheless it is true; for as absolute goodness is not to be found in this fallen world, we must be willing to accept those efforts after it which seem to imply that the idea of it at least exists in the mind and the desire in the heart, while it is exemplified only in a very subordinate degree in the life. The doctrine of the text is, that all Christians are specially called and committed to a warfare with sin, a striving against it, even unto blood. Consider:
I. The nature of the striving. (1) It is really a striving; that is to say, it is really a difficult thing. It is not a mere figure of speech; it is the most difficult thing that any human being can attempt. He who addresses himself to it must lay his account with many a sharp and terrible conflict, not in the arena of the world alone, but in the more awful, even the invisible, arena of his own soul; and in view of this he must be careful to grasp the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith, and by watchfulness and prayer to "gird up the loins of his mind." (2) It is a striving against sin as sin. Men of the world sometimes strive against sin after a fashion, but their striving is very different from that referred to here. (a) It is partial; (b) it is superficial; (c) it is only occasional. Such individuals may resist today, but they indulge tomorrow. The believer’s striving is universal and persistent.
II. Look next at some considerations fitted to sustain and encourage us in it. And here notice (1) That help is promised. Were it not so, it would be idle to begin it. We should speedily fail. But God sends us not on this warfare at our own charges. He has provided us with weapons. When the believer goes forth behind the shield of faith to duty and conflict, God goes forth to meet him, and joining His power to the creature’s weakness, giveth him the victory over every foe. (2) The longer the striving is continued the easier it becomes. This is a law of our nature. It is embodied in the common saying that practice makes perfect. The frequent repetition of an act ultimately establishes habit, and habit is a second nature, frequently stronger than nature itself.. (3) Striving is the universal law and condition. No more is required of us than has been required of all who have reached the goal. We are only asked to walk in the footsteps and accept the experience of all who have gone before us to the celestial heights, and it will be the same with alt who come after us, to the end of time. (4) There is the certainty and glory of your reward. Look less to the way, where, indeed, there is much to discourage, and more to the end of the way, where all is calm and bright. Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.
A. L. Simpson, Sermons, p. 187.
The Witness of the Passion.
The Apostle in the text is addressing the Hebrew Christians and encouraging them to a conflict, and as he encourages them to a conflict, for its object, its method, and its degree, he refers them back to the Passion of the Lord. The reason is, that the Passion has in it the essence of a great witness for God and man. The verses immediately before the text show clearly that that is indeed the Apostle’s meaning, and that on which he would fix their minds.
I. What was the mode of conflict? What was the meaning of the severe dignity of the Passion of the Lord? Now it may appear startling that in the Passion of the Lord we find what confuses at first, what is difficult to interpret, that, whilst we Christians call it a conflict, its method is purely passive. There is no spirit throughout of aggression; there is no attempt at attack. Certainly it is true that in this moral attitude of the Lord there are most consoling, most comforting, most invigorating lessons for the patience and endurance of a Christian. But remember that the moral attitude, the method, of the Passion, its purely passive phase, means a great deal more than that. Like the flash of the lightning or like the track of the glacier, it makes us feel at once that we are in the presence of a force which is unmeasured and unmeasurable, of a force in the life of God. Now what is that force? The Passion in its passive character, in the moral attitude of simple forbearance and endurance, witnesses to force in the character of God. Force can be seen in a mere passive moral attitude.
II. And in the same way as there was real force there depicted in a passive attitude, so there was completeness in that attitude as it was seen in the Lord. When Jesus stood face to face with evil, when Jesus endured the Cross, resisting, not attacking, unto blood, there came out before the mind of man, before the thought of Christendom, the gathering up of every element of moral splendour in that one great glory—the glory of the sanctity of God. The witness of the Passion to the character of God is the witness to unspeakable, unapproachable holiness.
III. The Passion also witnessed to sin. The world exhibited indifference. Jesus breasted indifference with intensity. Sin teaches us to hate God, to hate one another. Jesus in the Passion met it by love. He witnessed to the sanctity of God; He witnessed to the sin of man.
W. J. Knox Little, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii, p. 257.
References: Heb 12:4.—H. Wace, The Anglican Pulpit of To-day, p. 325; D. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 212; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 118. Heb 12:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 48. Heb 12:6.—G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons in Marlborough College, p. 476. Heb 12:6-11.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 241.
Heb 12:7 (Revised Version)
I. The word endure is no tame word. It means something widely different from insensibility, or proud defiance. Stoicism is no Christian virtue. Obstinate and contemptuous superiority to pain has no place here. This may possibly save a waste of passion in the sufferer; it may impress; it may win admiration. But all that kind of thing is far remote from the writer’s thought. He drops very impressive hints about the afflictions of these Hebrews, and about the example of Christ. Christ endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him, counting its pain and its shame as light, trivial, in comparison with that. His holy soul had adequate solace and stay all through that immeasurable anguish; mental reasons mastered the flesh: spiritual considerations sustained Him that were far mightier to support than the cross to overthrow. The Hebrews, too, were exercised, much exercised, in their afflictions, and the exercise, like a Divine alchemy, was turning every constituent of distress into gold.
II. Questions arise here that admit of only one answer. (1) Who doubts the need of chastening? Sin in one or other of its myriad forms has aggravated all the imperfections of inexperience, so that we require far surer correction and direction than a childhood and youth of innocence had ever called for. (2) Who doubts the spirit in which this chastening is inflicted? Dictated by love, directed by wisdom, aimed at the highest ends, it has every quality to keep us alike from despising it or fainting under it. (3) Who is not driven to rigorous self-examination? There is no talismanic power in afflictions, in pains and penalties, that of itself can correct and transform. Chastening calls for thought, for reflection, for faithful survey of our life, with its temper, aims, and spirit. (4) Who does not rejoice in the advance of correction and growth? "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but since have I kept Thy word."
G. B. Johnson, The Beautiful Life of Christ, p. 166.
References: Heb 12:7.—F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol xxvi.,p. 321. Heb 12:8.—T. R. Stevenson, Ibid., vol. xvi., p. 412. Heb 12:9.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2987. Heb 12:10.—E. de Pressensé, The Mystery of Suffering, p. 55; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 12th series, p. 92. Heb 12:11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 528; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 139; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 1st series, p. 238; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 10.
Heb 12:12
Religious Cowardice. .
The encouragement which we derive from St. Mark’s history is, that the feeblest among us may, through God’s grace, become strong; and the warning to be drawn from it is to distrust ourselves, and, again, not to despise weak brethren or to despair of them, but to bear their burdens and help them forward, if so be we may restore them.
I. Observe in what St. Mark’s weakness lay. There is a sudden defection, which arises from self-confidence. Such was St. Peter’s. In St. Mark’s history, however, we have no evidence of self-confidence; rather we may discern in it the state of multitudes at the present day who proceed through life with a certain sense of religion on their minds, who have been brought up well and know the truth, who acquit themselves respectably while danger is at a distance, but disgrace their profession when brought into any unexpected trial.
II Christians such as Mark will abound in any prosperous Church; and should trouble come, they will be unprepared for it. They have been so long accustomed to external peace that they do not like to be persuaded that danger is at hand. They settle it in their imagination that they are to live and die undisturbed. They look at the world’s events, as they express it, cheerfully, and argue themselves into self-deception. Next, they make concessions to suit their own predictions and wishes, and surrender the Christian cause, that unbelievers may not commit themselves to an open attack upon it To speak plainly, a state of persecution is not (what is familiarly called) their element; they cannot breathe in it. If there be times when we have grown torpid from long security and are tempted to prefer the treasures of Egypt to the reproach of Christ, what can we do? what ought we to do but to pray God in some way or other to try the very heart of the Church and to afflict us here rather than hereafter? So may we issue evangelists for timid deserters of the cause of truth, speaking the words of Christ and showing forth His life and death, rising strong from our sufferings and building up the Church in the strictness and zeal of those who despise this life except as it leads to another.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. ii., p. 175.
References: Heb 12:12.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. i., p. 55. Heb 12:12, Heb 12:13.—J. H. Thorn, Laws of Life, 1st series, p. 323; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 243. Heb 12:12-29.—R. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, p. 264.
Heb 12:14
The Peaceful Temper.
There are many particular duties in which Christianity and worldly wisdom meet, both recommending the same course. One of these is the duty mentioned in the text, viz., that of being at peace with others. The reason which worldly prudence suggests is the quiet and happiness of life, which are interfered with by relations of enmity to others. The reason which religion gives is the duty of brotherly love, of which the peaceful disposition is a part. But the frequency of the advice, under either aspect, is remarkable, and shows that there is some strong prevailing tendency in human nature by which it is opposed. Let us examine what that tendency is.
I. When we examine the tempers of men, the first thing we observe is that people rush into quarrels from simple violence and impetuosity of temper, which prevents them from waiting a single minute to examine the merits of the case and the facts of the case, but carries them forward possessed of a blind partiality in their own favour and seeing nothing but what favours their own side. (2) Again, there is the malignant temper, which fastens vindictively upon particular persons, who have been either the real or the supposed authors of some disadvantage. (3) There are some persons who can never be neutral or support a middle state of mind. If they do not positively like others, they will see some reason for disliking them; they will be irritable if they are not pleased; they will be enemies if they are not friends.
II. Peace implies the entire absence of positive ill-will. The Apostle says this is our proper relation toward all men. More than this applies to some, but as much as this applies to all. He would have us embrace all men within our love so far as to be in concord with them, not to be separated from them. Separation is inconsistent with Christian membership. On the other hand, he knows that more than this must, by the limitations of our nature, apply to the few rather than to the mass and multitude; he fixes then upon this, nothing higher and nothing lower; he fixes upon the middle ground of peace as our proper relation towards the many. You must not, he says, be at peace only with those to whom you are partial; that is easy enough. You must be at peace with those towards whom you entertain no partiality, who do not perhaps please you or suit you. This is the rule of peace which the Gospel lays down, and it must be fulfilled by standing guard at the entrance of our hearts and keeping off intruding thoughts. It was not without design that following peace and holiness were connected by the Apostle. A life of enmities is greatly in opposition to growth in holiness. All that commotion of petty animosity in which some people live is very lowering; it dwarfs and stunts the spiritual growth of persons. Their spiritual station becomes less and less in God’s sight and in man’s. In a state of peace the soul lives as in a watered garden, where, under the watchful eye of the Divine source, the plant grows and strengthens. All religious habits and duties, prayer, charity, and mercy, are formed and matured when the man is in a state of peace with others.
J. B. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 203.
I. Even supposing a man of unholy life were suffered to enter heaven, he would not be happy there, so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter. We are apt to deceive ourselves, and to consider heaven a place like this earth; I mean, a place where every one may choose and take his own pleasure. But an opinion like this, though commonly acted upon, is refuted as soon as put into words. Here every one can do his own pleasure, but there he must do God’s pleasure. Heaven is not like this world; it is much more like a church. For in a place of worship no language of this world is heard; there are no schemes brought forward for temporal objects, great or small, no information how to strengthen our worldly interests, extend our influence, or establish our credit. Here we hear solely and entirely of God; and therefore a church is like heaven, because both in the one and in the other there is one single sovereign subject—religion—brought before us. When, therefore, we think to take part in the joys of heaven without holiness, we are as inconsiderate as if we supposed that we could take an interest in the worship of Christians here below without possessing it in our measure.
II. If we wished to imagine a punishment for an unholy, reprobate soul, we perhaps could not fancy a greater than to summon it to heaven. Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man. We know how unhappy we are apt to feel at present when alone in the midst of strangers or of men of different tastes and habits from ourselves. How miserable, for example, would it be to have to live in a foreign land, among a people whose faces we never saw before, and whose language we could not learn! And this is but a faint illustration of the loneliness of a man of earthly dispositions and tastes thrust into the society of saints and angels. How forlorn would he wander through the courts of heaven!
III. If a certain character of mind, a certain state of the heart and affections, be necessary for entering heaven, our actions will avail for our salvation chiefly as they tend to produce or evidence this frame of mind. Good works are required, not as if they had anything of merit in them, not as if they could of themselves turn away God’s anger for our sins or purchase heaven for us, but because they are the means, under God’s grace, of strengthening and showing forth that holy principle which God implants in the heart, and without which we cannot see Him. The separate acts of obedience to the will of God, good works as they are called, are of service to us as gradually severing us from the world of sense and impressing our hearts with a heavenly character.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 1.
References: Heb 12:14.—A. K. H. B., The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, 3rd series, p. 124; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 401; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 359; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 80. Heb 12:14, Heb 12:15.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 940.
Heb 12:14-18
Peace and Holiness.
The two exhortations to follow peace with all men and that holiness without which none can see the Lord comprise the whole Christian life.
I. The characteristic feature of the Church ought to be the spirit of peace. Christians are faithful to God, and to His truth; their testimony is against sin and unbelief in the world, against hypocrisy and unfaithfulness in the Church; but as love is their life element, so peace is their characteristic. If God’s peace is within us, we love the brethren and all men. We are able to deal with them tenderly and calmly. Humility, affection, and helpfulness characterise the son of peace; for he is always praising the boundless grace of God in which he stands.
II. Holiness. Christ is made unto us sanctification. If only holiness can admit us to the blessed vision of God, it must be Christ’s; for imperfect holiness is as great a contradiction as unclean purity. The warfare is painful, for sin is still in us. It is not like a garment that we wear. It has entrenched itself in our flesh; that is, the old Adam-nature of body, soul, and spirit. Hence cleaving to Christ and our holiness in Him is crucifixion of the flesh, and that is painful. Let us study the epistles of the Apostle Paul, and learn the solemn and awful character of the Christian life, warfare, and race, the constant need of watchfulness and concentration of energy, of diligence, self-restraint, and self-denial. But let us learn from them that it is a blessed and joyous thing to follow the holiness, to abide in the light and love of God, to dwell in Him who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all, who is love, and who hath shed abroad His love in our hearts.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 388.
References: Heb 12:15.—E. Bersier, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 322; Outline Sermons to Children, p. 267; J. H. Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 22. Heb 12:16, Heb 12:17.—S. A. Tipple, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 139. Heb 12:17.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 85; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 317; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 172. Heb 12:18-24.—Parker, Cavendish Pulpit, 1st series, p. 148.
