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.
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Hebrews 12:2-4 sits inside this longer paragraph.
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.
Parallel Translations
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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.
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lokynge vnto Iesus the auctor and fynnyssher of oure fayth which for the ioye that was set before him abode the crosse and despysed the shame and is set doune on the right honde of the trone of God.
Consider therfore how that he endured suche speakinge agaynst him of synners lest ye shuld be weried and faynte in youre myndes.
For ye have not yet resisted vnto bloud sheddinge stryvinge agaynst synne.
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Looking vnto Iesus the authour and finisher of our faith, who for the ioy that was set before him, endured the crosse, and despised the shame, and is set at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider therefore him that endured such speaking against of sinners, lest ye should be wearied and faint in your mindes.
Ye haue not yet resisted vnto blood, striuing against sinne.
Cross-references (125)
- Micah 7:7 (v2) But as for me, I will look to Yahweh. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me.
- 1 Peter 3:18 (v2) Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God, being put to death in the…
- 1 Peter 2:23-24 (v2) When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously. He…
- Hebrews 1:3 (v2) His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had…
- Philippians 1:6 (v2) being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
Show all 100 cross-references
- Ephesians 5:2 (v2) Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
- Hebrews 9:28 (v2) so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, without sin, to those who are eagerly waiting…
- Titus 2:13-14 (v2) looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might…
- John 6:40 (v2) This is the will of the one who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in him, should have eternal life; and I will raise…
- Philippians 2:8-11 (v2) And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also…
- Galatians 6:9 (v3) Let’s not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up.
- 2 Corinthians 4:16 (v3) Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
- Philippians 3:20 (v2) For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
- 1 Peter 3:22 (v2) who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him.
- Isaiah 45:22 (v2) “Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
- Acts 5:31 (v2) God exalted him with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins.
- Isaiah 53:3 (v2) He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;…
- Luke 24:26 (v2) Didn’t the Christ have to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?”
- 2 Timothy 4:8 (v2) From now on, the crown of righteousness is stored up for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day; and not to…
- Jude 1:21 (v2) Keep yourselves in God’s love, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
- Revelation 2:3 (v3) You have perseverance and have endured for my name’s sake, and have not grown weary.
- Mark 14:36 (v2) He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”
- 1 Peter 4:14-16 (v2) If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed; because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. On their part he is…
- John 17:1-4 (v2) Jesus said these things, then lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may also…
- 1 Corinthians 15:58 (v3) Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in…
- Hebrews 8:1 (v2) Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this. We have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of…
- Isaiah 8:17 (v2) I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.
- Hebrews 5:9 (v2) Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation,
- Revelation 2:8 (v2) “To the angel of the assembly in Smyrna write: “The first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life says these things:
- Hebrews 12:2 (vv3–4) 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…
- Acts 2:25-26 (v2) For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore my…
- Hebrews 12:3 (v2) For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls.
- Hebrews 13:13 (v2) Let’s therefore go out to him outside of the camp, bearing his reproach.
- Isaiah 50:6-7 (v2) I gave my back to those who beat me, and my cheeks to those who plucked off the hair. I didn’t hide my face from shame and spitting. For…
- John 12:27-28 (v2) “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this time?’ But I came to this time for this cause. Father, glorify your…
- Psalms 138:8 (v2) Yahweh will fulfill that which concerns me. Your loving kindness, Yahweh, endures forever. Don’t forsake the works of your own hands.
- John 13:3 (v2) Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came from God, and was going to God,
- Mark 9:24 (v2) Immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, “I believe. Help my unbelief!”
- Luke 17:5 (v2) The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
- Ephesians 2:16 (v2) and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it.
- Psalms 22:6-8 (v2) But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see me mock me. They insult me with their lips.…
- Matthew 26:67-68 (v2) Then they spat in his face and beat him with their fists, and some slapped him, saying, “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who hit you?”
- John 1:29 (v2) The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
- John 12:32 (v2) And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
- Hebrews 2:7-10 (v2) You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.”…
- Isaiah 53:10-12 (v2) Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He…
- Matthew 16:21 (v2) From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and…
- Luke 23:35-39 (v2) The people stood watching. The rulers with them also scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others. Let him save himself, if this is the Christ…
- Psalms 69:19-20 (v2) You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of…
- Matthew 20:28 (v2) even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
- Acts 5:41 (v2) They therefore departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus’ name.
- 1 Corinthians 1:7-8 (v2) so that you come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will also confirm you until the end, blameless…
- Hebrews 1:13 (v2) But which of the angels has he told at any time, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet?”
- Hebrews 3:1 (v3) Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession: Jesus,
- Psalms 16:9-11 (v2) Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices. My body shall also dwell in safety. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither…
- Psalms 110:1 (v2) Yahweh says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.”
- Isaiah 31:1 (v2) Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they…
- Isaiah 49:6-7 (v2) Indeed, he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of…
- Zechariah 12:10 (v2) I will pour on David’s house, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me whom…
- Matthew 20:18-20 (v2) “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to…
- Mark 9:12 (v2) He said to them, “Elijah indeed comes first, and restores all things. How is it written about the Son of Man, that he should suffer many…
- Luke 23:11 (v2) Herod with his soldiers humiliated him and mocked him. Dressing him in luxurious clothing, they sent him back to Pilate.
- John 8:56 (v2) Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it, and was glad.”
- John 12:24 (v2) Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much…
- John 13:31-32 (v2) When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in…
- John 15:18-24 (v3) If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But…
- Acts 2:36 (v2) “Let all the house of Israel therefore know certainly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
- 1 Corinthians 10:13 (v4) No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able,…
- Hebrews 10:14 (v2) For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
- 1 Peter 1:11 (v2) searching for who or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, pointed to, when he predicted the sufferings of Christ, and…
- 1 John 1:1-3 (v2) That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we saw, and our hands…
- Revelation 1:11 (v2) saying, “What you see, write in a book and send to the seven assemblies: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and…
- Revelation 1:17 (v2) When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man. He laid his right hand on me, saying, “Don’t be afraid. I am the first and the last,
- Matthew 27:27-50 (v2) Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium, and gathered the whole garrison together against him. They stripped him, and…
- 2 Corinthians 4:1 (v3) Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we don’t faint.
- Hebrews 7:19 (v2) (for the law made nothing perfect), and a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.
- Hebrews 10:5-12 (v2) Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, “You didn’t desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me. You had no…
- Hebrews 11:36 (v2) Others were tried by mocking and scourging, yes, moreover by bonds and imprisonment.
- John 5:16 (v3) For this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath.
- 1 Samuel 12:24 (v3) Only fear Yahweh, and serve him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.
- Hebrews 10:32-34 (v4) But remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle with sufferings; partly, being exposed to…
- Hebrews 10:33 (v2) partly, being exposed to both reproaches and oppressions; and partly, becoming partakers with those who were treated so.
- Revelation 1:8 (v2) “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
- Revelation 2:13 (v4) “I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. You hold firmly to my name, and didn’t deny my faith in the days of…
- Matthew 10:24-25 (v3) “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be like his teacher, and the…
- Matthew 24:9 (v4) Then they will deliver you up to oppression, and will kill you. You will be hated by all of the nations for my name’s sake.
- 2 Timothy 4:6-7 (v4) For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have…
- Revelation 12:11 (v4) They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death.
- 2 Thessalonians 3:13 (v3) But you, brothers, don’t be weary in doing what is right.
- Hebrews 12:5 (v3) You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor…
- Deuteronomy 20:3 (v3) and shall tell them, “Hear, Israel, you draw near today to battle against your enemies. Don’t let your heart faint! Don’t be afraid, nor…
- Luke 14:1 (v3) When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him.
- John 8:52 (v3) Then the Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets; and you say, ‘If a man keeps my word, he…
- 2 Timothy 2:7-8 (v3) Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the offspring of…
- Proverbs 24:10 (v3) If you falter in the time of trouble, your strength is small.
- Isaiah 40:30-31 (v3) Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall; but those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will…
- Isaiah 50:4 (v3) The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary. He awakens…
- Matthew 21:15-16 (v3) But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children who were crying in the temple and saying,…
- Luke 19:39-40 (v3) Some of the Pharisees from the multitude said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” He answered them, “I tell you that if these were…
- John 18:22 (v3) When he had said this, one of the officers standing by slapped Jesus with his hand, saying, “Do you answer the high priest like that?”
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (125 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (27 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv2–4 2. Who for the joy that was set before…
2. Who for the joy that was set before him, etc. Though the expression in Latin is somewhat ambiguous, yet according to the words in Greek the Apostle’s meaning is quite clear; for he intimates, that though it was free to Christ to exempt himself from all trouble and to lead a happy life, abounding in all good things, he yet underwent a death that was bitter, and in every way ignominious. For the expression, for joy, is the same as, instead of joy; and joy includes every kind of enjoyment. And he says, set before him, because the power of availing himself of this joy was possessed by Christ, had it so pleased him. At the same time if any one thinks that the preposition ἀντὶ denotes the final cause, I do not much object; then the meaning would be, that Christ refused not the death of the cross, because he saw its blessed issue. I still prefer the former exposition.
But he commends to us the patience of Christ on two accounts, because he endured a most bitter death, and because he despised shame. He then mentions the glorious end of his death, that the faithful might know that all the evils which they may endure will end in their salvation and glory, provided they follow Christ. So also says James, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and ye know the end.” (James 5:11.) Then the Apostle means that the end of our sufferings will be the same with those of Christ, according to what is said by Paul, “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign together.” (Romans 8:17.)
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 vv2–4 Whereas he had all kind of blessedness in his…
Whereas he had all kind of blessedness in his hand and power, yet suffered willingly the ignominy of the cross.
He setteth before us, as the mark of this race, Jesus himself our captain, who willingly overcame all the roughness of the same way.
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As it were upon the mark of our faith.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2–4 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of…
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.
Ver. 2. Looking unto Jesus] Gr. αφορωντες, looking off those things that may either divert or discourage, and looking unto Jesus with loving and longing looks. A Persian lady being at the marriage of Cyrus, and asked how she liked the bridegroom? How? said she; I know not. I saw nobody but mine own husband. Saints have a single eye, an eye of adamant, which will turn only to one point, to Christ alone.
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The author and finisher] The Alpha and Omega, the beginner and ender. In all other things and arts, non est eiusdem invenire et perficere, the same man cannot begin and finish. But Christ doth both, Php 1:5.
Endured the cross] Ran with courage, though he ran with the cross upon his back all the way.
Despising the shame] Whereof man’s nature is most impatient. Christ shamed shame (saith an interpreter), as unworthy to be taken notice of in comparison of his design. So, according to his measure, did that nobleman, who when he came into jeering company of great ones, would begin and own himself for one of those they called Puritans. This was much better than that scholar in Queen’s college, mentioned by Mr Burroughs, who professed he had rather suffer the torments of hell than endure the contempt and scorn of the Puritans.
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 vv2–4 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our…
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith: as if all the former witnesses were not enough, he adds a more excellent one than them all, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who is not only a pattern to them in their race and running of it, but a help, and for which end they were looking to him: the word αφορωντες is only here used in all the New Testament, and signifieth a looking off from whatever would distract us from earnestly looking on the proposed object alone; and though a word of sense, yet here noteth an act of the mind. It is borrowed from racers, the similitude of whom the apostle further improves: they fixedly eye their guides or leaders, to help them on in their course; so must a Christian in his race look off from all things else, and singly and intently look on Jesus to help him through it; αρχηγον see Heb 2:10; here it denotes Jesus to be the great institutor of, and chief leader in, the Christian race, and perfecter of them in running it. The disposition, grace, ability, and success which they have for running, it is all from him; from the beginning of the work of faith unto the end of it, to the finishing of the course, he doth infuse, assist, strengthen, and accomplish the work of it to the last, Joh 6:29,30; Php 4:13; 2Ti 4:7; 1Jo 5:4,5.
Who for the joy that was set before him; who for that joyful and glorious state which was clearly represented and faithfully promised to him by his Father to succeed his sufferings, that he should immediately attain himself, and successively communicate to all who believe in him, Luk 24:26; Joh 17:1,5,24; 1Pe 1:11. This did so cheer and strengthen him, that with unexpressible patience he cheerfully
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endured the cross, with all the concomitants of it, the sorrows in his soul, the torturing pains in his body, of buffetings, smitings, piercings of thorns, tearing his flesh with scourges, boring of his hands and feet with nails, with all the evils that either the malice or rage of devils or men could inflict on him; he was neither weary of his burden, nor shrinking from nor fainting under it. With what invincible meekness and passive fortitude did he undergo all that was foretold of him! Isa 53:1-12.
Despising the shame; as the same time slighting and casting out of his thoughts all the disgrace poured on him by his enemies, both in his mind and action, contemning all the blasphemies, taunts, reproaches, and shameful carriages of sinners to him, suffering without any emotion all their indignities, even in the most shameful death itself, Phi 2:6-8, though he were the most innocent as well as excellent person in all the world.
And is set down at the right hand of the throne of God; the issue of all which was, his exaltation by God for his abasement by man; he riseth from the dead, ascendeth to heaven, sets himself down as a triumphing conqueror over sin, the prince of the powers in the air, death, and hell, at the right hand of the throne of God; and thence discovers himself in his state and glory, as the great Ruler of the world, King of kings, and Lord of lords, Phi 2:9,10, (see Heb 8:1) and the glorious rewarder of those who serve him, and suffer for him.
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 v4 Here the apostle subjoins another reason why the Hebrews…
Here the apostle subjoins another reason why the Hebrews should be reconciled to a suffering condition; because what they had already suffered was but a fleabite, compared with what Christ and the fore-mentioned cloud of witnesses suffered; he and they resisted unto blood, which you never yet did: Ye have not resisted unto blood, &c.
By blood is meant death and loss of life; though they had resisted bravely, and suffered manfully, yet their lives were safe.
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Learn hence, 1. That such as are engaged in the Christian profession have no security, but that they may be called forth to the utmost sufferings, even to the sealing of it with their blood.
Learn, 2. That whatever befalls us on this side, blood is to be looked upon as a fruit of divine tenderness and mercy towards us.
Learn, 3. It is highly dishonourable to faint in the cause of Christ and the gospel, under lesser sufferings, when we know there are greater to be undergone by ourselves and others on the same account.
Learn, 4. That it is a noble struggle to resist even unto blood, in opposing sin, and striving against it; both in striving against the sin which others commit, and in striving against the sin which others by promises or threatenings would tempt us to commit.
O how honourable a warfare is it to be engaged against such an enemy as sin is! Striving against sin.
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 v4 Here the apostle presses the exhortation to patience and…
Here the apostle presses the exhortation to patience and perseverance by an argument taken from the gentle measure and gracious nature of those sufferings which the believing Hebrews endured in their Christian course.
I. From the gentle and moderate degree and measure of their sufferings: You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin, Heb 12:4. Observe,
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1. He owns that they had suffered much, they had been striving to an agony against sin. Here, (1.) The cause of the conflict was sin, and to be engaged against sin is to fight in a good cause, for sin is the worst enemy both to God and man. Our spiritual warfare is both honourable and necessary; for we are only defending ourselves against that which would destroy us, if it should get the victory over us; we fight for ourselves, for our lives, and therefore ought to be patient and resolute. (2.) Every Christian is enlisted under Christ's banner, to strive against sin, against sinful doctrines, sinful practices, and sinful habits and customs, both in himself and in others.
2. He puts them in mind that they might have suffered more, that they had not suffered as much as others; for they had not yet resisted unto blood, they had not been called to martyrdom as yet, though they knew not how soon they might be. Learn here, (1.) Our Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation, does not call his people out to the hardest trials at first, but wisely trains them up by less sufferings to be prepared for greater. He will not put new wine into weak vessels, he is the gentle shepherd, who will not overdrive the young ones of the flock. (2.) It becomes Christians to take notice of the gentleness of Christ in accommodating their trial to their strength. They should not magnify their afflictions, but should take notice of the mercy that is mixed with them, and should pity those who are called to the fiery trials to resist to blood; not to shed the blood of their enemies, but to seal their testimony with their own blood. (3.) Christians should be ashamed to faint under less trials, when they see others bear up under greater, and do not know how soon they may meet with greater themselves. If we have run with the footmen and they have wearied us, how shall we contend with horses? If we be wearied in a land of peace, what shall we do in the swellings of Jordan? Jer 12:5.
II. He argues from the peculiar and gracious nature of those sufferings that befall the people of God. Though their enemies and persecutors may be the instruments of inflicting such sufferings on them, yet they are divine chastisements; their heavenly Father has his hand in all, and his wise end to serve by all; of this he has given them due notice, and they should not forget it, Heb 12:5. Observe,
1. Those afflictions which may be truly persecution as far as men are concerned in them are fatherly rebukes and chastisements as far as God is concerned in them. Persecution for religion is sometimes a correction and rebuke for the sins of professors of religion. Men persecute them because they are religious; God chastises them because they are not more so: men persecute them because they will not give up their profession; God chastises them because they have not lived up to their profession.
2. God has directed his people how they ought to behave themselves under all their afflictions; they must avoid the extremes that many run into. (1.) They must not despise the chastening of the Lord; they must not make light of afflictions, and be stupid and insensible under them, for they are the hand and rod of God, and his rebukes for sin. Those who make light of affliction make light of God and make light of sin. (2.) They must not faint when they are rebuked; they must not despond and sink under their trial, nor fret and repine, but bear up with faith and patience. (3.) If they run into either of these extremes, it is a sign they have forgotten their heavenly Father's advice and exhortation, which he has given them in true and tender affection.
3. Afflictions, rightly endured, though they may be the fruits of God's displeasure, are yet proofs of his paternal love to his people and care for them (Heb 12:6, Heb 12:7): Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Observe, (1.) The best of God's children need chastisement. They have their faults and follies, which need to be corrected. (2.) Though God may let others alone in their sins, he will correct sin in his own children; they are of his family, and shall not escape his rebukes when they want them. (3.) In this he acts as becomes a father, and treats them like children; no wise and good father will wink at faults in his own children as he would in others; his relation and his affections oblige him to take more notice of the faults of his own children than those of others. (4.) To be suffered to go on in sin without a rebuke is a sad sign of alienation from God; such are bastards, not sons. They may call him Father, because born in the pale of the church; but they are the spurious offspring of another father, not of God, Heb 12:7, Heb 12:8.
