For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin.
You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed, for a few days, punished us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees,
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 3. For consider him, etc. He enforces his exhortation…
3. For consider him, etc. He enforces his exhortation by comparing Christ with us; for if the Son of God, whom it behoves all to adore, willingly underwent such severe conflicts, who of us should dare to refuse to submit with him to the same? For this one thought alone ought to be sufficient to conquer all temptations, that is, when we know that we are companions or associates of the Son of God, and that he, who was so far above us, willingly came down to our condition, in order that he might animate us by his own example; yea, it is thus that we gather courage, which would otherwise melt away, and turn as it were into despair.
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 vv3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12 An amplification taken of the circumstance of the person,…
An amplification taken of the circumstance of the person, and the things themselves, which he compareth betwixt themselves: for how great is Jesus in comparison of us, and how far more grievous things did he suffer than we?
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–12 3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of…
3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
Ver. 3. For consider him] Gr. αναλογισασθε, comparationem instituite. Make the comparison betwixt Christ and yourselves, betwixt his sufferings and yours, and then you will see a difference. Our troubles are but as the slivers and chips of his cross. I am heartily angry (saith Luther) with those that speak of my sufferings, which if compared with that which Christ suffered for me, are not once to be mentioned in the same day.
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Lest ye be wearied and faint] Gr. εκλυομενοι, loosened, as the nerves are in a swoon or palsy; or, let go, as water spilt upon the ground. This to prevent keep your eye upon your Captain and that cloud before mentioned. There were in Greece certain fields called Palaestrae, where young men exercised themselves in wrestling, running, &c. In these were set up statues of various valiant champions, that the young men that ran or wrestled, might fix their eye upon them. and be encouraged. When Jerome had read the life and death of Hilarion, he folded up the book, and said, Well, Hilarion shall he the champion that I will follow.
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 vv3–12 For consider him; the connection is rational, that they…
For consider him; the connection is rational, that they ought to regard this example, for that there were greater sufferings behind than any yet they had endured, which would enforce it, as Heb 12:4; αναλογισασθε signifieth the use of it proportionable consideration, thinking on or reasoning about this example within a man’s self, such as may make the considerer bear a proportion to the subject considered.
That endured such contradiction of sinners against himself; this Jesus spoken of before, who most patiently submitted to, and perseveringly bore up under, such opposition and contradiction by the words and works of the most wicked and vilest men against himself, who was the most innocent and best of men, always going about doing good to them, so as their sin and his patience were without parallel: none was ever so scorned, taunted, reviled, blasphemed, spit on, and ignominiously treated like him; and never any so invincibly endured it, Rom 15:3.
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Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds; the reason of this consideration is, lest faintness, languishing, or deficiency of soul, that is, of vigour, strength, and activity of heart in grace, should befall them; and so they should lie down and cease to run the Christian race, which the devil designed to oblige them to, as he would Christ, by the multitude and soreness of the contradictions they should suffer from sinners in it, so greatly as would not end but by broaching their life-blood, as they did Christ’s, and these must expect from them.
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 vv4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12 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 vv3–12 For consider him,.... In the greatness of his person,…
For consider him,.... In the greatness of his person, as God, the Son of God, the heir of all things; and in his offices of prophet, priest, and King, as the Saviour of lost sinners, the Leader and Commander of the people, as the apostle and high priest of our profession: consider him in his human nature, his conversation on earth, and what he did and suffered for men; how that in his nature he was pure and holy, in his conversation harmless and innocent, in his deportment meek and lowly; who went about doing good to the souls of men, and at last suffered and died, and is now glorified: consider the analogy between him and us, and how great is the disproportion; and therefore if he was ill treated, no wonder we should consider him under all his reproaches and sufferings:
that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself; against his person, they denying his deity, and speaking against his sonship, and against his offices; mocking him as a King, deriding him as a prophet, and treating him with the utmost contempt as a priest and Saviour; and against his actions, his works of mercy to the bodies of men, when done on the sabbath day; his conversing with sinners for the good of their souls, as if he was an encourager of them in sin, and a partner with them; his miracles, as if they were done by the help of the devil; and against the whole series of his life, as if it was criminal. Now we should analogize this contradiction, and see what proportion there is between this, and what is endured by us: we should consider the aggravations of it, that it was "against himself"; sometimes it was against his disciples, and him through them, as it is now against his members, and him in them; but here it was immediately and directly against himself: and this he endured "from sinners"; some more secret, as the Scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees; some more open, as the common people; some of them the vilest of sinners, the most abandoned of creatures, as the Roman soldiers, and Herod's men of war: and this should be considered, that we cannot be contradicted by viler or meaner persons; and it is worthy of notice, with what courage and bravery of mind, with what patience and invincible constancy he endured it: this should be recollected for imitation and encouragement,
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lest ye be wearied, and faint in your minds; contradiction is apt to make persons weary and faint, as Rebekah was, because of the daughters of Heth, and as Jeremiah was, because of the derision of the Jews, Gen 27:46 but a consideration of Jesus, and of what he has endured, tends to relieve the saints in such a condition; See Mat 10:25.
