Take some time to think of the people who have most encouraged you in your race. But thanks be to God, He holds us up and gives the church to us as a cheering section. It is a race that must be run with endurance. We must turn away from them and look instead to Jesus. We must therefore “lay aside” these sins. They will weigh us down like heavy clothing, preventing us from running with freedom and endurance. If we have sins that overcome us, then we may never finish the race. The things that hinder us, today’s passage tells us, are the sins that cling so closely. Yet we will only run with endurance if we throw off all hindrances. The old covenant saints encourage us to run with endurance. So run brothers and sisters, run and do not stop holding onto Christ!” Therefore, you have no excuse for not persevering. They cheer us on saying, “You live in an even better age than we did. They cheer us on through the example of their faithful endurance, waiting for the promises of God to come. In the race that is the Christian life, the old covenant saints described in chapter 11 are our cheerleaders. In a race, the stadium is filled with great throngs of people in the bleachers cheering on the contestants to victory. One motivation to run this race is the great “cloud of witnesses” surrounding us. We see then that the life of faith is like a race that must be run with endurance so that the finish line may be crossed and the prize received. This is an image of an athletic competition, of Olympic footraces familiar to the original audience of this book. We are called to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (12:1). This is the point that the author of Hebrews makes in today’s passage. We must press on just as the saints of old did. As such, we still must persevere in faith until Jesus comes back. We still must wait for the return of Christ to bring His kingdom to consummation (8:13 9:28). However, though we live in a better era after Christ than those who lived before His sacrifice, our positions are not wholly dissimilar. He is the one who will perfect God’s people. He brings the new covenant through the perfect sacrifice of Himself (8:1–10:18). Jesus is the one who brings all of God’s promises to final fulfillment. Nevertheless, they died in faith, trusting that God would bring all of His promises to final fulfillment (vv. 39–40). This was because God was not willing to perfect them apart from new covenant believers. Hebrews 12:1, “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,”Īt the end of Hebrews 11, we are reminded that the old covenant saints, in their lifetimes, never received what was promised.
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