Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Hebrews 12:1-3 ESV

After the great explanation of Jesus’ superior priesthood at the heart of Hebrews, the author proceeded to give us three commands: draw near in faith, hold fast the confession of our hope, and stir one another up to love and good works. As I noted previously, these commands sort of serve as a table of contents for the final chapters of this sermon-letter. Chapter 11 gave us examples of Old Testament saints who lived by faith in God’s promise, even though they did not have the full assurance that we have in Christ. The verses before us are a transition into the theme of chapter 12, which presents us with the great hope of our confession in Christ as well as our great need for enduring in that hope.

SO GREAT A CLOUD OF WITNESSES // VERSE 1

We begin the word therefore, which is reaching backward and pulling the cumulative weight of Hebrews 11 upon us. In fact, he gathers together all those Old Testament examples of faith and envisions them as being a great cloud all around us as far as the eye can see: since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Now we should not take these saints to be witnesses in the sense that they are spectators of our life here on earth. Instead, they are witnesses in the same sense that martyrs are witnesses for Christ by testifying to the truth of Jesus at the cost of their very blood. This great cloud of saints that surrounds us is a multitude of testimonies of God’s faithfulness, love, and grace to His people.

Of course, that great cloud of witnesses is even greater for us in the 21^st Century because we have the testimonies of nearly two thousand years of church history that have been added to its vast number. Proverbs repeatedly notes that fools neglect the instruction of their father and mother, whereas the wise gladly embrace the wisdom of the previous generation. The same can be said of whole societies as well. Where history is neglected, foolishness abounds. This, of course, goes for the church as well. How much foolishness and outright worldliness has been embraced by churches today that might have been avoided through being more rooted in the testimonies of our fathers and mothers of the faith?

With their lives of faith still in mind, the author gives us two commands that constitute one point: let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Robert Paul Martin notes:

The exhortation contained in this verse is expressed with the greatest possible urgency as essential to our inheriting the promises. The imagery is from the Greek games (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24-27; 2 Tim. 4:6-8), in particular the marathon. The Christian life is indeed a long distance race, not a short sprint. This imagery, of course, is particularly powerful as the backdrop to an exhortation to persevere in faith. The Greek games were not casual, frivolous amusements, but a serious civil institution with critical significance in the lives of the participants. The prizes were not silver or gold, but honor and glory and fame, power and position, a glorious future. In the marathon the course was marked out with a reviewing stand constructed at the end—on which sat the judges, who were successful competitors from former years. The runner, stripped of every encumbrance, ran virtually naked. After each race, the winner took his place in the stands and watched while others competed. Unlike our modern games, winners did not receive their prize after each event but were crowned together at the end of the day. This is the image behind our text.[1]

Indeed, is it not a fitting way to visualize the commands to hold fast and endure that have so permeated this sermon-letter? The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. Those who have fallen away from the faith may have appeared to be great runners at the start, but a strong beginning is not enough to win a race. Endurance is necessary for pushing through the aches and pains that will inevitably set in along the way.

Such a picture should be expressed as clearly as possible to new believers. After all, that is what Jesus did, saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Or also:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–33)

Christ’s warning is made visible by the character of Pliable in the Pilgrim’s Progress. After hearing Christian speak of the glories of the Celestial City, Pliable decided to become his companion. Yet after he and Christian slip into the Slough of Despondency, he abandons his pilgrimage and returns home. As Jesus warned, when he came to his house again, his neighbors came and mocked him for his cowardice.

The life of following Christ is full of life and immense joy; however, it is also a life of endurance, marked by various trials and afflictions. And while the circumstances of the broken world around us will yield plenty of those trials, we must most significantly wrestle against our own hearts, which will yearn to walk mindlessly down the broad and easy path, even though its end is destruction.

