Hebrews 12:4

Fatherly chastisements should be cheerfully endured

4. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood If this be a metaphor drawn from pugilism, as the last is from "running a race," it means that as yet they have not "had blood drawn." This would not be impossible, for St Paul adopts pugilistic metaphors (1 Corinthians 9:26-27). More probably however the meaning is that, severe as had been the persecutions which they had undergone (Hebrews 10:32-33), they had not yet and perhaps a shade of reproach is involved in the expression resisted up to the point of martyrdom(Revelation 12:11). The Church addressed can scarcely therefore have been either the Church of Rome, which had before this time furnished "a great multitude" of martyrs (Tac. Ann.xv. 44; Revelation 7:9), or the Church of Jerusalem, in which, beside the martyrdoms of St Stephen, St James the elder, and St James the Lord's brother, some had certainly been put to death in the persecution of Saul (Acts 8:1).

striving against sin "in your struggles against sin." Some from this expression give a more general meaning to the clause "You have not yet put forth your utmost efforts in your moral warfare."