Scripture Daily

Context No. 1385 of 4322 · Hebrews

Context · Reflection

Hebrews 12:1-6: in context

1Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3For consider him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, that you don’t grow weary, fainting in your souls. 4You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin. 5You 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; 6for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

The writer, having recounted a long roll of the faithful who have gone before, turns to us. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, he says, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at God's right hand. Consider him, so that you do not grow weary and lose heart; you have not yet resisted to the point of blood. And he reminds them that the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father his children.

The heart of the passage is the direction of our gaze: run the race looking to Jesus. The Christian life is pictured as a long-distance race requiring endurance, and the key to running it is not looking at our own feet, or at the other runners, or at how far we have to go, but fixing our eyes on Jesus, who ran the same course before us and finished it. And how did he endure? For the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising its shame. He kept his eyes on the joy that lay beyond the suffering, and that future joy carried him through the present agony. There is the pattern for our own endurance: not gritting our teeth against present hardship but looking past it, as he did, to the joy set before us, letting what lies ahead give us strength for what we bear now. And notice the two things to lay aside: not only the sin that entangles, but every weight. Some things that slow us in the race are not sins at all, just weights, encumbrances, good things even, that we are carrying and do not need, that hold us back from running freely. The runner strips down to run. To run the race well is to lay aside both the sin and the surplus weight, to fix our eyes on Jesus rather than on ourselves, and to endure the present for the joy that, as with him, lies on the far side of it.

Am I running my race with my eyes fixed on Jesus, who endured the cross for the joy set before him, laying aside not only my sins but the weights that slow me, and letting the joy ahead give me strength for what I must endure now?

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