Today, we are continuing our journey along Route 66, and we are stopping off to visit the letter to the Hebrews…
AUTHOR
The writer of The Letter to the Hebrews does not identify himself. Despite this fact, many have thought over the past two thousand years that this letter was written by Paul. However, the writing style and distinct emphases of this letter are different from those of the Apostle Paul. Thus, most modern scholars are agreed that this letter is not part of the Pauline corpus. In Hebrews 2:3 the author says, “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.” This indicates that the author was not with Jesus during his earthly ministry, nor had he received revelation directly from Jesus as had Paul. (See Galatians 1:11-12.)
There have been many guesses over the past two thousand years as to who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. The early church father, Tertullian, suggested that the Letter to the Hebrews was written by Barnabas. Martin Luther believed that Apollos was the author of this letter. Whoever the author was, he apparently had some authority in the early church and was an intellectual Jewish Christian well-versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Barnabas and Apollos both fit this description.
DATE
Hebrews was probably written before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70 because if the Letter to the Hebrews was written after, he almost certainly would have used the destruction of Jerusalem as an argument for the superiority of Christ to the Temple. The author consistently uses the present tense when speaking of the Temple and the activities of the Jewish priests, thus suggesting that the Temple was still in operation when he wrote this letter.
THEMES
This letter is addressed to Jewish Christians who were familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures and may have been tempted to revert to Judaism in some manner. The main theme of this letter is the absolute superiority of Jesus as Messiah and mediator of God’s grace. Jesus is presented as the final revelation of God, the mediator of a new covenant, superior to the ancient prophets, superior to the angels and even superior to Moses. A good title for this letter would be “the book of better things”. The bottom line for this author is that the whole Jewish system of religion has been superseded by Jesus. All Christians are called to persevere in a faith relationship with Christ.
STRUCTURE
- Prologue: The Superiority of God’s New Revelation (1:1-4)
- The Superiority of Christ to Leaders of the Old Covenant (1:5-7:28)
- The Superior Sacrificial Work of Our High Priest (8-10)
- Final Plea for Persevering Faith (11-12)
- Conclusion (13)
KEY CONCEPT: RUNNING THE RACE
At the beginning of Hebrews 12, the author of this letter compares the Christian life to a race.
When I entered junior high school, I was overweight. Sports and physical activity generally were not my favorite things in life. But I had a physical education teacher who was truly inspiring to me. His name was Earl Toler.
Coach Toler gave extra points in P.E. class if we did some jogging outside of class time and kept track of how many miles we ran. So, I started running a mile every morning before going to school.
Coach Toler always spoke encouraging words to me and to others in our class. I liked Coach so much that I invited him to go with me when my father spoke in a chapel service to the Los Angeles Dodgers one Sunday morning. Coach loved that. We went to the game later that day and Coach explained to me all the intricacies of baseball and statistics about each of the players.
Nonetheless, I was always one of the last students to finish running the mile in class, something we had to do every Friday. But one particular Friday as I was coming into the home stretch, I could hear Coach Toler yelling words of encouragement to me: “Great job Vaus! Magnificent effort! Keep going! You’re almost there!” When I crossed the finish line, I clocked in at under eight minutes for the first time in my life. Coach praised me as though I had just won an Olympic gold medal.
The writer to the Hebrews presents us with a similar picture at the beginning of chapter 12. He compares the Christian life to running in a foot race. At the Olympic games the amphitheater would be filled with a crowd watching the sporting competitions.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us that we too are being watched as we run our race for the Lord. Let’s read what the writer to the Hebrews says about how to run our race to win…
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
In Hebrews 11 the author of this letter gives us the example of a whole list of heroes of faith. Then in chapter 12 he tells us that these heroes are watching us as we run our race for Christ. No pressure there!
The question is: how are we going to run our race to win? The author of this letter tells us three things we need to do.
First, we need to throw off everything that hinders.
In preparing for a footrace, athletes in Greek culture would not only try to lose weight and get in shape, but when the time came for running their race, they would literally strip off all their clothes so that there would be nothing to hinder them. The ancient Greeks who participated in the Olympic games would usually participate in most of the athletic competitions naked. This is, most likely, what the writer to the Hebrews had in mind when he said that we must throw off everything that hinders.
The word this author uses for a race is ἀγῶνα, which can mean the place of contest, the racecourse, the stadium, or the contest itself. Originally, the Olympic games consisted only of a running race. And it is from this word, ἀγῶνα, that we get our English word “agony”.
The Greek word that the New International Version of the Bible translates as “easily entangles” may originally have been a word best translated as “easily distracts”. I am reminded of a scene in the movie, Chariots of Fire, where the American runner, Jackson Scholz, looks aside at the last moment to see if another runner is catching up to him. That one little mistake proves fatal, and he fails to win the race.
We all have some things that can easily distract us from running full out in our race for Christ. There are weights that weigh us down unnecessarily. They may not be sins, but just things that needlessly clutter our lives. Some of us may be weighed down by worry. Others may be distracted by things that keep us from focusing on the Lord. And certainly, specific sins can entangle us and trip us up as well.
