Like his teacher, the author of the letter compares the spiritual path with runners competing in a stadium: each one...
Like his teacher, the author of the letter compares the spiritual path with runners competing in a stadium: each one has his own race ahead, and only the one who runs without losing sight of Jesus can run to the goal. Jesus has gone ahead of all who are running, so that all the others run after Him, who has already reached the goal (vv. 1-2). At the same time he reminds his readers that the events of their own life, which they perceive as punishment from God, do not at all testify that God has rejected them and that they have nothing more to hope for in regard to salvation. The author of the letter gives them Christ Himself as an example, Christ who had to endure punishment He did not deserve at all, but without which He could not have done for those seeking the Kingdom and salvation what He did for them (vv. 3-5). Relying on the tradition reflected in the Book of Proverbs, the author reminds his readers that punishment is not an evil in itself, that it is part of what we today call the process of upbringing, and a necessary part at that. Since God's relationship with a person includes an educational aspect as well, punishment becomes inevitable; otherwise the relationship between God and the faithful would not be a relationship of father and children, but a relationship of people who are strangers to one another (vv. 6-11).
Of course, if we keep the author's analogy in mind, we have to think that the issue is persecution for the faith, as is directly suggested by the author's phrase "you have not yet resisted to the point of blood, struggling against sin" (v. 4), because when New Testament authors speak of shedding blood in struggle, they almost always have in mind confession or martyrdom. But the author of the letter brings new shades of meaning into the traditional expression. This may have been connected with the fact that some of his contemporaries began to perceive persecution and harassment in the traditional Jewish spirit not as an inevitability, but as God's punishment for one sin or another committed by the community as a whole or by individual people. The author tells them directly that persecution can also become punishment for sin if the persecuted themselves forget the sufferings of Christ. In that case what could have become witness, as it became for witnesses who understood the meaning of what was happening, turned into punishment for those who were seeking an easy path, trying to avoid what the Savior had directly and completely unambiguously warned His followers was inevitable, and had warned them more than once. And the goal of punishment in this case was to remind the faithful of the path from which they had turned aside or were ready to turn aside, having forgotten the price paid by the Savior for the triumph of the Kingdom to which they themselves had been joined, after choosing a path that now seemed too hard to them.
12
12:1 Wherefore, being encompassed with a cloud - A great multitude, tending upward with a holy swiftness. Of witnesses - Of the power of faith. Let us lay aside every weight - As all who run a race take care to do. Let us throw off whatever weighs us down, or damps the vigour of our Soul. And the sin which easily besetteth us - As doth the sin of our constitution, the sin of our education, the sin of our profession.
12:2 Looking - From all other things. To Jesus - As the wounded Israelites to the brazen serpent. Our crucified Lord was prefigured by the lifting up of this; our guilt, by the stings of the fiery serpents; and our faith, by their looking up to the miraculous remedy. The author and finisher of our faith - Who begins it in us, carries it on, and perfects it. Who for the joy that was set before him - Patiently and willingly endured the cross, with all the pains annexed thereto.And is set down - Where there is fulness of joy.
12:3 Consider - Draw the comparison and think. The Lord bore all this; and shall his servants bear nothing? Him that endured such contradiction from sinners - Such enmity and opposition of every kind Lest ye be weary - Dull and languid, and so actually faint in your course.
12:4 Unto blood - Unto wounds and death.
12:5 And yet ye seem already to have forgotten the exhortation - Wherein God speaketh to you with the utmost tenderness.Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord - Do not slight or make little of it; do not impute any affliction to chance or second causes but see and revere the hand of God in it. Neither faint when thou art rebuked of him - But endure it patiently and fruitfully. Heb 3:11, etc
12:6 For - All springs from love; therefore neither despise nor faint.
12:7 Whom his father chasteneth not - When he offends.
12:8 Of which all sons are partakers - More or less.
12:9 And we reverenced them - We neither despised nor fainted under their correction. Shall we not much rather - Submit with reverence and meekness To the Father of spirits - That we may live with him for ever. Perhaps these expressions, fathers of our flesh, and Father of spirits, intimate that our earthly fathers are only the parents of our bodies, our souls not being originally derived from them, but all created by the immediate power of God; perhaps, at the beginning of the world.
12:10 For they verily for a few days - How few are even all our day on earth! Chastened us as they thought good - Though frequently they erred therein, by too much either of indulgence or severity. But he always, unquestionably, for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness - That is, of himself and his glorious image.
12:11 Now all chastening - Whether from our earthly or heavenly Father, Is for the present grievous, yet it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness - Holiness and happiness. To them that are exercised thereby - That receive this exercise as from God, and improve it according to his will.