Heb 12:16
Profanity in the Home.
In Scripture there are few characters more profitable for study than Esau. Whether we look at his circumstances, or his temper, or the line along which the tragedy of his life developed, we get nearer to this man, and find in him more that resembles ourselves, more that resembles the pitiful facts and solemn possibilities of our own lives, than we do in connection with almost any other character in either of the two Testaments. Here is a man who was not an insane or a monstrous sinner, a Lucifer falling from heaven, but who came to sin, who came to fatal irredeemable sin, in the common human way: by birth into it; by the sins of others as well as his own; by everyday and sordid temptations; by carelessness and the sudden surprise of neglected passions. Esau is not a repulsive, but a lovable, man; and we know that if one is to learn from any character, one’s love must be awake, and take her share in the learning too. There is everything about Esau to engage us in the study of him. The mystery that haunts all human sin, the pity that we feel for so wronged and so genial a nature, only make clear to us more fully the central want and blame of his life. Perhaps we may discover it to be the central want and blame of our own.
I. Hereditary sinfulness. First, then, Esau was sinned against from his birth. The problems of heredity and of a stress of temptation for which he was not responsible appear in his case from the very first. His father and mother were responsible for much of the character of their son. It has always seemed to me a strange thing that in the otherwise beautiful marriage service of the Church of England the example of Isaac and Rebecca should be invoked for each new-wedded pair; for Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage was the spoiling of one of the most beautiful idylls that ever opened on this earth of ours. It began in a romance, and it ended in the sheerest vulgarity; it began with the most honourable plighting of troth, and it ended in the most sordid querulousness, and shiftiness, and falsehood. This was just because, with all its grace and all its wonder, the fear of God was not present, because, with all the romance, there was no religion, and, with all the giving of the one heart to the other, there had been no surrender of both to God. The Nemesis of picturesqueness without truth is always sordidness; the Nemesis of romance without religion is always vulgarity; and vulgarity and sordidness are the prevailing notes of Isaac and Rebecca’s wedded life.
II. Evil home influence. Our text calls Esau "a profane person," and this predominant aspect of his character he got at home. The Greek word for "profane" means literally that which is trodden, which is not closed to anything, but may be passed over, used, and trodden by who will. It is equivalent to a word in a notice we often see in our own towns: "No Thoroughfare." "Profane" means "thoroughfare," and had a Greek been wanting to put up "No Thoroughfare" upon any street, he would have expressed it probably in the original word in this text: "Not Profane." It was first applied to the ground outside sacred enclosures or temples. It meant ground that was common and public—profane. That which lay in front of the fane or temple is thus the adequate translation of the original Greek. Now such was the home Rebecca made for her sons, a home which was not walled in by reverence and truth, and the steadfast patience of father and mother. The falsehood was permitted in its most sacred relations; petulance, vulgar haste, foolishly strong language, and lies found free course across its holy of holies—the mother’s lips. Profane home, indeed, when a mother’s temper spoiled the air, and her ambitions trampled down her elder son’s rights, her younger’s honour, and her poor blind husband’s weakness. The mother who thus profaned her home could not be expected to do otherwise with the heart of her son. Esau’s was an open heart, as far as we can see—a naturally free and unreserved heart. You know the kind of man. He has fifty doors to the outer world, where the most of us have only two or three; and except angels be sent of God Himself to guard these, the peril and fatality of such a man are immense. Friends and foes alike get far into him; the citadel of his heart lies open to all who come near. But instead of angels poor Esau had by him only tempters—a tempter in his brother and a tempter in his mother. Unguarded by loving presences, unfilled by worthy affections, his mind became a place across which everything was allowed to rush, across which his own mother’s lips poured the infection of her waywardness, and across which the commonest passions, like hunger, ran riot, unawed by the presence of any commanding principle. That is what the text means by a "profane person"—an open, common character, unfenced, unhallowed, no guardian angel at the door, no gracious company within, no heavenly music pealing through it, no fire upon the altar, but open to his dogs and his passions, to his mother’s provocations, and his brothe?s fatal wiles.
III. An impregnable heart. Finally, let us get back to this word "profane," for it is the centre of the whole evil. Be on your guard, then, against the little vices. It is they that first desecrate the soul. Take the virtue of truth. It seems to many an innocent thing to tell certain kinds of lies—I am sure we have all fallen under the temptation—society lies, business lies, rhetorical lies, lies prompted by pure selfishness, lies prompted by mistaken kindness. Now that is a fatal mistake, fatal for eternity. The character whose doors lie open to these visitors is the character that is open to anything, anything except what miserable fear and selfishness will in the end keep out, namely, the more rampant forms of vice. To everything else such a character lies open. Admit them, and you can keep nothing out. You are certain some day to be betrayed by them into larger and more fatal issues.
G. A. Smith, Christian World Pulpit, August 17th, 1892.
The Religious Standard of Value.
I. Esau’s act was the act of one who had in him that disregard for the claims of things sacred which constitutes the essence of profaneness. Esau’s temper was, like Saul’s, of the earth, earthy, or, as we now say, purely secular. Both represent a type of character which may have many of the elements of popularity, many amiable or estimable qualities, but nothing of what Scripture calls faith, no real interest in the spiritual and the unseen. High spirits, good-nature, generosity, a fondness for manly exercises, a fearless gallant bearing, a frankness of speech which, at any rate, scorns all shyness—these are well enough in their way, but are, after all, a poor outfit for a child of the great covenant, in which are gathered up the hopes of the world. They are ruined and rendered useless for any high purpose by fickleness, unsteadiness, want of faith and want of principle, wayward and selfish worldliness.
II. Esau does not always wear the goatskin raiment of the skilful Eastern hunter; he passes in society often enough as a finished English gentleman. Are there not baptized persons, calling themselves Christians with a certain degree of sincerity, who habitually despise a birthright still more august and precious than Esau’s? They do not, we will suppose, reject Christianity as incredible, but they never allow it to be a power in their life. Their interests are all elsewhere, perhaps in a purely material region, perhaps in a higher, but still an unspiritual, sphere. A servant of Christ will make it his rule to test all weights in the balances of the sanctuary; he will honestly endeavour to call that good which Christ calls good and call that evil which Christ calls evil, he will regard nothing as really expedient or profitable which interferes, or which is even likely some time to interfere, with loyalty to that Master in whose service alone is true liberty and happiness.
W. Bright, Morality in Religion, p. 233.
Reference: Heb 12:16.—J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned—Forearmed, p. 3.
Heb 12:1
Repentance.
I. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is speaking in this passage of Esau—a reckless young man parting with spiritual advantages without any thought of their real value, finding that the loss of them involves the loss of temporal advantages too, and trying in vain to recover the temporal advantages which in a moment of recklessness he had parted from for ever. A man squanders his money, and he is very sorry for it, and wishes he had not done so; but he cannot get back his money, even though he seeks it earnestly and with tears. A man by dissipation ruins his health, and when he is lying on a sick-bed, he is very sorry for it, and he wishes he had never been such a fool, and that he could recover the health which he has parted from for ever. It is easier to harden the heart than to have the softness restored; it is easier to blunt our feelings than to recover for them their elasticity and acuteness. And then the man, though, for a time at least, he may be sorry, makes no great change; he finds a change very difficult, if not impossible, and he finds, therefore, no place for repentance, though he seek it for a moment "even with tears."
II. We cannot expect that every effect of sin is to be entirely done away with. God intends that we shall still feel the scourge of our sins, even when, by His mercy, we are freed from their dominion; and the gospel of Jesus Christ is this, that, though sin has made men slaves, they may be emancipated, If the mercy of God in Jesus Christ visits us, and we turn to Him with full purpose of amendment, though the temporal consequences of our sin may be beyond recall and must continue for ever, yet, by His operation on the heart, God brings deliverance to the enslaved soul. The death of Christ speaks of our justification, and removes for those who turn to God the penalty which is hanging over them for sins past; the sanctification through the gift of the Holy Spirit makes the reconciled sinner to grow in holiness, and brings him back to the state which he had lost by the sin he had committed.
Archbishop Tait, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 97.
Esau’s Birthright—Irreparable Follies.
I. The writer is here speaking to Jewish Christians, pleading examples from the early history of their own race, to which they ever turned with reverence and fondness. He is warning them of the danger of forfeiting in carelessness the inheritance which belonged to them as Christians. They were in danger of undervaluing it. In the sense of present isolation from the mass of their countrymen, of hunger for the visible tangible support of ordinances in the old religion from which they had separated themselves, in the pressing fear of deadly persecution, they were losing heart and hope. They were losing, so he argues all through the eleventh chapter, that crowning grace to which their nation, through its long line of patriarchs, heroes, prophets, had owed its peculiar greatness—the grace of faith, of trust in the invisible, of power to live and die in hope, not having received the promises. In this chapter for the moment he has turned to the other sight. He suggests from their own history an instance of one who lacked this power, who in a moment of weakness sold the future for the present, and who found that that moment’s work was irreparable. He found no place of repentance. He could never again to any purpose change his mind. It is the type of our irretrievable acts, but in an especial way of irretrievable choices made under such circumstances as those under which Esau made his choice—in the heat and weakness of youth. A single heedless act with unalterable results.
II. How often is the story repeated. The character of Esau, drawn in the bold natural outlines of a simple age, is one that cannot fail to find its likeness among the young. Bold, vigorous, his father’s favourite, fond of outdoor life and adventure, generous even in his after-years, as we see from his meeting again with Jacob, here surely was the making of a fine character. Yet, even as in Saul and David, we should have been wrong. Something is wanting, something that cannot be replaced. And sooner or later the want shows itself, stamps itself indelibly in an act of folly that cannot be undone. We know the thoughtlessness that leads to loss of innocence, to the missing of golden opportunities. In spite of everything, the birthright, in the best sense of all, is still ours. Yet even in that sense too we may cast it away.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 27.
Esau’s Vain Tears.
I. Look at the history which is here held up before us, a solemn warning. There is nothing in Genesis about Esau’s vainly seeking for repentance, but there is an account of his passionate weeping and loud entreaties that he yet might obtain a blessing from Isaac’s trembling lips. There is bitter sorrow for what had passed, and that is repentance. And there is earnest desire that it might be different. In what may be called its secular significance there are in Esau’s case as recorded in Genesis both the elements of a decided alteration of mind and purpose, and a penitence and sorrow for the past.
II. Look at the lessons which this story teaches us. There may come in your life a time when the scales will fall from your eyes, and you will see how insignificant and miserable are the present gratifications for which you have sold your birthright, and may wish the bargain undone which cannot be undone. You cannot wash out the bitter memories, you cannot blot out habits, by a wish. The past stands. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
III. Notice the misapprehension which these words do not teach. They do not teach that a man may desire to repent with tears, and be unable to do so. If a man desires to repent, there must be in him some measure of regret and sorrow for the conduct of which he desires to repent considered as sin against God; and that is repentance. Nor do the words teach that a man may desire to receive the salvation of his soul from God and not receive it. To desire is to possess, to possess in the measure of the desire and according to its reality. There is no such thing in the spiritual realm as a real longing unfulfilled. The Gospel proclaims that whosoever shall ask will receive, or rather that God has already given, and that nothing but obstinate determination not to possess prevents any man from being enriched by the fulness of God’s salvation.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, Oct. 22nd, 1885.
References: Heb 12:17.—L. Cheetham, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 241; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 144.
Heb 12:18, Heb 12:22
Sinai and Sion.
I. The points of contrast in the text are, that Sinai was the emblem of a sensuous, and Sion of a spiritual, economy, and that Sinai was a system of rigour, and the Gospel is a system of love. Sinai is represented as the mount that might be touched, that is, something palpable, the emblem of a material framework, of a system of gorgeous ceremonies and local shrines, and of impressiveness of external appearance. This was very largely characteristic of the system of Judaism. The giving of the law, for example, was an overwhelming address to the senses of the awed multitude. Of course there was an inner life in all this, at least in the palmy days of Judaism—a vital heart pulsing beneath that drapery of symbol. But in the time of the Saviour—the Incarnation—the religion of too many had become only rubric and creed; the shadow was still grasped tenaciously, but the substance was gone; the whole system was like a corpse awaiting its embalmment, all ready for burial, so that the sepulchre were but in a garden. And this very sensuous-ness of Jewish worship necessitated the appointment of sacred places and a central temple of worship.
II. But, in contrast with this pomp of ceremonial and localisation of interest, ye are come to the spiritual Sion, filled with the inner man and with lively human stones building up a spiritual house. God on Sinai gave to the Hebrews a law; God on Sion hath given to the people a life: and now that the age of visible symbol has passed away, the Lord speaks no longer from the lips of seers or from any chosen or exclusive lawgiver. Religion, as the Gospel sets it before you and asks you to receive it, comes, so to speak, in the bareness of the Saviour’s incarnation. No pomps attend it; no patronage commends it to our regard; its glory is not of this world; it stands alone upon the banks of our modern Jordan, unattended by any retinue of circumstance, a living, holy, independent stranger, without form or comeliness to the beauty-seeking eye of nature; it is loved, and it must be loved, for itself alone; it has no preferments in its gift, save those that are beyond the grasp of human hands; it calls men to no reluctant duty, and it offers to mortal weakness no compromises: it only offers the succour of a grace that will stoop down from heaven to help it up.
III. The Sinaitic was a rigorous discipline; the Gospel is a system of love. Our God is not remote, but near. Our very threatenings are fringed with sunlight. Our every precept has a promise. The service to which Christianity invites you is not a drudgery, but a healthful lucrative labour. When the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, when the man is come to Sion and is happy in its citizenship, he rejoices that glorious things are spoken of his city. Everything about him is congenial, not constrained; intimacy, not distrust and distance; the calm of a soul that revels in sunshine, not the unrest of a spirit where tempest mutters and broods. He is satisfied with God’s likeness; his delight is in the law of the Lord.
W. M. Punshon, Penny Pulpit, No. 3424.
Heb 12:18-25
The Blessedness of the Christian Life.
A Christian Jew is writing to Christian Jews, who stand in some danger of falling back to the religion they had abandoned. This writer is here, as every one sees, contrasting the two systems, the old and the new, the law and the Gospel, with a view to show—which is indeed the thing he is showing all through his letter—that the step from Moses to Christ had been in every respect a step forward and upward, that everything which they appeared to lose in forsaking Moses had been more than recovered in finding Christ.
