Explanatory Notes -- Hebrews 12:1-11

I'm almost done with explanatory notes on Hebrews. Second to last installment.

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C. Endure God's Discipline (12:1-29)

The Cloud of Witnesses (12:1-2)

12:1-2 Therefore, we also having such a great cloud surrounding us of witnesses, laying aside every weight and the easily ensnaring sin, with endurance let us run the set before us race. 2 looking toward the leader and perfecter of faith, Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and on the right [hand] of the throne of God has sat.

The word therefore suggests that these verses tell us what our take-away should be from the example list of Hebrews 11. Given the examples of Hebrews 11, the audience should run with patience the race set before them. The examples ran the race with distinction. So should we. 

If you are running a race, you do not want any extra weight. Sin weighs a person down as they run. The sin the author primarily has in mind is the sin of doubt and lack of faith about the promises of God. We might generalize the point however to anything in our lives that causes resistance to the love of God and the love of neighbor.

Jesus is an example of such faith for the audience (cf. 5:7). He was the pioneer of such faith and his faith became complete in his suffering on the cross. In a sense, if the heroes of faith from Hebrews 11 are in the stands cheering us on, Jesus is at the finish line. He is the goal toward which we run, the consummate and final example of faith.

Jesus disregarded the shame, another example of honor-shame language in Hebrews. Another translation suggests that Jesus "despised" shame, an ironic twist because it suggests that Jesus made shameful calling his death shameful.

Jesus' sitting at God's right hand is another allusion to Psalm 110:1. Jesus' race is finished, although he will appear yet a second time (9:28). He currently sits enthroned as Son of God, Lord, and Christ at God's right hand.

Endure God's Discipline (12:3-11)

3. For consider the one who has endured such hostility on himself from sinners so that you might not be discouraged, giving up in your souls.

We sometimes forget that Jesus himself is in the hall of faith. He is the last and consummate example of faithfulness to death. We look to him not only as the one who rescues and saves us but as the one who perfected and completed faithfulness as our model. We look to him at the finish line as yet another who has run the race and completed the course.

Jesus endured hostility from sinners just as the audience either already was or were afraid they were about to. "Sinners" here presumably connects not to sin in general but to the sinfulness of opposing God and God's plan. God raised Jesus victorious from the grave and so also the audience should not be discouraged and lose heart. The worst that humans might do to them was nothing compared to the victory that would follow. 

We can give up in our "souls" even though our body continues on. This is similar to the expression "to lose heart." Perhaps the primary pastoral purpose of Hebrews is to keep the audience from losing heart and quitting their faith. 

4. Not yet to blood have you resisted in your struggle against sin. 

William Lane used this verse to argue that Hebrews must have been written before the persecution the Roman emperor Nero conducted around the year AD64 after the fire of Rome. [1] He was assuming the common view that Hebrews was a sermon sent to Rome. I share this inclination but not his conclusion.

This verse suggests that, in the current situation of the audience, no one in their community as yet has lost their lives. By contrast, 13:7 suggests that some of the earliest evangelists to the audience had indeed lost their lives as martyrs for their faith. In my view, this verse also does not preclude the possibility that some Jews from outside their community might have lost their lives in some event such as when prisoners from Jerusalem were executed in the aftermath of the Jewish War.

5. And have you completely forgotten the admonition that is directed to you as sons [and daughters], 

"My son, do not minimize the discipline of the Lord
    Nor give up when being corrected by him.
6. For the Lord disciplines the one whom he loves,
    And he punishes every son that he receives?"

12:5-11 use the analogy of a parent disciplining a child as what God is doing to the audience. God, as the audience's father, is disciplining them. They need to learn from the discipline. The author draws on Proverbs 3:12 to encourage the audience to view their troubles as a positive thing, as the Lord's "discipline." 

The word discipline has two distinct meanings, and the author may float somewhat between them. We probably naturally think of discipline as punishment, and the use of Proverbs 3:12 does seem to have some of that connotation. However, it also can have a sense of training, and the use of the Greek word paideia probably suggests some of those overtones as well.

The experiences of the audience are thus "discipline." There does seem to be at least a little sense of punishment here. Proverbs 3:12 has a connotation of correction and punishment. Perhaps the correction was a waning in commitment. As 10:25 indicates that some had stopped meeting together. The social pressure the audience is feeling is forcing them to choose. They cannot simply fade away. They must make a choice to strengthen their commitment or abandon their faith consciously.

