Hebrews 12:1-11

Hebrews 12:1-11. Exhortation with encouragement and reproof, in view of all these witnesses, and of the later example of Jesus, to maintain the conflict, and to remember the love from which all discipline comes, and the fruit it is intended to produce. The chapter is introduced by a strong Pauline particle, seeing then, therefore, found only here and in 1 Thessalonians 4:8, and by a favourite Pauline image taken from the ancient games. The figure is doubly instructive; it throws some light upon the authorship, and it illustrates the general principle that Christianity is a universal religion, using for literary purposes Hellenic materials as well as Jewish. The chief thought continues the appeal of chap. 10, basing it on stronger arguments suggested in part by the eleventh chapter.

Let us (as well as those just named), having about us such a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every encumbering weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience (i.e with endurance maintained through to the end) the race that is set before us. These are the first conditions of success. Those who were once witnesses for God, witnesses even unto blood, martyrs in the modern sense, now form the circle, the ring, of spectators who witness our consistency. This double meaning is certainly here; the first in the word ‘witnesses,' and the second in the cloud that bends over the militant Church. The witnesses for God, whose deeds are named in the previous chapter, are also witnesses of our faithfulness and patience.