I. If on Sinai all was material and ail was alarming, in the Gospel, on the contrary, everything is spiritual, everything speaks of peace. In the first place, to the material, changeable mountain there is set in opposition the fair God-guarded city of peace, the metropolis of the saints, not a metropolis to be sought for among the sons of earth—a spiritual dwelling-place for pure spirits, temple and capital in God’s moral realm, that hath perchance no local habitation anywhere, yet gathereth into its ample and ordered enclosure every lowly and loving heart throughout the Almighty’s moral universe. The writer pictures for us the felicity, the tranquillity, the permanence, of that vast assemblage of spiritual beings, knit into a state under the reign of God, under the law of a reconciled and gracious Father.
II. The language in which these angelic inhabitants of Sion are described here, the force of which is not well brought out by our version, suggests a vast convocation assembled on some solemn day for stately and joyous festivity. It carries with it associations of sacred leisure and rhythmic song. It recalls those lovely paradises in which the angelical painter of Fiesole has depicted the mirth of heaven, with its unfading verdure, its golden pomp, its troops of happy spirits, that proclaim their gladness in musical cadence and reverent dance.
III. Men and angels are gathered into one brotherhood; but how and where? Gathered to their common King. The name of Jesus stands last on this mighty catalogue, the crowning name to make our privilege and our blessedness complete. But in the order of your experience and God’s grace it comes first of all. There shall fly back at Jesus’ word—He only speaks the "open sesame" of heaven—the everlasting golden gates that were barred against my importunity and yours, and the meanest of us all, the worst of all for whom this Mediator’s death avails, who have fled for refuge to this Surety, shall be judged worthy to walk the shining pavements of God’s heavenly city, to mingle in the pure festivity of its inhabitants, and to rest for ever in the shelter of its sure defence.
J. Oswald Dykes, Sermon Year Book, vol. i., p. 183.
Heb 12:18-29
Mount Sinai and Mount Zion.
In this passage are mentioned seven great and solemn heavenly realities.
I. Mount Zion. Mount Sinai represents the law. It manifests the majesty of God above us as creatures, the wrath of God against us as sinners; it reveals to us God’s judgment and our condemnation; it convinces us of our guilt and of our strengthlessness; it represents the state of fear and darkness, of distance and alienation from God. It is winter, without sunshine, without flower and fruit, without the song of birds, the melody of praise.
II. Mount Sinai has passed away. It was only temporary. God touched it, but did not abide there. There is another mount, even Zion. Mount Sinai represents the law, temporary and intermediate; Mount Zion the Gospel, eternal and abiding. Sinai is connected with God’s dealings with man according to responsibility, Mount Zion with the eternal election of grace.
III. We have come to myriads of angels. The moment we came to Christ, He brought us unto all the angels, who rejoice in the salvation of sinners.
IV. We have also come to the general assembly of the Church of the first-born ones, whose names are written in the heavens. Believers possess, by virtue of their union with Jesus, the rights and privileges of primogeniture. Their names are enrolled in the list of the heavenly city. When we come to Jesus we enjoy communion with all the saints.
V. In this blessed city of God there is no condemnation, there is no more judgment. But there is order, rule, government, to which all render obedience with joy and praise.
VI. We have come to the Mediator of the new covenant. The same Jesus who died for us is on the throne.
VII. We have come to the blood of sprinkling. Christ is set forth by God a propitiation, and faith beholds the blood of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary as a great reality.
A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 405.
References: Heb 12:19.—J. W. Lance, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 261. Heb 12:22.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 147. Heb 12:22-24.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1689; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ix., p. 286; G. W. Conder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 106; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xi., p. 362.
Heb 12:22-23
Where and with whom faith lives.
I. Where faith lives. (1) The life of a man who has truly laid hold of Jesus Christ, and so is living by faith, is on its inward side—that is, in deepest reality—a life passed in the dwelling of the great King. (2) The privilege has for its other side a duty; the duty has for its foundation a privilege. For if it be true that the real life of every believing soul is a life that never moves from the temple-palace where God is, and that its inmost secret and the spring of its vitality is communion with God, what shall we say of the sort of lives that most of us live? Does it not sound far more like wrong than truth to say of people whose days are shuttlecocked about by trifling cares, and absorbed in fleeting objects, and wasted in the chase after perishable delights, that they "are come unto Mount Zion," and dwell in the presence of God? The old fable of a mountain of loadstone which drew ships at sea to its cliffs is true of this Mount Zion, which is exalted above the mountains that it may draw hearts tossing on the restless sea of life to the "fair havens" beneath its sheltering height. There is no dread, though there is reverence, and no fear, though there is awe, in the approach of those who come through Jesus Christ, and live beneath the smile of their reconciled God and Father. (3) If you are living by faith, you do not belong to this order in the midst of which you find yourself. See that you keep vivid the consciousness, that you cultivate the sense, of having your true home beyond the seas; and look out as emigrants and colonists in a far-off land do to the old country, as being home. II. With whom does faith live? Of companions for us, in our lonely earthly life, there be two sorts, and as to both of them the condition of recognising and enjoying their society is the same, viz., the exercise of faith. (1) We have a better face brightening the unseen than any angel face. But just because Jesus Christ fills the unseen for us, in Him we are united to all those of whom He is the Lord, and He is Lord of men as well as angels. And we too may come to the joyful assembly of the angels, whose joy is all the more poignant and deep when they, the elder brethren, see the prodigals return. (2) "The Church of the first-born." These first-born have their names written in heaven, inscribed on the register of the great city; and to that great community, invisible like the other realities in my text and not coterminous with any visible society such as the existing visible Church, all those belong and come who are knit together by faith in the one Lord.
A. Maclaren, Paul’s Prayers, p. 101.
Heb 12:23
Faith’s Access to the Judge and His Attendants.
I. Faith plants us at the very bar of God. "Ye are come to God the Judge of all." (1) Here is a truth which it is the office of faith to realise continually in our daily lives. He would be a bold criminal who would commit crimes in the very judgment hall and before the face of his judge. And that must be a very defective Christian faith which, like the so-called faith of many amongst us, goes through life and sins in the entire oblivion of the fact that it stands in the very presence of the Judge of all the earth. (2) This judgment of God is one which a Christian man should joyfully accept. It is inevitable, and likewise most blessed and desirable, for in the thought are included all the methods by which in providence, and by ministration of His truth and of His Spirit, God reveals to us our hidden meannesses, and delivers us sometimes, even by the consequences which accrue from them, from the burden and power of our sins. It is a gospel when we say, The Lord will judge His people. (3) This judgment is one which demands our thankful acceptance of the discipline it puts in force. If we know ourselves we should bless God for our sorrows.
II. Faith carries us while living to the society of the blessed dead. "The Judge of all and the spirits of just men made perfect" Immediately on the thought of God rising in the writer’s mind, there rises also the blessed thought of the company in the centre of whom He lives and reigns. We get glimpses, but no clear vision, as when a flock of birds turn in their rapid flight and for a moment the sun glances on their white wings, and then, with another turn, they drift away, spots of blackness in the blue. So we see but for a moment as the light falls, and then lose the momentary glory; but we may, at least, reverently note the exalted words here. These saints are perfected. The ancient Church was perfected in Christ; but the words refer, not only to those Old Testament patriarchs and saints, but to all who, up to the time of the writer’s composition of his letter, had "slept in Jesus." They have reached their goal in Him. The end for which they were created has been attained. They are in the summer of their powers and full-grown adults, whilst we here, the maturest and the wisest, the strongest and the holiest, are but as babes in Christ. Mark further that these spirits perfected would not have been perfected there unless they had been made just here. That is the first step, without which nothing in death has any tendency to ennoble or exalt men. If we are ever to come to the perfecting of the heavens, we must begin with the justifying that takes place on the earth.
A. Maclaren, Paul’s Prayers, p. 113.
Reference: Heb 12:23.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 136.
Heb 12:24
The Messenger of the Covenant and its Seal.
I. God’s revelation to us is in the form of a covenant. The promises of the covenant are, full forgiveness as the foundation of all, and built upon that knowledge of God inwardly illuminating and making a man independent of external helps, though he may sometimes be grateful for them, then a mutual possession which is based upon these, and then as the result of all—named first, but coming last in the order of nature—the law of His commandment will be so written upon the heart that delight and duty are spelt with the same letters, and His will is our will.
II. Jesus Christ is the Executor of this covenant. Because God dwells in Him, and the Word became flesh, He is able to lay His hand upon both, and bring God to man and man to God. (1) He brings God to man. Nowhere else is there found the confidence in the Father’s heart which is the property of the Christian man, and the result of the Christian covenant. Jesus Christ brings God to man by the declaration of His nature incarnate in humanity. (2) On the other hand, He brings man to God, for He stands by each of us as our true Brother, and united to us by such close and real bonds as that all which He has been and done may be ours if we join ourselves to Him by faith. And He brings man to God because in Him only do we find the drawings that incline wayward and wandering hearts to the Father. And, still further, He is the Mediator of the covenant in so far as He Himself possesses in His humanity all the blessings which manhood is capable of deriving from the Father, and He has them all in order that He may give them all. Here is the great reservoir from which all men may fill their tiny cups.
III. Note the sprinkling of blood which seals the covenant. If Jesus had not died, there would have been no promises for Us, beginning in forgiveness and ending in wills delighting in God’s law. It is the new covenant in His blood. The death of Christ is ever present to the Divine mind, and determines the Divine action.
A. Maclaren, Paul’s Prayers, p. 124.
References: Heb 12:24.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 211; vol. xii., No. 208; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 108; Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., p. 181; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 144. Heb 12:24, Heb 12:25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., Nos. 1888, 1889.
Heb 12:25
Refusing God’s Voice.
I. We have here, first of all, the solemn possibility of refusal. It is possible for Christian people so to cherish wills and purposes which they know to be in diametrical and flagrant contradiction to the will and purpose of God, that obstinately they prefer to stick by their own desires, and, if it may be, to stifle the voice of God.
II. Note the sleepless vigilance necessary to counteract the tendency to refusal. "See that ye refuse not." A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptation around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. "Blessed is the man that feareth always," says the psalmist. There is no security for us except in the continual temper of rooted self-distrust, for there is no motive that will drive us to the continual confidence in which alone is security but the persistent pressure of that sense that in ourselves we are nothing and cannot but fall. The dark underside of the triumphant confidence which on its sunny side looks up to heaven and receives its light is that self-distrust which says always to ourselves, "We have to take heed lest we refuse Him that speaketh."
III. Note the solemn motives by which this sleepless vigilance is enforced. The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience; the voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty and of the clearer utterances which are granted us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it. "See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh," for the clearer, the tenderer, the more stringent, the beseechings of the love and the warnings of Christ’s voice, the more solemn the consequences if we stop our ears to it.
A. Maclaren, Paul’s Prayers, p. 135.
Heb 12:26-27
The Shaking of Sinai and Calvary.
I. That voice of Sinai was a shaking of earthly things. How were nations dispossessed? How were thrones tumbled into the dust? How was the course of human history and human life changed or directed by that shaking of Sinai? And so with the shaking voice of Calvary. Earthly things were moved, and are still moved, by the power of that voice Divine. Sinai stands like a rock in the midst of a stream, and turns and separates the current. Calvary, like a mountain round which and at whose feet, in the valley which follows the configuration of the height, a great river finds its way, directs the course of history, of nations, the movement of the world.
II. May we not reverently suggest that the voice of appeal to a forsaking God, the voice of victory in the completion of redeeming work, the voice of final calm commending to the hands of the Eternal Father, wrought even upon the heart of the Infinite One Himself? At least, the issue was a Divine approval, a Divine acceptance, the change of threatening judgment into saving mercy.
III. There was shaking at Sinai—shaking of old temporal and earthly relations, of old human and profane habits, and in their place the appointment of things seen in the heavenly kingdom, commanded by God, "made," indeed, by men, but made "after the fashion given on the mount." But now the voice from heaven hath shaken both earth and heaven. Once again, and far more surely and distinctively, are the earthly things shaken, and there topple down all secularities and temporalities and mere passing phenomena of human thought and law of man’s mere worldly duty and faith.
IV. Much, indeed, in that awful shaking has departed, and its glory, was great, and its memory is illustrious. But what remains to us? What are the things that not even the voice from heaven can shake, that not even does the voice desire to shake, but only to establish? (1) Law remains, grand, inviolable, Divine. (2) Love remains. (3) Law and love combine, and in their union salvation remains.
L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 271.
Reference: Heb 12:26-29.—C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons, p. 92.
Heb 12:27
Things which cannot be shaken.
In this remarkable verse the writer goes to the heart of the philosophy of religion and of history. He declares that through the ages runs one ever-increasing purpose, and this purpose is the will of God.
I. It is said that when the King of Prussia visited the playing-fields of our Eton college he said, "Blessed is the land in which the old is ever mingled with the new, and the new ever mingled with the old." To cling to the old when the new demands our attention and our allegiance has been a constant error and indolence of mankind. They look back to the east when the west is calling them. The noontide is approaching, and they linger amid the shadows of the dawn. So it was with the Jews in the days of Paul and Apollos. Christ had come, and they could not get beyond Moses.
II. Apollos, if he was the author of this epistle to the Hebrews, tells us that there are systems, doctrines, institutions, organisations, which God continually shakes to the ground in the earthquakes of history. He does so because they have had their day and done their work, because they have become obstructive and obsolete. These things are but shadows, and men take them for the substance; these things are quivering, unreal, evanescent as the reflection of the bulrush upon the shimmering wave. But there are other things which are unshakable and eternal, as are the cedars of Lebanon, yea, as the very crags on which they stand. There are foundations which no earthquake can make to tremble, much less rock to the ground. Such was the case in the days of Christ and of the great Apostle Paul. The Jews thought that their temple, and their sacrifices, and their ritual, and their priesthood, and their Pentateuch legislation were perfect, eternal, and Divine. Christ taught them that they were imperfect and transitory, and vanishing away. That was why they crucified Him. The cross was the reward of Pharisaism to the Son of God; and as it was with the Master, so shall it be with the servants. Wherever any great human soul utters new truth, there is once more the shadow of Calvary. But God not only gives, but gives back; and what He gives back is better than what was taken away. The earthquake can rock no sure foundation. Shadows of theory, shadows of opinion, shadows of tradition, shadows of hierarchy and party, may be shaken; Christ remains.
