Hebrews 12 · Passage · Perseverance
Run with Endurance
The chapter after the roll of the faithful turns to the race its readers must run themselves.
Its first readers had once “joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property” (Hebrews 10:34), and by chapter 12 they were in danger of losing heart.
Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?
- The passage
- Hebrews 12:1 to 29
- Book
- Hebrews
- Hold in memory
- Hebrews 12:11, Hebrews 12:28
Summary
Hebrews 12 is one argument for endurance in five movements. It sets the race before the reader with Jesus as its pattern and reads hardship as a father's training of his sons. It then turns to the weak and to the warning of Esau, sets Mount Zion beside Mount Sinai, and closes with the unshakable kingdom believers receive. Each movement gives a tired believer a reason to keep going.
- Jesus endured the cross, and the writer tells believers to consider Him.
- God disciplines His children as a father trains his sons, for their good and for their holiness.
- The strong among believers are to steady the weak, and each is to watch over the others.
- Believers have come to Mount Zion, and the voice that shook Sinai will shake heaven and earth once more.
- The answer the chapter asks for is gratitude and worship offered with reverence and awe.
A Chapter for Weary Runners
The chapter opens with “Therefore” and draws its call from the faithful named in Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 12 calls believers to perseverance, the value this study belongs to, which the chapter pictures as a runner's steady course with his eyes on Jesus. This study asks how the chapter builds its call to keep going, from the race in its first verse to the consuming fire in its last.
It gives the five movements of the chapter, the Greek words of endurance in its first seven verses and three readings of its discipline. It also traces the commands the writer draws from Isaiah and Deuteronomy and the promise he borrows from Haggai.
Before the roll of faith the writer had told his readers, “You need to persevere” (Hebrews 10:36). Chapter 11 then names the faithful from Abel to the prophets, and chapter 12 draws from them the lesson for the runner.
The study of the Joy Set Before Him reads Hebrews 12:1 to 3 for the joy of Christ. Readers ask whether the cloud of witnesses watches the race or testifies to God, and the study of the Race sets out both answers.
The Five Movements of Hebrews 12
Discipline takes the most verses of the chapter, eight of its twenty-nine.
The chapter turns from each runner's race to the church's life together, and from Sinai to the kingdom believers receive.
A ladder of the five movements of Hebrews 12, from the race of Hebrews 12:1 to the kingdom of Hebrews 12:28.
The Words of Endurance in Hebrews 12:1 to 7
The writer uses the noun and the verb of endurance four times in the chapter's first seven verses.
The noun hypomone stands in the command to run (Hebrews 12:1). The verb hypomeno, in the aorist hupemeinen, says what Jesus did at the cross (Hebrews 12:2), and its perfect participle hupomemenekota names Him as the One who had endured hostility (Hebrews 12:3).
The fourth use is the present hupomenete (Hebrews 12:7), set beside the noun paideia. The verb is a present indicative in the second person plural, and the Berean renders it as a command.
Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.The writer gives the reader one person to think about and names the danger that thought guards against.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.The writer turns from the endurance of Jesus to the readers' own struggle against sin.
Discipline as the Training of Sons
The writer quotes Proverbs 3 and reads the hardships of believers as a father's training.
The writer reminds his readers of a saying of Proverbs that addresses them as sons: “My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD, and do not loathe His rebuke” (Proverbs 3:11). In Proverbs the father who disciplines is the LORD, and Hebrews applies the saying to a church under hardship.
Furthermore, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Should we not much more submit to the Father of our spirits and live?The writer argues from the respect owed to earthly fathers to the submission owed to the Father of spirits.
No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it.The writer answers the readers' present pain with what training yields later.
The Weak, the Bitter Root and Esau
The writer turns from each runner to the whole church and draws his commands from Isaiah and Deuteronomy.
The command to strengthen limp hands and weak knees takes up Isaiah's call to “Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees” (Isaiah 35:3). The root of bitterness recalls Moses' warning to Israel, “Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit” (Deuteronomy 29:18).
See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many.The writer makes each believer answerable for those who run beside him.
Esau traded his birthright for bread and lentil stew, and Genesis says, “Thus Esau despised his birthright” (Genesis 25:34).
For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. He could find no ground for repentance, though he sought the blessing with tears.The writer warns that a choice like Esau's can leave a man unable to undo it.
Readers differ over what Hebrews 12:17 means for a believer who falls away, and the debate on eternal security sets out their readings.
Sinai and Zion
The writer sets the mountain Israel feared beside the city to which believers have come.
The writer recalls the command given at Sinai, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned” (Hebrews 12:20). He adds that “even Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear’” (Hebrews 12:21).
For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom, and storm; to a trumpet blast or to a voice that made its hearers beg that no further word be spoken.The writer recalls Sinai so that the reader can measure what he has been given against what Israel feared.
in joyful assembly, to the congregation of the firstborn, enrolled in heaven. You have come to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.The list ends with Jesus because the new covenant He mediates is the reason believers may draw near.
How the Church Has Read Hebrews 12
John Chrysostom preached on the commands to the weak in his thirtieth homily on Hebrews.
died 407 · John Chrysostom
Chrysostom heard Hebrews 12:12 to 13 as a coach's charge to athletes who had begun to give up.
Read the page on John Chrysostom
“He speaks as to runners, and boxers, and warriors. Seest thou how he arms them, how he encourages them? ‘Walk straight,’ he says. Here he speaks with reference to their thoughts; that is to say, not doubting. For if the chastisement be of love, if it begin from loving care, if it end with a good result (and this he proves both by facts and by words, and by all considerations), why are ye dispirited? For such are they who despair, who are not strengthened by the hope of the future. ‘Walk straight,’ he says, that your lameness may not be increased, but brought back to its former condition. For he that runs when he is lame, galls the sore place. Seest thou that it is in our power to be thoroughly healed?”
John Chrysostom · Homily on Hebrews 30 · on Hebrews 12:12 to 13Patristic
Punishment or Training
Readers have taken the discipline of Hebrews 12 in three ways, each with its holder, its work and the objection to it.
Hardship sent for the readers' goodJohn Chrysostom
John Chrysostom said in his twenty-ninth homily on Hebrews that the readers' hardship came “not for punishment, nor for vengeance, nor for suffering”.
The objection: Matthew Henry held that the same discipline also corrects sin.
Correction of sin for the believer's profitMatthew Henry
Matthew Henry wrote in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710) that the Father's chastening is “to correct and cure those sinful disorders which make us unlike to God”.
The objection: Chrysostom set the hardship of sons apart from the penalty the wicked pay for their crimes.
A hardship to bear with patienceJamieson, Fausset and Brown
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), wrote on Hebrews 12:5 that “Some in adversity kick against God's will, others despond”, and that “neither is to be done by the Christian”.
The objection: the reading says how discipline is to be borne and leaves its purpose to Hebrews 12:10 to 11.
The Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken
The chapter ends with a last warning, a promise from Haggai and a call to worship.
The writer warns, “See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks” (Hebrews 12:25). The promise he cites is Haggai's: “Once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land” (Haggai 2:6).
At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth, but heaven as well.”The verse marks the turn from the voice heard at Sinai to the promise still ahead.
“For our God is a consuming fire.”The chapter ends by naming God Himself, which gives the call to worship its weight.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews, homilies 29 and 30, on Hebrews 12:7 and 12:12 to 13 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 14)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Hebrews 12:9 to 10.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Hebrews 12:5.
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