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 vv3–12 Consider - Draw the comparison and think. The Lord…
Consider - Draw the comparison and think. The Lord bore all this; and shall his servants bear nothing? Him that endured such contradiction from sinners - Such enmity and opposition of every kind Lest ye be weary - Dull and languid, and so actually faint in your course.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–12 Verse 3. For consider him] Αναλογισασθε - ἱνα μη…
Verse 3. For consider him] Αναλογισασθε - ἱνα μη καμητε, ταις ψυχαις - εκλυμενοι· Attentively observe and analyze every part of his conduct, enter into his spirit, examine his motives and object, and remember that, as he acted, ye are called to act; he will furnish you with the same Spirit, and will support you with the same strength. He bore a continual opposition of sinners against himself; but he conquered by meekness, patience, and perseverance: he has left you an example that ye should follow his steps. If ye trust in him, ye shall receive strength; therefore, howsoever great your opposition may be, ye shall not be weary: if ye confide in and attentively look to him, ye shall have continual courage to go on, and never faint in your minds.
Here is a continued allusion to the contenders in the Grecian games, who, when exhausted in bodily strength and courage, yielded the palm to their opponents, and were said καμνειν, to be weary or exhausted; εκλυεσθαι, to be dissolved, disheartened, or to have lost all bravery and courage.
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 vv3, 5, 9, 12 Heb 12:3-4. For consider him — Draw the comparison…
Heb 12:3-4. For consider him — Draw the comparison and think; the Lord bore all this, and shall his servants bear nothing? If he suffered, if he endured such things, why should not we do so also? If he, though so great, so excellent, so infinitely exalted above us; yet endured such contradiction of sinners — Such grievous things, both in words and deeds, from his enemies; against himself — Ought not we to do so too, if called to it? Consider this; lest ye be wearied — By the greatness and length of your trials and sufferings; and faint in your minds — Lest your hearts should fail you, and you should draw back, partially or totally, from the profession of the gospel. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood — Your sufferings are far short of those which Christ endured. He grants that they had met with many sufferings already, but their enemies had been so restrained that they had not proceeded to take their lives, or to inflict wounds and bruises upon their bodies. By which the apostle intimates two things: 1st, That those who are engaged in the profession of the gospel have no security that they shall not be called to the utmost and last sufferings, by laying down their lives on account of it; and 2d, That whatever befalls us on this side martyrdom, is to be looked on as a fruit of divine tenderness and mercy. Striving against sin — Or against violent and injurious persons, and in opposing men’s wicked practices, and your own sinful inclinations, lusts, and passions.
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 vv3–12 For consider him - Attentively reflect on his example…
For consider him - Attentively reflect on his example that you may be able to bear your trials in a proper manner.
That endured such contradiction of sinners - Such opposition. The reference is to the Jews of the time of the Saviour, who opposed his plans, perverted his sayings, and ridiculed his claims. Yet, regardless of their opposition, he persevered in the course which he had marked out, and went patiently forward in the execution of his plans. The idea is, that we are to pursue the path of duty and follow the dictates of conscience, let the world say what they will about it. In doing this we cannot find a better example than the Saviour. No opposition of sinners ever turned him from the way which he regarded as right; no ridicule ever caused him to abandon any of his plans; no argument, or expression of scorn, ever caused him for a moment to deviate from his course.
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Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds - The meaning is, that there is great danger of being disheartened and wearied out by the opposition which you meet with. But with the bright example of one who was never disheartened, and who never became weary in doing the will of God, you may persevere. The best means of leading a faithful Christian life amidst the opposition which we may encounter, is to keep the eye steadily fixed on the Saviour.