F. W. Farrar, Sermons and Addresses in America, p. 128.
Things Passing and Things Permanent.
I. Let us, first, illustrate the law of things which is declared in the text. (1) The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain. The coming of Christ in the flesh was the signal for the overthrow of that venerable and magnificent system. That shaking broke to pieces a Divinely instituted system, and the wreck of it can be seen in a nation still scattered over the face of the whole world. But there were things intended to remain. The daily sacrifice was taken away, but the great sacrifice of Christ abides to the world’s close. The Jewish nation has ceased to be the peculiar people of God, but there is a spiritual Israel, all of them priests that offer sacrifices continually in lives holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ. (2) The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate it remain. Let us have confidence in the fact that God made man for society; let us have faith in the experience of all past history; above all, let us have trust in the word of Christ that the things which cannot be shaken shall remain. Every chaos has its harmonising voice—"Let there be light"—every flood its ark and its rainbow. (3) Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. (4) The temporal circumstances of men are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. (5) The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. (6) The whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains.
II. Consider some of the benefits that result from this law. Could not God, it may be asked, have made a permanent world at first, without requiring us to pass through this process of change, deepening often to ruin? After all, this may be asking why God has seen fit to make this world under the condition of time, for, wherever time enters, change, as far as we can see, must accompany it. This is a world into which moral disorder has entered, and the painful changes that touch us are the consequence of it—the consequence of it and yet an aid to the cure of it. Without sin there might still have been mutation, but it would have wanted the sting and the shadow. We have lost through our fall the perception of spiritual and eternal realities, and we must be made to see them through painful contrasts. It is by this process, too, that we not only see the greatness of these permanent things, but learn to cleave to them as our portion. This at least is the purpose, and if God’s Spirit stirs the heart when His providence shakes the outward life this will be the result. Still further, things that are shaken preserve those things that are to remain until their suitable time of manifestation. They are wrapped round them, and fall away when men are ready for their reception. It is Christ who shakes all things, but He stands unshaken. Amid tottering commonwealths, and conflicting creeds, and shifting scenes, and dying friends, and fainting hearts, He abides ever, and He shakes all beside that we may cling more closely to Himself alone. "To whom can we go but to Thee?" and as we come we shall find a peace and strength that are the pledge of eternal life laid up in Him, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever."
J. Ker, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 320.
References: Heb 12:27.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 690; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 345.
Heb 12:28
The Immovable Kingdom.
Consider the immobility of the kingdom which we receive and the service which citizenship in this kingdom requires.
I. The immovable character of the kingdom of God. Even a careless observer and superficial thinker will not fail to recognise, in the midst of all the shifting and changing scenes and events of nature and human life, a stable, ceaseless, unswerving principle, which ever emerges, and plainly controls all objects and all actions with resistless sway. All the movements of human life in social and national history lead up to this principle, or work it out in their own peculiar details. History is the illustration of that unity, and the religion of Jesus Christ, the purpose of the grace of God in the salvation of the world, is the final object of all human thought, the conclusion of the whole matter in human life, the all-embracing universal fact of the Church of God, the kingdom of God, which nothing can overthrow, which nothing can remove.
II. The phrase "kingdom of God" is used in two senses, the difference between them consisting in the extent to which the kingdom reaches. In the one case we have that entire government of God which embraces heaven and earth and hell in its sway, controlling alike the natural and the supernatural worlds; the other usage refers to that special department or division of that kingdom which is peculiarly concerned by the work of Jesus Christ in the salvation of the world.
III. It is obvious that anything which can be termed the kingdom of God must be immovable. The kingdom is not the mere work of Jesus, not the mere truth of the Gospel, not the merely external invisible community of the baptized, or even of the believers. But it is that spiritual, that only real, entity, the living faith, and love, and obedience; the loyal acceptance of Jesus Christ; the vital union of devoted souls to each other and to the Master: and this, when received, is the kingdom that cannot be moved.
L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 285.
Acceptable Service.
We observe:—
I. That our relation to God produced by the Gospel necessarily demands our service.
II. The service which we can render unto God is the continual sense of gratefulness under which we ought to live towards Him.
III. We learn the spirit in which our service should be for ever rendered—"with reverent submission and godly fear."
L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 299.
Heb 12:28-29
The Religion of the Day.
In every age of Christianity, since it was first preached, there has been what may be called a religion of the world, which so far imitates the one true religion as to deceive the unstable and unwary. The world does not oppose religion as such. It has in all ages acknowledged, in one sense or other, the Gospel of Christ, fastened on one or other of its characteristics, and professed to embody this in its practice; while, by neglecting the other parts of the holy doctrine, it has, in fact, distorted and corrupted even that portion of it which it has exclusively put forward, and so has contrived to explain away the whole.
I. What is the world’s religion now? It has taken the brighter side of the Gospel, its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love, all darker, deeper views of man’s condition and prospects being comparatively forgotten. This is the religion natural to a civilised age, and well has Satan dressed and completed it into an image of the truth. As the reason is cultivated, the taste formed, the affections and sentiments refined, a general decency and grace will of course spread over the face of society, quite independently of the influence of revelation. Is it not the case that Satan has so composed and dressed out what is the mere natural produce of the human heart under certain circumstances as to serve his purposes as the counterfeit of the truth?
II. Nothing shows more strikingly the power of the world’s religion than to consider the very different classes of men whom it influences. (1) Many religious men, rightly or not, have long been expecting a millennium of purity and peace for the Church. In the case of those who have expected this, it has become a temptation to take up and recognise the world’s religion as I have delineated it. They have, more or less, identified their vision of Christ’s kingdom with the elegance and refinement of mere human civilisation, and have hailed every evidence of improved decency, every wholesome civil regulation, every beneficent and enlightened act’ of state policy, as signs of their coming Lord. They have sacrificed truth to expedience. (2) On the other hand, the form of doctrine which I have called the religion of the day is especially adapted to please men of sceptical minds. There is a dark side to religion, and these men cannot bear to think of it. They shrink from it as too terrible. The religion of the world is but a dream of religion, far inferior in worth to the well-grounded alarm of the superstitious, who are awakened and see their danger, though they do not attain so far in faith as to embrace the remedy of it.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. i., p. 309.
Reference: Heb 12:28, Heb 12:29.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1639.
Heb 12:29
I. In the word "fire" there is the idea of purity, which belongs as an essential quality to the element itself. It is not possible to conceive of flame as impure. The material which is being consumed may be impure, the smoke which proceeds from the flame may be thick and black and suffocating, but the flame itself, freely and fully burning, is pure, taintless, without trace of corruption or uncleanness. Who can tell the purity of God, whose symbol is a flame?
II. Fire is a defence, a means of protection, and to symbolise the strong refuges of God’s people is thus often used. It is not altogether as a terror that we approach the celestial light. The fire descending and consuming the offering was a gracious and encouraging sign of acceptance and favour. The chariots and horsemen of fire proved to be the defence and guard of the man of God. So is our God the comfort and defence of His people.
III. But the energy of fire is not only repellent; it is communicative. Fire kindles; fire sets on fire. These symbols of the Divine Being suggest the communicableness of the Divine nature and activity which is the very basis of our religious life. God is the fire of the spiritual world, and He gives His being unto the natures that He has made.
IV. "A consuming fire." A deeper, darker mystery still lies behind it all. God must burn for ever the thing that is against Him. Let the sinner hold to his sin, and the wrath of God must consume that sin.
L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age, p. 315.
The Sterner Aspects of the Divine Character.
This is the aspect of Deity which some well-meaning people would wish blotted out of the Bible. That God can take vengeance to the uttermost on evil-doers seems to some persons against the notion of God.
I. The disposition in question is indeed woven, if I may so speak, of two threads: it is partly moral, partly intellectual. So far as it is moral, it comes under the head of moral cowardice, the shrinking from uncomfortable truths; so far as it is intellectual, it proceeds on the false assumption that we know the whole of the case, and have faculties to criticise it. Remember, as against this perilous as well as false assumption, that from the beginnings of philosophy the wisest of mankind have ever leaned to a distrust of human faculties in their power of mastering the whole of any moral question.
II. The Bible is popularly regarded as a comfortable book, the contents of which may be taken for granted as in unison with our consciousness, and therefore as not needing examination. Thus men, in fact, assume without inquiry that the Bible reflects their own prejudices; and the vague idea of salvation which they connect with it is not hampered with any conditions or with any which they disapprove. Then when it is pointed out that salvation is not unconditional, and that the conditions are, whether of faith or practice, of God’s fixing, not man’s, such popular minds are offended. That salvation without such conditions cannot be had is too stern a truth to be accepted by the self-indulgent. Do you think that such false charity will bring a man peace at the last? Dare we speak as if our God were not a consuming fire? Or dare we think that He will be more tolerant of those that cheapen the way of salvation under the new covenant, than of a rival altar under the old?
H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons, p. 84.
References: Heb 12:29.—J. M. Whiton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 179. Heb 13:1.—J. Aldis, Ibid., p. 216. Heb 13:1, Heb 13:2.—M. Dods, Ibid., vol. xxxvi., p. 216.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 1. (Heb 12:1-29; Heb 13:1-6.)
Section 1. (Heb 12:1-29; Heb 13:1-6.)
That of steadfast continuance in the confession of faith.
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The last two chapters, forming the final division of the epistle, press the responsibilities resulting from all that has been before us. These divide, nearly with the chapters, into two parts, speaking first of steadfast continuance in the confession of their faith, through whatever difficulties, and lastly of the need of decisive separation from the "camp" of Judaism.
1. The first section seems again to divide into seven subsections:
(1) The first of which urges concentration of energy in following One who is, whatever may be the encouragement from that of others, the unique Example, the Leader and Perfecter of faith. In the histories that remain of all these witnesses, still encompassing us, we have what is the principle of the path; and he urges, therefore, to lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and run with patience the race set before us. For a runner in a race, to drop all unnecessary weights is imperative. The weight and the sin are quite different things, although so closely connected, as undoubtedly they are. A weight is something I take up when I need not; not a duty, for what is really a duty is never a weight. People may, of course, take up a weight and miscall it duty, and its misnomer will not hinder their finding it what it really is. But it would be impossible for God to impose upon us as duty what would be in itself necessarily hurtful. On the other hand, the artificial life lived at the present day and the supposed responsibility of living up to one’s position among men, such like things do indeed often burden the back and make running well-nigh impossible. A racer’s heart is at the end of the road, and his motto is: "Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching on to that which is before." Just in proportion as he has the spirit of a racer will he measure things by his one desire to make progress in the race.
The connection with sin, too, here, is most important. It is, no doubt, sin in the abstract, although there are sins which beset each of us in a special way. If we thought of it as of a pack of wolves at our heels, we should easily realize the connection of a weight with sin. You must drop the weight to distance the wolves. Amalek slew the hindermost of Israel. To get on in the road is the way to escape entanglements and the need of a battle. Christ is the goal; and if our eyes are upon Him, we find at once the perfect Example and the energy for the way. "Author" in the common version is the same word as we have had before, both as "Leader" and "Originator." The path for us is what He has made it; and He has completed it, gone through it Himself all the way. "The joy set before Him" was all that was to be the issue of His work, the fruit of the travail of His soul; for this He "endured the cross, despising the shame." The cross itself He could not despise. In result He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God; and the full compensation is at hand for Him.
(2) This introduces the second subsection. It is not merely a race we have to run, but a battle to fight. We have to endure the contradiction of sinners as He endured. The Hebrews had suffered a good deal, but they must not, he tells them, be weary yet. They had not yet, as Christ Himself had, "resisted unto blood, wrestling against sin." Of course, the sin here is that which is outside and around. It is a different conflict from that in Gal 5:1-26, and of course, also, from that in Eph 6:1-24. Here it is persecution, and not standing against the wiles of the devil, as there. Christ went on to death, and His followers must be prepared to do as He did; suffering with Him, as far as men are concerned. The suffering from God, that which made the cross what it was for Him, He alone endured; and there is no cup of that kind for us at all; no forsaking of God, but the very contrary. The suffering from men only brings Him in for us. "If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you."
(3) On the other hand, as we find in the third subsection, there is a character of suffering on our part which was not and could not be His. For us there is discipline because of what we are, the trials by the way being overruled of God so that we should be thus made partakers of His holiness. As it is put in Romans, "Tribulation worketh patience," the subduing of our wills to God; "and patience, experience," the experience of what His will is, -"and experience, hope." It may not be any positive failure that is here in view. The thorn in the flesh, for an apostle, was needed by him because of the abundance of the revelations which had been made to him, but of course, also, in view of the tendency native in him, as in others, to be lifted up. It was preventive, therefore -a conclusive argument against those views of perfection which would imply the removal of such tendencies from any one while here. This was a man who had been in the third heavens, hearing unspeakable things, which it was not lawful or possible for one to utter; yet even he needed such a preventive, and needed it to be continued, for his prayer for its removal was not answered in the way expected, but grace made him triumph over it. We must take care, moreover, -as we see of the argument of Job’s friends, which is now being elaborately put forth as wholesome Christian doctrine in some quarters -that one’s spiritual condition be not argued from the bodily one. "Beloved," says the apostle to Gaius, "I wish in all things that thou prosper and be in health, even as thy soul doth prosper." People would tell him now that there was very little need for him to have any trouble about that.
"The Lord" in the quotation here in Hebrews -"the chastening of the Lord" -is really "Jehovah," according to the usual rendering of the Septuagint and of our common version in the Old Testament. In 1Co 11:1-34, "chastened of the Lord" refers to the Lord Jesus. In Peter, also, "judgment must begin at the house of God" in chastening. The "house" in Peter is the house of living stones (1Pe 2:1-25). In governmental dealings thus, it is much with us as with Moses on the mount. In governmental ways, clouds and darkness are still round about Him. Like Moses, we cannot meet Him face to face; but after it is past, we see the glory of the back parts. "Afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those" who, in the darkness, have been "exercised thereby." The law was just such a government of God, but without the revelation of His face, as it has now been given us in Christ. Now, if as to special dealings the cloud is there, we yet know Him who is behind the cloud. Exercise is right as to what His ways mean, and we must not deem it a strange thing if we are left to the exercise. It is not intended that we should float lightly over everything. That which is from a Father’s hand has purpose in it, and is not to be treated lightly. Because it is a Father’s hand the purpose is blessing, and therefore there is no cause to faint under it.