4. Those that are impatient under the discipline of their heavenly Father behave worse towards him than they would do towards earthly parents, Heb 12:9, Heb 12:10. Here, (1.) The apostle commends a dutiful and submissive behaviour in children towards their earthly parents We gave them reverence, even when they corrected us. It is the duty of children to give the reverence of obedience to the just commands of their parents, and the reverence of submission to their correction when they have been disobedient. Parents have not only authority, but a charge from God, to give their children correction when it is due, and he has commanded children to take such correction well: to be stubborn and discontented under due correction is a double fault; for the correction supposes there has been a fault already committed against the parent's commanding power, and superadds a further fault against his chastening power. Hence, (2.) He recommends humble and submissive behavior towards our heavenly Father, when under his correction; and this he does by an argument from the less to the greater. [1.] Our earthly fathers are but the fathers of our flesh, but God is the Father of our spirits. Our fathers on earth were instrumental in the production of our bodies, which are but flesh, a mean, mortal, vile thing, formed out of the dust of the earth, as the bodies of the beasts are; and yet as they are curiously wrought, and made parts of our persons, a proper tabernacle for the soul to dwell in and an organ for it to act by, we owe reverence and affection to those who were instrumental in their procreation; but then we must own much more to him who is the Father of our spirits. Our souls are not of a material substance, not of the most refined sort; they are not ex traduce - by traduction; to affirm it is bad philosophy, and worse divinity: they are the immediate offspring of God, who, after he had formed the body of man out of the earth, breathed into him a vital spirit, and so he became a living soul. [2.] Our earthly parents chastened us for their own pleasure. Sometimes they did it to gratify their passion rather than to reform our manners. This is a weakness the fathers of our flesh are subject to, and this they should carefully watch against; for hereby they dishonour that parental authority which God has put upon them and very much hinder the efficacy of their chastisements. But the Father of our spirits never grieves willingly, nor afflicts the children of men, much less his own children. It is always for our profit; and the advantage he intends us thereby is no less than our being partakers of his holiness; it is to correct and cure those sinful disorders which make us unlike to God, and to improve and to increase those graces which are the image of God in us, that we may be and act more like our heavenly Father. God loves his children so that he would have them to be as like himself as can be, and for this end he chastises them when they need it. [3.] The fathers of our flesh corrected us for a few days, in our state of childhood, when minors; and, though we were in that weak and peevish state, we owed them reverence, and when we came to maturity we loved and honoured them the more for it. Our whole life here is a state of childhood, minority, and imperfection, and therefore we must submit to the discipline of such a state; when we come to a state of perfection we shall be fully reconciled to all the measures of God's discipline over us now. [4.] God's correction is no condemnation. His children may at first fear lest affliction should come upon that dreadful errand, and we cry, Do not condemn me, but show me wherefore thou contendest with me, Job 10:2. But this is so far from being the design of God to his own people that he therefore chastens them now that they may not be condemned with the world, Co1 11:32. He does it to prevent the death and destruction of their souls, that they may live to God, and be like God, and for ever with him.
5. The children of God, under their afflictions, ought not to judge of his dealings with them by present sense, but by reason, and faith, and experience: No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness, Heb 12:11. Here observe,
(1.) The judgment of sense in this case - Afflictions are not grateful to the sense, but grievous; the flesh will feel them, and be grieved by them, and groan under them.
(2.) The judgment of faith, which corrects that of sense, and declares that a sanctified affliction produces the fruits of righteousness; these fruits are peaceable, and tend to the quieting and comforting of the soul. Affliction produces peace, by producing more righteousness; for the fruit of righteousness is peace. And if the pain of the body contribute thus to the peace of the mind, and short present affliction produce blessed fruits of a long continuance, they have no reason to fret or faint under it; but their great concern is that the chastening they are under may be endured by them with patience, and improved to a greater degree of holiness. [1.] That their affliction may be endured with patience, which is the main drift of the apostle's discourse on this subject; and he again returns to exhort them that for the reason before mentioned they should lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, Heb 12:12. A burden of affliction is apt to make the Christian's hands hang down, and his knees grow feeble, to dispirit him and discourage him; but this he must strive against, and that for two reasons: - First, That he may the better run his spiritual race and course. Faith, and patience, and holy courage and resolution, will make him walk more steadily, keep a straighter path, prevent wavering and wandering. Secondly, That he may encourage and not dispirit others that are in the same way with him. There are many that are in the way to heaven who yet walk but weakly and lamely in it. Such are apt to discourage one another, and hinder one another; but it is their duty to take courage, and act by faith, and so help one another forward in the way to heaven. [2.] That their affliction may be improved to a greater degree of holiness. Since this is God's design, it ought to be the design and concern of his children, that with renewed strength and patience they may follow peace with all men, and holiness, Heb 12:14. If the children of God grow impatient under affliction, they will neither walk so quietly and peaceably towards men, nor so piously towards God, as they should do; but faith and patience will enable them to follow peace and holiness too, as a man follows his calling, constantly, diligently, and with pleasure. Observe, First, It is the duty of Christians, even when in a suffering state, to follow peace with all men, yea, even with those who may be instrumental in their sufferings. This is a hard lesson, and a high attainment, but it is what Christ has called his people to. Sufferings are apt to sour the spirit and sharpen the passions; but the children of God must follow peace with all men. Secondly, Peace and holiness are connected together; there can be no true peace without holiness. There may be prudence and discreet forbearance, and a show of friendship and good-will to all; but this true Christian peaceableness is never found separate from holiness. We must not, under pretence of living peaceably with all men, leave the ways of holiness, but cultivate peace in a way of holiness. Thirdly, Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. The vision of God our Saviour in heaven is reserved as the reward of holiness, and the stress of our salvation is laid upon our holiness, though a placid peaceable disposition contributes much to our meetness for heaven.
6. Where afflictions and sufferings for the sake of Christ are not considered by men as the chastisement of their heavenly Father, and improved as such, they will be a dangerous snare and temptation to apostasy, which every Christian should most carefully watch against (Heb 12:15, Heb 12:16): Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, etc.
(1.) Here the apostle enters a serious caveat against apostasy, and backs it with an awful example.
[1.] He enters a serious caveat against apostasy, Heb 12:15. Here you may observe, First, The nature of apostasy: it is failing of the grace of God; it is to become bankrupts in religion, for want of a good foundation, and suitable care and diligence; it is failing of the grace of God, coming short of a principle of true grace in the soul, notwithstanding the means of grace and a profession of religion, and so coming short of the love and favour of God here and hereafter. Secondly, The consequences of apostasy: where persons fail of having the true grace of God, a root of bitterness will spring up, corruption will prevail and break forth. A root of bitterness, a bitter root, producing bitter fruits to themselves and others. It produces to themselves corrupt principles, which lead to apostasy and are greatly strengthened and radicated by apostasy - damnable errors (to the corrupting of the doctrine and worship of the Christian church) and corrupt practices. Apostates generally grow worse and worse, and fall into the grossest wickedness, which usually ends either in downright atheism or in despair. It also produces bitter fruits to others, to the churches to which these men belonged; by their corrupt principles and practices many are troubled, the peace of the church is broken, the peace of men's minds is disturbed, and many are defiled, tainted with those bad principles, and drawn into defiling practices; so that the churches suffer both in their purity and peace. But the apostates themselves will be the greatest sufferers at last.
[2.] The apostle backs the caution with an awful example, and that is, that of Esau, who though born within the pale of the church, and having the birthright as the eldest son, and so entitled to the privilege of being prophet, priest, and king, in his family, was so profane as to despise these sacred privileges, and to sell his birthright for a morsel of meat. Where observe, First, Esau's sin. He profanely despised and sold the birthright, and all the advantages attending it. So do apostates, who to avoid persecution, and enjoy sensual ease and pleasure, though they bore the character of the children of God, and had a visible right to the blessing and inheritance, give up all pretensions thereto. Secondly, Esau's punishment, which was suitable to his sin. His conscience was convinced of his sin and folly, when it was too late: He would afterwards have inherited the blessing, etc. His punishment lay in two things: 1. He was condemned by his own conscience; he now saw that the blessing he had made so light of was worth the having, worth the seeking, though with much carefulness and many tears. 2. He was rejected of God: He found no place of repentance in God or in his father; the blessing was given to another, even to him to whom he sold it for a mess of pottage. Esau, in his great wickedness, had made the bargain, and God in his righteous judgment, ratified and confirmed it, and would not suffer Isaac to reverse it.
(2.) We may hence learn, [1.] That apostasy from Christ is the fruit of preferring the gratification of the flesh to the blessing of God and the heavenly inheritance. [2.] Sinners will not always have such mean thoughts of the divine blessing and inheritance as now they have. The time is coming when they will think no pains too great, no cares no tears too much, to obtain the lost blessing. [3.] When the day of grace is over (as sometimes it may be in this life), they will find no place for repentance: they cannot repent aright of their sin; and God will not repent of the sentence he has passed upon them for their sin. And therefore, as the design of all, Christians should never give up their title, and hope of their Father's blessing and inheritance, and expose themselves to his irrevocable wrath and curse, by deserting their holy religion, to avoid suffering, which, though this may be persecution as far as wicked men are concerned in it, is only a rod of correction and chastisement in the hand of their heavenly Father, to bring them near to himself in conformity and communion. This is the force of the apostle's arguing from the nature of the sufferings of the people of God even when they suffer for righteousness' sake; and the reasoning is very strong.
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 vv2–4 Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our…
Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,.... Not with bodily eyes, for at present he is not to be looked upon in this manner, but with the eye of the understanding, or with the eye of faith; for faith is a seeing of the Son; it is a spiritual sight of Christ, which is at first but glimmering, afterwards it increases, and is of a soul humbling nature; it is marvellous and surprising; it transforms into the image of Christ, and fills with joy unspeakable, and full of glory: a believer should be always looking to Christ, and off of every object, as the word here used signifies. Christ is to be looked unto as "Jesus", a Saviour, who being appointed and sent by God to be a Saviour, came, and is become the author of eternal salvation; and to him only should we look for it: he is able and willing to save; he is a suitable, complete, and only Saviour; and whoever look to him by faith shall be saved; and he is to be considered, and looked unto, as "the author and finisher of faith": he is the author or efficient cause of it; all men are by nature without it; it is not in the power of man to believe of himself; it is a work of omnipotence; it is an instance of the exceeding greatness of the power of God; and it is the operation of Christ, by his Spirit; and the increase of it is from him, Luk 17:5 and he is the finisher of it; he gives himself, and the blessings of his grace, to his people, to maintain and strengthen it; he prays for it, that it fail not; he carries on the work of faith, and will perform it with power; and brings to, and gives that which is the end of it, eternal life, or the salvation of the soul.
Who for the joy that was set before him; the word rendered "for"; sometimes signifies, in the room, or stead of, as in Mat 2:22 and is so rendered here in the Syriac and Arabic versions; and then the sense is, that Christ instead of being in the bosom of the Father, came into this world; instead of being in the form of God, he appeared in the form of a servant; instead of the glory which he had with his Father from eternity, he suffered shame and disgrace; instead of living a joyful and comfortable life on earth, he suffered a shameful and an accursed death; and instead of the temporal joy and glory the Jews proposed to him, he endured the shame and pain of the cross: sometimes it signifies the end for which a thing is, as in Eph 5:31 and may intend that, for the sake of which Christ underwent so much disgrace, and such sufferings; namely, for the sake of having a spiritual seed, a numerous offspring with him in heaven, who are his joy, and crown of rejoicing; for the sake of the salvation of all the elect, on which his heart was set; and for the glorifying of the divine perfections, which was no small delight and pleasure to him. And to this agrees the Chaldee paraphrase of Psa 21:1.
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"O Lord, in thy power shall the King Messiah "rejoice", and in thy redemption how greatly will he exult!''
And also because of his own glory as Mediator, which was to follow his sufferings, and which includes his resurrection from the dead, his exaltation at the right hand of God, and the whole honour and glory Christ has in his human nature; see Psa 16:8 and with a view to all this, he endured the cross; which is to be taken not properly for that frame of wood, on which he was crucified; but, improperly, for all his sufferings, from his cradle to his cross; and particularly the tortures of the cross, being extended on it, and nailed unto it; and especially the death of the cross, which kind of death he endured to verify the predictions of it, Psa 22:16 and to show that he was made a curse for his people; and this being a Roman punishment, shows that the sceptre was taken from Judah, and therefore the Messiah must be come; and that Christ suffered for the Gentiles, as well as Jews: and this death he endured with great courage and intrepidity, with much patience and constancy, and in obedience to the will of his Father: despising the shame; of the cross; for it was an ignominious death, as well as a painful one; and as he endured the pain of it with patience, he treated the shame of it with contempt; throughout the whole of his life, he despised the shame and reproach that was cast upon him; and so he did at the time of his apprehension, and when upon his trial, and at his death, under all the ignominious circumstances that attended it; which should teach us not to be ashamed of the reproach of Christ, but count it an honour to be worthy to suffer shame for his name.
And is set down at the right hand of the throne of God; Which is in heaven; and is expressive of the majesty and glory of God; and of the honour done to Christ in human nature, which is not granted to any of the angels: here Christ sits as God's fellow, as equal to him, as God, and as having done his work as man, and Mediator; and this may assure us, that when we have run out our race, we shall sit down too, with Christ upon his throne, and be at rest.
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 vv2–4 Looking - From all other things. To Jesus -…
Looking - From all other things. To Jesus - As the wounded Israelites to the brazen serpent. Our crucified Lord was prefigured by the lifting up of this; our guilt, by the stings of the fiery serpents; and our faith, by their looking up to the miraculous remedy. The author and finisher of our faith - Who begins it in us, carries it on, and perfects it. Who for the joy that was set before him - Patiently and willingly endured the cross, with all the pains annexed thereto. And is set down - Where there is fulness of joy.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv2–4 Verse 2. Looking unto Jesus] αφορωντες. Looking off and…
Verse 2. Looking unto Jesus] αφορωντες. Looking off and on, or from and to; looking off or from the world and all secular concerns to Jesus and all the spiritual and heavenly things connected with him. This is still an allusion to the Grecian games: those who ran were to keep their eyes fixed on the mark of the prize; they must keep the goal in view. The exhortation implies, 1. That they should place all their hope and confidence in Christ, as their sole helper in this race of faith. 2. That they should consider him their leader in this contest and imitate his example.
The author and finisher of - faith] αρχηγος, translated here author, signifies, in general, captain or leader, or the first inventor of a thing; see Heb 2:10. But the reference seems to be here to the βραβευς, or judge in the games, whose business it was to admit the contenders, and to give the prize to the conqueror. Jesus is here represented as this officer; every Christian is a contender in this race of life, and for eternal life. The heavenly course is begun under Jesus; and under him it is completed. He is the finisher, by awarding the prize to them that are faithful unto death. Thus he is the author or the judge under whom, and by whose permission and direction, according to the rules of the heavenly race, they are permitted to enter the lists, and commence the race, and he is the finisher, τελειωτης, the perfecter, by awarding and giving the prize which consummates the combatants at the end of the race.
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Who, for the joy that was set before him] The joy of fulfilling the will of the Father, Ps 40:6-8, c., in tasting death for every man and having endured the cross and despised the shame of this ignominious death, He is set down at the right hand of God, ever appearing in the presence of God for us, and continuing his exhibition of himself as our Sacrifice, and his intercession as our Mediator. See the notes on "Heb 10:5", c. There are different other explanations given of this clause, but I think that here offered is the most natural. It never can, in any sense, be said of Jesus that he endured the cross, c., in the prospect of gaining an everlasting glory when he had the fulness of that glory with the Father before the world began Joh 17:5.
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 vv2–3 Heb 12:2. Looking — Αφορωντες, literally, looking off, from…
Heb 12:2. Looking — Αφορωντες, literally, looking off, from all other things; unto Jesus — As the wounded Israelites looked to the brazen serpent. Our crucified Lord was prefigured by the lifting up of this; our guilt by the stings of the fiery serpents; and our faith by their looking up to the miraculous remedy; the author and finisher of our faith — Who called us out to this strenuous yet glorious enterprise, who animates us by his example, and supports us by his grace, till the season comes in which he shall bestow upon us the promised crown; or who begins it in us, carries it on, and perfects it. Who for the joy that was set before him — Namely, that of bringing many sons unto glory; or, who, in consideration of that glory and dignity his human nature should be advanced to, as a reward of his labours and sufferings, and of that satisfaction and pleasure he should take in the happiness of his members, procured for them by his incarnation, life, and death; patiently and willingly endured the cross — The ignominious and painful death of crucifixion, with all the torture and misery connected therewith; despising the shame — Not accounting the disgrace which attended his sufferings so great an evil as for fear thereof to neglect the prosecution of his great and glorious design. He did not faint because of it; he regarded it not, in comparison of the blessed and glorious effect of his sufferings, which was always in his eye. And is set down, &c. — Where there is fulness of joy for evermore. See on Heb 1:3; Heb 8:1.
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 vv2–4 Looking unto Jesus - As a further inducement to…
Looking unto Jesus - As a further inducement to do this, the apostle exhorts us to look to the Saviour. We are to look to his holy life; to his patience and perseverance in trials; to what he endured in order to obtain the crown, and to his final success and triumph.
The author and finisher of our faith - The word “our” is not in the original here, and obscures the sense. The meaning is, he is the first and the last as an example of faith or of confidence in God - occupying in this, as in all other things, the pre-eminence, and being the most complete model that can be placed before us. The apostle had not enumerated him among those who had been distinguished for their faith, but he now refers to him as above them all; as a case that deserved to stand by itself. It is probable that there is a continuance here of the allusion to the Grecian games which the apostle had commenced in the previous verse. The word “author” - ἀρχηγὸν archēgon - (marg. beginner) - means properly the source, or cause of anything; or one who makes a beginning. It is rendered in Act 3:15; Act 5:31, “Prince”; in Heb 2:10, “Captain”; and in the place before us, “Author.”
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It does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament. The phrase “the beginner of faith,” or the leader on of faith, would express the idea. He is at the head of all those who have furnished an example of confidence in God, for he was himself the most illustrious instance of it. The expression, then, does not mean properly that he produces faith in us, or that we believe because he causes us to believe - whatever may be the truth about that - but that he stands at the head as the most eminent example that can be referred to on the subject of faith. We are exhorted to look to him, as if at the Grecian games there was one who stood before the racer who had previously carried away every palm of victory; who had always been triumphant, and with whom there was no one who could be compared. The word “finisher” - τελειωτὴν teleiōtēn - corresponds in meaning with the word “author.” It means that he is the completer as well as the beginner; the last as well as the first.
