Let *us* also therefore, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight, and sin which so easily entangles us, run with endurance the race that lies before us,
Hebrews 12 opens with a "therefore" that looks back over the whole list of faithful people in chapter 11 and turns it into a picture: a runner stripped for a race already marked out for him. Two questions shape the verse: who are the witnesses around us, and how does a weight differ from a sin?
The verse is not a fresh start. It draws its conclusion from the long list of people who lived and died in faith and never received what God promised. That list ends with a note: God had planned something better for us.
This chapter closes by giving the reason why those who not only lived but died in faith did not receive the promise: "since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect." What was this "better thing"? Can there be a doubt that Christianity is meant?… God then has provided some better thing for us. He has brought in redemption, accomplished now… So He crowns the noble army of witnesses with Christ Himself.
The word "witnesses" in English can suggest onlookers in a stadium. Commentators reject that reading. They point to what the original word can and cannot mean.
We must not think of the cloud of witnesses as onlookers watching our struggle, like a crowd in a stadium. Our English word "witness" does carry that sense, but it has another — one who bears witness. The Greek word has only the second meaning. They are witnesses through the testimony they gave, or the testimony Scripture gives about them. Now the writer calls them up, each in the special circumstances where they won through by faith, to encourage us in the race.
Some go further. They teach that these believers who have died both watch us and help us. Another writer answers that claim head-on:
But this view is unscriptural. We know that angels are spectators (1 Cor. 4:9; 11:10). Angels are serving spirits, sent to help those who will inherit salvation. But the spirits of righteous people who have died are not spectators, and they do not serve the saints on earth. The chapter before holds "the cloud of witnesses." They testify to us by their lives and by the victory of their faith, and that is our encouragement.
Writers differ slightly in tone here. Samuel Ridout allows that "in a certain sense we are running our race under the eyes of all who have gone before," while still insisting the point is the record of their lives, not their observation of ours.
The verse names two things to put off, and it keeps them apart. A weight can be perfectly respectable.
The weight and the sin are quite different things, though they are closely connected. A weight is something I take up when I need not; not a duty, for what is really a duty is never a weight. People may take up a weight and call it duty. The wrong name will not stop them finding out what it really is. But God could never lay on us as a duty something that would harm us.
This turns the familiar question "what harm is there in it?" into a better one:
We often hear the question: What is the harm, or the sin, in doing this or that — going into this business, or enjoying that pleasure? This verse answers it. Is the thing a weight, or is it a wing? Is it something that speeds you on your course, or does it hold you back?
Many read the phrase as each person's private "besetting sin." But the wording points somewhere else. It shows sin standing all around, tripping the runner's feet.
The words "sin which clings so closely" — older translations read "which doth so easily beset us" — render one unique Greek word, euperistatos. It occurs nowhere else. It means "well surrounded" or "standing round about" — like bystanders getting in a runner's way… So it points to sin as something that hinders, not to the evil in it. Sin is pictured as an entanglement, not an opponent.
Gaebelein reads it more narrowly, identifying it as the sin of unbelief the Hebrews had been warned about; others take it as sin in general. Both agree the trouble is entanglement, not a single named fault.
The race is not a sprint, and the strength required is staying power rather than bursts.
But the call is to look away from all else to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of faith. Sentiment and superstition can only get in the way of running the race well. And we run it with endurance, not with bursts of energy.
Stripping off good and useful things sounds harsh. It stops sounding harsh when something better takes their place.
Suppose I have a very beautiful cloak on, and I am running a race. If my heart is set on the prize, I will not care how beautiful the cloak is. I will feel it only as a weight, and I will throw it off… That is the secret: one object fills the heart, and its power frees me from everything else. A thing is a temptation to me only so far as my heart values it.
- Testimony, not audience. The cloud does not watch you run; their lives testify that faith works, and that is the encouragement.
- Weight before sin. What must go first is not always wrong. A real duty is never a weight. The test is simple: does it speed you up or hold you back?