(4) And so he exhorts in the next subsection, which presses the practical ways that please God, and warns against departure from Him, according to the constant style of the epistle. There need be no discouragement. They must lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees. And withal they must make straight paths for their feet, so that even the lame may not be turned out of the way, but rather be healed of their lameness. It is in God’s path for us alone that power is found, whatever be the difficulties. The weaker we are, the more urgent should be our desire to walk where alone He can be with us; for what are all the difficulties then? And here we find not only strength, but healing. "Peace with all men" was to be sought, also, not at the expense of holiness, but in holiness, which with the Lord is of the first necessity. Without it none shall see Him, and therefore they must look diligently to see that no one among them really lacked the grace of God, and so a root of bitterness spring up in their midst by which many might be defiled; for, alas, we have in us all that which makes us sensitive to such infection, and the presence of the evil shows already a lax condition which has allowed it to spring up. How a single act may discover a man’s character, as with Esau here! For a bit of food he sold his birthright; and the act characterized him as a profane person, one who habitually left God out of his thoughts. Yet he could desire the blessing, and sought it earnestly after he had lost it; just as Balaam could desire to "die the death of the righteous" while he had no thought of living their life. Thus "he found no place for repentance," for this had only respect to the lost blessing and involved no judgment of his ways before God. He valued the gain of godliness without the godliness, and the nature of God would have had to be changed to gratify him in that which was his sole desire.
(5) Now we come to the contemplation of that to which faith brings the Christian. It is put in contrast with that which characterized Judaism; not, however, as to faith, but in experience. Faith might, as has been shown us, have put before the Jew also something of that which lies before the Christian; but the point is, what did the law do to help or hinder a soul in this glorious prospect? And here the apostle carries them back to the record of its beginning, that all might judge for themselves by the facts given. Israel came to mount Sinai, and there the nation had in spirit remained: a palpable mount indeed, and that burned with fire from the presence of God. With this an awful darkness, out of which the sound of a trumpet summoned attention, and then a Voice more dreadful than all, though with a distinct utterance of words, but not a gospel; for what had been the effect upon those that heard and saw? Touch they could not, for even the beast that touched was to be stoned; and their terror was so great that they begged that the word might be spoken to them no more; nay, even Moses, the mediator, said: "I exceedingly fear and quake." Such was the character, then, of that dispensation: darkness from the face of God, obscurity as to the future; and when God drew nigh, it was but to inspire terror.
Now what a contrast! Of that opened sanctuary, the ability to draw nigh, of the promise securing everything, the apostle has already spoken. He has only now, therefore, to put before them the prospect for heaven and for earth which lies unobscured on the horizon of faith -Jewish hope as well as Christian pictured in a few touches only, but which can be extended indefinitely from a multitude of scriptures. His object is not descriptive, but to point out some features of this glorious scene.
Upon earth, first, mount Zion, the place of God’s choice in grace when everything had broken down in Israel (Psa 78:68-70), and thus his abiding rest (Psa 132:13-14). From this he rises to "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem," the corresponding centre of heavenly glory; which we must not confound, as some do, with the Church itself, which is mentioned apart, almost directly afterwards. It is the home of the saints, the common thought, and the more correct one. Next, we find "myriads of angels, the universal gathering," taking in, it is to be supposed, all ranks and orders of these heavenly beings. And next, "the assembly of the first-born ones whose names are enrolled in heaven," in contrast with Israel, who are God’s first-born people en-registered on earth. These are the true heirs, the "brethren," among whom Christ is the First-born in necessary pre-eminence. These, then, are distinguished plainly from the city of God already spoken of.
Next, we rise to "God the Judge of all," the sovereign awarder to every one of place and service and recompense. This is why, in the holy city, the sevens which we might expect to characterize it are expanded into twelves, the number of manifest divine government. Seven is 4+3, as twelve is 4X3. The twelve is thus an expanded seven; and where can perfection be more secured than by God being in absolute supremacy, His will the complete settlement of everything for His creatures?
We have, then, the "spirits of just men made perfect," which certainly are Old Testament saints distinguished as a company from "the assembly of the first-born ones." "Just men" is the natural title of the Old Testament saints, and the "spirits of just men" show them to be a company that has come under death, which will not be true of the Christian assembly as a whole, which remains here until the coming of the Lord. "Made perfect" is for these by resurrection, and will be accomplished at the same time for them as for us, as the last verse of the eleventh chapter says: "that they without us should not be made perfect."
We are then reminded of the foundation of all blessing, "Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling," which has been already fully spoken of. These things we have as Christians "come to." That is, nothing lies, that we can see, between us and them. As heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, they all have to do with us, and are of full personal interest to us.
(6) The sixth subsection reaches to the end of the chapter. It is another of the many warnings of this epistle, and reminds all that there is a limit to the divine patience. How great the responsibility of refusing this divine Voice which now speaks in such marvelous grace from heaven! The Voice at Sinai shook the earth, but now, "once more," He is going to "shake, not the earth only, but also heaven." If but "once more," that must imply the removal of everything that can be shaken, that all afterwards may remain absolutely unmoved. How blessed to know, then, that the kingdom that we have received is among the things that cannot be shaken! But let us have grace, therefore, to "serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire." All that is not according to His mind is destined to perish in that fire.
(7) In the seventh subsection the apostle adds some words of exhortation as to the filling out of the acceptable service on the part of those upon the earth created of God, though disordered by sin and that which is attendant upon it. They are of very simple character, and need no interpretation to make them understood. He urges the continuance of brotherly love, the maintenance of hospitality, the sympathetic linking themselves with those enduring imprisonment or suffering injury of any kind, as being themselves also in the body. He urges the holding of that in honor which God had instituted at the beginning, and that the manner of life should be without covetousness, content with whatever God might see best for them here, it being sufficient to know that He has promised never to forsake his own, so that they might say, in fearless reckoning upon Him as their Helper, they would not fear what man could do to them.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 10
Hebrews
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A RACE
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Heb 12:1
THE previous clauses of this verse bring before us the runner’s position as ‘compassed about with a cloud of witnesses,’ and his preparation as ‘laying aside every weight and.., sin.’ The text carries us a stage further in the metaphor, and shows us the company of runners standing ready, stripped, and straining at the starting-post, with the long course stretching before them.
The metaphor of the Christian life as a race is threadbare, so far as our knowledge is concerned, but it may be questioned if it has sunk deeply enough into the practice of any of us. It is a very noble one, and contains an ideal of the Christian life which it would do us all good to hold up by the side of our realisation of it. It might stimulate and it would shame us. What is the special note of that metaphor? Compare with the ‘kindred one, equally well-worn and threadbare, of a journey or a pilgrimage. The two have much in common. They both represent life as changeful, continuous, progressive, tending to an end; but the metaphor of the race underscores, as it were, another idea, that of effort. The traveller may go at his Leisure, he may fling himself down to rest under a tree, he may diverge from the road, but the runner must not look askance, must not he afraid of dust or sweat, must tax muscle and lungs to the utmost, if, panting, he is to reach the goal and win the prize, So, very significantly, our writer here puts forward only one characteristic of the race. It is to be ‘run with patience,’ by which great word the New Testament means, not merely passive endurance, noble and difficult as that may be, but active perseverance which presses on unmoved, ay, and unhindered, to its goal in the teeth of all opposition.
But, whilst that is the special characteristic of the metaphor, as distinguished from others kindred to it, and of the ideal which it sets forth, I desire in this sermon to take a little wider sweep, and to try to bring out the whole of the elements which lie in this well-worn figure. I see in it four things: a definite aim, clearly apprehended and eagerly embraced; a God- appointed path; a steady advance; and a strenuous effort. Now let us ask ourselves the question, Do they correspond to anything in my professing Christian life?
We have here, then
I. A definite aim, clearly apprehended and eagerly embraced.
Most men have aims, definite enough, in regard lower things, and if you ask the average man out of the ruck what he is living for, he will generally be able to answer curtly and clearly, or at any rate his life will show, even if he cannot put it into words. But all these are means rather than ends; ‘I am living to make a big business.’ ‘I am living to make a fortune.’ ‘I am living to found a family.’ ‘I am living to learn a science, an art, a profession.’ ‘I am living for enjoy-merit,’ etc., etc. Yes, and then suppose somebody perks up with the exceedingly inconvenient further question, ‘Well, and what then?’ Then, all that fabric of life-aims rushes down into destruction, and is manifest for what it is-altogether disproportionate to the man that is pursuing it. Such shabby, immediate’ aims’ are not worth calling so. But my text sets forth far beyond, and far above them, the one only goal which it is becoming, which it is natural which it is anything else than ludicrous, if it were not so tragical, that any man should be pursuing. And what is that mark? You can put it in a hundred different ways. Evangelical Christian people generally say salvation, and a great many so-called Evangelical Christian people have a very low, inadequate, and selfish idea of what they mean by the word. Let us put it in another form. The only aim that it is worthy of a man to live for, as his supreme and dominant one, is that he shall be completely moulded in character, disposition, nature, heart, and will into the likeness of Jesus Christ, who is the image of God, and that he shall pass into no Nirvana of unconsciousness, but into that blessed union with the divine nature, which is not absorption into it, or the Weakening of the individual, but the making a man tenfold more himself because he lives in God, as the taper plunged into the jar of oxygen, which burns the brighter for its surroundings, and unlike the taper, is unconsumed by burning. Thus the complete development of human character into the divine image, and the complete union of the human with the divine, is the aim that Christianity sets before us.
And that aim it becomes every one of us professing Christians clearly to apprehend, and keep ever in view as the thing to which we are not merely tending, but to which we are striving. Clearly apprehended, and eagerly embraced, this conception of the purpose of our lives must be if we are not to make them ignoble and conscious or unconscious hypocrisies. But remember that such an aim may be pursued through, and requires for its attainment, all those lower aims and ends which monopolise men’s efforts without regard to anything beyond. What we want most is a Christianity which, recognising that great, supreme purpose, follows it persistently and doggedly through all nearer and lesser pursuits. We want our Christian principle to penetrate into all the tissues of our lives, and to bring there healing, purging, and quickening. And if we suppose that the greatest of all aims is contrary to any of these lesser ones, except such of them as are sinful, then we misapprehend both the highest blessedness and good of the nearest objects that are set before us, and still more fatally misapprehend the very genius and intention of that Christianity, which is not unworldliness but the secret of making the world and all its fading sweets subservient to this highest end.
Now, need I say one word as to the nobleness and blessedness of a life which is consistently and thoroughly ordered with a view to this great aim? Think of the unity that thus will be blessedly breathed over all the else bewildering diversity of earthly conditions and occupations. As the moon gathers into one great tidal wave the heaped waters of the shoreless ocean, and mastering currents, and laughing at the opposing powers of the tempest, carries the watery wall round the earth, so the white, pure beam of that aim shining down on the confused welter of our earthly life will draw it all after itself. Think, too, of the power that comes into a life from this unity. A man of one aim is always formidable, and high above all other aims in its absorbing power is this one that a Christian man only deserves his name if-he sets and keeps before him. Such a unity will, if I may so say, gather together the whole power of our nature, and bring it into a point, and it will heat it as well as concentrate it. If you take a bit of blunt iron, cold, and try to bore a hole in a ten-inch plank, you will make little progress; but if you sharpen it to a point, and heat it red-hot, then it will penetrate anything. So my life gathered up into one, and heated, by the very fact of its being concentrated, will pierce through all obstacles, and I shall be strong in the proportion in which ‘ this one thing I do,’ and do it through all other things.
I need not remind you, either, of the blessedness which is involved in this unity of aim, clearly apprehended and eagerly embraced, in so far as it will act as a test of all lower pursuits and objects Wherever there comes a little rill of fresh water down upon the coral reef the creatures that build it die, and the reef disappears, and thus a great aim will kill all lower ones that work in the dark, creeping and crawling, and that are contrary to itself.
Further, this supreme aim is supremely blessed, because it will shine ever before us. There is a blessedness in having an object of pursuit which we never reach. It is better to steer straight to the pole-star, though we never get there, than to creep like the old mariners, from headland to headland, and leave behind us sinking on the backward horizon, purpose after purpose, hope after hope, aim after aim. Better to have it shining ahead. Let me point out the second idea contained in this metaphor, that of
II. A God-appointed path.
The race is ‘ set before us.’ Set before us by whom? The course is staked out and determined by the Judge of the games. And that may well be applied in two directions. My duties are appointed by God, and if only we realise that, and bring the thought of His will continually into connection with the smallest of the sets which circumstance, relationships, occupations and the like constitute our duties, how different they all become! It is an entirely different thing to say, ‘Being where I am, I must do so-and-so’; or ‘Right and wrong being what it is, I must do so-and-so; or to say,’ This and that man prescribes ‘so, and-so for me’; and to say. ‘Thou hast prepared a path for us, and ordained that we should walk therein.’ That elevates, that sweetens, that calms us, that smooths the road, makes the rough places plain and the crooked things straight. We want with the clear vision of the aim the equally clear and abiding persuasion that God has appointed the path. A modern thinker said that religion was morality touched by emotion. No, religion is morality transfigured into obedience to the law of God. Bring your duties into connection with His appointment, and they will all be easy; and when the path stretches gloomy before you, and it seems that you are called upon to do some hard thing, say: ‘Created unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.’
Then there is the other thought that, as the duties are appointed by Him, so the circumstances are appointed, too. You know what they call an obstacle-race, in which the intention is to accumulate as many difficulties in the course as can be crowded into it; I fancy that is a good deal like the race that is set before all of us, by God’s wisdom. There are many fences to be climbed, many barriers to be crept under, many deep ditches to be waded through, many bad bits of road studded with sharp points, through which we have to pick our way. We say as to ourselves, and as to our friends, ‘What does it all mean?’ And the answer is, ‘He has set the race before for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness.’