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 vv4, 5, 8, 11, 12 You have not yet resisted unto blood. Though you…
You have not yet resisted unto blood. Though you have met with some persecutions, you have not yet shed your blood for his sake who laid down his life, and shed every drop of his blood for you. (Witham)
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 vv3–12 For--justifying his exhortation, "Looking unto Jesus."
For--justifying his exhortation, "Looking unto Jesus."
consider--by way of comparison with yourselves, so the Greek.
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contradiction--unbelief, and every kind of opposition (Act 28:19).
sinners--Sin assails us. Not sin, but sinners, contradicted Christ [BENGEL].
be wearied and faint--Greek, "lest ye weary fainting." Compare Isa 49:4-5, as a specimen of Jesus not being wearied out by the contradiction and strange unbelief of those among whom He labored, preaching as never man did, and exhibiting miracles wrought by His inherent power, as none else could do.
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 vv3–12 3. ADMONITORY.—Review your past history as of cheerful and…
3. ADMONITORY.—Review your past history as of cheerful and hopeful, yet fearful, endurance, Heb_12:3-17.
3. For consider him—Our author pauses to hold the suffering phase of the victorious Exemplar before their mind’s eye steadily. Think of his old-time endurances, and that will explain and lighten your own. His Father, permissively, exposed him to trials; so then realize that your trials are the dealings of a Father.
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We may lose the connexion here by not keeping in mind that the chastisements of 4-13 all refer primarily to the persecutions the Hebrews had to endure from their unbelieving adversaries. Not that the specific acts of persecution were preordained of God; but the endurance of trials is part of our probation, and it is a cheering explanation to interpret every infliction as a divine discipline.
Endured such contradiction— Contradiction, a pregnant term, including all that the sinners referred to inflicted.
Lest ye be wearied—In order that ye may not falter and apostatize.
Faint—Exhausted by the wearing contest; forgetting your Exemplar, and losing sight of the final exaltation.
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 vv3–12 3. consider] Lit., “compare yourselves with.” Contrast the comparative…
3. consider] Lit., “compare yourselves with.” Contrast the comparative immunity from anguish of your lot with the agony of His (Joh_15:20).
that endured …] Who hath endured at the hand of sinners such opposition.
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such contradiction of sinners against himself] The Greek word for “contradiction” has already occurred in Heb_6:16, Heb_7:7. Three uncials (א, D, E) read “against themselves.” Christ was a mark for incessant “contradiction,”—“a sign which is spoken against” (Luk_2:34).
lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds] The correction of the R. V., “that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls,” will be reckoned by careless and prejudiced readers among the changes which they regard as meaningless. Yet, as in hundreds of other instances, it brings out much more fully and forcibly the exact meaning of the original. “That ye wax not weary” is substituted for “lest ye be weary” because the Greek verb, being in the aorist, suggests a sudden or momentary break-down in endurance; on the other hand, “fainting” is in the present, and suggests the gradual relaxation of nerve and energy which culminates in the sudden relapse. Lastly the word in the original is “souls,” not “minds.” Endurance was one of the most needful Christian virtues in times of waiting and of trial (Gal_6:9).
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 vv3–12 (3) The figure of the race is still continued,…
(3) The figure of the race is still continued, “For unless ye thus look unto Jesus ye will grow weary.”
Consider.—Literally, compare; place your sufferings by the side of His.
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Him that endured such contradiction.—Rather, Him that hath endured such gainsaying from sinners against themselves. The word “gainsaying,” (Heb_6:16; Heb_7:7) is so frequently used in the LXX. for the rebelliousness of the people of Israel, that we need not here limit it to contradiction in words. The change of “Himself” into “themselves” (the reading of the oldest MSS.) is important, but it is not easy to say with what the last two words should be joined; for the meaning may be either “sinners against themselves” (comp. Num_16:38), or “gainsaying against themselves,” In either case the force of the words will be that the sin or the opposition manifested against Him was really against themselves, since it was for their salvation that He came upon earth. To all His other sorrows were added the pain of their ingratitude and His grief over their aggravated guilt.
And faint.—Rather, fainting in your souls.