As there has been no one hitherto who could be compared with him, so there will be no one hereafter; compare Rev 1:8, Rev 1:11. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last.” The word does not mean that he was the “finisher” of faith in the sense that he makes our faith complete or perfects it - whatever may be true about that - but that he occupies this elevated position of being beyond comparison above all others. Alike in the commencement and the close, in the beginning of faith, and in its ending, he stands pre-eminent. To this illustrious model we should look - as a racer would on one who had been always so successful that he surpassed all competitors and rivals. If this be the meaning, then it is not properly explained, as it is commonly (see Bloomfield and Stuart in loc.), by saying that the word here is synonymous with “rewarder,” and refers to the βραβευτὴς brabeutēs - or the distributor of the prize; compare notes on Col 3:15, There is no instance where the word is used in this sense in the New Testament (compare Passow), nor would such an interpretation present so beautiful and appropriate a thought as the one suggested above.
Who for the joy that was set before him - That is, who in view of all the honor which he would have at the right hand of God, and the happiness which he would experience from the consciousness that he had redeemed a world, was willing to bear the sorrows connected with the atonement.
Endured the cross - Endured patiently the ignominy and pain connected with the suffering of death on the cross.
Despising the shame - Disregarding the ignominy of such a mode of death. It is difficult for us now to realize the force of the expression, “enduring the shame of the cross,” as it was understood in the time of the Saviour and the apostles. The views of the world have changed, and it is now difficult to divest the “cross” of the associations of honor and glory which the word suggests, so as to appreciate the ideas which encompassed it then. There is a degree of dishonor which we attach to the guillotine, but the ignominy of a death on the cross was greater than that; there is disgrace attached to the block, but the ignominy of the cross was greater than that; there is a much deeper infamy attached to the gallows, but the ignominy of the cross was greater than that. And that word - the cross - which when now proclaimed in the ears of the refined, the intelligent, and even the frivolous, excites an idea of honor, in the ears of the people of Athens, of Corinth, and of Rome, excited deeper disgust than the word “gallows” does with us - for it was regarded as the appropriate punishment of the most infamous of mankind.
We can now scarcely appreciate these feelings, and of course the declaration that Jesus “endured the cross, despising the shame,” does not make the impression on our minds in regard to the nature of his sufferings, and the value of his example, which it should do. When we now think of the “cross,” it is not of the multitude of slaves, and robbers, and thieves, and rebels, who have died on it, but of the one great Victim, whose death has ennobled even this instrument of torture, and encircled it with a halo of glory. We have been accustomed to read of it as an imperial standard in war in the days of Constantine, and as the banner under which armies have marched to conquest; it is intermingled with the sweetest poetry; it is a sacred thing in the most magnificent cathedrals; it adorns the altar, and is even an object of adoration; it is in the most elegant engravings; it is worn by beauty and piety as an ornament near the heart; it is associated with all that is pure in love, great in self-sacrifice, and holy in religion. To see the true force of the expression here, therefore, it is necessary to divest ourselves of these ideas of glory which encircle the “cross,” and to place ourselves in the times and lands in which, when the most infamous of mankind were stretched upon it, it was regarded for such people as an appropriate mode of punishment. That infamy Jesus was willing to bear, and the strength of his confidence in God, his love for man, and the depth of his humiliation, was shown in the readiness and firmness with which he went forward to such a death.
And is set down at the right hand of the throne of God - Exalted to the highest place of dignity and honor in the universe; Mar 16:19 note; Eph 1:20-22 notes. The sentiment here is, “Imitate the example of the great Author of our religion. He, in view of the honor and joy before him, endured the most severe sufferings to which the human frame can be subjected, and the form of death which is regarded as the most shameful. So amidst all the severe trials to which you are exposed on account of religion, patiently endure all - for the glorious rewards, the happiness and the triumph of heaven, are before you.”
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 vv2, 4 Who having joy [2] proposed to him, underwent the…
Who having joy [2] proposed to him, underwent the cross. The sense seems to be, who by reason of the joy he had to perform the will of his eternal Father, for which he knew he should be exalted above all creatures, underwent willingly the ignominy and death of the cross. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Curramus ad propositum nobis certamen, Greek: trechomen ton prokeimenon emin agona, without Greek: pros, ad. Certamen is not only pugnando, but contendendo cursu, &c.
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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v4 Their sufferings are profitable chastisements of the paternal love…
II
Their sufferings are profitable chastisements of the paternal love of God
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Heb_12:4-13
4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. 5And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children [sons], My son, despise not thou [make not light of] the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are rebuked [while being probed, corrected, ἐλεγχόμενος] of [by] him; 6For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7If ye endure chastening [It is for chastisement that ye endure],3 God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he [who is a son] whom the father chasteneth not? 8But if ye be [are] without chastisement, whereof all are [have become] partakers, then 9are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore [εἶτα, then, then again], we have had [we had, used to have the] fathers of our flesh which [who] corrected us [as chasteners], and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather4 be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? 10For they verily [indeed] for [or, with reference to] a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might [may] be partakers of his holiness. 11Now no chastening for the present [in respect indeed to the present] seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless [but], afterward it yieldeth the peaceable [peaceful] fruit of righteousness unto them which are [which have been] exercised [disciplined] thereby. 12Wherefore lift up [right up again] the hands which hang down, and the feeble [relaxed] knees; 13And make straight paths for your feet, lest [that] that which is lame [may not] be turned out of the way; but let it [may] rather be healed.
[Heb_12:4.—ἀντικατέστητε, ye resisted, Aor.; Words, lays stress on the Aor.=“as ye might have done on several occasions.” Alf., with most, makes it=perfect. With οὔπω the Aor. rendering is harsh, unless we render not in any way, not at all, and take ἀντικατ. of a specific internal conflict with the sin of disobedience and apostasy, as the Saviour’s in Gethsemane; then μέχρις αἵματος, refers to the Saviour’s sweating drops of blood. I incline with Barnes to this interpretation.
Heb_12:5.—ἐκλέλησθε, ye have forgotten, much better than interrog., have ye forgotten? as Bl., De W., Lün., in order to soften what otherwise seems too harsh; but this forgetting is virtually assumed below, and the interrog. would be awkward.—ὀλιγωρεῖν, make little account of, not so strong as despise.—ἐλεγχόμενος, while being probed, sifted, corrected, rather than rebuked.
Heb_12:7.—εἰς παιδείαν ὑπομένετε, so the best authorities; it is for chastening or discipline that ye are enduring. Alf. argues that ὑπομένειν can hardly have the incidental meaning which the ordinary reading requires.—τίς γάρ ἐστιν υἰός,for who is a son?
Heb_12:8.—μέτοχοι γεγοναμεν, we have become partakers.
Heb_12:9.—έἶτα, then, in the next place. Unless we take έἶτα as a particle of indignant emotion, which I think better. This would indeed require, in a regular construction, οὐ πολὺ δὲ μἀλλον (not as Bl. and Alf., καὶ οὐ πολὺ μᾶλλον); but that the author began with this construction in his mind, is shown by the μέν after τούς, which has not its answering δέ.
Heb_12:10.—πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας, with reference to a few days, or, perhaps, with Moll, etc., during.
Heb_12:11.—τοῖς δἰ ἀυτῆς γεγυμνας, to those that have been trained by means of it.—ἀποδίδωσιν, it renders back, yields.—δικαιοσυνης, emphatically placed.
Heb_12:12.—ἀνορθώσατε, right up, bring back to erectness or straightness.—παρεινένας, slackened, unstrung.—παραλελυμένα, paralyzed, relaxed.
Heb_12:13.—καὶ τροχιὰς ὀρθὰς, etc., is a regular Dactylic Hexameter: ἴνα μὴ τὸ χωλὸν ἐκτραπῆ, part of an Iambic trimeter, as in Heb_12:14, οὗ χωρὶς οὐδεὶς ὄψεται τὸν κύριον, is a perfect Iambic verse.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_12:4. Resisted unto blood.—The expression is hardly a figure drawn from boxing (Beng., Bl., Del.), but denotes a bloody death (Wieseler), with a reference to the death of Jesus, and implies that the readers have indeed already been subjected to acts of violence (Heb_10:32 ff.), but have not as yet, like earlier members of the Church (Heb_13:7), been persecuted unto death, but rather are in their conduct, shielding themselves from such perils, and forget the import of the sufferings which God destines for His children. A moral struggle against their own sin, and one in which they have not put forth their utmost exertions (so recently again Holtzmann in the Stud. und Krit., 1859, II.) is here not intended. [I incline to think it is, and that in this consists the rebuking character of the language.—K.]. Sin appears here as an objective worldly power, as it appears in particular in the enemies of the Gospel, and prepares the same suffering for the disciples, as for the Lord.
Heb_12:5. And ye have forgotten, etc.—If with Calv., Beza, Bl., Lün., etc., we take these words interrogatively, the tone of reproof is softened [and the passage enfeebled]. The citation is from Pro_3:11-12, where in Heb. the concluding clause runs, “and as a father to the son, He is good to him” (or, receives him kindly). instead of וּכְאָב the Sept. read either יְכָאֵב or as Job_5:17, יַכְאִב, he occasions pain. The Cod. A. of the Sept. reads with fifteen other MSS. παιδεύει; the remainder have ἐλέγχει.
Heb_12:7. For chastisement.—The lect. rec. εἰ has the parallels, Heb_12:8, in its favor; still this cannot decide us against the authorities, which by no means present us an unmeaning clerical error, but assign the object of the suffering, which is the first mentioned παιδεία. Εἰς, denoting purpose, is frequent in our Epistle, Heb_4:14; Heb_3:5; Heb_4:16; Heb_6:16; Heb_9:15; Heb_10:19; Heb_11:11. The Indic. construction corresponds better with the connection (Chrys., Del.) than the Imper. (Ebr.), especially considering the pregnant signification of ὑπομένειν and the δέ in Heb_12:8. Again τίς is not to be taken adjectively with υἱός (Bl., De W., Thol., Lün.), nor as predicate=of what sort perchance is the son? (Böhme) but as a substantive, as also υἱός and πατήρ, are without the article. Thus the sense is, according to Del., “where is there one who stands in truth in the relation of son, whom He does not chastise, who stands to Him in truth in (the relation of father?”
Heb_12:9. Again, [in the next place].—εἶτα continues the argumentation.—To take the word as ironical, or as a question of surprise=to ita ne (Valck., Alberti, etc.) is consistent with classical usage, but is here forced, besides which also, the second member of the sentence should have commenced with καί.
Father of spirits.—This is not Christ (Hammond), but God, who, however, receives this designation not as one caring for our souls (Böhm. after Morus, and others), nor as bestower of the gifts of the Spirit (Theodoret), nor in the moral sense, as Father, in respect to the higher spiritual province of life (De W., Ebr., Lün.); but inasmuch as all spirits are derived from Him (Thol., Del., Riehm). We must not, however, refer the “spirits” exclusively to angels (Chrys., Œc., Theoph.); nor find here a one-sided and extreme statement of creatianism (Calv., Beng., Este, Carpz., etc.), but only a moderate and authorized form, as at Heb_7:10, of Traducianism.
Heb_12:10. For a few days.—The πρός stands here, and Heb_12:11; Luk_8:13; 1Co_7:5; 2Co_7:8; 1Th_2:17, of the duration of the chastisement. The majority of expositors, with Calvin, regard the “few days” as the days of our earthly life; and thus find a contrast expressed between the purpose of the chastisement of children by our earthly parents, as being with reference to, or for (πρός), a few days, and the eternity, which is the end and scope of the Divine chastisements. Such an interpretation, however, introduces at once a false statement into the first member of the antithesis—that, viz: which restricts the end of human training in all cases to our earthly life, and creates a contrast for which the original furnishes no basis. But neither, on the other hand, is the πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας to be attached equally to both members of the antithesis, as stating the common period of time during which, for their respectively different purposes, and in their different ways, the human and the Divine training are carried forward (Bleek, etc.). The few days point to the brief period of minority, during which, as shown by the Imperfect ἐπαίδευον, the readers, as children, were the subjects of parental discipline. But neither again does the author contrast with this limited period of parental training the life-long continuance of the Divine education. Of this the text contains nothing whatever. Its phraseology shows rather that any such special contrast with πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας is utterly out of the author’s mind; and, in fact, Delitzsch is obliged to extract it artificially and unnaturally from the εἰς τὸ μεταλαβεῖν τῆς ἁγιότητος αὑτοῦ, making πρός unite the ideas of time and purpose, and εἰς those of purpose and result, while the clause with πρός expresses the limit as to time, and that with εἰς that of aim and object. The diversity of the human and the Divine παιδεία is briefly given in their respective characteristic features, and the preëminence of the latter is urged upon the attention of the readers (who have had personal experience of the former), that they may the more willingly submit themselves to it. The abstract ἁγιότης is found elsewhere only at 2Ma_15:2. [In regard to the construction of the vexed passage above, we may, in the first place, set aside at once the idea of Wets., Storr, Kuin., Böhm., and Bleek, that πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας is to be understood of the second member of the sentence, as implying a restriction in the time of the discipline, alike of the human and the Divine, both being confined to the present life. This, however true, is clearly not expressed in the sentence; πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας belongs only to the first member. But, so restricted, are we to explain it as “for, i.e., during a few days,” viz: the few days of our minority, in which we were subject to their chastisement, or, as “with reference to a few days,” viz., the days of our earthly life? The objection to this latter, hinted at by Moll, and more fully expressed by Alford, viz., that it is not true that the discipline of earthly parents always “has regard only to the present life,” seems to me without force; inasmuch as the author’s statement is simply a general one, not referring to what may be the possible scope of the training of Christian parents, but what is the natural scope of human and earthly discipline as such. Alford’s next objection (as also Moll’s), viz., that the contrast thus implied between the transitory purpose of human chastisement, and the eternal purpose of the Divine, is superinduced on the passage because “there is not one word in the latter clause expressing the eternal nature of God’s purpose,” he subsequently answers himself by placing the πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας in contrast with the ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον, in which, he says, “we have set over against one another the short time during which, the temporary reference with which their chastisement was inflicted, and the great purpose implied as eternal from its very expression, as τὸ συμφέρον for an immortal being, in which he chastises us.” The question, then, is whether, with Moll, we are to take πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας as simply like our “for=during a few days,” or, with many others, to take it as= “with reference to a few days.” If the former, then the clause κατὰ τὸ δοκοῦν αὐτοἴς, of the first member is set over against the two clauses in the second. If the latter, then we have a double antithesis, and the question arises, whether we are to take it, with Alford, in the natural order of the clauses (“for a few days” against “for our profit,” and “according to their pleasure” against “in order to participate in his holiness”) or, with Delitzsch, chiastically, the second of the one corresponding to the first of the other, and the first of the one to the second of the other. It does not follow, however, necessarily, that, even if we take πρός, with reference to, there still is any such exact antithesis intended as either of these explanations implies. I incline, on the one hand, to take πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας as in reference to a few days (which seems to me to have much more point than the other), and, on the other, to doubt even then if the writer intends any exactly balanced antithesis. He puts the two grand points of earthly correction, viz., its being but for and with reference to a few days, and its possessing, even in the best, the character more or less of arbitrariness, against the one grand point of the Divine, viz., its intrinsic and essential profitableness, in which, however, a contrast to both the other characteristics is virtually implied.—K.].
Heb_12:11. Peaceful fruit of righteousness.—As the tree which bears the fruit is the παιδεία, δικαιοσύνης cannot be the Gen. Subj.—as even recently Klee supposes. The Gen. is Gen. of apposition (Jam_3:18). The adj. εἰρηνικός stands in relation to δι’ αὐτῆς γεγυμνασμένοις, so that the παιδεία is regarded under the point of view of γυμνασία=ἀγών (Thol., Del., etc.).
Heb_12:12. Wherefore raise up again, etc.—The first clause borrows both thought and language from Isa_35:3; the other from Pro_4:26. The Pass. Signif. given by many since and with Grot. to ἐκτρέπ., to be dislocated, distorted, is unsustained by usage. The original text, the expression of the Sept. ποίει σοῖς ποσί, and partially the following clause with ἵνα, lead us to take the τοῖς ποσίν ὑμῶν, not as Dat. instrum. (It., Vulg., Luth., Bl., De W., Thol., Lün.), but as Dat. commodi (Böhm., Ebr., Del., Riehm, Alf.). [We may call attention to the lofty and rythmical character of the language here. Καὶ τροχιὰς ὀρθάς, etc., is a perfect Dactylic hexameter; ἵνα μὴ τὸ χωλόν, etc., is a rough and irregular Iambic trimeter, while the general cast of the expression is decidedly poetic. See textual note, and Heb_12:14-15.—K.].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Sin which reigns in the world, and is mighty in the children of unbelief, is often also skilful to employ violent measures against the professors of the true faith, and to threaten not merely their property and honor, but their life. In such cases it behooves them to be faithful and obedient even unto death.
2. Yet even where matters do not come to extremities, still there are frequently sorrows and sufferings, painful and heavy. In them we must recognize not mere violent acts of men, not mere undeserved strokes of fortune, but the hand of God, yet still, as of a father who regards our interests, and by his discipline of suffering, is bringing into clear recognition, and stamping with the seal of validity, that filial relation to which he has received us in Christ.
3. There are, thus, sufferings which stand indeed in connection with our own sinfulness, and have the significance of chastisement, yet still are not punitive sufferings, such as would give us to taste the wrath of God, but strokes inflicted by Divine love, as means of paternal chastisement for the purpose of educating us for the heavenly kingdom.
4. If we recognize this Divine purpose, and find in the painful, yet salutary chastisings, a recognition, confirmation, and development of our filial relation to God, then we shall all the more readily submit ourselves, in humility and patience, to these chastisements, which have their ultimate ground in the love of God, and their true end and aim in His desire for our salvation, the more clearly we perceive that this loving chastisement of our heavenly Father immeasurably transcends that of earthly fathers.
5. This submission is entirely authorized, obligatory and salutary: for, while our parents can only endow us with merely natural life, but cannot change our fleshly nature, and during our minority are influenced by personal, and sometimes selfish views, in the application of the means of chastisement, so that the results are often either inconsiderable or uncertain, God, as the Father of spirits, is also the author of our spiritual nature, and by the means of education which He employs, makes us partakers of His holiness, of the Divine nature (2Pe_1:4). Thus life, in its fullest sense, is the consequence of such a subjection to the dispensations and leadings of God; and the end of this discipline of suffering, is a fruit which consists in righteousness, and the taste of which is peace.
