FOLLOWERS OF THEM
HEB. xii. 1-14
The Epistle approaches its close. The Writer has much yet to say to the
disciples upon many things, all connected with that main interest of
their lives, a resolute fidelity to the Lord, to the Gospel, and to one
another. But he has not yet quite done with that side of their
"exceeding need" to which the antidote is _the faith_ which can deal
with the future as the present, with the unseen as the seen. Upon this
theme, from one aspect or another, is spent the passage now before us.
First, the appeal is to the recollection that the combat, the race, the
victory of faith, as it was for the Hebrew believers, "the contest set
before _us_" (ver. 1), not only had been fought and won before them by
the saints of the old time, but that those saints were now, from their
blessed rest, as "spirits of the just made perfect" (ver. 23), watchers
and witnesses of their successors' course. "We have, lying around us,
so great a cloud of witnesses" (ver. 1). "We" are running, like the
competitors in the Hellenic stadium, in the public view of a mighty
concourse, so vast, so aggregated, so placed aloft, that no word less
great than "cloud" occurs as its designation: that "long cloud" as it is
finely called in Isaac Watts' noble hymn, "Give me the wings of faith."
True, the multitudinous watchers are unseen, but this only gives faith
another opportunity of exercise; we are to treat the Blessed as seen,
for we know that they are there, living to God, one with us, fellows of
our life and love. So let us address ourselves afresh to the spiritual
race, the course of faith. Let us, as athletes of the soul, strip all
encumbrance off, "every weight" of allowed wrong, all guilty links with
the world of rebellion and self-love; "the sin which doth so easily
beset us," clinging so soon around the feet, like a net of fine but
stubborn meshes, till the runner gives up the hopeless effort and is
lost.[N]
[N] I cannot think possible the alternative (marginal) rendering of
[Greek: euperistaton] in the Revised Version--"_admired by many_." There
is example for the meaning in classical Greek, but the _idea_ is totally
out of keeping with the spirit of this passage.
I thus explain the "witnesses" to mean spectators, watchers, not
testifiers. The context seems to me to decide somewhat positively for
this explanation. It is an altogether pictorial context; the imagery of
the foot-race comes suddenly up, and in a moment raises before us the
vision of the stadium and its surroundings. The reader cannot see the
course with his inner eyes without also seeing those hosts of eager
lookers-on which made, on every such occasion, in the old world as now,
the life of the hour. In such a context nothing but explicit and
positive reasons to the contrary could give to the word "witnesses," and
to the word "cloud" in connexion with it, any other allusion. True,
these watchers are all, as a fact, evidential "witnesses" also,
testifiers to the infinite benefit and success of the race of faith. But
that thought lies almost hidden behind the other. It is as loving,
sympathetic, inspiring lookers-on that the old saints, from Abel
onwards, are here seen gathered, thronging and intent, around us as we
run.
The conception runs off of course into mystery, as every possible
conception about the unseen does, even when Scripture is most explicit
about unseen facts. We ask, and ask in vain, what is the medium through
which these observers watch us, the air and light, as it were, in which
their vision acts; what is their proximity to us all the while; to what
extent they are able to know the entire conditions of our race. But all
this leaves faith in peaceful possession of a fact of unspeakable
animation. It tells the discouraged or tired Christian, tempted to think
of the unseen as a dark void, that it is rather a bright and populous
world, in mysterious touch and continuity with this, and that our
forerunners, from those of the remotest past down to the last-called
beloved one who has passed out of our sight, know enough about us to
mark our advance and to prepare their welcome at the goal.
In that rich treasury of sacred song, _Hymns from the Land of Luther_,
is included the translation of a noble hymn by Simon Dach, _O wie selig
seid ihr doch, ihr Frommen_, "O how happy are ye, saints forgiven." That
hymn beautifully illustrates this verse. It is written responsively all
through. One stanza, sung upward, is the utterance from below of the
pilgrim Church, longing for her rest. The next, sung from above, is the
answer of the Blessed, telling of their love and sympathy, taught them
by their own similar sufferings, of their bright foreview of the
celestial crown reserved for their still toiling brethren. So the two
choirs answer each other, turn by turn, till at last both join in a
glorious concert of blended song, a closing strain of faith and praise.
Let us listen often for those answers from above.
But the holy Writer has more to say yet about the motives to faith. He
points the weary saints upward, even beyond the "cloud," to a Form
radiant and supreme. They are to run, conscious of the witnesses, but
yet more intently "looking off ([Greek: aphorontes]) unto JESUS, the
supreme Leader ([Greek: archegon]) and Perfecter of faith"; that is to
say, the Lord of the whole host of the believing, and Himself the
consummate Worker in the field of faith, who, for a joy promised _but
not seen_, "endured the Cross," when its immediate aspect was an
inexpressible outrage and disgrace; reaching the throne of all
existence, as Son of Man, in spite of every possible appearance to the
contrary (ver. 2). Yes, and not only was that final victory thus won by
Him, but He arrived at it by a path full of the conflicts which threaten
faith. He "endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself" (ver.
3). Year by year, day by day, from the Pharisee, from the worldling,
from the leaders of religion, from the inconstant crowd, He had
"contradiction" to endure--sometimes even from "the men of His own
household." He was challenged to prove His claims; He was insulted over
His assertion of them, or over His silence about them. In every way, at
every turn, they spoke against Him to His face, as He slowly advanced,
through a life of love and suffering, to the Agony and the Crucifixion.