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 vv3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 For consider him that hath endured such contradiction of…
For consider him that hath endured such contradiction of sinners against himself (or, of the sinners against him), lest ye be weary fainting in your souls. The word antilogia ("contradiction"), though strictly applicable to verbal gainsaying, and thus especially suggesting to our minds the blasphemies and false accusations against Christ, includes opposition of all kinds. It is used in the LXX for "rebellion" (Hebrew, yrs), 2Sa_22:41 Pro_17:11, cf. Jud_1:11, th antilogia tou Kore . (Instead of eiv eauton (al. eiv auton) there is weighty manuscript authority for eiv eautouv , equivalent to "against themselves. ") "Lest ye be weary," etc., keeps in view the idea of getting tired in a race, the word ekluesyai ("faint") being used primarily for corporeal, and figuratively for mental, lassitude. (cf. Mat_15:32, mhpote ekluywsi en th odw )
The Christian"s danger of weariness and his defense. "For consider him that endured such contradiction, etc. Our subject naturally divides itself into two branches,
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I THE EVIL TO BE GUARDED AGAINST. "Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." The Christian is in danger of weariness in the course which he is called to run. This weariness springs from faintness of soul. When the heart loses its faith and hope and enthusiasm, the step soon loses its elasticity and vigor and speed. And this may arise:
1. From the difficulties of the course. The path of the Christian is not always through green pastures or beside still waters. It is often bleak and rugged, and mountainous. It is marked by trials of various kinds, which sorely strain his faith and patience and fortitude. And there are enemies who would delay his progress sometimes by subtle solicitations to ease and enjoyment, and at other times by opposing his efforts or obstructing his way. "And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.
2. From the slowness of the apparent progress. There are times when the Christian runner seems to make little or no advancement in the race. Notwithstanding reading and meditation, aspiration and resolution, prayer and effort, we are still so hampered by imperfections and sins, so deficient in holiness and usefulness, and so little like our Lord, that at times all that we desire and do seems to be vain, and our souls wax faint within us.
3. From a false or exaggerated estimate of the value of feeling in the Christian life. There are those who are prone to test their spiritual condition and progress by the state of their feelings. If their emotions are tender and confiding and cheerful, they conclude that they are in the true course and moving onward to the goal; but if their hearts seem unfeeling, or cold, or cheerless, they doubt whether they are in the course at all, or ever started aright in the race, and so they faint in their souls and flag in their footsteps. Feelings fluctuate; they ebb and flow; they rise and fall. But we run this race, not by feeling, but by faith. We are saved, not by our emotions, however delightful they may be, but by our confidence in our Lord and Savior.
4. From neglect of the means by which hope and courage are maintained. If prayer be neglected; if meditation upon the spiritual and eternal, upon the soul and truth and God, cease; if the testimony of the "great cloud of witnesses" be unregarded; if "the Leader and Perfecter of the faith" be not contemplated, the soul will faint and the limbs become weary, and the attainment of the prize will be jeopardized, How, then, is the evil to be guarded against?
II THE SAFEGUARD AGAINST THIS EVIL. "Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself," etc. The meaning of the word rendered "consider" is not easily expressed in English. Analogize, compare, think on him and on his sufferings by way of comparison with ours. The "contradiction of sinners" should not be confined to words, but indicates the opposition of the wicked against him. A comparison of what he thus suffered and the trials we have to bear will preserve the soul from faintness, and the steps from faltering.
1. He suffered more than his followers are called to suffer. He was assailed by slander, by contradictions, by ensnaring questions. He was betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and forsaken by all in the time of his trial. He was blasphemed, scourged, derided, and crucified. Think, moreover, how intensely susceptible to suffering he must have been, since he was untainted in his body and perfectly holy in his soul.
2. Yet his sufferings did not cause him to falter in his course, or to turn aside from it. Resolutely he went forward on his path of suffering and sacrifice; knowing the shame and anguish that awaited him, yet still he steadfastly pursued his appointed wayUntil the perfect work was done, And drunk the bitter cup of gall.
3. In this he is an Example to us. "If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example," etc. (1Pe_2:20-23) Consideration of him and of his sufferings makes our severest sufferings seem small, and saves us from weariness and discouragement in the Christian course. Lord, should my path through suffering lie, Forbid it I should e"er repine; Still let me turn to Calvary, Nor heed my griefs, remembering thine. (Conder.) W. J.
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, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12 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 vv3–12 3. Consider him. When you become faint and discouraged…
3. Consider him. When you become faint and discouraged by persecution, consider what Christ suffered from sinners.
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 vv3, 9 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 vv4, 10
Hebrews
RESISTING UNTO BLOOD
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Heb 12:4
‘Ye have not yet resisted’ - then others had done so; and the writer bids his readers contrast their own comparative immunity from persecution from the fate of such, in order that they may the more cheerfully do the easier task devolved upon them. Who were those others?