6. “The entire falling away of the unconfirmed, wavering members of the Church, can be guarded against, and their recovery be rendered possible, only by the opening of straight paths on the part of the entire body, only by their going forward in a plain, simple, upright course of thought, confession and action, which shall exercise upon the weak such a salutary and restorative influence as straight and even paths upon lame and diseased feet” (Del.).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
If God comforts us as a father, we must allow ourselves to be chastised as children.—Points of likeness and unlikeness in human and Divine education.—That which pains, comforts, and blesses us in sufferings.—The sweetness, not only of the means, but of the mode of God’s comforting us in suffering.—Our filial relation to God teaches us not lightly to regard afflictions, not to faint in them, but to be improved by them.
Starke:—The thing which is not pleasant to us, we can easily forget (Psa_88:13); but he who often calls to mind the cross, will be less surprised by it when it comes (1Pe_4:12).—To make an honest application to one’s self, is the most important thing in the reading of the Holy Scripture (Rom_4:23-24).—The dearer a child the sharper his discipline under the rod.—The community of sufferings which visits in the world all the brethren, is the consolation of all the children of God.—Do not vex thyself in relation to long continued sufferings; our whole life is but short.—We must regard the cross not in reference to our outward sensibilities, as being painful and afflictive to flesh and blood; but according to the salutary uses which God brings out of it (Rom_8:17).—Every cross has a bitter beginning, but a sweet termination.—In tears lies hidden the seed of all joy and glory.—Hands and feet should, in the spiritual sense, be properly employed; the former for valiant strife, the latter for nimble running.—The stumbler must not be immediately rejected, but restored and raised up with words of comfort and admonition (Psa_73:2; Psa_17:15).
Rieger:—Those are sure steps which are made in accordance with the course and conflict which God has ordained, with our eye on the goal of joy and glory that is set before us, and in confidence in the grace of God, accompanying us at every step.
Heubner:—How much less are our sufferings than the sufferings of the early Christians! Now, those who confess Christ have peace. This should shame, warn, and incite us.
Fricke:—Every chastisement of God is, in His children, a seed, which subsequently produces fruit.
Footnotes:
[3]Heb_12:7.—Instead of εἰ read εἰς, after Sin. A. D. E. K. L., and most minusc. Reiche, however, defends the Rec.
[4]Heb_12:9.—Οὐ πολὺ μᾶλλον, sanctioned by Sin. A. D*., instead of the lect. rec. οὐ πολλῷ μᾶλλον.
[5]Heb_12:15.—Instead of διὰ ταύτης, we should read after A., 17, 67***, 137, 238, δι’ αὐτῆς, and instead of πολλοί, read after Sin. A., 47, οἱ πολλοί.
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 vv2–4 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 vv2–4 2. Looking unto—Mainly as our example, as the next…
2. Looking unto—Mainly as our example, as the next verse shows. Jesus ran the most arduous race of all, and attained the loftiest final seat of all. So that, while we are looking unto him, he is looking down upon us, a most divine witness and spectator of our race. The heroes of chap. xi, we, and Jesus, are all in the same inclusion, Jesus being supreme exemplar and real founder of the whole.
Author… finisher… our faith—The word our, as is indicated by the italics, is not in the Greek, but the article the—the faith. Hence the meaning is, not that Jesus is the author or inspirer of faith in us; but that he is the beginner and founder of the faith of all the roll, by being their great suffering and conquering example, as described in words following.
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Finisher—He finished the faith by his own triumphant example, whereby he ascended to heaven and made like faith and like triumph possible to us.
The joy set before him—Of being triumphant and glorified head of a glorified body of saints in heaven. Compare Rom_8:29.
Set before him—By the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Endured the (or, rather, a) cross—The meaning is, not that he endured the, that is, some specially appointed cross, but that he endured such a thing as a cross.
Despising (omit the, which is not in the Greek) shame— That is, not simply the one shame of crucifixion, but every thing in the nature of ignominy that could be heaped upon him.
Is set—Rather, actively, has taken his seat. From endurance on earth he passes to the throne of heaven, and there now sits. Herein he is the deepest of all sufferers and the most triumphant of all victors; a perfect and supreme example of which we are the little imitators.
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 vv2–4 2. looking unto Jesus] It is not possible to…
2. looking unto Jesus] It is not possible to express in English the thought suggested by the Greek verb aphorôntes, which implies that we must “look away (from other things) unto Jesus.” It implies “the concentration of the wandering gaze into a single direction.”
the author] The word is the same (ἀρχηγὸν) as that used in Heb_2:10. In Act_3:15; Act_5:31 it is rendered “a Prince,” as in Isa_30:4 (LXX.). By His faithfulness (Heb_3:2) he became our captain and standard-bearer on the path of faith.
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and finisher] He leads us to “the end of our faith,” which is the salvation of our souls (1Pe_1:9).
of our faith] Rather, “of faith.”
endured the cross, despising the shame] Lit., “endured a cross, despising shame.”
is set down] Rather, “hath sat down” (Heb_1:3, Heb_8:1, Heb_10:12).
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 vv2–4 (2) Looking unto Jesus.—As in Heb_2:9, the description precedes…
(2) Looking unto Jesus.—As in Heb_2:9, the description precedes the mention of the name, “Looking unto the Author and Perfecter of (our) faith, Jesus.” The first word is very similar to that of Heb_11:26; the runner looks away from all other objects and fixes his gaze on One. Jesus is not directly spoken of as the Judge (2Ti_4:8); but, as the next words show, He has Himself reached the goal, and His presence marks the point at which the race will close. As the last verse spoke of our “patient endurance,” this speaks of our faith, and of this Jesus is the Author and the Perfecter. The former word has occurred before, in Heb_2:10; and here, as there, origination is the principal thought. There the idea of leading the way was also present; but here “Author” stands in contrast with “Perfecter,” and the example of our Lord is the subject of the clause which follows. Because it is He who begins and brings to perfection our faith, we must run the race with our eye fixed upon Him: in Him is the beginning, in Him the completion of the promises (2Co_1:20); and in the steady and trustful dependence upon Him which this figure describes consists our faith.
Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.—The literal meaning is very forcible, endured a cross, despising shame; the shame of such a death being set over against the joy that lay before Him. Here again we have the thought of Heb_2:9 (Php_2:9-10); the joy of His accomplished purpose (Isa_53:11; Mat_25:21; Luk_10:21-22) and the glory with which He was crowned (Joh_17:1; 1Pe_1:11) being the reward for His “obedience even unto death.” The whole form of the expression (comp. especially Heb_6:18, “the hope set before us”) shows that Jesus is presented to us as an example not of endurance only, but also of faith (Heb_2:12). On the last words of the verse see Heb_1:3; Heb_1:13; Heb_8:1; Heb_10:12-13; there is here a slight change in the Greek, which requires the rendering, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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 vv2–4 Looking unto the Author and Finisher of our faith…
Looking unto the Author and Finisher of our faith (rather, the Leader, or Captain, as in Heb_2:10, and Perfecter of the faith, or of faith faith"s Captain and Completer), Jesus; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. The idea is not, as implied in the A.V and understood by Chrysostom and other ancients, that Jesus first inspires and then brings to its complete result the individual Christian"s faith ("quod caepit in nobis consummabit"), but (as implied in the word archgov , and suiting the context better) that he is the Leader of the whole army of faith, whose standard we are to follow, and whose own completed victory is the enabling cause as well as the earnest of our own. It is no valid objection to this view that he could not have been a Leader in this sense to the faithful ones before his coming, referred to in the last chapter; for, as has been before observed, (see on "the reproach of Christ," Heb_11:26) he is regarded as the Head and Leader, in all ages, of the faithful; and in virtue of his future warfare for mankind the saints of old endured and triumphed: and certainly Christians, to whom the exhortation is addressed, may look to him in an obvious sense as their Captain to be followed. Nor, again, is there difficulty apart from that of the whole mystery of the Incarnation in his being presented to us as himself an example of triumphant faith. For he is elsewhere spoken of as having so "emptied himself" of his Divine glory as to have become like unto us in all things, sin except; and thus to have been sustained during his human life by faith in the unseen, as we are. His addresses to the Father (see especially John 17) are strikingly significant in this regard. The expression, "for the joy," etc. (anti thv prokeimenhv autw carav ), does not mean, as some take it, "instead of the joy which he might have had on earth" (such e.g. as was offered to him by the tempter), but, as is evident from the word prokeimenhv , "as set against, i.e. for the sake of, future joy" (cf. anti brwsewv miav , ver. 16). Such looking forward to joy with the Father and the redeemed after triumph is expressed in the great intercessory prayer above referred to. (Joh_17:5, Joh_17:13, Joh_17:22, Joh_17:23, Joh_17:24, Joh_17:26) It may be here observed that anticipation of reward hereafter is among legitimate human motives to a good life. It may be said, indeed, that the highest virtue consists in doing what is right simply because it is right in fulfilling God"s will, whatever may come of it to ourselves; but the hope of a final happy issue comes properly, and indeed inevitably, in as an inspiring and sustaining motive. Aspiration after Happiness is a God-given instinct of humanity, necessary for keeping up the life of virtue. There may be some so in love with virtue as to be capable of persevering in lifelong self-denial, though without any faith in a life to come. But human nature in general certainly requires this further incentive, and Christian faith supplies it. Nor are those who thus work with a view to future joy to be accused of selfish motives, as though they balanced only a greater against a smaller gain. To the true Christian the grand inspiring principle is still the love of God and of his neighbor, and of goodness for its own sake, though the hope of an eternal reward supports and cheers him mightily. Nor, again, is the joy looked forward to a selfish joy. It is the joy of sharing in the triumph of eternal righteousness in company with all the redeemed, whose salvation, no less than his own, he desires and strives for. And, further, with regard to his own individual joy, what is it but the joy of attaining the end of his being, the perfection God meant him for, and to which it is his duty to aspire? Hence Christ would not have been a perfect Example to man had he not been represented as looking forward to "the joy that was set before him.
Looking to Jesus.
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I WHAT WE LOOK AWAY FROM. For the idea in the verb is that of looking away from one thing to some other thing. We must always have some object before the eyes of our mind, and very often it is an object that will cause the natural man discomposure, doubt, vacillation in his practice. Looking round on your companions professedly in the path of faith, you may feel that they are doing anything but live the life of faith. You may see some backsliding, Demas-like, through their love of the present evil world. And even the best of brother believers have their moments of failure and misapprehension. Then, moreover, as we look round us, we see not only the cloud of testifying believers, we see a cloud given over to the things of this world. To mingle with them in many relations is a necessity of life. Insensibly they affect that standard of excellence at which we ought to aim. We see something which is not God"s standard, but in our self-deception, honestly enough, we take it to be so. And so we must look away from the ordinary surroundings of life, and even from the achievements of ordinary believers, to one in whom we shall find every good we find in man, without alloy, without contradiction, and with special power in us to produce perseverance and aspiration.
II WHO WE LOOK TO. What a great matter it is to have an Object so satisfactory, so inspiring, on which our eyes may rest, on which our thoughts may dwell I But we must look at that Object in a certain way. As we have looked for faith in Abraham, in Moses, in the prophets, and found it, so we must look for faith in Jesus. It is of the greatest importance for us to see that the life which Jesus lived in the flesh was a life of faith faith in his Father in heaven, faith in his brethren upon the earth. And what is to be noticed most of all is this combination of Author and Finisher. We see Jesus beginning his course of faith, we also see him finishing it. With regard to other believers, it is by an act of faith on our part that we comprehend a reward to be in store for them. But the reward of Jesus is before our eyes. That reward is to be clearly seen by us if we have any power of spiritual perception at all. We see the faith of one who submits to death with the certainty that he will rise again, and in due time he does rise again. Jesus is at the right hand of God, for he does actually rule over many human hearts, He did not pass through suffering and shame into an obscurity which was only the last stage of the suffering and shame. His present glory is a manifest thing, manifest in the light of more tests than one. It is a glory perceptible from the common historian"s point of view. The richness and depth of that glory become more and more apparent when the eye of a real Christian is turned upon it; he looks for things and sees things which to the world are only names. And yet what appears to our eyes is a very imperfect representation of the reality proposed to him and seen by him. He saw more with his sense of truth, his power of insight, his superiority to this world"s considerations, than we can see. And along with the end he saw the way to it. Well might he warn rash, would-be disciples to count the cost, for he himself had counted the cost to begin with. Thus must we ever look at Jesus, not in one part of his career, but in all taken together. The cross and the shame must not be separated from the seat of honor and of power. Nor must the end be looked at apart from the way. We also have a joy set before us, namely, that of attaining to companionship with Jesus. When we look away to Jesus we look, not only to an example, to an inspiration, but also to a goal. Y.
Vers. 2, 3. What Christ was exposed to.
I PHYSICAL PAIN. He endured a cross. When the hour and. authority of darkness came upon him, he was left to those tender mercies of the wicked which are cruel. It was part of his victory to endure whatever men chose to inflict in the way of pain. All who afterwards had to endure crosses, all who were thrown to wild beasts, burnt, etc., knew that their Savior had been in exactly the same path. He did not choose the cross; it came in the way he had to take to the joy. If it had been the Roman amphitheatre, the stake, or the rack of the Inquisition, he would have gone with equal willingness. Whatever suffering evil men in their recklessness thought fit to inflict, he was ready for it. And we, always determined in the way of duty, service, honor, and reward, must also be ready for all that comes in the way of pain. Notice the force of" endure," the verb corresponding to the substantive upomonh . Not only did he bear the cross as a Stoic might have done, in grim silence, but with the veritable patience of one testifying for God. In all his bearing there was love, meekness, and patient waiting for the joy yet to be revealed.
II A SHAMEFUL REPUTATION. Christ might have been put to death cruelly and yet not shamefully. Shame, according to human reckoning, was added to keen pain. But human shame could not reach to the height of out" Leader"s magnanimity. He had too clear a view of everything to be affected by mere reputation. The cross is not shameful to us. Things reckoned shameful are largely so according to custom. What would be shameful in one age and country has no such repute in another age and country. Hence, while we can at once see the pain of the cross, we cannot see the shame. But we can understand that there would be a shame when we recollect that it has even been counted a privilege to die by the headsman"s axe, and not by the hangman"s rope. And this shame would be a great difficulty in the way of the apostles in preaching Christ; indeed, we know it actually was so. It is not the slightest difficulty now, however. How an old Roman would have laughed to hear it predicted that the cross of crucifixion could ever become an ornament! What men reckoned shameful has proved the way to glory and exaltation. He who conquered the worst men could do to him, might welt take a place at the right hand of God.
III BITTER TAUNTS. The shameful repute of hanging on a cross could not but come into the reflections of Jesus; but also to the silent insult of the cross itself was added the bitterest words men could find. But let men do their worst. All things Work together for good to them that love God." And surely of such Jesus is facile princeps. Taunts bound back from the innocent and the God-fearing as arrows do from one who is thoroughly clad in amour. 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 vv3–4 Consider Him that endured such contradiction
Heb_12:3
Consider Him that endured such contradiction
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Christs afflictions a lesson for His people:
All heaven considers or looks at Christ.
The angels look at Him with reverence and adoring wonder, as their Lord and King. All hell considers or looks at Christ. The devils look at Him with terror and alarm, as their Judge and the Author of their punishment. But neither heaven nor hell can get such precious views of Christ as can those whom Christ came to redeem. They consider Him as the Lawgiver who shows the path of duty, as the Redeemer who shows the way of life. They consider Him as the Physician who heals their spiritual diseases, as the Pattern after which they are themselves to copy. They consider Him who endured the contradiction of sinners, in order that they may be not wearied, nor faint in their minds. The flowers that bloom upon a thousand hills, in more than royal stateliness, are rich in fragrant moisture; but it is not every gaudy insect that can extract the honey they yield. So, Christ, however rich and precious He be to those who know Him, is rich and precious to them alone. The ungodly get nothing by their contemplation of Him, except, indeed, a greater aversion ever to contemplate Him again. Believers are always benefited by this exercise. They are made better, wiser, holier, happier, by it. Looking unto Jesus is the attitude of spiritual health, the posture of spiritual activity, the habit of spiritual enjoyment: it is a blessed exercise--it strengthens the soul, it animates the heart, it enlivens the whole frame of the inner man. And while it is beneficial to all who engage heartily in it, be their circumstances what they may, it is peculiarly beneficial to all those who are in distress or perplexity. The contemplation of Him who suffered the contradiction of sinners hinders the mind from becoming weary and faint.
I. LOOK AT THE PICTURE WHICH THE APOSTLE HERE EXHIBITS. It is the picture of Him who endured such contradiction of sinners. It is the picture of a mighty Being, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It represents Him, however, as man. It represents Him as suffering contradiction, that is, animosity, hatred, and persecution. It represents Him as suffering all this from sinners. It represents the suffering as being in every respect intense, aggravated, and indescribable. Let us seek to fill our minds with a sense of what He underwent.
1. The sufferings of Christ were Divinely appointed and tremendously severe. They were not the mere natural evils which are shed upon us, all in consequence of Adams disobedience. They were singular, peculiar, and transcendental. They had no like, no parallel. They were infinite sufferings.
2. The subject of Christs suffering is deserving of consideration because, had He chosen, He could have avoided them. But He did not so choose. He did not spare Himself. He gave Himself up to death for us all.
3. Again, in estimating the contradiction of sinners endured by Christ, let us remember that He was, through out the whole of it, actuated by disinterested motives.
4. Once more, Jesus did not deserve the punishment that was inflicted upon Him.
5. Lastly, the nature of Christs endurance will be still more strikingly manifested when it is recollected that it was borne for the sake of those who inflicted it.
II. Let us now speak of THE LESSONS CONVEYED BY THE PICTURE on which we have been meditating.
1. By looking to the afflictions of Christ we derive materials for encouragement, because we could not of ourselves do what Christ has done for us. We may endure contradiction of sinners, as Christ Himself did; but ours will never be such contradiction as His.
2. Again, by looking to the tribulations of Christ we derive materials of encouragement, because we should not expect to be treated better than He Himself was.
3. By looking to the tribulations of Christ we derive materials of encouragement, because, as our great Model and Exemplar, He has exhibited to us a specimen of patient endurance and submission under the most dreadful inflictions.
4. By looking to the tribulations of Christ we derive materials of encouragement, because we find that, as our great High Priest and Redeemer, He is able to sympathise with us in all our afflictions.
5. Lastly, by looking to the tribulations of Christ we derive materials of encouragement, because, as He triumphed over all His enemies, so shall we if we be partakers of His salvation. Christians are one with their Redeemer. (Alex. Nisbet.)