This passage gives a small window into how parental discipline was understood by the author of Hebrews. Punishment was seen as loving redirection. There is no sense here of punishment as penalty that must be dispersed for wrath sake, for judgment sake. Correction is for the benefit of the child, not to satisfy some abstract justice.

7. Endure for training. God is treating you as sons [and daughters], for what son [or daughter] is there whom a father does not discipline? 8. And if you are without discipline, in which all have become partakers, are you then not illegitimate and not sons [and daughters]? 

I have rendered the word paideia as "training" here. The theme of discipline as training was a commonplace in ancient Hellenistic literature. The theme appears in Philo, for example. The purpose of the Greek "gymnasium" or educational system was paideia. Given the level of Greek and rhetoric in Hebrews, it is possible that the author himself underwent such training.

Legitimate children, the author says, undergo discipline by their parents, presumably their fathers in particular. It is a slightly unpleasant illustration, but the sense is that real parents discipline their children. Perhaps, the passage suggests, a father might not bother to train an illegitimate child. The father wants the best for his son, especially. That suggests the father will have expectations and perhaps be demanding because he wants to see his son excel in life.

The athletic illustration is clear. If you want to be able to run a race as best as you can, you must train. No one simply gets up one day and runs a marathon. You have to train. Even the most naturally gifted swimmer or gymnast will never come close to the Olympics without rigorous training. Our potential cannot be activated otherwise. The Lord is a trainer.

9. Then we used to have fathers [as] trainers of our flesh and we ourselves respected [them]. Will we not much more submit ourselves to the father of spirits and we will live? [2]

Hebrews' dualism once again peaks through. Our bodies, our "flesh" has a father, an earthly father. But our spirits have a Father too, a heavenly Father. In this picture, we are flesh and spirit. Each part of us has a different parentage. [3]

The statement is also an allusion to Numbers 27:16. In that verse, Yahweh is the "God of the spirits of all flesh." We think back to Genesis 2:7 where God gives breath to Adam, making him come alive. Ecclesiastes 3:21 questions whether that breath or spirit of a person returns to God at death. However, the anthropology of Hebrews is probably more along the lines of a certain Greek conceptualization as opposed to Genesis' Old Testament understanding. Plato believed that the body was the prisonhouse of the soul. In the Old Testament, a soul is a whole living being, body with breath/spirit inside it.

10. On the one hand, they for a few days were disciplining according to what seemed [right] to them. But he [disciplines us] for what is beneficial so that [we] might partake of his holiness. [4]

This verse may hint that earthly fathers were not always just in their discipline. Certainly, no human father is perfect either in the administration of punishment or training. My hunch is that ancient fathers were far less in tune with the emotional well-being of their children as we are in a post-Freudian world. They probably were quite regularly what we might think of as abusive. 

But God the Father is perfectly good and righteous in his training. He does not administer punishment on a whim, out of misinformation, or because he is having a temper tantrum. God disciplined the audience--and disciplines us--purely for our good and the good of others.

God's discipline makes it possible for us to partake of his holiness. We cannot be his unless we are his. We have to turn toward him and away from our default trajectory that is separated and alienated from him. We partake of the heavenly gift of the Holy Spirit and turn to the atonement in Christ to become purified of our stains. Through the atonement of Jesus, we are properly prepared to be in God's presence.

11. And every discipline on the one hand for that which is present does not seem to be [a matter] of joy but of grief, but afterward they repay a peaceable fruit of righteousness for those who have been exercised through it.

Here the training sense of discipline becomes clear. Those who train bear the fruit of righteousness. They do their exercises and it pays off in the fruit that follows. 

There is a saying in athletics: "No pain, no gain." It may be a little exaggerated as exercise releases endorphins that can give the person exercising a kind of high. Still, most of us can identify with the sense that the exercise itself is not always pleasurable. It is the pay off that comes after the exercise that is most rewarding. So it is with the Lord's discipline, especially when it has a dimension of corrective.

[1] William L. Lane, Hebrews ***

[2] future middle

[3] The ancients probably thought of spirit as a thin type of material, rather than the immaterial soul that Rene Descartes invented.

[4] infinitive purpose construction