If the supposition of many is correct that this Epistle was addressed to the Mother Church at Jerusalem, the fate of Stephen the first martyr, and of James the brother of John, who had ‘had the rule over’ that Church, may have been in the writer’s mind. If the date assigned to the letter by some is accepted, the persecution under Nero, which had lighted the gardens of the Capitol with living torches, had already occurred; and the writer may have wished the-Jerusalem Church to Bethink themselves that they had fared better than their brethren in Rome. But whether these conjectures are adopted or no, there is another contrast evidently in the writer’s mind. He has Been speaking of the long series of heroes of the faith, some of whom had been ‘stoned and sawn asunder,’ and he would have the Christians whom he addresses contrast their position with that of these ancient saints and martyrs. And there is another contrast more touching still, more wonderful and impressive, in his mind; for my text follows immediately upon a reference to Jesus Christ, ‘who endured the Cross, despising the shame.’ So Himself ‘had resisted unto blood.’ And thus the writer bids his readers think of the martyrs in the Mother Church; of the blood that had deluged the Church at Rome; of the slaughtered saints in past generations; and, above all, of the great Captain of their salvation; and, animated by the thoughts, manfully to bear and mightily to resist in the conflict that is laid upon them. ‘Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against Sin.’
I. So then, we have here, to begin with, the permanent condition of the Christian life, as one of Warfare and resistance.
The imagery of the whole context is drawn from the arena. A verse or two before the writer was speaking about the race. Now he slightly shifts his point of view, and is speaking rather about the wrestling or the pugilistic encounters that were there waged. And his point is that always, and everywhere, however the forms may vary in which the conflict is carried on, there is inseparable from the Christian life an element of effort, endurance and antagonism. That is worth thinking about for a moment. It is all very Well to sing of green pastures and still waters, and to rejoice in the blessings, the consolations, the tranquillities, the raptures of Christian experience, and to rejoice in the thought of the many mercies for body and soul which come to men through faith. That is all true and all blessed, but it is only one side of the truth. And unless we have apprehended, and have educed to practice and experience the other side of the Christian life, which makes it a toil and a pain to the lower self, and a continual resistance, I venture to say that we have no right to the soothing and sweet and tender side of it; and have need to ask ourselves whether we know anything about Christianity at all. It is not given to us merely - it is not given to us chiefly - to secure those great and precious things which it does secure, but it is given to us in order that, enriched and steadied and strengthened by the possession of them. we should be the better fit for the conflict, just as a wise commander will see that his soldiers are well fed before he flings them into the battle.
But then, passing from that, which is only a side issue, let me remind you of what our antagonist is ‘striving against sin.’
Now some people would take my text to mean solely the conflict which each of us has to wage with our own evils, meannesses and weaknesses. And some, guided by the context, would take the reference to be exclusively to the antagonisms with evils round about us, and with the embodiment of these in men who do not share Christian views of life or conduct. But I think that neither the one nor the other of these two exclusive interpretations can be maintained. For sin is one, whether embodied in ourselves or embodied in men or in institutions. And we have the same conflict to wage against precisely the same antagonist when we are occupied in the task of purging ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, and when we are occupied in the wider task of seeking to bring every man to recognise the power of Christ’s love, and to live in purity by obedience to Him.
And so, the first field on which every Christian is to win his spurs, to prove his prowess, and to exercise his strength is the field within, where the lists are very narrow, and where self wages war against self in daily conflict. Every man of us carries his own worst enemy inside his own waistcoat. We have all lusts, passions, inclinations, desires, faults, vices, meannesses, selfishnesses, indolences, - a whole host of evils lying there like a nest of vipers within us, and our first task and our lifelong task, is to take the sting and the poison out of these, and to throttle them and to east them out.