The endurance of Christ
The contemplation of Christs sufferings may, or may not, be spiritually beneficial to us. It is possible to occupy our attention with the physical side of the Passion to the exclusion of the moral and spiritual, and to think almost exclusively of the sufferings and scarcely at all of the Sufferer. Such contemplation may work upon our feelings much in the same way as thrilling incidents in a powerful work of fiction, and create a spurious sympathy with the Sufferer which cannot produce the effect which the passion of our Lord ought to have upon our lives. The remedy is to be found mainly in considering Him that endured--in keeping before us the personality of the Sufferer. But we shall only rightly consider the Sufferer Himself when we keep in mind the purpose He had in His endurance. He suffers for sinners, as well as from sinners; and He suffers for the direct purpose of removing the contradiction which He endures--to take away sins. And all profitable contemplation of the sufferings of Christ ought to have in it the desire and willingness to have its purpose fulfilled in us. In considering Him we must keep in mind His faultlessness; the entire absence of any justification for the contradiction. He was not only faultless, but good. Although graced with the perfect qualities of human virtue, and rich in the beneficent works of goodness, He endured the contradiction of sinners. Remember, too, that within, and perfectly conjoined to, that holy humanity, was all the fulness of God. In every act of endurance there is the manhood which endures as human, and there is the deeper endurance of God underlying it all. The word contradiction is here used to include the whole of the opposition which our Lord experienced from sinners. The Cross was only the climax of a long and varied course of antagonism out of which it sprung, without which it would not have been reached, and by which alone it can be understood and duly estimated. The first contradiction Christ endured was in the unbelief which met Him. He was the True One and the Truth; but they affirmed Him either deceived or a deceiver--utterly untrustworthy. But this contradiction advanced to open condemnation. He was said to be a gluttonous man, &c. They said His power over evil spirits was due to a league between Himself and the prince of the devils. They charged Him with being the enemy of God and man, a blasphemer and an evildoer. Remember who it was against whom all these false and bitter things were spoken. Consider Him, and see His brave endurance. And there was an element in all this contradiction which added to its painfulness. It was not the result, in general, of a mistake, which could be excused by the Sufferer. It had its root in personal hate (Joh_15:24). And He knew the cause ofthat hate. It came out of a conscious moral antipathy. His pure, holy, humble, unselfish life made them conscious of the unreality and hollowness of their assumed excellence. And He endured this hate--He who combined in His own person all that is gracious in God and lovable in man. This antagonism and hate could not fail to proceed to acts of violence if occasion should arise. They took up stones to stone Him; and, think you, was it not as if He felt the blows of hardness of heart hurled at Him as He preserved Himself from this attempt upon His life? To Christ the spiritual was not less real than the physical; and in every infliction of suffering and wrong upon Him by the hands of wicked men He felt the spirit of the acts--the sin of the world--going right down deep into His soul. Yes, thepainful pressure of the crown of thorns, the piercing of nails and the anguish of the body, were means through which He bore in Himself the contradiction of sinners and of sin. One point more: This endurance of the contradiction of sinners was out of consideration to them. He might have saved Himself, and have made them to feel His contradiction against themselves. But He suffered Himself, instead of making them to suffer. His consideration for them was grounded in love--love to them and to us. In love He endured seeing them the opposite of that which He could love; endured receiving from them the reverse of what He had a right to expect, the opposite of that which His coming had made possible. If He could have hated and despised those who contradicted Him, it would have been less painful to His spirit to endure the contradiction. But the more He loved us, the more bitter became every experience, the more pointed and painful every act of wrong. Consider Him who endured, etc., and consider Him, with this fact in mind, that in thus enduring He was exhibiting and putting forth His gracious power to save us from sinning against Him. The purpose of His Cross is to reconcile us and all things to Himself; to bring us to harmony of mind and life with Him; to destroy our contradiction by enduring it. (R. Vaughan, M. A.)
The great source of courage:
Consider Him. Learn to look up. It is an exercise in which we have to be trained and drilled until we have mastered it. Unbelief gives a man a crick in the neck so that he cannot look up. But faith, like the eagle, sets her eyes on the sun and soars away until earth is lost in the mists below, and she lights on the highest mount of God. If we would have a life of singing and triumphant courage, we must get into this habit--the heavenly habit of considering Jesus. Consider Him. This is everything. In the Christian life Christ Himself is the Source and Strength of all. A man is a Christian exactly as he receives Christ into his thought, and heart, and life. And this is the order, through the thought into the heart and thence into the life. Therefore consider Christ--gather the thoughts in from other things, and set them upon Christ. In everything that we would get hold of thoroughly we must give our minds to it, as we say. And this means give your mind to Christ. Christ is to us what we will let Him be. If I will let Him into my life, He will fill it with light and blessedness, as the sun fills the heavens. Consider Him--not the truth about Him. Lectures on botany are poor things to put in place of flowers. Sermons and teachings about Christ are poor things indeed to put in place of Him. It is more than ever needful in times like these, when life is such a rush and whirl, that we make room and leisure in our lives to cultivate this art of considering Christ. Alas! what hurried and passing glimpses of out great Master do content us! There is a bit of the country--than which, I think, there is nothing more lovely in all England--that I have often passed through in the railway carriage; eagerly I have looked out of the window, over the deep valleys, woods overhanging woods, going down to misty depths, and away to the moorland, stretching up to the rugged heights; then suddenly a bank of earth has blotted it all out; a narrow cutting has hemmed us in--and then the tunnel darkness. Out again and across some viaduct; looking down on the clear stream amidst the boulders below, another glance of the hills, and then a new obstruction. And some people call that seeing the country. How much can one consider it amid such vexatious glimpses? But some fine day I have left the railway station and stepped out on to the moor, and in a few moments have stood amidst its stillness, the great unbroken stretch of earth and sky, the music of some little brook and the plovers call not breaking the silence, only heightening it. Then I have gone up on to the granite height, and there under the blue heaven I have looked away, away on every side, over the miles of country, catching here and there the faint, silvery line of the sea. Then and then only I saw it--thus I could consider it. We must get away alone up into the mount of the Lord if we would consider Him. The busier you are the more you need it: this thinking about Him until He comes to reveal Himself. With many bow would half an hour of such considering transform the life I He, my Lord and Captain, my Friend and Helper, my Deliverer and my God. (M. G. Pearse.)
Suffering and glory:
No pain, no palm; no thorn, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown. (Wm. Penn.)
Consider Him:
Our troubles are but as the slivers and chips of His Cross. (J. Trapp.)
Christ with us in trial:
One thing which contributed to make Caesars soldiers invincible was their seeing him always take his share in danger, and never desire any exemption from labour and fatigue. We have a far higher incentive in the war for truth and goodness when we consider Him wire endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Considering Christ in persecution
Li Cha Mi, a Chinese preacher, was nearly killed by robbers during the excitement against foreigners, in 1872. At a subsequent conference, he said; You have all heard of my sufferings during the past few months. I wish to say that these sufferings were very slight. It was easy to endure pain when I could feel that I bore it for Christ. It is wonderful--I cannot explain it. When attacked by the robbers, and beaten almost to death, I felt no pain. Their blows did not seem to hurt me at all. Everything was bright and glorious. Heaven seemed to open, and I thought I saw Jesus waiting to receive me. It was beautiful. I have no words to describe it. Since that time I seem to be a new man. I now know what it is to love not the world. My affections are set on things above. Persecutions trouble me not. I forget all my sorrows when I think of Jesus.
I call nothing on earth my own. I find that times of trial are best for me. When all is quiet and prosperous, I grow careless and yield to temptation, but when persecutions come, then I fly to Christ. The fiercer the trial, the better it is for my soul. (The Christian.)
Lest ye be wearied
Spiritual weariness
I. THERE IS A CONFLICT WHICH STILL DEMANDS OUR FAITH AND PATIENCE, The great purpose of life should be to attain the highest excellent of which our nature is susceptible. This involves difficulties.
II. WE ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING HEART, AND GROWING WEARY IN THIS CONFLICT. Perhaps we may hardly wonder at this, if we think of the nature of the conflict itself, its continuousness, its unintermittent character. This result ensues, too, from the providential trials under which we are sometimes called to carry on the conflict. This danger also arises from the perpetual vigilance and resistance which are required to be exercised against custom, against kindness, against the slumbrous atmosphere in which we live.
III. THIS WEARINESS AND FAILURE OF SPIRITUAL DETERMINATION IS AN EVIL WHICH OUGHT TO BE STRENUOUSLY RESISTED. Weariness and exhaustion are fatal to real enjoyment. They are equally fatal to work. When worn down by fatigue, you have neither strength nor spirit for work. Moreover, there must be much danger in this state of weariness and exhaustion.
IV. THE REST MEANS OF AVOIDING THIS WEARINESS AND SPIRITUAL EXHAUSTION IS STEADILY TO CONTEMPLATE JESUS. Look upon Him in such a way as to call out comparison with),ourselves, and it will encourage you, and enable you to rise above this exhaustion and fear.
1. The greatness and nobleness of the Sufferer!
2. Consider the poignancy and the severity of His suffering.
3. Consider the innocency of the Sufferer.
4. Consider the spirit in which Jesus suffered. (J. C. Harrison.)
Discouragements in the Christian life
I. MANY PERSONS ARE DISCOURAGED AT THE GREAT DIFFERENCE WHICH THEY EXPERIENCE IN THEIR FEELINGS, WHEN THEY RECEIVE INSTRUCTION FROM THE MINISTRATION OF OTHER PEOPLES MINDS, AND WHEN THEY ARE OBLIGED TO FURNISH THEMSELVES WITH THE TRUTH WHICH IS REQUIRED FOR THEIR DAILY CHRISTIAN LIFE.
II. MANY ARE LIABLE TO BECOME WEARIED AND FAINT FROM POSITIVE REACTION, FROM DEPRESSION ARISING FROM EXHAUSTION.
III. PERSONS OF A TIMID NATURE, WHOSE RELIGIOUS LIFE HAS, EITHER BY EDUCATION OR FROM SOMETHING IN THEMSELVES, TURNED UPON CONSCIENCE, OR IN WHOM THEIR RELIGIOUS LIFE IS OF THE TYPE OF CONSCIENCE RATHER THAN OF LOVE, OR TRUST, OR HOPE, ARE PECULIARLY LIABLE TO DISCOURAGEMENT AND WEARINESS.
IV. GREAT DISCOURAGEMENT BEFALLS MEN WHO HAVE A RELIGION WITHOUT ANY SOCIAL ELEMENT TO CORROBORATE IT.
V. MANY PERSONS ARE BROUGHT INTO GREAT DISCOURAGEMENT AND UNCERTAINTY AS TO WHAT THEY SHALL DO, BECAUSE THEY HAVE MISTAKEN THE FULL PURPORT OF RELIGION.
VI. THE NEGLECT TO CONSOLIDATE RELIGIOUS FEELINGS INTO HABITS IS FREQUENTLY AN OCCASION OF DISCOURAGEMENT, BECAUSE IT LEAVES MEN SUBJECT TO ALL THE FLUCTUATIONS OF FEELING.
VII. MANY ARE CONVICTED OF SIN LESS DEEPLY AT THE BEGINNING OF THEIR CHRISTIAN LIFE THAN LONG AFTER CONVERSION; AND THIS NOT ONLY ALARMS, BUT SERIOUSLY DISCOURAGES THEM. (H. W. Beecher.)
Spiritual weariness and its antidote
I. THE LIABILITY OF CHRISTIANS TO SPIRITUAL WEARINESS. Arising from
1. The little advancement we seem to make in spiritual excellence.
2. The little good we seem to accomplish in all our efforts to serve our fellows.
3. The little difference which Providence in its dispensation makes between us and those who are the enemies of Christ.
4. The little influence which our best efforts seem to have in correcting the evils of our age.
II. THE ANTIDOTE OF CHRISTIANS TO SPIRITUAL WEARINESS. Reflection on Christ will renew our energies, reinvigorate the soul.
1. Consider what He endured. The contradiction of sinners.
2. Consider how He endured (1Pe_2:23).
3. Consider why He endured. For His enemies. (Homilist.)
Liability of saints to faint-heartedness
It was stated some time ago, that a man had discovered an invention for making a form of crystallised carbon, which to all intents and purposes was a diamond; but his invention was useless, because of the difficulty and expense in getting any vessel strong enough to bear the intense heat to which it must be subjected during the process. And so with some of Gods saints, they faint beneath the trial, and the saintly virtue is not formed within their characters, because they have lost the power of endurance. (Canon Newbolt.)
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 vv2–4 2. Looking unto Jesus. In running, Jesus should be…
2. Looking unto Jesus. In running, Jesus should be constantly regarded as the example. Finisher of the faith. Not our faith, but the faith in the Greek. The Gospel, which rests upon faith, is meant rather than the individual faith of the saint. Jesus is its author and perfected it. He is the exemplar of all who live by faith. Hence we should look to him. For the joy that was set before him. The joy of saving men and of sitting at God's right hand. Endured the cross. Not only its pain, but its shame. It was in that age the most ignominious of deaths. Set down at the right hand, etc. In the place of heavenly honor.
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 v3 Heb_12:3. Consider.—Place your sufferings in comparison with His. Against…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Heb_12:3. Consider.—Place your sufferings in comparison with His. Against Himself.—R.V. renders “against themselves,” which is a well-supported reading. Wearied.—R.V. renders “that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.” Stuart renders, “lest, becoming discouraged in your minds, ye grow weary.”
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Heb_12:4. Unto blood.—The last extremity; the surrender of life. Implying that Christ had so resisted. From this we infer that there had been no actual martyrs among the Christian Jews addressed by the writer.
Heb_12:5.—Better read as a question, “Have ye forgotten?”
Heb_12:8. Bastards.—νόθοι, illegitimate children, who cannot be properly thought of as God’s spiritual children.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_12:3-8
The Strain of Maintaining Christian Profession.—These verses indicate three sources whence strain cannot fail to come, and they suggest considerations which may help the professor successfully to endure the strain, whencesoever it may come.
I. One source is the contradiction of sinners.—They that would live godly will, in every age, suffer some form of outward persecution. The persecution need not always take coarse and violent forms; in our times it takes refined and subtle forms, which are often harder to bear. Let any man to-day try to live a really spiritual life, and teach men really spiritual truth, lifting off material coverings, and bringing to view spiritual realities, he will be sure to meet with persecutions at the hands of those who are zealous for the literality and materiality of religion. Our Lord embodied an ever-acting principle when He said to His disciples, “Ye are not of the world; therefore the world hateth you.” Put the earnest young Christian into the worldly-toned house of business to-day, and he will get the “contradiction of sinners against himself,” as certainly as did the Christian men and women in the old Pagan days. The peril of persecution from without, on account of our religious opinions, or our religious life, must be duly estimated. What can bring us strength to endure? “Consider Him.” “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master.” We need not wonder that we should be misrepresented and misunderstood, for so was He. We need not wonder even that our words should be resolutely turned against us, for so were His. We need not wonder even if we are the victims of hostile schemes and combinations, for so was He. But He triumphed over all; and, in spite of all, lived through His “godly, righteous, and sober life”: and so may we. The principles on which He triumphed may be ours. The spirit in which He triumphed may be ours. We need not faint.
II. Another source of strain is the weakness of self.—There is such an easily reached limit to our power of resistance. We can try a little; but if we do not immediately succeed, we give up trying. Our striving against sin is at best but a poor thing; there is seldom anything heroic about it. Cranmer may be weak enough to yield when the stake is right in view, but we weakly shrink back long before we reach any such extremities. To us it can be said, with a most pointed application, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” We are far enough away from the martyr spirit. What shall so inspire us as to lift us into moral strength for enduring? To some extent the story of the martyr ages; but chiefly the thought of Him who did resist unto blood—who did wrestle with sin, and yielded His life in the struggle, but yielded it only when the victory was won. We must never wonder if the demand upon our moral strength is such a demand as was made upon Christ’s. It is inspiration to us to look and see how He “resisted unto blood.”
III. Another source of strain is the discipline of God.—We wish that to be saved was to be saved once for all. And it is not. It is to be put into the school of God for discipline, involving chastisements, with a view to full sanctifying. God’s discipline is as that of a father with his sons.
1. There is love at the heart of it.
2. There is wisdom in the arranging of it.
3. But there is no hesitation in putting all needful severities into it. The Christian can no more expect to understand the discipline of God than the son can expect to understand the corrections and restraints of his father. The son endures through the trustfulness of his love. And the Christian endures in the same way. No noble human character ever yet existed that had not come out of a school of discipline; and no saintly character ever yet was found among us which had not come out of the disciplinary school of God. What shall help us to bear this form of strain? Looking unto Jesus, who, “though He were a Son, learned obedience by the things which He suffered,” while in God’s earthly school of discipline.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_12:3. Christ’s Enduring Contradiction.
I. What forms of contradiction Christ was subjected to.—
1. His design in founding a spiritual kingdom was contradicted.
2. His spirit and character were misunderstood both by His own disciples and by His enemies. He was often hindered, as at Capernaum and Gadara, and above all at Jerusalem. And at last He was turned out and crucified.
II. In what forms, and on what principles, did Christ overcome the contradiction?—
1. An amazing patience was shown by Him. He proved the power that lies in “patient continuance in well-doing.”
2. The consciousness of His Divine mission sustained Him. A man can always be strong if in his soul is the cherished conviction that he has a work to do. “A man is immortal until his work is done.”
3. His faith in the abiding presence of God with Him constantly sustained Him. St. Paul in this sense of God’s presence comes a long way behind our Divine Lord, and yet he could say, “I can do all things through Him who strengtheneth me.”
III. How does Christ’s overcoming contradiction become an encouragement and a help to us?—None of us can ever have so extreme a conflict as He had. But none can ever have any conflict that will be really different to His.
1. His was a conquest on our behalf. It was really our foe He disabled. And it is a weakened, humbled foe that is left to us to fight.
2. He presented the example which may guide us to wise methods in our conflict.
3. His triumph has brought Him a trust of grace which He now dispenses to all who follow Him in the same holy war, and are subject now to a similar “contradiction of sinners.” Whatever then may be the precise form which our difficulties take, as we endeavour practically to live the Christian life amid depressing and opposing circumstances, we are distinctly called to endure, in Christ’s strength, for Christ’s sake, and after the pattern of Christ’s example.