I wonder: is there something weighing you down right now or distracting you from running full out in your race for the Lord? Why not give it to him? Why not lay it aside right now? Imagine the freedom you will feel when you take off that extra weight. Imagine how much more focused you will be on the Lord if you stop looking aside to see how others are doing in their race. Remember, in the race of the Christian life, the only person you are in competition with is yourself.
The second thing the writer to the Hebrews tells us we need to do, if we are going to run our race to win, is that we need to persevere.
The Greek word used here is sometimes translated as “patience”. However, as William Barclay explains, ὑπομονή is not…
the patience which sits down and accepts things but the patience which masters them. It is not some romantic thing which lends us wings to fly over the difficulties and the hard places. It is a determination, unhurrying and yet undelaying, which goes steadily on and refuses to be deflected. Obstacles do not daunt it and discouragements do not take its hope away. It is the steadfast endurance which carries on until in the end it gets there.
That is why the NIV translates this word as “perseverance”.
Why do we especially need perseverance in the Christian life? The reason is that the race we are running is often a long-distance one. It is not usually a short sprint to the end.
My sons James and Jonathan both ran on the cross-country team when they were in high school. What would have happened if they began each race by sprinting? They would have gotten tired out and given up long before they reached the end. The important thing in running a cross-country race is that you pace yourself so that you have the energy, the stamina, to go the distance.
Which is harder—running a marathon or the 100-meter? Both take unique skills and perhaps God knows what we are best suited for and gives us what we need. However, for my money I would lay a bet on saying that the marathon race is harder, especially the marathon of a lifetime. It is more challenging to live eighty-one years well for God than it is to live twenty-one.
Tom Wright says…
Sadly, many of us will know Christians… keen and eager in their early days, they run out of steam by the time they reach mature adulthood, and by the time they’re in middle age or older they have either lost all energy for active Christian living or are frantically trying to recapture the zip and sparkle of a now inappropriate teenage-style faith. Give me the person, any day, who starts a bit more slowly but who is still there, patiently running the next mile and the next and the next, all those years later.
Bottom line: we need the grace of perseverance. As the saying goes, “It’s not how you start, but how you finish.”
That leads me to the final point of these brief verses. If we want to run our race to win, however long that race may be, we need to fix our eyes on the finish line.
Raymond Brown says that the word used here for fixing one’s eyes “indicates the action of one who, aware of rival attractions, deliberately looks away from other things.”
Who is there at the finish line? In the very center of that great cloud of witnesses is Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews calls him the author and perfecter of our faith. That means that Jesus was the pioneer in running the same course we must run. Jesus completed the race successfully and he can help us to do the same. That is why we must keep our eyes fixed on him; we must continually consider Jesus.
We are invited here to think through just what Jesus experienced as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Jesus went through many of the same struggles you and I must go through: temptation in the wilderness, anxiety in the garden, abandonment by friends. But Jesus also went through more, much more than you or I will ever have to experience. He endured the shame and pain of the cross. Certainly, there have been others in history that experienced the horror of death on a cross. But the New Testament maintains that Jesus died for the sin of others; he took the sin of the world upon himself when he died. And that is something none of us will ever experience. If he did that, then we have sufficient reason, sufficient justification, to never grow weary or lose heart as we run our race for him. If Jesus made it through the cross and came out the other side, then he can enable us to handle whatever agony we encounter in our race for him and to him.
How did Jesus keep going when he had the cross to endure? The writer to the Hebrews tells us Jesus kept his eyes fixed on the joy that would follow afterwards. That’s how we can keep going—by meditating on the joy that will be ours when some day we see our Lord face to face and hear those wonderful words: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21)
The summer I turned nineteen, I spent a month traveling around the British Isles all by myself. I had an interest, among other things, in seeing the Yorkshire countryside made famous by the books of James Herriot. So, being a keen bicyclist at that time, I decided I was going to go on a ride across Yorkshire. I asked a guide in York how many miles it would be from York to Robin Hood’s Bay on the coast. He said it was forty miles. That was a little further, round-trip, than what I wanted to ride, but I thought I could do it. So, I rented a bicycle and set out the next morning around 9 am… By sunset that evening I was just approaching Robin Hood’s Bay and had to spend the night there because I was so tired. I told my host at the B&B about my journey, and they said the way I had come was sixty-six miles. The next day they sent me home by a different route that was slightly shorter—only sixty miles. I cycled 126 miles in two days.
You might wonder, how did I keep going on such a long journey by bicycle, literally over hill and over dale? The answer: I kept thinking about the hot bath and soft bed I was going to enjoy at the end of the trip.
The same is true of the journey of the Christian life. We keep going by keeping our eyes fixed on the finish line. But at the finish line of this life there is something better than a hot bath and a soft bed. Jesus stands at the finish line ready to welcome us into the joy of our Father in heaven. Jesus and his joy are what enable us to persevere. He is the one who makes us want to lay aside every weight so that we can reach the end of our journey successfully.
But when we do trip over the sins that so easily entangle us on the way there is still hope. As C. S. Lewis once wrote to a correspondent…
No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of His presence.
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