And then, and only after that, there comes the next thing - viz., the antagonism in which Christian men must permanently stand to a world which does not sympathise with their views, which is strange to the maxims that rule their lives, and which renders no fealty to the King whom they are sworn to obey. And that antagonism runs out into various forms. First of all, it is the solemn duty of every Christian to wage war so as to prevent himself from being caught up in the current of godless living which prevails round him. We have to fight to keep ourselves from being harmed by the world and the worldly communities amidst which we dwell What would become of the captain of a ship who did not take care to have his compass corrected so as to neutralize the effects of all the mass of iron in his vessel? You walk as in the wards of a hospital. If you do not take precautions you will catch the disease that is in the air. It is as certain that careless Christian people who do not ever keep on guard against impending and surrounding evil shall be infected by it, as it is certain that if an Englishman goes out, say to the United States, he will come back with the intonations of our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic slipping unconsciously from his tongue. The first duty, imperative upon Christian people, is to realise that they live in the midst of an order of things that is not in accordance with the Master’s principles, and so to beware that they do not catch the infection.
I do not need to say a word about the other form of antagonism, which is equally imperative, and which will prevent us from caring much about the judgments that may be formed of us by the people round us. ‘With me it is a very small matter that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment.’ But the resistance against sin, which is the Christian man’s merciful warfare in the world, is not completed either by his keeping himself from complicity with surrounding evils or by his refusing to let antagonism divert him from his course. There is something more that is plain duty, and that is, that every Christian should be Christ’s soldier in the attempt to get Christ’s commandments recognised, and the principles of His word obeyed, in the world.
Society is not organised on Christian principles. You have only to look around you to see that. I do not need to dwell upon the various discordances between the plain teachings of this Book and every community, and every nation, and every individual; but let me remind you that until the Sermon on the Mount is the law for individuals and communities, the Christian man, if he is loyal to his Lord, must be ‘striving against sin’ in the endeavour to get established Christ’s kingdom, which is the kingdom of righteousness. That sermon does not contain all Christian truth, but it is the Magna Charta of an applied Christianity; the laws of the kingdom from the lips of the King Himself.
So, brethren, I come to you with this for my message, that no Christian man is doing his work as Christ’s soldier, ‘striving against sin,’ until he is seeking, with the best of his strength, to get Christ’s law, which is righteousness, established on the face of the earth.
Talk of dynamiters and explosives, why, there is explosive power enough in Christianity to shatter to pieces the corruptions which make so large a part of modern social life. But, alas! the Christian Church has too long and too generally been employed in damping down the gunpowder instead of firing it, and seeking to explain away the large and plain commandments of the Master, instead of seeking to apply them.
There is a new spirit springing up around us to-day, for which we should be devoutly thankful, whilst at the same time we must forget that, like all new move-merits, it is apt to be one-sided and exaggerated. Much harm is done, I believe, in many directions by Christian teachers seeking to apply the principles of Christ’s commandments to various phases of social iniquity without a clear knowledge of the facts of the case. But that being fully admitted, I still rejoice to believe that Christ’s men round about us are waking up, as they never did before, to the solemn obligation laid upon Christian churches, if they are not to perish of inanition and inactivity, to proclaim and seek to have recognised Christ’s laws for the individual and Christ’s law for the community.
Only remember the limitations and the antecedents about which I have already spoken a word. No man has any business to go crusading among other people until he has cleansed himself. And the first task of the Christian reformer is with his own heart. And again, it is useless to deal with institutions unless you deal with the men who live under them. The main work of the Christian Church must ever be with individuals, and through their improvement the improvement of society will be most fully secured. But the error of many good and earnest men to-day is in thinking that if you set the ‘environment,’ as they call it, right you will get the men right. It is a mistake. Take a pack of drunken wastrels out of the slums and put them into model lodging-houses, and in a fortnight the lodging-houses. will be as dirty, as the sties from which the men were dragged. Mend the men, and then you may hopefully Set them in new environment; mend the men, and society will be mended. And, mend yourselves first, and then you will be able to mend society. Resist your own sin, and then go out to fight with the sin of others.
II. Notice the brunt of the battle which has been borne by others.
I have already said that the immediate context suggests two contrasts between the comparative immunity from persecution of the readers of the letter and certain others.
The first is that suggested by all that glorious muster-roll of heroes and martyrs of the faith which precedes this chapter. And I may say without dealing in rhetoric, or dilating on the subject, that Christian men in this generation may well bethink themselves of what it was that their fathers bore, and did, that has won for them this ease.
I remember an old church, on the slopes of one of the hills of Rome, which is covered over on all its interior walls with a set of the most gruesome pictures of the martyrs. There may be an unwholesome admiration and adoration of these. I think modern Christianity, in its complacency with itself, and this marvellous nineteenth century, of which we are so proud, would be all the better if it went back sometimes to remember that there were times when ‘young men and maidens, and old men and children,’ had to resist to blood; and when they went to their deaths as joyfully as a bride to the altar.
