Hebrews 12:1 Why seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight… I. THE FIGURE EMPLOYED. The particular form of it is unfamiliar, but the essence is familiar enough, and likely long to be so. We are led to think of the natural man, ambitious to triumph by virtue of physical or intellectual strength. His motive is self-regarding, yet it leads him to a measure of self-restraint; indeed, he will go extraordinary lengths in checking self-indulgence if only he may stand first when the struggle is done. A man may be very low in the scale of humanity and yet have the spirit of emulation in him very strong. Now, by this figure, men thirsting for fame and honor have their thoughts turned away from low aims to the highest aim a man can cherish; from aims that bring envy, waste of human faculties, and ultimate disappointment, to an aim which may bring to every man the richest, the most abiding of gains without the slightest loss to any brother man. While there is a stimulus in this exhortation for every Christian, it is specially directed to ambitious climbing, striving men. It tells them to relinquish purposes that at the very best can bring them only a corruptible crown, and bend their energies to the attainment of that divinely produced joy which is set before them even as it was before Jesus. We who are not engaged in the struggle set before us here need to ask what sort of a struggle we are engaged in, We are summoned from the lower to the higher. II. THE AIM PROPOSED TO US. The struggle is the thing mentioned, but behind the struggle stands that for which the struggle is engaged in. Each man, looking at possibilities through his natural eyes, has his own ideal of how to reward the exercised faculties of life. So many kinds of men, so many ideals. But God our Maker has also his ideal for the universal man. His purpose is that the whole man should win a victory. Not that the intellect should be victorious while the spiritual nature lies crushed and dishonored. Jesus had a joy set before him; so also have we. And even as the joy of this world's successes lies at the end of a long and toilsome struggle, so it must be in the joy of spiritual success. We put struggles before ourselves in order to satisfy ambition; God puts a struggle before us to comply with a sense of duty. Here is the proposition of this arduous career put right before us in our onward path. Shall we accept it or shall we evade it? We cannot very well ignore it. III. PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS. We are to lay aside every weight. Wherein a weight consists is to be determined by its character in relation to the result of the struggle. The moment anything binders progress in spirituality it is to be forsaken. As to the easily besetting sin, perhaps that is best taken not as indicating something different from the weight, but in apposition to it. The variety of expression enforces the one paramount duty of putting aside everything, external and internal, which would tend to failure. The easily besetting sin is generally spoken of as being unbelief. But it is not enough to look at unbelief on its negative side; we must look at it positively as a state of the heart wherever it goes out after things that are seen, mere appearances, satisfactions of the fleshly appetite. Then, when obstacles are thrown off, we can patiently pursue our path. We shall need patience because there will be external obstacles - a world not sympathizing with us, and indeed crossed and thwarted by us in our steady adherence to the course God has marked out. But the patience must be that quality which in the New Testament is specially dignified by the name "the patience of hope." The toil, the strain, the seasons of weariness and of special difficulty, must all be cheered by the well-grounded hope of ultimate victory. The dreadful thing in all struggles is when they end in failure. In the race run by the Christian all succeed. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, |
    |