- Sin as entanglement. The rare Greek word pictures sin standing all around, like a crowd blocking a runner. It is not one private failing.
- Endurance, not bursts. You finish with staying power, not bursts of energy — day after day, whatever comes.
- One object clears the track. Weights fall off by themselves when the heart is taken up with the prize — that is the power the verse assumes.
looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured [the] cross, having despised [the] shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The verse closes a long roll-call of believing men and women. It turns the runner's eye away from all of them to one Person. Two questions decide how we read it. What does it mean to call Jesus the "founder and perfecter of faith"? And what was the joy that carried Him through the cross?
The word translated "looking" is unusual. One writer explains what it asks of us, and why no one in the previous chapter could fill the place.
This word for "looking" appears only here in the Greek Scriptures. It means turning the eyes away from other things and fixing them on one. The testimonies of Hebrews 11 give faith much encouragement, but not one of those witnesses could be the object the eye of faith rests on. There is only One who could take that place, and He must have it exclusively.
Older translations put the word "our" before "faith." One writer argues that this shifts the sense.
"Our" faith misleads, especially alongside "author and finisher." It sounds as if the Holy Spirit were presenting Him as the One who begins faith in our souls and carries it on to the end — its source and its sustainer. Not so. He is the leader and perfecter of the race of faith as a whole.
Commentators differ here. Others hold that the title, while true of His own course, also reaches to ours.
He is also the Perfecter of faith — the One who has brought it to full completion. He has run His course and finished it with joy. He has gone on high, and just as surely as He is there, we will finish our course too.
Hebrews 11 lists many who believed, yet this verse gives the title to none of them.
There is only One who is here called the Leader and Perfecter of faith. No Old Testament saint could claim this title. Not one of the great believers of the past fits it — not the father of the faithful, not the friend of God, not the meekest man on all the earth, not the man after God's own heart. It is said of no child of Adam born in sin. The name belongs to One only: the second Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He ran the whole course of faith here without wavering and without the least turning aside.
One writer points to a psalm that shows what that joy was.
In Psalm 16 we get the joy that was set before Him, and there we get Him treading the whole path of faith. I have no doubt that Psalm is in the mind of the writer in chapter 12. He began that path saying, "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge." The closing words of that Psalm show the goal set before Him: "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."
Yet the joy ahead of Him was not the reason He went.
Love, yes the Father's glory, was His motive, however much the future joy cheered Him along the way. Even for us it is the same thing in principle... Reward, however glorious, is never the motive; yet it is most encouraging in the face of danger and trial.
The verse uses two different verbs. One writer stops at the difference between them.
Does it say that the Lord Jesus endured the shame? No, He despised the shame. It does not say that He despised the cross. We know that was an awful reality — He could not despise that. But the shame, the reproach, the disgrace, He did not think of for a moment, in comparison with the joy of having us with Him there.
Where He now sits is the finish line. That speaks to a runner who has slowed down.
And where is He now? At the right hand of the throne of God! He has reached the goal, and that goal is in glory. This is a huge incentive for everyone still running the race. It is a greater one for those who should be running but have given up, or who have grown discouraged and now run half-heartedly.
That seat also settles a public dispute over Him.
In Hebrews 12:2 Jesus sits at the right hand of the throne. That seat is the witness that God is against the world and for the One the world threw out. He is the Captain of faith — not only the sacrifice or the Priest, but the perfect pattern of faith as a man here on earth. Now as such He was a sufferer. The more faith, the greater the suffering.
- Look off. The word means turning your eyes away from everything else. The witnesses of chapter 11 encourage faith, but none of them can be what it rests on.
- Leader. He began and completed the whole course of faith Himself, without wavering — a title no believer of old could carry.
- Joy. What lay before Him was the Father's presence and fullness of joy. But love and the Father's glory, not reward, moved Him to go.
- Endured. He endured the cross, which could not be despised, and thought nothing of the shame men heaped on Him.
- Seated. He has reached the goal. The throne declares that God is for the One the world threw out. Nothing encourages a half-hearted runner more.