Ah, brethren I you Nonconformists in this generation, who have an easy- going religion, do not always remember how it was worn Think of George Fox and the Friends. Think of the early Nonconformists, hunted and harried, their noses slit and ears cropped off, their pillories and exile, and then be ashamed to talk about the difficulties that you have to meet. ‘Ye have not resisted unto blood.’
There is a far more touching contrast suggested, and apparently mainly in the writer’s mind, because just before he has said, ‘Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners.’ The word that he employs for ‘consider’ might be rendered ‘compare, weigh in the balance,’ Christ’s sufferings and yours. He has borne the heavy end of the Cross of which He lays the light end upon our shoulders. Of course the more mysterious and profound aspects of Christ’s death, in which He is no pattern for us, but the propitiation for our sins, do not come into view in this contrast. They are abundantly treated in the rest of the letter. But here the writer is thinking of Jesus Christ in His capacity of the Prince of sufferers for righteousness’ sake, who could have escaped His Cross if He had chosen to abandon His warfare and His witness. Jesus Christ is a great deal more than that. And the differentia of His sufferings and death is not touched by such a consideration. But do not let us forget that He is that, and that whatever else His death is, it stands also as being the very climax of all suffering for righteousness. He is the King of the martyrs as well as the Sacrifice for the world’s sin. Let us turn to Him, and mark the heroic strength of character, hidden from hasty observation by the sweet gentleness in which it was enshrined, like the iron hand in a velvet glove.
Let us understand how His pattern is held forth to us, and how the Cross is our example, as well as the ground of all our hope. ‘Ye have not yet resisted ... Consider Him.’
III. And now, lastly, note the lighter warfare incumbent upon us.
The resistance changes its form, but in essence it continues. In old days warfare consisted in men bludgeoning each other, or engaging in hand- grips foot to foot and face to face. Nowadays it is artillery duels - a great deal more scientific, a great deal less coarse; but it is warfare all the same. The world used to burn Christians, to hang them, to stone them. It does not do that now, but it fights them yet. The world has become partially Christianised, and the principles of Christianity have, in a certain imperfect way, infiltrated themselves through the mass, so that the antagonism is not quite as hot as it once was. And the Church has weakened its testimony and largely adopted the maxims of the world. So why should the world persecute a Church which is only a bit of the world under another name? But let any man for himself honestly try to live a life modelled on Christ’s maxims, and let him cast himself against some of the clamant evils round about him, and seek to subdue them, because Christ has bidden him, and he will see whether the old antagonism is not there yet. What a chorus of select epithets will immediately be discharged! ‘Impracticable,’ ‘fanatical,’ ‘one-sided,’ ‘revolutionary,’ ‘sour visaged,’ ‘Pharisee,’ ‘hypocrite.’ These will be the sweet, smelling flowers in the garland that will be woven Depend upon it, a Christian man who is bent on living out Christianity for himself, and on seeking to apply it around him, will have to fight and endure.
But all that is. as nothing - nothing - to what the front rank had to go through, and went through, joyfully. They fell in the trenches and filled them up, that the rear rank might pass across. They bore sword stabs; we have only to bear pin pricks. Stones were flung at them, as at Stephen outside the wall; handfuls of mud are all that we have to be afraid of.
So, brethren, accept thankfully to-day’s form of the permanent conflict, and see that you do unmurmuringly, cheerfully, and thoroughly the task that is laid upon you. And do not think much of the discomforts and annoyances. For us to speak about sacrifices for Christ is as if a bargeman on a canal were to dilate on the perils of his voyage in the hearing of an Arctic explorer; or as if a man that went in a first-class carriage to London were to speak to an African traveller about ‘the perils of the road.’ ‘Ye have not yet resisted unto blood. ‘Consider Him’; and take up your cross, and follow Him.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 11 consider consider well, i.e. weigh so as to judge…
consider consider well, i.e. weigh so as to judge its value.
sinners Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
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 vv4, 9 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 vv4, 7, 9, 12 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 vv3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12 12:3 Think of all the hostility he endured from…
12:3 Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people: The recipients of Hebrews had become weary and were about to give up—they were emotionally fatigued because of the persecution they were facing. The key to their endurance was to focus on Jesus, who had been through even worse hostility.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.