Heb_12:4. War with Sin to the Death.—Read only with the imperfect human vision, the “great cloud of witnesses” are but men, who sustained human relationships, fulfilled human duty, and suffered human sorrows. Read with the illuminations of the Divine Spirit, they are more than men; they are spiritual men, carrying on a spiritual warfare, gaining spiritual triumphs, and looking for the eternal rewards of righteousness. And such as they were we are or may be. Looking down on our lives, they may seem to be wholly human things, full of human cares, human toils, and human associations. But learn to, look aright, and then, though our world-sphere may seem to be insignificant, we are really occupying the places of the old heroes, and doing the work of the old giants. We are spiritual men, wrestling with human circumstances, and forcing them to yield us spiritual strength, spiritual riches.
I. Christian life, in all its aspects, presents to us sin as a fact.—St. Paul says, as an unfolding of private and personal experience that somewhat surprises us: “For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do.… I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members” (Rom_7:15; Rom_7:21-23). We can sympathise with him. It is the fact, that conscious evil is intimately connected with all the expressions and associations of the Christian life.
1. The field of Christian thought. The conceptions, imaginations, desires, of Christian thinking. Who can say, “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin”? There is no side of the Christian life in which the subtlety of sin is so painful and oppressive. Even in the house of God we cannot keep our thoughts free from that which is unsuitable and disturbing.
2. The Christian’s bodily nature. Desires, dispositions, passions, tempers, lusts, are closely related to bodily conditions, and the sincere man is conscious that they are not always kept under hand, subject to authority. There are indulgences of bodily evil which do not come forth to public view, or bring us into the condemnation of even social law. In even the outer relations of life evil is always near, in forms of omission or of commission. There are falterings in honesty, in truth, in long-suffering, in faithfulness, in speech, and in duty. He must be a very bold man, and withal a very foolish one, who thinks he can read his life in the light of the spiritual and holy laws of God, and can say, “All these have I kept from my youth up.” Sin is not only an existing thing; it exists in activity; it is ever moving and working as an opposing force. The “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”; in it is a world of undeveloped evil capacity. Out of the heart proceedeth all kinds of evil. It is not properly sin that all these evil things should be in our hearts. Sin is really something done, something wrong cherished, something bad that is sought after. The sadness of sin lies in this—that it exists in activity; the evils in our hearts are always proceeding forth, coming out. St. Paul speaks of the “motions of sins in our members.” It would have mattered little if they had kept still. It was imperilling, it was humiliating, that, serpent-like, they writhed and twisted, and strove to lift up the head and thrust forth a deadly sting. He speaks of evil as warring within him. He had not cared, if it had only sheathed sword, and lain still; but it was perpetually harnessed, sallying forth, and watching for every opportunity of striking a deadly blow. We need to face this fact—the evil in us is evil in activity, in an activity of opposition to the work of grace in our souls. It is a masked thief, actively engaged in stealing our peace; a masked slanderer, trying to make us think ill of our God; a masked serpent, watching to thrust out a sting, and fill our natures with the poison of hell; and a masked murderer, who would, if he could, destroy both body and soul.
II. The Christian life in us is a Divine force, also existing in activity, and conflicting with sin up to the measure of blood.—St. Paul says, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” That gives the true idea of Christian life. It is “Christ living in us.” It is the power of God dwelling in us, so as to be the main-spring, the motive-power, the controlling principle, of our life. As truly as the soul possesses the body and uses its faculties, so truly does God possess the soul and express Himself in all the powers and workings of the soul. Evil is near to us, closely associated with every aspect of the religious life; but this new thing, this vital force, this power of the Divine, is nearer, is in closer relations, is truly ours. However the evil may get in to us, it is still an outside thing. It is a parasite on the outside of the tree: this Divine life is the very sap which flows in the tree itself. The parasite may cling very closely, it may even pierce the bark, but it can never be more than an outside thing; while every duct and vessel of the tree is filled with this flowing life of God. Being the Divine Spirit, it must be active. We cannot think of God otherwise than as ever working. And it is active, we may be sure, to mould character, to settle right dispositions, to influence and tone human relationships, to recover from human failings, to battle with spiritual foes. The activity of the Christ-life will be seen in opposition to that evil which comes so close, puts on so many forms, and stands in such constant antagonism to everything that is good and God-like. Wherever there is active evil there is an opposing active good. Wherever there are microbes there are also phagocytes. Every man’s life is the scene of a twofold conflict. Each of these represents the other. In the physical sphere there is a perpetual struggle between disease and health, death and life. Every breath of air we breathe, every measure of food we eat, has poisonous matter with it, and may breed disease. Our vital force is constantly trying to eliminate the poison. So in the sphere of morals. In our spirit is present, active evil, only kept down by the unceasing activity of the new life in Christ. Our text gives the measure up to which God expects this conflict to go. “Resisting unto blood.” There must be this striving against sin, even at the peril of expending life itself in the striving. As the martyr stands for the truth, and resists evil, up to the very sacrifice of his life, so must every Christian man expect, and even desire, to stand for purity, for truth, for God, resisting all the forms of evil that may assail him, even up to the measure of the sacrifice of life itself. In the old days of chivalry, when tournaments were held, and knights, clad in armour, met within the lists to prove their prowess, and young squires fought to win their knightly spurs, the struggle was not usually for life: whoever was unhorsed was reckoned to be vanquished. But if there was family feud, and deadly hatred filled the mind of the combatant, he would go up and touch his foeman’s shield with the point of his lance. That meant war to the death. In that case there must be “resisting unto blood”—the life of one or the other of those combatants must stream forth upon those lists. Such is the conflict of evil and good within the Christian. It is an irreconcilable feud; no play of blunted spears. When a man becomes a Christian, he virtually goes up to strike with the lance-point the shield of his foe, and there must be no putting spear in rest, no sheathing of the sword, until the foe is vanquished, and the victory of righteousness is won. This is the standard of the Christian conflict; but in us the conflict too often falls below the standard. God, indeed, does not often call for the extreme self-sacrifice. Within this limit, how real is our battle with sin? How much has it cost us to resist sin, taking form as
(1) weaknesses of Christian character;
(2) neglect of Christian duties;
(3) besetting sins;
(4) social and business errors and failings? Unto blood? So far from our life-struggle reaching unto blood, there is a much smaller test which we cannot bear to have applied to us. It has not reached to the imperilling of a limb. What passion, like a hand, has been resolutely cut off, and cast away? What sinful appetite, like a right eye, has been determinedly plucked out, and cast away? What questionable business habit which brought money in, what comfortableness which led to the neglect of Christian ordinances, has, like a foot, been cut off, and cast away? Would we gain the full victory? Then must we keep “looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”
Heb_12:5. Men’s Persecutions as God’s Chastenings.—“The chastening of the Lord.” This expression might seem to be especially suited to the distresses that come by disease, calamity, failure; pain, bereavement—things in which man’s action is not evident, but God’s providential workings are very manifest. It is, however, singular and suggestive that the writer has so distinctly in mind the persecutions which the Jewish Christians were then suffering, and the strain which those persecutions were putting on their loyalty to Christ. Even those persecutions he would have them think of as God’s chastisements—things which God was graciously using for the carrying out of His disciplinary work. Illustration may be taken from the nation of Israel. They were subject to oppression and persecution from many outside foes—Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Syrian, Roman; but those foes could never be other than instruments in the hands of Jehovah, for the disciplinary work needed by His people. The manifest human element in outward persecutions makes it difficult to realise the Divine element in them. If God is in them, and working His work by means of them, then of these things we may be sure:
1. They are held within strict limitations.
2. The schemes of men in arranging them have no security of being carried out.
3. We are not left alone in the enduring of them.
4. Instead of injuring us, they can only do us the good God has assigned for them to do.
Heb_12:7-8. The Fatherliness of the Heavenly Father.—We are permitted to use our earthly paternal relations in the endeavour to understand the paternal relations of God. But this is often a difficulty to devout souls, who hesitate to compare the heavenly Father with imperfect earthly fathers. It may be helpful, therefore, to present and to illustrate this point. There is a perfect fatherliness conceivable. If we could put together the many forms of fatherliness which have been presented by unusually good fathers, we should have a satisfactory apprehension of it. That fatherliness can but be incompletely represented in any one human father; but that fatherliness—ideal fatherliness—is found in the relations of God with us.
Heb_12:7. Life an Education.—God’s purpose in placing us in this world is not chiefly that He may put us to the proof, but that He may educe and train our faculties and gifts, and make the best of us, whatever our natural virtues or failures. This is the proof of Scripture, and of the teachings of experience. Life is an education.
I. God educates us by means of our physical needs.—We alone, of all God’s creatures, are sent into this world unprovided with any of those things which are necessary to the support of physical life. God has not made our task easy. He does not mean that work shall be mechanical, but that it shall tax our ingenuity, and bring out our mental powers to the uttermost. Relatively, too, we are one of the weakest of living beings. We must work. That is the law of life. It strengthens the mind, produces patience, endurance, forethought, courage. Thus is God educating us.
II. God educates us by means of our mental needs.—He has implanted in nature that which awakens our curiosity, and He has implanted in us a hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, and the result is education. There is in us all a love of the beautiful. Our hearts go out after these things in nature. They have a strange power to make us think.
III. God educates us by the sorrows and trials of life.—The lower animals are almost exempt from suffering. “Life to them is a maximum of enjoyment, with the minimum of suffering.” Man is born to trouble. All life is leavened with pain, forebodings, vain regrets, unsatisfied longings. Why? Because “God dealeth with you as with sons.” “Mystery of pain.” The saintliest of men are those who have suffered the most. It behoved even the great Captain of our salvation to be made perfect through suffering.
IV. God educates us by our spiritual needs.—Our greatest want is to know God. All feel the need of propitiation and reconciliation. Just as nature satisfies mind, so the Bible satisfies spiritual needs.
1. The text throws light on the mystery of the present. We are often puzzled by the question, “What will become of the heathen?” If life is only a probation, I can show no light; but if life is an education, then this earth is only the lowest room in God’s school; and in other spheres and at other times the education which circumstances thwarted and hindered here can be carried on under happier circumstances.
2. It throws light on the mystery of the future. Here is a powerful argument for a future life. Our education here is at best but in its initial stage when death removes us. Our education here is only the learning of the alphabet. In our Father’s house are many mansions, and in one of these our education will be continued.—Angus M. Mackay, B.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Heb_12:6. The Uses of Affliction.—Note the difference between summer storms and winter ones, the latter rushing over the earth with all their violence; and if any poor remnants of foliage or flowers have lingered behind, these are swept along at one gust, leaving nothing but desolation; while the former make all things to rise as it were with renewed beauty,—the types of the difference between the storms of affliction as coming upon the Christian and the sinner.—Guesses at Truth.
Perfect through Suffering.—Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches are better for beating; grapes come not to the proof till they come to the press; spices smell best when bruised; young trees root faster for shaking; gold looks brighter for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; the palm tree proves the better for pressing. Such is the condition of God’s people; they are most triumphant when most tempted, most glorious when most afflicted.—Bogatsky.
Heb_12:7. God’s Dealing with Us.—Visiting a person who was in deep affliction and sorrow, Gotthold was told by the family that he was in the garden. Thither he followed, and found him employed in clearing a vine of its superfluous leaves. After a friendly salute, he inquired what he was doing. “I find,” was the reply, “that, owing to the abundant rain, this vine is overgrown with wood and leaves, which prevent the sun from reaching and ripening the grapes; I am, therefore, pruning part of them away, that it may bring its fruit to maturity.” Gotthold rejoined, “And do you find that in this operation the vine resists and opposes you? If not, why are you displeased that a gracious God should do to you what your vine must not be displeased that you do to it?”
The Estimate of Things lost.—
For so it falls out,
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.—Shakespeare.
Like birds, whose beauties languish, half concealed,
Till, mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes
Expanded, shine with azure, green, and gold;
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!—Young.
Farewell I did not know thy worth,
But thou art gone, and now ‘tis prized:
So angels walked unknown on earth,
But when they flew were recognised.
Thomas Hood.
’Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels
Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day
Beside you, and lie down at night by you,
Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep;
And all at once they leave you, and you know them.—Robert Browning.
Not to understand a treasure’s worth
Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.
Cowper.
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 v4 When a collegiate student we were frequently made to…
ARGUMENT 17
CASTIGATION AND SANCTIFICATION.
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When a collegiate student we were frequently made to mourn over the experiences of some of our comrades. Those were memorable occasions when the President of the Faculty at chapel service announced from the rostrum the expulsion of one or more of our school companions. Frequently the college was transformed into a Bochim of weeping on the announcement of the sad news. How striking the contrast with commencement day, when twenty of us young men delivered our orations to an audience of three thousand, and received our diplomas with the blessing of our teachers! This world is a great school in which God is teaching fifteen hundred millions of people, manifesting every conceivable diversity of character. After due and patient toil for their correction and culture, myriads proving utterly incorrigible are expelled from the school of probationary grace and turned over to Satan for an eternity of woe. Meanwhile thousands, having faithfully and courageously graduated amid the congratulatory shouts of the saints and angels, are crowned with diadems in the realms of fadeless glory. Thus the mighty waves of earth’s flooded population are rushing to diametrically opposite directions. All are born with an evil nature, resulting from the Fall, which must be eliminated by castigatory grace, if they ever go up to live in heaven. The ultimatum of these divine castigations is sanctification or damnation.
4. This letter was written just before the great Roman invasion, which desolated Palestine, destroyed Jerusalem and expatriated the Jews to the ends of the earth, inaugurating a great flood-tide of martyrdom.
5. Here we are admonished to be on the outlook for chastisements which must inevitably come to all, testing our stamina to the bottom.
6. “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” This is positive confirmatory proof that all have something in them which must be eliminated by chastisement, of hopeless ruin intervenes.
7. “For what son is there whom the Father chasteneth not?” This positively and unequivocally settles the question in favor of universal chastisement, without a solitary exception.
8. “But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partners, then are you bastards and not sons.” This verse sweeps all controversy forever from the field, settling the castigatory problem unequivocally in case of all of God’s children; irreconcilably demolishing the Zinzendorfian theology, which teaches that we receive complete purification in conversion. This castigatory simile is deduced from domestic government, which is the nucleus of civil society. The delinquency of home government and the relaxation of parental discipline are filling the world with anarchy, misrule, political dissension and commotion, this day. Solomon says, “If you beat a boy with a rod you shall save his soul.” Why do you chastise your children? To get the evil out which was born in them. Here we have a perfect illustrative parallel with God’s family. He says He chastises all of His children, and those who receive no chastisement are not His children, but bastards, i.e., illegitimate claimants, i.e., hypocrites. If you chastise your child when there is no evil in him you are a merciless tyrant and unworthy to be a parent. You would not dare say that God chastises His children unless He sees some evil in them to be eliminated by the castigatory rod. Hence the very fact that He chastises all of His children is incontestable proof that they all have some evil in them which must be eliminated by castigations. Therefore, the dogma that we get it all in conversion, i.e., that all Christians have pure hearts, flatly contradicts these Scriptures, and makes God a merciless tyrant, chastising His children when there is no evil in them to be eliminated.
9. Here we have the beautiful parallelism between domestic and divine government, vividly portrayed, inspiring the fervent exhortation, that we shall all “submit to the Father of spirits and live.”
10. “For they during a few days chastised us according to that which seemed good to them, but He for our profit in order that we partake of His holiness.” Here we have the castigatory problem clearly and forever solved, incontestably setting forth the end in view, i.e., that we become partakers of His holiness. In God, holiness is original; in us, it is imparted. Hence we do not have our own holiness but God’s. This Scripture forever settles the conclusion that the reception of God’s holiness on the part of His children puts an end to all divine chastisements. Hence we see that entire sanctification winds up all chastisements, as it eliminates all the hereditary evil, leaving nothing to be removed by farther chastisement. Are not sanctified people incident to the adversities of this life, like others? Certainly they are. But when we sink into God, adversity and prosperity become synonyms, and disappointments forever take their flight. God’s will never fails with me, if I do not antagonize it. Entire sanctification forever eliminates all antagonisms and puts an end to all disappointments. If I am lost in God’s will I certainly have no disappointments. The insults, rebuffs, criticisms, scandals, persecutions, bankruptcies, empty coffins, and open graves, which sorely chastise the unsanctified, become messengers of love and mercy over which the wholly sanctified can shout victory till Gabriel blows his trumpet. Baalam’s big curses were all turned into blessings before they reached Israel. “God worketh together for good all things to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). Truly God is in everything to His wholly sanctified people, brightening the darkest adversity with the sunshine of prosperity. The very things which chastise God’s unsanctified children are bright with blessing to all those who experience the death of sin and self.
11... “But afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto those who have been exercised by it.” We have here the Greek word gymnasium, so profoundly significant of all possible disciplinary tergiversations, essential to the perfect development of the entire physical organism.
Hence we see the inscrutable mercy of God’s providence and grace, which have placed us in this wonderful spiritual gymnasium, so indispensable to the complete development of our gifts and graces and thorough enduement, not only for the battlefields of probation, hut for the illimitable susceptibilities, capacities and achievements which await immortal intelligences in the illimitable cycles of celestial ages. “Therefore hold up the hands which hang down and the paralyzed knees.” We need our hands to work for God and our knees to worship Him. God says (Php 2:10),
“Every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, in earth and beneath the earth.”
Hence we see there is no defalcation. Those who do not how in this world will all how in hell. The knee is the worshipping joint. Hence it must be free from Satan’s paralysis. O, the magnitude of this awful knee paralysis in the churches In a great church in this city (San Francisco, Cal.) last Sunday morning, the pastor stood and all the people but myself sat during prayer. Nothing but the baptism with fire is competent to burn up this awful knee paralysis and restore the worship of God to our congregations.
13. “Make straight paths for your feet in order that the lame may not be turned out of the way, but rather healed.” In regeneration the omnipotent Christ raises the sinner from the dead. Yet he is affected with multitudinous ailments transmitted from Adam the first. It is the subsequent work of entire sanctification to eliminate all of these ailments and restore perfect soul-health. Since heaven is a perfect world, nothing can enter there having the slightest spiritual ailment. The great panacea, the infallible elixir, the cleansing blood, was not shed in heaven but on earth. Hence it must be applied here or never.