Again, we have here the notion of
III. A steady progress.
Continual advance is the very salt of the Christian life, and unless there be such progress there is something fatally wrong with the Christianity. An unprogressive Christianity is very apt to become a moribund and then a dead Christianity. Of course that is so because the aim of which I have been speaking is, in its very nature, inaccessible and yet capable of indefinite approximation. ‘Alps upon Alps arise.’ Neither in regard to the intellectual or spiritual apprehension of the deep things of God, nor in regard to the incorporation of His likeness into itself, will human nature ever be able to say, ‘Lo, I have passed through the land, and know it all.’ But an indefinite approximation to an eternally unreached point is a description of a geometrical figure, and it is the description of the Christian life. And, therefore, at no point must we stop, and at no point is it safe for us to say, ‘I have apprehended and attained.’ Our nature, quite as much as the divine nature towards which we tend, demands this continuous progress, for the human spirit is capable of an indefinite expansion, and the seed of the life kindred to God which is lodged in every believing soul, though it be at the beginning ‘less than the least of all,’ must grow into a great tree.
Ah, brethren! what a sad contrast to this unbroken progress our lives present to our own consciousness! How many Christian people there are who have almost lost sight of the notion, and have certainly ceased from the practice of an unbroken advance in either of the directions of which I have been speaking, likeness to God or communion with Him! Ask yourselves the question, ‘Am I further on than I was this day last year, this day ten years, this day twenty years?’ The Japanese gardeners pride themselves on having the secret of dwarfing forest trees, and they will put an oak into a flower-pot; and there it is, only a few inches high, in age a patriarch, in height a seedling. And that is what a great many of you Christian people are doing, dwarfing the tree; even if you are not distorting it. And now the last thing that I point out here is
IV. The strenuous effort, I have already said a word or two about that as being the differentia, the special characteristic, of this metaphor.
And I may just refer for one moment to the fact that the word rendered here ‘race,’ and quite rightly so rendered, literally means a contest - ‘Let us run the contest that is set before us.’ What does that say? Why, just this, that every foot of advance has to be fought; it is not merely ‘running,’ it is conflict as well. And then, pointing in the same direction, comes the selection in the text, which I have already touched upon, of the one qualification that is necessary - patient endurance, which suggests antagonism. Opposition - where does the opposition come from? The Apostle asked the Galatians that once. ‘Ye did run well; what did hinder you?’ And the answers are diverse: flowers by the roadside, golden apples flung across the course, siren voices tempting us, the force of gravity holding us back, the pressure of the wind on our faces. Yes, and my own self most of all That is what hinders, and that is what has to be fought against by myself. Effort, effort, effort is the secret of all noble life, in all departments, and it is the secret of advancing Christian life.
Now, let us understand aright the relations between the faith of which the New Testament makes so much and the effort of which this metaphor makes so much. A great many Christian people seem to fancy that faith supersedes effort. Not so! It stimulates and strengthens effort. If I trust, I receive the power to run, but whether I shall really run or not depends on myself. God gives the ability in Jesus Christ, and then we have to use the ability, and to turn it into an actuality. They have invented a movable platform at the Paris Exhibition, they tell me, on which a man steps, and having stepped upon it is lazily carried to his destination in the building without lifting a foot or moving a muscle. And some people seem to think that Christianity is a platform of that sort, a ‘living way,’ on which, if once they get, they may be as idle as they like, and they will reach their journey’s end. Not so! Not so! By faith we enter on the race; through faith we receive the power that will make us able to run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint. But unless we run we shall not advance, and unless we advance we shall not attain. Understand, then, that faith is the basis of effort, and effort is the crown of faith. If we will thus trust ourselves to that Lord, and draw from Him the power which He is infinitely willing to give, then the great vision of the prophet will be fulfilled in our case, and we shall find stretching across the low, swampy levels of this world ‘a highway,’ and it shall be ‘a way of holiness, and no ravenous beast shall come up therein, but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’
Hebrews
WEIGHTS AND SINS
Heb 12:1
THERE is a regular series of thoughts in this clause, and in the one or two which follow it, ‘Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us; and let us run with patience the race that is set before us - looking unto Jesus.’ That is to say, If we would run well, we must run light; if we would run light, we must look to Christ. The central injunction is, ‘Let us run with patience’; the only way of doing that is the ‘laying aside all weights and sin’; and the only way of laying aside the weights and sins is, ‘looking unto Jesus.’
Of course the Apostle does not mean some one special kind of transgression when he says, ‘the sin which doth so easily beset us.’ He is speaking about sin generically - all manner of transgression. It is not, as we sometimes hear the words misquoted, ‘that sin which doth most easily beset us.’ All sin is, according to this passage, a besetting sin. It is the characteristic of every kind of transgression, that it circles us round about, that it is always lying in wait and lurking for us. The whole of it, therefore, in all its species, is to be cast aside if we would run with patience this appointed race. But then, besides that, there is something else to be put aside as well as sin. There is ‘every weight’ as well as every transgression- two distinct things, meant’ to be distinguished. The putting away of both of them is equally needful for the race. The figure is plain enough. We as racers must throw aside the garment that wraps us round - that is to say, ‘the sin that easily besets us’; and then, besides that, we must lay aside everything else which weights us for the race - that is to say, certain habits or tendencies within us.
We have, then, to consider these three points ; - First, There are hindrances which are not sins. Secondly, If we would run, we must put aside these. And lastly, If we would put them aside, we must look to Christ.
In the first place, there are hindrances which are not sins. The distinction which the writer draws is a very important one. Sin is that which, by its very nature, in all circumstances, by whomsoever done, without regard to consequences, is a transgression of God’s law. A ‘weight’ is that which, allowable in itself, legitimate, perhaps a blessing, the exercise of a power which God has given us - is, for some reason, a hindrance and impediment in our running the heavenly race. The one word describes the action or habit by its inmost essence, the other describes it by its accidental consequences. Sin is sin, whosoever does it; but weights may be weights to me, and not weights to you. Sin is sin in whatever degree it is done; but weights may be weights when they are in excess, and helps, not hindrances, when they are in moderation. The one is a legitimate thing turned to a false use; the other is always, and everywhere, and by whomsoever performed, a transgression of God’s law.
Then, what are these weights? The first stop in the answer to that question is to be taken by remembering that, according to the image of this text we carry them about with us, and we are to put them away from ourselves. It is fair to say then, that the whole class of weights are not so much external circumstances which may be turned to evil, as the feelings and habits of mind by which we abuse God’s great gifts and mercies, and turn that which was ordained to be for life into death. The renunciation that is spoken about is not so much the putting away from ourselves of certain things lying round about us, that may become temptations; as the putting away of the dispositions within us which make these things temptations. The other is, of course, included as well; but if we want to understand the true depth of the doctrine of self-denial and serf-sacrifice which is taught here, we must remember that the sin and the weights alike lie within our own hearts - that they are our feelings, not God’s perfect gifts - that they are our abuse of God’s benefits, not the benefits which are given to us for our use. We shall have to see, presently, that By the power which we possess of turning all these outward blessings of God’s hands into occasion for transgression, God’s most precious endowments may become weights - but let us observe that, accurately and to begin with, the text enjoins us to put away what cleaves to us, and is in us, not what is lying round about us. Then, if it be mainly and primarily, legitimate feelings and thoughts, abused and exaggerated, which make the weights that we are to lay aside, what are the things which may thus become weights? Oh, brethren! a little word answers that. Everything. It is an awful and mysterious power that which we all possess, of perverting the highest endowments, whether of soul or of circumstances, which God has given us, into the occasions for faltering, and falling back in the divine life. Just as men, by devilish ingenuity, can distil poison out of God’s fairest flowers, so we can do with everything that we have, with all the richest treasures of our nature, with the hearts which He has given us that we may love Him with them; with the understandings which He has bestowed upon us, that we may apprehend His divine truth and His wonderful counsel with them; with these powers of work in the world which He has conferred upon us, that by them we may bring to Him acceptable service and fitting offering; and, in like manner, with all the gladness and grace with which He surrounds our life, intending that out of it we should draw ever occasions for thankfulness, reasons for trust, helps towards God, ladders to assist us in climbing heavenward. Ah! and because we cleave to them too much, because we cleave to them not only in a wrong degree but in a wrong manner {for that is the deepest part of the fault}, we may make them all hindrances. So, for instance, in a very awful sense is fulfilled that threatening, ‘A man’s foes shall be they of his own household,’ when we make those that we love best our idols, not because we love them too well, but because we love them apart from God; when instead of drawing from those that are dear to us - our husbands, and wives, and children, and parents, and friends, and every other tender name - lessons of God’s infinite goodness, and reasons why our hearts should flow perpetually with love to Him - we stay with them, and hang back from God, and forget that His love is best, His heart deepest, and His sufficiency our safest trust. That is one single instance; and as it is in that sacredest of regions, so is it in all others. Every blessing, every gladness, every possession, external to us, and every faculty and attribute within us, we turn into heavy weights that drag us down to this low spot of earth- We make them all sharp knives with which we clip the wings of our heavenward tendencies, and then we grovel in the dust.
And now, if this be the explanation of what the Apostle means by ‘weights’ - legitimate things that hinder us in our course towards God - there comes this second consideration, If we would run we must lay these aside. Why must we lay ‘them aside? The whole of the Christian’s course is a fight. We carry with us a double nature. The best of us know that ‘flesh lusts against spirit, and spirit against flesh.’ Because of that conflict, it follows that if ever there is to be a positive progress in the Christian race, it must be accompanied, and made possible, by the negative process of casting away and losing much that interferes with it. Yes! that race is not merely the easy and natural unfolding of what is within us. The way by which we come to ‘the measure of the stature of perfect men’ in Christ, is not the way by which these material bodies of ours grow up into their perfectness. They have but to be nourished, and they grow. ‘The blade and the ear, and the full corn in the ear,’ come by the process of gradual growth and increase. That law of growth is used by our Lord as a description, but only as a partial description, of the way by which the kingdom of Christ advances in the heart. There is another side to it as well as that, The kingdom advances by warfare as well as by growth. It would Be easy if it were but a matter of getting more and more; but it is not that only. Every step of the road you have to cut your way through opposing foes. Every step of the road has to be marked with the blood that comes from wounded feet. Every step of the road is won by a tussle and a strife.
There is no spiritual life without dying, there is no spiritual growth without putting off ‘the old man with his affections and lusts.’ The hands cannot move freely until the bonds be broken. The new life that is in us cannot run with patience the race that is set before it, until the old life that is in us is put down and subdued. And if we fancy that we are to get to heaven by a process of persistent growth, without painful self-sacrifice and martyrdom, we know nothing about it. That is not the law. For every new step that we win in the Christian course there must have been the laying aside of something. For every progress in knowledge, there must have been a sacrifice and martyrdom of our own indolence, of our own pride, of our own blindness of heart, of our own perverseness of will. For every progress in devout emotion, there must have been a crucifying and slaying of our earthly affections, of our wavering hearts that are drawn away from God by the sweetness of this world. For every progress in strenuous work for God, there must have been a slaying of the selfishness which urges us to work in our own strength and for our own sake. All along the Christian course there must be set up altars to God on which you sacrifice yourselves, or you will never advance a step. The old legend that the Grecian host lay weather-bound in their port, vainly waiting for a wind to come and carry them to conquest; and that they were obliged to slay a human sacrifice ere the heavens would be propitious and fill their sails, may be translated into the deepest verity of the Christian life. We may see in it that solemn lesson - no prosperous voyage, and no final conquest until the natural life has been offered up on the altar of hourly self-denial. That self-denial must reach beyond gross and undoubted sins. They must be swept away, of course, but deeper than these must the sacrificial knife strike its healing wound. If you would ,run with patience, ‘you must ‘lay aside every weight,’ as well as ‘the sin which so easily besets you.’
So much for the why; well, then, how is this laying aside to be performed? There are two ways by which this injunction of my text may be obeyed. The one is, by getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it; and the other is that feeling ourselves to be weak, we take the prudent course of put-ring it utterly aside. Or, to turn that into other words: the highest type of the Christian character would be, that we should, as the Apostle says, ‘use the world without abusing it’ - that’ they who possess should be as though they possessed not; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not.’ The noblest style of a Christian would be a man, who exercising all the faculties which God had given him, and enjoying all the blessings wherewith God had surrounded him, walked his Christian course like some of those knights of old, lightly bearing his heavy mail, not feeling it a burden, but strong enough to bear the massive breastplate and to wield the ponderous sword, and fitted for his rough warfare by it all. It would be possible, perhaps, some day for us to come to this - that inasmuch as it is the feelings within us which make the weights, and not the objects without us - we should keep and enjoy the blessings and the gladness that we possess, and yet never thereby be thwarted or stayed in our journey heavenward. It would be the highest condition. I suppose we shall come to it yonder, where there will no longer be any need to maim ourselves that we may ‘ enter into life,’ but where all the maimings that were done in this world for the sake of entering into life shall be compensated and restored, and each soul shall stand perfect and complete, wanting nothing.
But, alas! though that course be the highest, the abstract best, the thing for which we ought to strive and try; it is not the course for which the weakness and inaptness of the most of us makes us strong enough. And therefore, seeing that we have a nature so weak and feeble, that temptations surround us so constantly, that so many things legitimate become to us harmful and sinful - the path of prudence, the safe path, is absolutely and utterly to put them away from us, and have nothing to do with them.
Of course, there are many duties which, by our own sinfulness, we make weights, and we dare not, and we cannot if we would, lay them aside. A man, for instance, is born into certain circumstances, wherein he must abide; he has ‘a calling whereunto he is called.’ Your trade is a weight, your daily occupations are weights. The spirit of this commandment before us is not, ‘Leave your plough, and go up into the mountain to pray; Again, a man finds himself surrounded by friends and domestic ties. He dare not, he must not, he cannot, shake himself free from these. There are cases in which to put away the occupation that has become a weight - to sacrifice the blessing that has become a hindrance - to abstain from the circumstances which clog and impede our divine life, is a sin. Where God sets us, we must stand, if we die. What God has given us to do, we must do. The duties that in our weakness become impediments and weights, we must not leave.