Therefore, if we are going to run with endurance, we must lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely. One commentator notes, “As the athlete disciplines himself to discard everything that would impede his progress in the contest for which he has entered, so also every weight must be laid aside in the Christian race. An immoderate use of that which is not in itself sinful can become a great hindrance to the Christian.”[2] That is precisely why the Newton household does not watch television or play videogames. Tiff and I both have quite obsessive personalities, so knowing ourselves, those are weights of life that we have laid aside in order to run our race. Recall that thorns kept one of the soils from being fruitful in the Parable of the Sower, which Jesus explained as meaning: “They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). In considering these hindrances, we ought to consider the sheer amount of riches that saturate our lives on a daily basis. We do not need to feel guilty for having them, as some have suggested, but we ought to be perpetually skeptical of them, never letting them have mastery over our hearts.

Yet we must also lay aside our sin, which even though defeated and robbed of its power through Christ’s atoning sacrifice still clings tightly to us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly notes how sin hinders our walk of faith:

You complain that you cannot believe? No one should be surprised that they cannot come to believe so long as, in deliberate disobedience, they flee or reject some aspect of Jesus’ commandment. You do not want to subject some sinful passion, an enmity, a hope, your life plans, or your reason to Jesus’s commandment? Do not be surprised that you do not receive the Holy Spirit, that you cannot pray, that your prayer for faith remains empty! Instead, go and be reconciled with your sister or brother; let go of the sin which keeps you captive; and you will be able to believe again![3]

Now we should not take Bonhoeffer’s words further than they are intended to go. Of course, the sinner can only be freed from sin by first believing in Christ. His point is not that one. Rather, he is firing at Christians who still hold onto pet sins and are bewildered at why they are not growing in Christ.

What sins are hindering your race of faith? What excuses are you making for not putting them to death? Strip yourself of them now. Sin only grows stronger, not weaker, with time, and finishing a marathon is challenging enough in its own right.

LOOKING TO JESUS // VERSE 2

Moving into verse 2, the author now adds a qualifier for how we are to run our race with endurance: we should do so while looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Looking at the examples of the Old Testament saints to learn from their triumphs and failures is profitable. So is learning from the lives of those who have lived in the last two thousand years since the writing of the New Testament. Yet as beneficial as it is to learn from their flawed but faithful examples, it is profitable and beneficial in everyway to look to Christ, who the supreme and perfect example of living a faithful life to God.

Let us aim for precision here. There have been many theologians who have been uncomfortable with the concept of penal substitutionary atonement (which is the view that Christ atoned for our sins by suffering the penalty of our sins in our place) and have adopted instead the notion that Christ died upon the cross chiefly to serve as an example for us of faithfulness and sacrificial love. However, we should remember that our degree of comfort has no effect on how true something is, and Hebrews has clearly and repeatedly declared that Jesus rescued us from our sins by bearing in Himself the penalty that we rightly deserved. Thus, any attempt to wriggle away from penal substitutionary atonement is an attempt to wriggle away from Scripture itself.

Having made that clear, we can now note that the presentation of Christ as our supreme example is so appealing because it is also scriptural. Now, He is not our example in terms of atonement for sin, but He is our chief and ultimate example for a life of faithfulness and obedience to God. Indeed, we find this within the two titles that the author gives to Jesus here: the founder and perfecter of our faith. He is the founder or captain of our faith, for He established it. Our faith is nothing if it is not rooted in Christ as its foundation and following after Christ as our captain. But He is also the perfecter of our faith, “for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (10:14). He is the beginner and finisher of our faith, the initiator and completer. Thus, if we would have faith and preserve our souls rather than shrink back and be destroyed, we should supremely look to Jesus.  Indeed, as Richard Phillips notes:

There is no circumstance, no difficulty, no temptation for which this is not a reliable guide: “looking to Jesus.” This is the “secret” of the Christian life, the encouragement we need for our faith: to place our eyes not on the world with its enticements and threats, not even on ourselves with our petty successes and many failures, but on him who is the source and foundation of all our spiritual vigor.[4]

Particularly, we should set our eyes upon how Jesus endured suffering: who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God. Jesus perfectly ran His race of faith. From the moment that He took on human flesh within the womb of Mary, He lived in perfect obedience to God’s law, accomplishing what Adam ought to have done but with the added difficulty of being immersed into a world of sin and death. He even submitted to the will of Father by allowing Himself to be crucified, despising the shame.