14. “Follow peace with all people and the sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord.” This verse is the grand climax of the wonderful book of Hebrews. Blind preachers have crazed the world on water baptism and other non-essential church rites and human creeds. Suppose they could find in the Bible, “Without water baptism, no one shall see the Lord,” they would vociferate themselves hoarse proclaiming it to the ends of the earth, and you would see the whole country flocking to receive this ordinance. Why do not they ring changes on “Without the sanctification no one shall see the Lord”? Dead men never get high enough to ring the bells of heaven. If these preachers could only get their souls converted to God and the devil’s black hand lifted from their spirits, and the light of the Holy Ghost poured into their minds, they would jump a million of miles beyond the water line and preach holiness to the Lord, like messengers from heaven. They are opposed to holiness because holiness is opposed to them. It means crucifixion, and they are not ready to die. Remember, “peace with all men” is the inseparable concomitant of this holiness, without which “no one shall see the Lord.” No wonder the sectarian churches fight it, as they are full of belligerents to all others. Sanctification always kills Satan’s sectarianism, and floods the soul with peace to all mankind. No one receives this grand sine qua non in conversion. This argument is addressed to none but God’s children, all of whom need castigation till they become partakers of God’s holiness. In our Savior’s prayer for the sanctification of his disciples (John 17), he certifies positively that the world, i.e., the sinners, can not receive it. God has conversion for all sinners and sanctification for all Christians. The opposition to sanctification in the churches is demonstrative proof that they are unconverted; for most assuredly all the children of God desire to be holy and hunger and thirst after righteousness, longing to be filled. What people want with religion is a conundrum, if they do not expect to get to heaven. Then there is no sense in making any profession of religion if you do not intend, by the grace of God, to reach entire sanctification, since failure, collapse and damnation are inevitable if you do not receive the “sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord.”
15. “Watching diligently lest any one may fall from the grace of God, lest some root of bitterness springing up may trouble you and through it many may be defiled.” Here we have a clear corroboration of the warning, ringing from Alpha to Omega, that if we do not nave the bitter roots of inbred sin eradicated by the cleansing blood and consumed by the refining fire of entire sanctification, they will certainly sooner or later spring up and grow a crop of actual transgression, forever choking out the new life imparted by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, thus confirming you in final apostasy and dooming you to damnation.
16. Apollos corroborates this mournful conclusion by the lamentable case of Esau, who sold his birthright. This is the great trouble on sanctification: people are not willing to die to this world, and have their carnal appetites forever eradicated. They want the mess of pottage. The hog-life will not down. Hence the angel of spiritual life must take her everlasting flight.
17. This verse settles the problem of hopeless reprobacy as the inevitable alternative in case of failure to get sanctified. It is pertinent here to observe that while Esau’s reprobacy, as here stated, was absolute and irrecoverable, confirming forever the hopeless doom of the soul rejecting or neglecting sanctification, as, as it says, “he found no place of repentance, though earnestly seeking it with tears.” From your conversion you are in the hands of the Holy Ghost, whose office is your complete sanctification, by the eradication of all the roots sent down into the deep interior of your heart by the old upas tree of sin, which was cut down in regeneration. If you commit the awful sin of grieving away the Holy Ghost because you will not let Him sanctify you wholly, then He leaves you to the devil, sin and damnation. So you have crossed the dead line, committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, for which
“there is never forgiveness, neither in this life nor in that which is to come” (Mat 12:32).
This conclusion is here not only corroborated, but indisputably confirmed by the case of Esau, who earnestly sought and wept aloud with flowing tears when it was forever too late, because he was reprobated. While Apollos uses this unanswerable illustration to clinch his climacteric argument on the absolute necessity of sanctification as the condition of seeing God, and thunders the awful anathemas of hopeless apostasy and damnation against the wicked, we must remember that Esau’s reprobation pertained to another line of things altogether. We have no evidence that Jacob was elected to heaven, or Esau reprobated to hell. The simple truth of the inspired records is that Jacob was elected to the progenitorship of Christ, and Esau reprobated from the same. Repentance means a change of mind. In case of the sinner, it means that he must get rid of the carnal mind and receive the mind of Christ. In case of Esau, he did not seek a repentance in his own heart, but that of his father Isaac, that he should change his mind, revoking the patriarchal blessing from Jacob and conferring it on himself. That blessing did not raise a question of salvation, which was always free to all, but simply the privilege of the divine progenitorship. Pursuant to the will of God, Isaac had already conferred that blessing on Jacob, and could not give it to Esau. Hence he sought it in utter desperation, though bathed in tears and vociferous in pleading. Of course, Christ died for Esau as well as for Jacob, hence salvation was free for Esau and all the Edomites, as for Jacob and the Israelites. On the memorable night of Jacob’s sanctification at Peniel, we have prima facie evidence that Esau also received a great spiritual blessing, perhaps regeneration. though he had plotted twenty years to kill his brother, and at that time had brought four hundred fierce Arabic warriors to execute the bloody tragedy. Certainly God alone could work the wonderful changes wrought in this wild man of the desert. When he met Jacob, instead of killing him, he ran to him, embracing, kissing him, wept over him for joy. So the brothers mutually embraced, kissed, congratulated, wept, shouted and blessed each other. We have the record of Jacob’s wonderful Peniel experience, resulting from the night of wrestling prayer spent alone with God on the bank of the Jabbok. Hence we understand why he was not afraid to meet his brother, who had twenty years plotted to kill him. While we are minus the history of Esau, we can only explain the wonderful change manifested on meeting his brother on the hypothesis that he, too, had spent an eventful night with God. The reconciliation of this notable meeting proved genuine, as Jacob and Esau ever afterward remained faithful friends. I fondly hope to meet Esau, the illustrious father of the Arabs, as well as Jacob, the immortal patriarch of Israel, in heaven.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv2, 4 Heb 12:1-2
Hebrews
THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES AND THEIR LEADER
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Heb 12:1-2
WHAT an awful sight the rows above rows of spectators must have been to the wrestler who looked up at them from the arena, and saw a mist of white faces and pitiless eyes all directed on himself! How many a poor gladiator turned in his despair from them to the place where purple curtains and flashing axes proclaimed the presence of the emperor, on whose word hung his life, whose will could crown him with a rich reward!
That is the picture which this text brings before our eyes, as the likeness of the Christian life. We are in the arena; the race has to be run, the battle to be fought, All round and high above us, a mist, as it were, of fixed gazers beholds us, and on the throne is the Lord of life, the judge of the strife, whose smile is better than all crowns, whose downward-pointing finger seals our fate. We are compassed with a cloud of witnesses, and we may see Jesus the author and finisher of faith. Both of these facts are alleged here as encouragements to persevering, brave struggle in the Christian life. Hence we have here mainly two subjects for consideration, namely the relation between the saints who are gone and ourselves, and the encouragement derived from it; and the contrasted relation between Jesus and ourselves, and the encouragement derived from it.
I. The metaphor of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is perhaps intended to express multitude, and also elevation.
It may have been naturally suggested by the thought of the saints of the Old Testament {of whom the previous chapter has been so nobly speaking} as exalted to heaven, and hovering far above and far away like the pure whitenesses that tower there. Raphael’s great Sistine Madonna has for background just such a light mist of angel faces and adoring eyes all turned to the gentle majesty of the Virgin. There may also be blending in the writer’s mind such a reference to the amphitheatre as we have already noticed, which certainly exists in the later portion of the context. But we must remember that tempting as it is to a hasty reader to deduce from the words the idea that the saints whose ‘warfare is accomplished’ look down on our struggles here, there is, at all events, no support to that idea in the word ‘witnesses.’ It is not used, as often in our speech, as equivalent to spectators, but means here exactly what it does in the previous chapter, namely, attesters or testifiers. They are not witnesses of us, but to us, as we shall see presently. It may, indeed, be that the thought of the heavenly spectators of our Christian course is implied in the whole strain of the passage, and of the imagery borrowed from the arena, which would certainly be incomplete if there were nothing to answer to the spectators, who, whether at Corinth or Rome, made so important a part in the scene.
We shall be going too far, I think, if we dogmatically assert, on the strength of a figure, that this context teaches a positive communion between earth and heaven of such a sort as that they who have ‘overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His testimony,’ know about the struggles of us down here in the arena. Still, one feels that such an idea is almost needed to give full force either to the figure or exhortation. It does seem somewhat lame to say, You are like racers, surrounded with a crowd of witnesses, therefore run, only do not suppose that they really see you. If this be so, the glowing imagery certainly seems to receive a violent chill, and the flow of the exhortation to be much choked. Still we can go no further than a modest ‘perhaps.’
But even as a ‘may be,’ the thought of such a knowledge stimulates. As all the thousand eyes of assembled Greece looked on at the runners, and all the dialects of its states swelled the tumult of acclaim which surged round the victor, so here the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, the festal gathering on Mount Zion, into relations with which this very chapter says we have come, may be conceived of as sitting, solemn and still, on the thrones around the central throne, and bending not unloving looks of earnest pity on the arena below where they too once toiled and suffered.
It may be that, before their eyes, who have been made wise by death, and who, standing within the ‘sanctuary of God, understand the end’ of life and life’s sorrows, are manifest our struggles, as with Weary feet and drooping limbs we blunder on in the race. Surely there is love in heaven, and it may be there is knowledge, and it may be there is care for us. It may be that, standing on the serene shore beside the Lord, who has already prepared a meal for us with His own hands, they discern, tossing on the darkened sea, the poor little boats of us downhearted, unsuccessful toilers, who cannot yet descry the Lord, or the welcome which waits on the beach.
At all events the thought may come with cheer to our hearts, that, whether conscious of one another’s mode of being or no, they in their triumph and we in our toils are bound together with real bonds The thought, if not the knowledge, of their blessedness may be wafted down to us, just as the thought, if not the knowledge, of our labour may be in their restful souls. The hope of their tranquil shore may strengthen us that are far off upon the sea, though we cannot see more of it than the dim lights moving about, and catch an occasional fragrance in the air that tells of land, just as the memory of their stormy voyage mingles in their experience with their gladness because the waves be quiet, and God has brought them to their desired haven. Such thoughts may come with encouragement for the conflict, even if we hesitate to assert that the cloud of witnesses is a cloud of spectators. What, then, is the sense in which these heroes of the faith which the previous chapter has marshalled in a glorious bede-roll, are ‘witnesses’? The answer will be found by observing the frequent occurrence of the word, and its cognate words, in that chapter. We read there, for instance, that the elders ‘had witness borne to them’ {verse 2, Revised Version}; that Abel by the acceptance of his sacrifice, ‘had witness borne to him that he was righteous,’ ‘God bearing witness in respect of his gifts’ {verse 4, Revised Version}; that Enoch ‘had witness borne to him that he had been well pleasing unto God’ {verse 5, Revised Version}, and that the whole illustrious succession ‘had witness borne to them through their faith’ {verse 39, Revised Version}. This witness borne to them by God is, of course, His giving to them the blessings which belong to a genuine faith, whether of conscious acceptance with God, or of inward peace and power, or of outward victory over sorrows and foes. But they become witnesses to us for God by the very same facts by which He makes Himself the witness of their faith, for they therein become proofs of the blessedness of true religion, visible evidences of God’s faithfulness, and their histories shine out across the centuries testifying to us in our toils how good it is to trust in the Lord, and how small and transient are the troubles and hindrances that a life of faith meets. The calm stars declare the glory of God, and witness from age to age of His power, which keeps them every one from failing; and these bright names that shine in the heaven of His word proclaim His tender pity, and His rewarding love to all who, like them, fight the good fight. Like the innumerable suns that make up the Milky Way, they melt into one bright cloud that lies still and eternal above our heads and sheds a radiance on our dim struggles. So we have here brought out the stimulus to our Christian race from the faith and blessedness of these saints.
We have their history before us: we know what they were, and we have the ‘end of their conversation’ - that is, the issue or outcome of their manner of life - as the next chapter says. It was a hard fight, but it ended in victory. They had more than their share of sorrows and troubles, but ‘the glory dies not, and the grief is past.’ From their thrones they call to us words of cheer, and point us to their tears turned into diamonds, to their struggles stilled in depths of repose, to their wounded brows crowned with light and glory.
They witness to us how mighty and divine a thing is a life of faith. Their human weakness was filled with the power of God. Tremblings and self- distrust and all the ills that flesh is heir to dwelt in them. Black doubts and sore conflicts were their portion. They, too, knew what we know, how hard it is to live and do the right. But they fought through, because a mightier hand was upon them, and God’s grace was breathed into their weakness - and there they stand, victorious witnesses to us, that
whosoever will put his trust in the Lord shall have strength according to his need inbreathed into his uttermost weakness, and have One by his side in every furnace, like unto the Son of Man. They witness to us of companions in suffering, and the thought of them may come to a lonely heart wading in dark, deep waters, with the assurance that there is a ford, and that others have known the icy cold, and the downward rush of the stream, and have not been carried away by it. It is not a selfish thought that sometimes brings encouragement to a solitary sufferer, ‘the same afflictions have been accomplished in your brethren.’ It helps us to remember the great multitude who before us have come through the great tribulation and are before the throne. The cloud of witnesses testify how impotent is sorrow to harm, how strong to bless those who put their trust in God.
They witness to us of the faithfulness of God, who has led them, and upheld them, through all their conflicts, and has brought them to His side at last. That wondrous power avails for us, fresh and young, as when it helped the world’s grey fathers. God refers us to their experiences, and summons them as His witnesses, for they will speak good of His name, and each of them, as they bend down from their seats around the arena, calls to us, ‘O love the Lord, all ye His saints. I was brought low and He helped me.’ So that we, taking heart by their example, can set ourselves to our struggles with the peaceful confidence, ‘This God is our God for ever and ever.’
The word rendered ‘witnesses’ has a narrower meaning in later usage, according to which it comes to signify those who have sealed their testimony with their blood, in which sense it is transferred, untranslated, into English, in ‘martyr.’ What an eloquent epitome of the early history of the Church lies in that one fact! So ordinarily had the faithful confessor to die for his testimony that the very name had the thought of a bloody death inextricably associated with it. And if we for a moment think of that meaning, and look back to the long series of martyrs from the days of Stephen to the last Malagasy Christian or missionary, what solemn scorn of soft delights, and noble contempt of life itself may be kindled in our souls. Easy paths are appointed to us. We ‘have not yet resisted unto blood.’ Let us run our smoother race with patience, as we think of those who ran theirs with bleeding feet, and through the smoke of Smithfield or the dust of the arena beheld the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing ready to help, and so went to their death with the light from His face changing theirs into the same image.
But let us not forget that all these witnesses for God were imperfect men, whose imperfections are full of encouragement for us. Look at the names in that great muster-roll - Noah with his drunkenness, Jacob with his craft, Samson with his giant strength and giant passion, Jephtha with his savage faithfulness to a savage vow, David with his too well-known sins, and in them all not one name to which some great evil did not cling. There are quickly reached limits to the veneration with which we are to regard the noblest heroes and saints, and none of them are to be to us patterns, however we may draw encouragement from their lives, and in some respects follow their faith. Thank God for the shameful stories told of so many of them in the unmoved narrative of Scripture! They were men of common clay. The saints’ halo is round the head of men and women like ourselves. We look at our own sins and shortcomings, and are ready to despair. But we may lift our eyes to the cloud of witnesses and for every evil of ours find a counterpart in the earthly lives of these radiant saints. Thinking of our own evil we may hopefully say, as we gaze on them, ‘Such were some of ye, but ye are washed, and ye are sanctified.’ Therefore I will not doubt but that He is able to keep me, even me, ‘from falling, and to present me faultless before the presence of His glory.’
II. But we are not left to draw encouragement from the remembrance of men of like passions with ourselves only.
The second of these clauses turns our thoughts to the contrasted relations between Christ and us, and the stimulus derived from it. ‘Looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.’
Our Lord is hero very emphatically set in a place by Himself apart from all that cloud of witnesses, who in their measure are held forth as noble examples of faith. All these, the greatest names of old, are in one class, and He stands above them in a class of which He is the only member. There we see no other man save Jesus only. Whatever be the inference from that fact, the fact itself is plain. He is something to all the fighters in the lists which none of these are. Our eyes may profitably dwell on them, but we have to look higher than their serene seats, even to His throne, and the relation between us and Him is altogether unlike that which binds us to the holiest of these.
The names He bears in this context are noteworthy, ‘the author and finisher of faith,’ the former being the same word which, in Act 3:15, is rendered ‘prince’ {of life}, and in this Epistle {Heb 2:10}, ‘captain’ {of salvation}. Its meaning may perhaps be best given as ‘leader.’ All these others are the long files of the great army, but Christ is the Commander of the whole array. ‘As Captain of the Lord’s host am I come up, said the man with the drawn sword, who stood before Joshua as he brooded outside the walls of Jericho over his task, and that armed angel of the Lord was He who, in the fulness of time, took our humanity that He might lead the many sons to glory. Not in order of time, but by the precedence of nature, is He the Leader and Lord of all who live by faith.
He is also the finisher, or more properly the perfecter of faith, inasmuch as He in His own life has shown it in its perfect form and power; inasmuch also as He gives to each of us, if we will have it, grace to perfect it in our lives; and inasmuch as, finally, He crowns and rewards it at last.
One more remark as to the force of the language here may be allowed. The word rendered ‘looking’ is an emphatic compound, and if full force be given to both its elements, we might read it ‘looking away,’ that is, turning our eyes from all other, even the grandest of these grand witnesses, to gaze on Christ alone.
All these details serve to bring out the unique position which our Lord holds, and the attitude in which we should stand to Him.
Christ is the one perfect example of faith. We are familiar with the rest of His perfect example in regard to other graces of the Christian character, but we dwell less frequently than we ought on Him as having Himself lived a life of faith. Many orthodox believers so believe in Christ’s divinity as to weaken their sense of the reality of His manhood, just as, on the other hand, a vivid apprehension of His manhood obscures to many the rays of His divinity. We lose much by not making very real to our minds that Jesus lived His earthly life by faith, that for Him as for us dependence on God, and humble confidence in Him, were the secret of peace, and the spring of power. This very Epistle, in another place, quotes the words of the psalm, ‘I will put my trust in Him,’ as the very inmost expression of Christ’s life, and as one of the ways in which He proves His brotherhood with us. He, too, knows what it is to hang on God; and is not only in His divine nature the object, but in His true manhood the pattern of our faith.
And His pattern is perfect. In all others, even the loveliest of saints and most heroic of martyrs, the gem is marred by many a streak of baser material, but in Him is the one ‘entire and perfect chrysolite.’ That faith never faltered, never turned its gaze from the things not seen, never slackened its grasp of the things hoped, nor degenerated into self-pleasing, nor changed its attitude of meek submission. We may look to others for examples, but they will all be sometimes warnings as well, only to Jesus we may look continually and find uusullied purity and perfect faith.