But for all besides these, anything which I know has become a snare to me - unless it be something in the course of my simple duty, or unless it be some one of those relations of life which I cannot got rid of - I must have done with it! It may be sweet, it may he very dear, it may He very near thy heart, it may be a part of thy very being : - never mind, put it away! If God has said to you, There, my child, stand there, surrounded by temptations! - then, like a man, stand to your colours, and do not take these words as if they said I am to leave a place because I find myself too weak to resist - a place in which God, for the good of others or for the good of myself, has manifestly set me. But for all other provinces of life, if I feel myself weak I shall be wise to fly. As Christ has said, ‘If thy hand offend thee,’ put it down on the block there, and take the knife in the other, ‘and cut it off’: it is better, it is better for thee to go into life with that maimed and bleeding stump, an imperfect man, than with all thy natural capacities and powers to be utterly lost at the last! And some of us, perhaps, may feel that these solemn lessons apply not only to affection and outward business. I may be speaking to some young man to whom study, and thought, are a snare. I know that I am saying a grave thing, but I do say, In that region too, the principle applies. Better be ignorant, and saved, than wise, and lost. Better a maimed man in Christ’s fold, than a perfect man, if that were possible, outside of it.
I know that there is a large field for misconception and misapplication in the settlement of the practical question - Which of my weights arise from circumstances that I dare not seek to alter, and which from circumstances that I dare not leave unaltered? There is a large margin left for the play of honesty of purpose, and plain common-sense, in the fitting of such general maxims to the shifting and complicated details of an individual life. But no laws can be laid down to save us that trouble. No man can judge for another about this matter. It must be our own sense of what harms our spiritual life, and not other people’s notions of what is likely to harm either theirs or ours, that guides us. What by experience I find does me harm, let me give up! No man has a right to come to me and say, There is a legitimate thing, an indifferent thing; it is not a sin; there is not in it, in itself, the essential element of transgression; but you must forsake it, because it is a weight to other people! To my own master I stand or fall. The commandment is, Have no weights! But the way to fulfil that commandment - whether by rejecting the thing altogether, or by keeping it, and yet not letting it be a weight, that is a matter for every one’s own conscience, for every one’s own judgment and practical prudence, guided by the Spirit of God, to determine. The obedience to the commandment is a simple matter of loyalty to Christ. But the manner of obedience is to be fixed by Christian wisdom. And remember that on both sides of the alternative there are dangers. There is danger in the too great freedom which says, I am strong; I can venture to do this thing - another man cannot - and I will do it! There is a danger On the other side in saying, We are all weak, and we will forsake all these things together! The one class of moralists axe apt to confound their own unsanctified inclinations with the dictates of Christian freedom. The other class are apt to confound their own narrowness with the commandments of God. The one class are apt to turn their liberty into a cloak of licentiousness. The other class are apt to turn their obligation into a yoke which neither they nor their disciples are able to bear. The Apostle pointed out the evils which these two ways of dealing with things indifferent are apt to foster when he said to those who adopt the one, ‘Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not’; and to those who adopt the other ‘Let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth.’ That is to say, on the one hand, beware of the fancied superiority to the weaknesses and narrowness of your more scrupulous brother, which is prone to creep into the hearts of the more liberal and strong. Remember that perhaps the difference between you is not all in your favour. It may be that what you call over-scrupulous timidity is the fruit of a more earnest Christian principle than yours; and that what you call in yourself freedom from foolish scruples, is only the result of a less sensitive conscience, not of a more robust Christianity. Then for the other class, the lesson is, ‘Let not him which eateth not, judge him that eateth.’ Judge not from the height of your superior self-denial, your brother who allows himself what you avoid. Your besetting sin is self-righteous condemnation of those who perhaps, after all, are wiser as well as wider than you, and who in their strength may be able to walk as near to God on a road, which to you would be full of perils, as you are in the manner of life which you know to be needful for you. Let us all remember, besides, that a thing which to ourselves is no weight, may yet be right for us to forsake, out of true and tender brotherly regard to others who, weaker than we, or perhaps more conscientious than we, could not do the same thing without damaging their spirits and weakening their Christian life. ‘Him that is weak in the faith, receive.’ Him that is weak in the faith, help. And in all these matters indifferent, which are weights to one and not weights to another, let us remember, first, for ourselves, that a weight retained is a sin; and let us remember, next, for others, that they stand not by our experience, but by their own; and that we are neither to judge their strength, nor to offend their weakness.
And now, in the last place: This laying aside of every weight is only possible by looking to Christ. That self-denial of which I have been speaking has in it no merit, no worthiness. The man that practises it is not a bit better than the man that does not, except in so far as it is a preparation for greater reception of the spiritual life. Some people suppose that when they have laid aside a weight, conquered a hindrance, given up some bad habit, they have done a meritorious thing. Well, we are strengthened, no doubt, by the very act; but then, it is of no use at all except in so far as it makes us better fitted for the positive progress which is to come after it. What is the use of the racer betaking, himself to the starting-post, and throwing aside every weight, and then standing still? He puts aside his garments that he may run. We empty our hearts; but the empty heart is dull, and cold, and dark: we empty our hearts that Christ may fill them. That is not all: Christ must have begun to fill them before we can empty them. ‘Looking to Jesus’ is the only means of thorough-going, absolute self-deniaL All other surrender than that which is based upon love to Him, and faith in Him, is but surface work, and drives the subtle disease to the vitals. The man that tries, by paring off an excrescence here, and giving up a bad habit there, to hammer and tinker and cut himself into the shape of a true and perfect man, may do it outwardly. He will scarcely do that, but it is possible he may partially. And then, what has he made himself? ‘A whited sepulchre’; outside, - adorned, beautiful, clean; inside, - full of rottenness and dead men’s bones! The self that was beaten in the open field of outward life, retires, like a defeated army, behind broad rivers; and concentrates itself in its fortresses, and prepares hopefully for a victorious resistance in the citadel of the heart.
My brother, if you would ‘run with patience the race that is set before you,’ you must ‘lay aside, every weight.’ If you would lay aside every weight, you must look to Christ, and let His love flow into thy soul. Then, self-denial will not be self-denial. It will be blessing and joy, sweet and easy. Just as the old leaves drop naturally from the tree when the new buds of spring begin to put themselves out, let the new affection come and dwell in thy heart, and expel the old. ‘Lay aside every weight’ - ‘looking unto Jesus.’ Then, too, you will find that the sacrifice and maiming of the old man has been the perfecting of the man. You will find that whatever you give up for Christ you get back from Christ, better, more beautiful, more blessed, hallowed to its inmost core, a joy and a possession for ever. For He will not suffer that any gift laid upon His altar shall not be given back to us. He will have no maimed man in His service. So, the hand that is cut off, the eye that is plucked out, the possessions that are rendered up, the idols that are slain - they are all given back to us again when we stand in God’s own light in glory - perfect men, made after the image of Christ, and surrounded with all possessions transfigured and glorified in the light of God. ‘There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Contest. Endurance, Holiness, and Divine Communion proposed to…
The Contest. Endurance, Holiness, and Divine Communion proposed to the Sons of God
Inspired by the example of those victorious heroes of faith who now encompass us, we ought to run our race patiently, looking to Jesus the supreme example of patient endurance (Heb_12:1-2). The present sufferings are the discipline of a loving Father, and are actually evidence of our being His children. Be brave, therefore, and help others to be the same (Heb_12:3-13). Beware of strife and impurity, taking warning from the case of Esau, who irretrievably forfeited his blessing (Heb_12:14-17). Our greater privileges entail greater responsibilities and call for greater watchfulness (Heb_12:18-29).
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1. Witnesses] The Gk. word is martyres. The word means primarily 'one who bears witness' to something he has seen or experienced. Here the witnesses are those who have borne testimony to the victorious power of faith. But the word passes easily over to the further sense of 'spectators,' which is also implied in this whole passage. The writer conceives these heroes as surrounding in a cloud, or dense mass, the arena in which the present generation of God's people are running their race. Once they were themselves runners; now they are promoted to the rank of spectators. Their presence and example ought to be a stimulus to those running now.
Every weight] mg. 'all cumbrance.' The word may refer to anything that impedes free running, such as loose garments. But it is used in a special sense to denote the superfluous flesh which an athlete seeks to get rid of by strict training: cp. 1Co_9:24-27.
Which doth so easily beset us] The meaning of this phrase, represented in the original by a single adjective, is doubtful, and the Revisers have not seen fit to change the translation in the text. But they give in the margin the two other possible renderings: (1) 'that doth closely cling to us,' i.e. like a clinging garment (cp. the common Oriental phrase, 'to gird up the loins,' i.e. to tack the loose ends of the outer flowing robe under the girdle as a preparation for any exertion); or (2) 'that is admired of many,' lit. 'well-surrounded'. by an admiring throng. The former, which is virtually identical with the accepted rendering of AV, is the easier, and is appropriate to the idea of a runner divesting himself of all impedimenta. It is to be observed that 'the sin' spoken of is not a particular sin (as the common use of the phrase 'besetting sin' suggests), but sin in general, all sin, the definite article being the 'generic' article.
2. Looking unto] The Gk. word is used of an artist who looks at his model. Jesus is the Great Exemplar, on whom, rather than on the cloud of witnesses, the runners are to fix their eyes. Author and perfecter] so RV: cp. Heb_2:10, where the word 'author' is rendered 'captain' in AV, Our faith suggests a system of Christian doctrine. But there is no word representing 'our' in the original. Jesus is leader in the way of faith, and He leads to the very end, exhibiting the perfection and triumph of faith.
For the joy] may mean 'instead of the joy,' i.e. renouncing it; but more likely 'in view of the joy,' i.e. the recompence of reward, as in Heb_11:26 : cp. Heb_11:1.
3. Against himself] RV 'against themselves,' A more difficult, but well-attested reading. If correct, it will mean that sinners sin against themselves, either by wronging their own souls (see Pro_8:36) or by contradicting their better selves,
4. The struggle has not yet been severe, A mild reproach of faintheartedness is implied: cp. Pro_24:10; Jer_12:5.
5. The quotation is from Pro_3:11, Pro_3:12.
7. RV 'It is for chastening ye endure,' i.e, your sufferings are designed as a discipline or means of education, God dealeth with you as with sons, 8. All are partakers] The clause refers to Heb_12:6.
11. Peaceable fruit of righteousness] i.e. the fruit which is righteousness. The result of discipline is called 'peaceable,' or 'peaceful,' in contrast to the 'painfulness' of the process spoken of in the previous part of the v.
13. Straight paths] better, 'even' or 'smooth paths,' containing no stumblingblocks that may injure the lame. The strong are to encourage the weak. Turned out of the way] RM 'put out of joint.' The reference to lameness and healing suggests that this is the right rendering. If they do not remove the stumblingblocks from the paths, lameness may become dislocation. But by making the paths 'even,' the lameness may be healed.
15. Fail of] RV 'fall short of.' Root of bitterness] cp. Deu_29:18.
16. Any fornicator] In the OT. apostasy from Jehovah is frequently described as adultery or fornication, being a breach of covenant; but here the word should perhaps be understood in the literal sense: cp. Heb_13:4; Profane] The word is the antithesis of 'hallowed' or 'consecrated,' and means 'common,' 'unspiritual,' 'secular,' Esau's defect was a want of appreciation of spiritual blessings. He 'despised his birthright' (see Gen_25:34), which implied not merely material advantage, but the spiritual heritage of the covenant promises.
17. Would have inherited] The RV removes the ambiguity of these words by rendering 'when he afterward desired to inherit.' He sought it] i.e. the blessing, not the repentance. When Esau is said to have 'found no place of repentance,' this does not mean that he found it impossible to repent—a thing contrary to all the doctrine of Scripture. In Heb_6:4-6 the author does not say 'they cannot repent,' but 'we cannot make them repent.' What is meant is that when he afterward wished to inherit the blessing he found it irretrievably beyond his reach. He found no way of undoing the consequence of his own act: see Gen_27:34-36.
18-24. Appeal for greater watchfulness based on a contrast between the new covenant and the old: cp. Gen_2:1-4; Gen_10:28-31.
18. Unto the mount] This balances the words 'unto mount Zion' in Heb_12:22. But the best. MSS omit the word 'mount' here, and read 'unto a palpable (i.e. material) and kindled fire.' For the whole description of the former manifestation see Exo_19:12-13, Exo_19:18-19; Exo_20:18; Deu_4:11. The old revelation was given with material and terrifying accompaniments; the new is a revelation of grace and peace, introducing its recipients to a spiritual society with spiritual privileges. But so much the more does it call for obedience (Heb_12:25) and consecration (Heb_12:28), Ye are not come] Even here and now they are members of this heavenly community and enjoy these spiritual privileges, although the fulness of the inheritance is reserved for the future.
22. Mount Sion] the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the eternal and ideal sphere, the abode of God and the angels and the spirits of the OT. saints.
23. General assembly] a word commonly applied to the Greek festal assemblies, such as at the Olympian Games. Church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven] so RV. Seeing that human beings are mentioned at the close of the v., these words are best taken as referring to the angels, who were created before man and may be appropriately described as 'first-born': cp. Job_38:7; In this case the word 'church' is used in its original sense of 'convocation,' or 'congregation.'
And to God] whose manifestation is direct and immediate. There is a suggestion of warning in the epithet Judge of all. Just men] i.e. the saints of the OT. dispensation, who are in one sense 'perfected,' though in another they still wait their final consummation of bliss: see Heb_11:40.
24. To Jesus] whose mediating has assured all these privileges.
Speaketh better things] Abel's blood cried for vengeance (see on Heb_11:4); that of Jesus appeals to God for pardon and reconciliation.
25. Him that speaketh] i.e. God, who spoke both at Sinai and now from heaven in the new manifestation.
26. Then] i.e. at the giving of the Law: see Exo_19:18. The quotation is from Hag_2:6-21, which is here applied as a prediction of the Second Coming, regarded as imminent.
27. Yet once more] i.e. once for all, finally. What follows the shaking and removal of the created and sensible world will be stable and imperishable.
28. Let us have grace] RM 'thankfulness'; but cp. Heb_12:15.
29. A consuming fire] cp. Deu_4:24. A solemn wraning against presumption.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 the sin
the sin
Omit "the."