As we noted while studying Mark’s Gospel, arguably the greatest torture of crucifixion was the shame and indignity of the execution, which was the evangelist’s focus far more than the physical suffering. Upon the cross, the crucified were essentially stripped of their humanity. They were derided while still living, and their bodies were thrown into the garbage dump upon their death, committing their spirits to a hundred years of restless wandering in the afterlife according to the Greeks and Romans. Thus, it was a shameful death and a shameful afterlife.

Yet as we rightly sing, “But the deepest stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that Justice gave.” His greatest affliction was the unmitigated wrath of God that was poured out upon Him. Hanging upon that tree, Christ became a curse for us. He was damned by the Father in our place. As Isaiah 53:10 explicitly says, “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief…” He was crushed to satisfy the righteous wrath of God against our sins.

But He endured the shame and disgrace of the cross for the joy that was set before him. That joy was certainly the glorification that Christ received after fulfilling His humiliation, taking His seat at the right hand of God, and receiving “the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). Indeed, the remainder of Isaiah 53:10 notes that Christ’s glorification was always the goal of His humiliation: “when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”

Yet His eternal and triumphant joy also includes us. Recall that 2:9 said that Jesus is now “crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” His being crowned with glory and honor is the same as His being seated at the right hand of God, for what greater honor and glory is there?

Indeed, if we go on to 2:10, we find that the author has already presented Christ as the founder and perfecter of our faith: “For it [that is, His suffering of death] was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Remember He was made perfect, not morally, but through His obedience and suffering He was made into the perfect and exact Savior we needed to rescue us from our sins. And through His salvation, Christ is leading as the founder and perfecter many adopted sons and daughters of God into glory to dwell with Him forevermore. Indeed, His is the joy of receiving the nations has His heritage, which marvelously includes us!

CONSIDER HIM // VERSE 3

With the wonders of verses 1-2 and all of chapter 11, the author now gives us this exhortation: consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Trapp notes that “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.”

That is precisely what the author is presenting here. Jesus is our champion, our founder, our perfecter, our Lord, and our God. He is also our example of true and perfect faith. Of course, we will never be able to imitate Him perfectly in this life, but we are still commanded to follow Him, to be like our great Teacher. Indeed, R. Kent Hughes notes that:

The phrase “grow weary or fainthearted” was sports lingo in the ancient world for a runner’s exhausted collapse. Thus, the way for the Christian runner to avoid such a spiritual collapse was to “consider him”—that is, to carefully calculate (we derive our word logarithm from the Greek word translated “consider”) Jesus and his endurance of opposition from the likes of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate. We are to remember his confidence and meekness and steel-like strength in meeting his enemies.[5]

Brothers and sisters, considering Jesus is both your great duty and your supreme delight. Since the race of faith finishes with death or Christ’s return, much endurance is required, and weariness and faintheartedness are to be held as mortal enemies. How then will you have the stamina to endure to the end? The message of the world is constant affirmation. “You can do this! You’ve got this this! You are enough.” The message of Scripture is a bit different. It says that you are not enough, you do not have a handle on your life, and you cannot do this alone. Yet importantly we are not alone, nor are we left to our devices. Let our eyes be fixed upon Christ. It is His joy that is set before us. For now, we walk in His joy by faith, but the joy set before us is that one day we shall know Him by sight, looking upon our Lord face to face. But that sight will never be joyous to us then if we do not delight in looking to Christ now by faith.

Indeed, the Table set before us is a visual call to set our eyes upon Christ, to consider Him. Through this bread and cup, we remember our Lord’s broken body and shed blood as He endured the cross as the once for all sacrifice for our sins.

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[1] Robert Paul Martin, Hebrews, 626.

[2] Geoffrey Wilson, New Testament Commentaries Vol 2, 443.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 66.

[4] Richard Phillips, Hebrews, 532-533.

[5] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, 391.