He is more than example. He gives us power to copy His fair pattern. The influence of heroic, saintly lives may be depressing as well as encouraging. Despondency often creeps over us when we think of them. It is not models that we want, for we all know well enough what we ought to be, and an example of supreme excellence in morals or religion may be as hurtful as the unapproachable superiority of Shake-spears or Raphael may to a young aspirant. Perfect patterns will not save the world. They do not get themselves copied. What we want is not the knowledge of what we ought to be, but the will and the power to be it. And that we get from Christ, and from Him alone. He stretches out His hand to hold us up in our poor struggles. His grace and His peace come into our hearts, Looking to Him, His Spirit enters our spirits, and we live, yet not we, but Christ liveth in us. Models will help us little. They stand there like statues on their pedestals, pure marble loveliness; but in Christ the marble becomes flesh, and the lovely perfection has a heart to pity and a strong hand stretched out to help. So let us look away from all others, who can only give us example, to Him who can give us strength. Turn from the circling thrones to the imperial throne in the centre. We are more closely bound to Him who sits on it than to them. Look away from the cloud of witnesses to the sun of uls, from whom, gazing, we receive warmth and light and life. They may teach us to fight, but He fights in us. They are patterns of faith. So is He, but He is also its object and its giver.
Christ is the imperial Rewarder of faith. At the last He will give the full possession of all which it has looked and hoped for, and will lift it into the nobler form in which, even in heaven, we shall live by faith. In that region where struggles cease, and sense and sight no longer lead astray, and we behold Him as He is, faith still abides, as conscious dependence and happy trust. It is perfected in manner, measure, and reward. And Christ is the giver of all that perfects it.
Let us, then, turn away our eyes from all beside, and look to Christ. He is the Reward as well as the Rewarder of our faith. As we look to Him we shall gain power for the fight, and victory and the crown. The gladiators in the arena lowered their swords to the emperor, before they fought, with the grim greeting ‘Hail, Caesar! the dying salute thee.’ So, in happier fashion, our Lord, who has Himself fought in the lists where we now strive. Then we shall have strength for the conflict, and when the conflict is drawing to its end and all else swims before our sight, and the din grows faint in our ears, we shall close our eyes in peace; and when we open them again, lo! the bloody field, and the broken sword, and the battered helm, have all disappeared, and we sit, crowned, and palm-bearing, at His side, hailed as victors, and lapped in sweetest rest for ever more!
Hebrews
THE PERFECTER OF FAITH
Heb 12:2
ST. LUKE gives us two accounts of the Ascension, one at the end of his Gospel and one at the beginning of the Acts. The difference of position suggests delicate shades of colouring and of distinction in the two narratives, the one is the ending of the sweet intercourse on earth, the other is the beginning of a new era and a different type of companionship. So in that which closes the Gospel, emphasis is put upon our Lord’s ascension as being parted from; and all that is told us is of the final benediction befitting a farewell, and of the uplifted hands, which left upon their minds the last sweet impression of the departing friend. But if we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, where the incident is the same, the whole spirit of the narrative is altered. We see there the beginning of a new era, and so we read nothing about parting, but, instead of the indefinite expression, He blessed them, we hear of their promised investiture with a new power, and of there being laid upon them a new obligation - ‘Ye shall be clothed with the Spirit: ye shall be My witnesses.’ And the two men who stand by them, and are only mentioned in the Book of Acts, announce the great thought, that the departing Christ will return, ‘He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.’ All in that account has a forward aspect. It is a beginning with a new power, strengthened by a new duty, and having a far- off hope. Thus equipped, these eleven no more feel that their Lord is parted from them, nor that they are abandoned and forlorn; but they cast themselves into their new circumstances, and joyfully take up their new work. So the Ascension of Christ is represented in that second account as being the transition from the earthly to the heavenly life and type of communion with Him, and as the preparation for that great fact which my text enshrines in highly figurative language, as being the sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. The Ascension is no transient fact, it is the beginning of the permanent condition of the Church, and of the permanent present relations between Jesus Christ, God, the Church, and the world. So I desire to turn now to the various characteristics of the present and permanent relationship of Jesus Christ to these three - God, the Church, the world.
And first of all I wish to notice’ we have here the thought of the Enthroned Christ. The attitude of sitting indicates repose. The position at the right hand of the throne of God indicates participation in the divine energies and in the administration of the divine providences. But the point to observe is that the Ascension is declared to be the prerogative of the Man Christ Jesus. And so with great emphasis and significance, in the verse with a part of which I am now dealing, we have brought together the name of the humanity, the name that was borne by many another Jew in the same era as Jesus bore it, we have brought together the name of the humanity and the affirmation of the divine dignity, ‘We see Jesus... set down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ And over and over again, not only in this Epistle, But in other parts of Scripture, we have the same intentional, emphatic juxtaposition of the two ideas which shallow thinkers regard as in some sense incompatible - the humanity and the divinity.
Remember, for instance, ‘this same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go.’ And remember the rapturous and wonderful exclamation which broke from the lips of the proto-martyr. ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ So then that exaltation and ascension is - according to New Testament teaching, which is not contradicted by the deepest thought of the affinities and resemblances of the divine and the human - the lifting up of the Man into the glory which the Incarnate Word had with the Father before the world was. And just as the earthly life of that Incarnate Word has shown how divine a thing a human life here may be, so the heavenly life of the still Incarnate Word shows us what our approximation to, and union with, the divine nature may be, when we are purged and perfected in the Kingdom of God, whither the Forerunner is for us entered.
But further, in addition to this thought, there comes another which is constantly associated with the teaching of this session of the Son of Man at the right hand Of God, namely, that it is intercessory. That is a word the history of which will take us far, and I dare not enter upon it now. But one thing I wish to make very emphatic, and that is that the ordinary notion of intercession is not the New Testament notion. We limit it, or tend to limit it, to prayer for others. There is no such idea in the New Testament use of the phrase. It is a great deal wider than any verbal expression of sympathy and desire. It has to deal with realities and not with words. It is not a synonym for asking for another that some blessing may come upon him; but the intercession of the great High Priest who has gone into the holiest of all for us covers the whole ground of the acts by which, by reason of our deep and true union with Jesus Christ through faith, He communicates to His children whatsoever of blessing and power and sweet tokens of ineffable love He has received from the Father. Whatsoever He draws in filial dependence from the Divine Father He in brotherly unity imparts to us; and the real communication of real blessing, and not the verbal petitions for forgiveness, is what He is doing there within the veil. ‘He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.’
But still further in this great figure of my text, the Enthroned Christ, there lies a wondrous thought which He Himself has given us, ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ What activities are involved in that wondrous idea it boots us not to inquire, nor would it become us to say. We know that never could we tread those pure pavements except our robes and our feet had been washed By Him. But that is the consequence of His earthly work, and not of His heavenly and present energy. Perhaps in our ignorance of all that lies behind the veil, we can get little further than to see that the very fact of His presence is the preparation of the place. For that awful thought, that crushing thought, of eternal life under conditions bewilderingly different from anything we experience here, would be no joy unless we could say we shall see Him and be with Him. I know not how it may be with you, but I think that the nearer we come to the end of the earthly life, and the more the realities beyond begin to press upon our thoughts and our imaginations as those with which we shall soon make acquaintance, we feel more and more how unquestionable the misery the thought of eternal life would bring if it were not for the fact that the world beyond is lighted up and made familiar by the thought of Christ’s presence there. Can you fancy some poor clod-hopping rustic brought up from a remote village and set down all in a moment in the midst of some brilliant court? How out of place he would feel, how unhomelike it would appear, how ill at ease he would be; ay, and what an unburdening there would be in his heart, if amongst the strange splendour he detected beneath the crown and above the robes, sitting on the throne, one whom he had known in the far-off hamlet, and who there had taken part with him in all the ignoble toils and narrow interests of that rustic scene. Jesus said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ and when I lift up my eyes to those far-off realities which overwhelm me when I try to think about them, I say, I am not dazzled by the splendour, I am not oppressed by the perpetuity of it, I do not faint at the thought of unlike conditions, for I shall be the same and He will be with me.
‘It is enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him.’
And so the Enthroned Christ is preparing a place for us. Ay, brethren, and He is not preparing it for us only when we die, but He is preparing it for us whilst we live; for it is only by faith in Him that we have boldness of access and confidence. And neither for the prayers and desires of Christian men on earth nor for the spirits of just men made perfect hereafter will the eternal golden gates swing open except His hand is on the bolt, and by His power the way into the Holiest is made manifest. And so set your minds as well as your affections on the things above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God.
Now, secondly, we have here the Present Christ. Matthew, in his Gospel, does not tell of the Ascension, but he preserves the promise, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,’ and that promise is not contradicted, but is realised by the fact of Christ’s ascension. He does tell us of the remarkable utterance to Mary on the morning of the Resurrection. ‘Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.’ The implication that we have plainly is, when I am ascended you may touch. And the contact of even her nervous and clutching hand round His feet is less than the touch and the presence for which that departure makes the way. ‘He was parted from them’ is the thought that ends the Gospel. He was parted for a season that thou mightest receive Him for ever, is the thought that begins the Acts and the history of the Church. And it is true of Him and His relation to us,, and because it is true about Him and about His relation to us, it is also true about all those who sleep in Jesus. Their relation towards the earthly form ceases, and there is an empty place where they once stood.
But there is a presence more real and capable of yielding finer influences, strengthening and sanctifying, than ever came from the earthly presence. It is blessed to clasp hands, it is blessed to link arms, it is blessed to press together the lips; but there is a higher touch than these, and sight is a less clear vision than faith; and they who can pass across the abyss of the centuries and the yet broader and deeper and blacker abyss between earth and heaven, and lay the hand of faith on the hand of Christ, have passed through the veil, that is to say His flesh, and have clasped His real presence. Yes, and the thing that calls itself such, is but a part of the general retrogression of Catholicism to heathenism and materialism. We have the real presence if we have the Christ in our heart by faith. He is present with us; enthroned on high above all heavens, He yet is near the humblest heart, the companion of the lonely, the solace of all that trust Him. ‘He trod the winepress alone,’ in order that none of us need ever live alone or die alone.
And there is another side to this presence. As I have said, He is present with us here, and you and I may be present with Him yonder; for one of the Epistles tells us that, ‘we die with Him that we may live with Him, and that God has quickened us {if we are Christian people} together with Him and made us sit together with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.’ Your life, Christian men and women, is in its roots and sources, and ought to be in its flow and course, ‘hid with Christ in God,’ and you should not only seek to realise the presence of the Master with you, but to climb to Himself, being present with Him.
Thirdly, this great figure of my text sets before us the working Christ. The attitude of sitting at the right hand of God suggests repose; but that is a repose which is consistent with, and is accompanied by, the greatest energy for continuous operation. You remember, no doubt {although, perhaps, not in its full significance}, the great words with which the close of St. Mark’s Gospel points on to the future, ‘So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went everywhere preaching the word.’ The Master gone, the servants left; the Master resting, the servants journeying and toiling. It is like the two halves of Raphael’s great transfiguration picture. The Lord and the three are up there in the amber light, the demoniac boy writhing in his convulsions, and the disciples by him helpless, down here. The gap is great. Yes. ‘They went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following.’ There is the true notion of the repose of Christ resting indeed at the right hand of God, yet working with His servants scattered over the face of the earth. And so in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the keynote is struck when St. Luke says, ‘The former treatise have I made of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day on which He was taken up’; and this treatise, O Theophilus, is the second volume of the one story, the history of all that Jesus Continued both to do and to teach after the day on which He was taken up. Acts of the Apostles? No; Acts of the Ascended Christ - that is the name of the book. Never mind about the apostles. They do come into the foreground; but the writer has little care about them. It is the Christ who is moving; and so we find it all through the book, the Lord did this, the Lord did that, the Lord did the other thing; and the apostles are, I was going to say, the pawns on the chess-board. And so you remember, too, that dying Stephen saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. He sprang to his feet, not breaking the eternal repose, to look down and to send down help and sustenance and blessing and good cheer to the man there at the foot of the old wall ready to die for Him.
And that is. the type of the whole history of the Church, I have said that Christ’s Ascension is the transition from the lower to the higher form of presence; and it is the transition to the wider form of work. He works for us, on us, in us, and with us, and as the apostle Peter said in expounding the significance of the Day of Pentecost, ‘Being to the right hand of God exalted He hath shed forth this,’ so the Christ is no longer tired, but is still working, working in us, with us, and for us.
And lastly, the metaphor of my text brings before us the returning Christ, It was not only the angel’s message that declared that departure and ascension were not the last that the worker was going to see of. Jesus. The necessities of the case, if I may say so, tell us the same message. The Incarnation necessarily involves the Crucifixion; the Crucifixion {if it is what we believe it to be} as necessarily involves the Resurrection, ‘for it was not possible that He should be holden of it,’ the grim death. The Resurrection and the Ascension are but as it were the initial point, which is produced into the line of His heavenly session. It cannot be that Ascension is the last word to be said The path of the King does not run into a cul de sac like that. The world has not done with Jesus Christ. He is coming, was the great thought around which all the past clustered. He will come, is the great hope around which all the future hopes for the Church and the world are piled and built, ‘He shall so come in like manner as ye havre seen Him go,’ corporeally, visibly, locally, in His manhood, in His divinity. ‘As He was once offered to bear the sin of many, so shall He come the second time without sin unto salvation.’ Brethren, that is the hope of the Church, discredited by many unworthy representations and mixed up with a great deal that does not commend it by the folly of those who believe in it; but standing out so distinct and so required by all that is gone before, that no Christian man can afford to relegate the expectation into the region of dimness, or to waver in his faith in it, without much imperilling his conception of his Master, and the blessedness of union with Him. You do not understand the Cross unless you believe in the throne; and you do not understand the throne unless you believe in the judgment-seat. The returning Christ shall judge the world. Brethren! Jesus is enthroned. Do you bow to His command? Do you trust His power? Do you see in Him the pattern of what you may be, and the pledge that you will be it if you put your confidence in your Lord? The enthroned Christ is present. Do you walk in blessed and continuous communion with Him? The enthroned and present Christ is working. Do you trust in His operation, peacefully, for yourself, for the Church, for the world? Do you open your heart to the abundant energies with which He is flooding His Church, and which His Church is so sadly and so much allowing to run to waste? The enthroned, present, working Christ is coming back, and you and I have to choose whether we shall be of ‘the servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching,’ and obeying His command with girt loins and lit lamps, and so will sweep with Him into the festal hall, and sit down with Him, on His throne; or whether we shall wail because of Him, and shrink abashed from the judgment-seat of Christ.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv2–4 leader, or, originator. See margin ref., Heb 2:10. (See…
author
leader, or, originator. See margin ref., Heb 2:10. (See Scofield "Heb 2:10").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v4 The chastening of God to assist us:
The chastening of God to assist us:
v. 4. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
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v. 5. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him;
v. 6. for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
v. 7. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
v. 8. but if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
The inspired writer here adds another thought to his appeal, namely, that his readers have by no means tasted the worst form of persecution yet: Not yet unto blood have you resisted, striving against sin. The Hebrew Christians of Judea were indeed suffering to some extent, both by reason of their isolation from others and by reason of the scorn which was heaped upon them. The fact that they were striving against sin in every form, especially against that of unbelief in Christ Jesus the Messiah, brought them many enemies. But the persecution had not yet reached the point that a great many of them had suffered death in the cause of Christ, the church in Judea had not yet become a martyr church as such. They might expect still worse conditions for them to endure.
Another thought is here brought in for the consideration of the readers: And you have altogether forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons, My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, nor faint when being corrected by Him; for whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and scourges every son whom He receives. The Christians are here reminded that their sufferings are tokens of God’s fatherly love and care. They must never forget the exhortation and comfort which is contained in the words of the Lord, Pro 3:11-12. These words are addressed to sons, to children, and that in itself is a distinction, to be called sons of God. The believers should not make light of, should not despise, the discipline of the Lord, His entire method of training and educating His children, particularly through the necessary chastising. There must be no fainting, no despondency, no failure of faith when He reproves by word or deed. For it is necessary that all the children of God be subjected to the same discipline; it is a token of God’s love, a treatment which He accords only to such as He receives into His heart and cherishes with all the wonderful love of His fatherly mercy.
The author now presents his conclusion: It is for discipline that you are enduring, as sons God is dealing with you. For what son is there whom the father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then are you bastards and not sons. This is the view which the believers should hold: their sufferings are evidence that God considers them His sons and treats them as such; they need such training in order that their sonship may be maintained. In fact, if there were a child in the house and the father would not take his chastening, disciplining, into his hand, a person might draw the inference that such a child is not a genuine son, but a bastard, one that is not accorded the same treatment as the true sons. In the same way believers, far from resenting the disciplining which God lays upon them, should rather be thankful for this evidence of their heavenly Father’s regard and interest.
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 v4 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The author of Hebrews has been comparing the Christian life to a race.
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You have not yet resisted or struggled against sin
Here "sin" is spoken of as if it were a person whom someone fights in a battle. AT: "You have not yet had to endure attacks of sinners" (See: Personification)
to the point of blood
Resisting opposition so much that one dies for it is spoken of as if one reached a certain place where he would die. (See: Metaphor)
of blood
Here "blood" refers to death. AT: "of death" (See: Metonymy)
the encouragement that instructs you
Old Testament scripture is spoken of as if it were a person who could encourage others. AT: "what God has instructed you in the scriptures to encourage you" (See: Personification)
as sons ... My son ... every son
These refer to everyone who belongs to God whether male or female. AT: "as children ... My child ... every child" (See: When Masculine Words Include Women)
My son ... corrected by him
Here the author is quoting from the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament.
do not think lightly of the Lord's discipline, nor grow weary
This can be stated in positive form. AT: "take it very seriously when the Lord disciplines you, and do not grow weary" (See: Litotes)
nor grow weary
"and do not become discouraged"
you are corrected by him
This can be stated in active form. AT: "he corrects you" (See: Active or Passive)
every son whom he receives
"everyone whom he accepts as his child"
translationWords
sin
blood
courage
instruct
son
lord
discipline
love
punish
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 vv2–4 12:2 Jesus is the supreme example of faithful endurance…
12:2 Jesus is the supreme example of faithful endurance (3:1). Our endurance in the Christian life will depend on our keeping our eyes on Jesus—staying focused on him and his work on our behalf. • Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith: Jesus has accomplished everything necessary for faith under the new covenant to be a reality. • disregarding its shame: Crucifixion was the most shameful form of execution, meant to humiliate and torture the person crucified. It was used only for slaves and criminals who were not Roman citizens. Christ treated that shame as if it were nothing. • seated in the place of honor: The author again alludes to Ps 110:1 (see also Heb 1:3, 13; 8:1; 10:12).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.