Let us not think that all this put no strain, even in the King Messiah,
upon faith. It may seem scarcely reverent (I know devout and thoughtful
Christians who have felt it to be so) to speak of our blessed Lord as
exercising faith, as being the supreme Believer. But we need not shrink
from the thought. It is no more irreverent, surely, than to accept the
evidence of the Gospels to His perfect human capacity to be weary, to be
surprised, to be specially moved to compassion by _the sight_ of
suffering. In His sinless conformity "in all things to His brethren"
there was never for one moment room in Him--of this we may be amply
sure--for error of thought or of word, as He acted as the supreme and
absolute Prophet of His Church. But there was room, so we are expressly
told, on one tremendous occasion at least (Matt. xxvi. 37), for a
mysterious "bewilderment" ([Greek: ademonein]) of His blessed human
soul. Can we doubt that the victory won in the Garden, after which He
went with profound calmness to the unjust priest, and Pilate, and the
Cross, was of the nature of a victory of faith? Did He not then treat
the coming "joy" as a reality although, in so awful a sense and measure
He did not "feel" it then? The "bewilderment" did not drive Him back
from our redemption; and why? Because "He TRUSTED in GOD that He would
deliver Him" (Ps. xxii. 9; Matt. xxvii. 42), whatever should be the
contents of "the cup" from which His whole humanity turned away as
_almost_ impossible to drink.
And may we not be sure that on many a previous occasion of minor and yet
bitter trial, when evil men gathered round Him with cynical objections
and ruthless denials of His claims, the victory was akin to the victory
of Gethsemane? Often, surely, a strange "bewilderment" must have beset
the Redeemer's soul, of which the external token was the sigh, the
groan, the tears, which shewed Him to be so truly Man.
We all hold, in full doctrinal orthodoxy, that the Lord's sufferings,
both of soul and body, were no "docetic" semblance but a deep and
infinitely pathetic reality. But we need at times to think somewhat
deliberately in order to receive the full impression of that truth upon
the heart. And then surely we are constrained to see in Him, who thus
really suffered and really "endured," the supreme Exemplar of the
victory of faith, the perfect Sympathizer with the tried believer.
From this pregnant thought, of the faith exercised by JESUS, the
disciple is directly led in the remainder of our passage to the
practical inferences for himself. The days, for those first readers of
the Epistle, were indeed evil. Though not yet called to martyrdom (ver.
4), they were hard beset, not only by importunate reasonings and appeals
which, as we have seen all along, were straining their spiritual
allegiance, but by actual outrages (see _e.g._ x. 34), by the
"scourging" (ver. 6) of bitter social persecution. Well, "looking off
unto" Him who had so greatly endured, they were, in these things also,
to see the unseen and to presentiate the future. From the Proverbs (iii.
11, 12), that book where the apostolic insight so often finds the purest
spiritual messages,[O] he quotes (verses 5, 6) the tender words which
bid the chastened child see in his chastening the assurance (ver. 8) of
his happy, holy sonship in the home of a Father, "the Father of our
spirits," who, unlike our earthly fathers even at their best (and that
was a noble best indeed), not only chastens, but chastens with an
unerring result of holiness in the submissive child--yea, a holiness
which is one with His own (ver. 10), His Spirit in our wills.
[O] It was evidently a book dear to St. Peter's mind, as his First
Epistle shews.
Beautiful is _the sympathy_ of this appeal to live, by faith, the life
of victorious patience. "All chastening, for the present, seems not to
belong to joy but grief" (ver. 11). Yes, the immediate pain is here
fully recognized, not ignored. It is not spoken of as if, in view of its
sequel, it did not matter. "It belongs to grief." Scripture is full of
this tender insight into the bitterness of even our salutary sorrows,
and its appeals to patience are all the more potent for that insight.
"Nevertheless, afterward, it produces the peace-bringing fruit of
righteousness," the sense of a profound inward rest, found in conformity
to the "sweet, beloved will of God," in living correspondence to the
Father's rule, "for those who have been exercised, as in a spiritual
_gymnasium_ ([Greek: gegymnasmenois]), thereby." That "exercise" was to
tell at once, as they surrendered their wills to it in faith, in a
present sense of the certainty of future blessing. "Brace the slack
hands" to toil, "and the unstrung knees" to march (ver. 12), "and make
straight paths for your feet," using your will, faith-strengthened, to
choose the line of the will of God, and that alone. So should "the lame
thing" be "healed" rather than "turned aside." The walk, feeble and
halting always when the will is divided, should be restored to firmness
and certainty again.
"Nevertheless, afterward." That is the watchword of the whole pregnant
passage. Nature, shortsighted and impatient, can deal with the seen and
the present only. Grace, in its victorious form of patient faith,
already takes hold upon the "afterward," and works on, and walks on, "as
seeing Him that is invisible."
With the thought of the witness-cloud around us, and "looking off" to
the Prince of Faith, ascended, yet present with us, and sure of the
ultimate and eternal "fruit of righteousness" which lies hidden in the
chastening of the Father of our spirits--we too will live by faith,
taking God at His word, and saying Amen to His will, even to the end.