Fix your eyes on Jesus
Today's reading Hebrews 12:1-3
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Today’s blog
“Therefore... 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 who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
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As so often in Hebrews, the “therefore” is important. It shows that this paragraph is the conclusion to “you need to persevere” (10:36). The Christian life is like a long-distance race (cf. Acts 20:24; 1 Cor.9:24; Gal.2:2; Gal.5:7; 2 Tim.4:7) but it’s been “marked out for us” by God, and the great number of Old Testament men and women whose lives bear witness to persevering by faith are now by their example encouraging us not to give up but to keep going.
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In order to do that, we need to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith”. The verb means more than to look – it has the sense of fixing our gaze upon him “on whom our faith depends from beginning to end” (Good News Bible). Jesus himself is the supreme example of godly endurance motivated by future hope: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame” (2). That joy was both the glory of his exaltation and the knowledge that through his death we will share in that glory with him (1:3; 2:10; 8:1; 10:12).
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“Endured” (2) is the same Greek word as persevere (1), and it then occurs again in v3: “Consider him who endured such opposition so that you will not grow weary and lose heart”. Weariness doesn’t happen in a moment but over a period of time. The answer to that is to keep focused on Jesus, so that by faith in him we keep on running the race right to the end.
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(To dig a bit deeper into Hebrews 12:1-3 click here for some commentary notes.)