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. Looking away unto Jesus (Heb 12:1-2)
CHAPTER 12
1. Looking away unto Jesus (Heb 12:1-2)
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2. The Contradiction of sinners (Heb 12:3-4)
3. Chastened as sons (Heb 12:5-11)
4. Exhortations (Heb 12:12-17)
5. The end of faith (Heb 12:18-24)
6. The final warning (Heb 12:25-29)
Heb 12:1-2
“Therefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with steadfastness the race lying before us.”
Some teach that the Old Testament saints are spectators of us and that they look upon us now from heaven. Dean Alford also states that they are lookers on and adds “Whosoever denies such reference, misses, it seems to me, the very point of the sense.” Others have gone so far as to say that they not only look on but help the believer in his conflict on earth. But this view is unscriptural. We know that angels are spectators (1Co 4:9; 1Co 11:10); angels are ministering spirits to minister unto the heirs of salvation, but the disembodied spirits of the righteous are neither spectators nor do they minister to the saints on earth. The preceding chapter contains “the cloud of witness”; they witness to us by their lives and the victory of their faith and this is the encouragement for us. The Christian’s life is a race; the glory at His coming is the goal. The runner of the race does not burden himself with weights, unnecessary things. Everything that impedes spiritual progress must be laid aside, as well as the sin that so easily besets us, which is the sin of unbelief. Against this sin they had been emphatically warned. “It is a sin that easily besets us, because it is but the mind of nature acting, according to its instincts, against the will of God.” And the runner’s eyes are to be on the goal (Php 1:3). The believer runs the race with steadfastness and divests himself of every weight and the sin that easily besets, if he looks away from everything and looks away “unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith (Leader and Perfecter), who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, having despised the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” He is the great exemplar of faith. He is to be constantly before us, and His people are to follow Him in the path of faith and trust. What light these words shed on His blessed life and especially His death on the cross! He endured the cross and despised the shame, connected with it, for the joy that was set before Him. See Isa 53:10-12. The joy set before us is to be with Him forever. Oh, for the daily vision of that goal.
“The flesh, the human heart, is occupied with cares and difficulties; and the more we think of them, the more we are burdened by them. It is enticed by the object of its desires, it does not free itself from them. The conflict is with a heart that loves the thing against which we strive; we do not separate ourselves from it in thought. When looking at Jesus, the new man is active; there is a new object, which unburdens and detaches us from every other by means of a new affection which has its place in a new nature: and in Jesus Himself, to whom we look, there is a positive power which sets us free” J.N. Darby.
Heb 12:3-4
The believer’s life is also a conflict, trials which come from sin in the world, a world which is always, and always will be, antagonistic to Christ. Those Hebrews had their share of it; they were persecuted and hated for His Name’s sake (Heb 10:32-34). Peter also wrote about these persecutions they endured. And now they are called to consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest they would be wearied, disheartened and fainting in their minds. These persecutions were the fellowship of His sufferings; and they had not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. Looking away unto Him gives strength to resist and to conquer.
Heb 12:5-11
In these verses the trials of the believer are viewed as chastenings from the Lord. As a loving father, who loves his children, He chastised them. They were not to forget this, that He speaks to them, not as to sinners, but as unto sons, “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when reproved by Him, for whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” The chastening they were to endure. God, as Father, permits trials and tribulations to come to believers for their own good. Such experiences are not an evidence of divine displeasure, but evidences of sonship. “God dealeth with you as with sons; for who is the son whom the father chastiseth not. But if you are without chastening, of which all are made partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.” And therefore chastisements must not be despised, nor viewed as a discouraging experience; for the chastisement is for our eternal good and He does it in love. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was such an experience which was needful for Him. Grace sustains in all chastisements. Then we have a contrast between the chastising of earthly fathers and that of the heavenly Father. The one is father of our flesh; God is the Father of spirits, the Creator and source of life, spiritual and ever-lasting, as well as physical and temporal. The one for a brief period; God during our whole lifetime. The one with imperfect knowledge, in much infirmity “after their own pleasure;” God with unerring wisdom, and in pure love. The aim of the one, our earthly future; the aim of God, to make us partakers of His holiness. Yet imperfect as is the earthly father’s discipline, we gave it reverence, “as was right” and according to God’s will, and for our safety. How much more ought we to be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, of whom is our true life.
And when we are disciplined it is not a joyous experience; it brings heart-searching, humiliation, confession, repentance and self-loathing, but afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which have been exercised in this way.
Heb 12:12-17
Words of exhortation and encouragement follow. The first three exhortations refer to ourselves (Heb 12:12-13); to others and to God (Heb 12:14). To follow peace (pursue peace) with all men is to characterize those who have peace with God and who know the way of peace. Holiness must also be pursued, for without that none shall see the Lord. In Christ, believers are sanctified once for all, as this Epistle has so clearly demonstrated. The holiness which qualifies a man to see the Lord, is Christ, and His blessed finished work. Abiding in Him the believer pursues the way of holiness, practical holiness, separation from evil in all things. It does not mean a certain “holiness experience” by which a believer is fitted, by eradication of the old nature, or by something else, to see the Lord. In Christ the believer is sanctified; as Martin Luther used to say “My holiness is in Heaven.” The exhortation here means to pursue that holiness into which grace has called us, which grace has given and for which grace gives daily power. Closely connected with this is the warning which follows in Heb 12:15-17. The man who falls short of the grace of God, who lacketh that grace which is in Christ Jesus, his heart not resting in Him, is a mere professing believer and Possesseth not the holiness, which grace alone can give. He is a root of bitterness and a profane, and earthly-minded person, as Esau was who sold his birthright.
(The time came when he regretted that for a paltry gratification he forfeited his right. Afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. For though he sought carefully with tears to change his father’s mind he found (in Isaac) no place for change of mind. This seems to be the meaning of this difficult passage, Esau is never represented as an apostle, as one who professed and appeared to be a believer, and then fell away. So (apart from other reasons) the meaning of the apostle cannot be that Esau, as an apostate, was not able to find repentance. But we know that, notwithstanding his vehement and urgent entreaties, Isaac could not change his mind, or repent him of what he had done in conferring the blessing on Jacob, which God approved of” Saphir.)
Heb 12:18-24
These verses contain a great contrast. The grace of God has brought and is bringing believers to better things than those which characterize Judaism. What the end of faith will be, the goal of glory is here unfolded. Believers have nothing now to do with Sinai, the law and its terror. Then follows a marvellous enumeration of the earthly and heavenly glories to which we have come through faith and which faith beholds. First Mount Zion is mentioned. It is the place the Lord has chosen for His rest (Psa 132:13-14). When that promised new covenant is fully established with the house of Israel and Judah, when sovereign grace has manifested its powers in the salvation and restoration of His people Israel, then Zion will be the earthly center, and God’s appointed King will establish His rule there (Psa 2:1-12). From the glory of the coming millennium we are taken to the glory above “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem .” It is the city for which Abraham looked in faith, the eternal home of the saints of God.
“And to an innumerable company of angels, the universal gathering”; we shall know and behold all the tenants of the unseen world. “The Church of the firstborn ones which are written in heaven”--this is the Church in particular; there will be an unbroken and eternal fellowship with all the saints who constitute the body of Christ. “And to God the judge of all,” whose grace in Christ has put His own beyond all condemnation and who will, in His Son, judge the world in righteousness. “The spirits of just men made perfect” are the Old Testament saints, distinguished in this way from “the Church of the firstborn ones”; they receive their perfection when the Church is gathered home (Heb 11:40). “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than Abel.” Through Him and His precious blood these earthly and heavenly glories will be accomplished. And faith looks to these. It is the blessed goal for the heirs of God, the many sons He brings to glory.
Heb 12:25-29
A final warning follows, not to refuse Him that speaketh. (Compare with Heb 2:3.) He that spoke on earth (giving the law) is the same that speaketh from heaven--the Son of God. To refuse Him means no escape from perdition. His voice then shook the earth. The prophetic word predicts another shaking of earth and heaven (Hag 2:6). That will be when He comes again. Then follows the judgment of all who obeyed not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The things that can be shaken will be removed and things that cannot be shaken remain. “Therefore let us, receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and fear; for our God is a consuming fire.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 9, 14 An Appeal to Heed the Old Testament Examples, Aided…
An Appeal to Heed the Old Testament Examples, Aided by God’s Chastisement.
The example of the believers of old and of Christ:
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v. 1. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
v. 2. looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
v. 3. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
On the basis of the example of faith as set before us in the believers of the Old Testament, the appeal of the author to be like-minded rests: Wherefore also we, having so great a cloud of witnesses encompassing us, let us likewise lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that clings to us, and through patience let us run the race set before us. Though the sacred writer, as he himself states, has cited but a few of the many cases of strong faith in the Old Testament history, yet even these are shining examples which envelop us like a bright cloud. It is a vast multitude of witnesses that have testified to the worth of faith, and wherever we may turn, we find their encouraging example. And just as they pursued their course unflinchingly and persistently till they reached their goal, so we also should be found running forward toward the heavenly object of our striving with steadfast, courageous patience. The course must be run, and it requires the very strongest endurance. We must accept the appointed course, cheerfully recognize the difficulties that beset it, and prepare our hearts and minds accordingly. Like an athlete that trains for a race with the greatest care, lest he bear even an ounce of flesh too much, so must we lay aside every encumbrance of this life, every weight, every burden that tends to hold us back in the appointed course. The greatest of these encumbrances is sin, our old evil nature, for this surrounds us, it clings to us and hinders the free use of our spiritual members, just as a long and heavy mantle which would always be in the way of an athlete running a race. Our constant endeavor, therefore, must be that we renounce this sin daily, shake off, throw aside its obstructing power.
Our success in this most necessary activity, as we must renew it daily, by daily contrition and repentance, depends upon one condition: Having our eyes fixed on the Leader and Perfecter of faith, Jesus, who, in consideration of the joy which was set before Him endured the cross, thinking nothing of the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. An athlete cannot afford to have his gaze toward the goal drawn aside to the consideration of various other interests. Even so we Christians cannot afford to have distractions draw our steadfast gaze away from Jesus, who beckons us on toward salvation. For it was He that not only set us an example of unwavering faith, but also leads us in the paths of perfect trust in God; it is He in whom faith finds its perfect embodiment. He that began the good work of conversion and sanctification in us will also perfect it until the day of the final revelation of glory. His example consists in this, that He willingly endured the cross, the entire burden of the Passion culminating in His crucifixion, at the same time disregarding the shame and disgrace which men were heaping upon Him. For during all this time Jesus kept before Him the prize, the eternal joy and bliss which would be His on the completion of His task, Php 2:9. And He received His reward; He was, also according to His human nature, elevated to the position of honor and glory at the right hand of God. Having held this position by virtue of His divine nature from eternity, He now holds it also by virtue of His human nature. Of His example we must never lose sight.
Just why the example of Jesus is able to serve us so well in the course which is appointed to us is also shown: For consider (your position) by comparing Him who steadfastly endured at the hands of sinners such terrible contradiction against Himself, lest you grow weary, fainting in your souls. The author wants us to consider carefully, to make our comparison in view of the example of Christ, this being the highest inducement which he has to offer. The force of the appeal lies in this, that Christ during His whole life suffered with the repudiation of His claims. Coming to men with the full love and mercy of His heavenly Father, He told them time and again that He was the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. But He met only with derision, with blasphemous denial, the few disciples excepted that remained true to Him. Just as Jesus did not grow weary in His work of saving souls, so we also must not let spiritual fatigue take hold of our souls nor permit our hearts to grow faint in the great work of sanctification. His spirit should live in us and enable us to follow in His steps.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Because of this great number of Old Testament believers, the author talks of the life of faith that believers should live with Jesus as their example.
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General Information:
The words "we" and "us" refer to the author and his readers. The word "you" is plural and here refers to the readers. (See: Inclusive "We" and Forms of You)
we are surrounded by such a large cloud of witnesses
The writer speaks about the Old Testament believers as if they were a cloud that surrounded the present-day believers. This can be stated in active form. AT: "such a large cloud of witnesses surrounds us" or "there are so many examples of faithful people about whom we learn in the scriptures" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)
witnesses
Here "witnesses" refers to the Old Testament believers in chapter 11 who lived before the race of faith that believers now run.
let us lay aside every weight and easily entangling sin
Here "weight" and "easily entangling sin" are spoken of as if a person could take them off himself and put them down. (See: Metaphor)
every weight
Attitudes or habits that keep believers from trusting and obeying God are spoken of as if they were loads that would make it difficult for a person to carry while running. (See: Metaphor)
easily entangling sin
Sin is spoken of as if it were a net or something else that can trip people up and make them fall. AT: "sin that makes obeying God difficult" (See: Metaphor)
Let us patiently run the race that is placed before us
Following Jesus is spoken of as if it were running a race. AT: "Let us continue obeying what God has commanded us, just like a runner keeps going until the race is over" (See: Metaphor)
the founder and perfecter of the faith
Jesus gives us faith and makes our faith perfect by causing us to reach our goal. AT: "creator and finisher of our faith" or "the one who enables us to have faith from beginning to end"
For the joy that was placed before him
The joy that Jesus would experience is spoken of as if God the Father had placed it before him as a goal to reach. (See: Metaphor)
despised its shame
This means he was not concerned about the shame of dying on a cross.
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God
To sit at the "right hand of God" is a symbolic action of receiving great honor and authority from God. See how you translated a similar phrase in Hebrews 1:3. AT: "sat down at the place of honor and authority beside the throne of God" (See: Symbolic Action)
weary in your hearts
Here "hearts" represents a person's thoughts and emotions. AT: "discouraged" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
testimony
sin
patient
run
Jesus
perfect
faith
joy
endure
cross
shame
right hand
throne
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15 12:1-17 The author challenges his hearers to endure in…
12:1-17 The author challenges his hearers to endure in following Jesus, the supreme example of faithfulness, by imitating him in his suffering (12:1-4), by enduring under God’s discipline (12:5-13), and by living in peace with others (12:14-17).
12:1 huge crowd of witnesses: The host of faithful followers of God (ch 11) bear witness to the truth that God blesses the life of faith. • let us strip off every weight: In Greco-Roman literature, a race is a metaphor for the need for endurance in life. Just as extra weight hinders a runner, sin . . . trips us up. It entangles us and restricts us from moving by faith.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.