New Salem Baptist Church

The Author and Perfecter of our Faith

Nov 24, 2024

Read Hebrews 12:1-2 in LSB.

The author of this wonderful book begins chapter 12 with “a great cloud of witnesses.” He uses the word cloud to indicate the expansiveness of the witnesses. There are not just one, two, or three witnesses. There are so many! These are the ones he has already named in chapter 11.

The word witness has two connotations. It can mean a person who sees something. Or, it can mean a person who testifies to something as true. I remember when I first read verse 1 as a young Christian I assumed that it meant the former, so that I imagined all these great mean and women of faith are watching me live my life now from heaven …so I had better have faith and run the race. But Paul (who the early church identified as the author) didn’t intend that. He means that these men and women of God testify to faith by the examples of who they are. This understanding matches what he had just written in chapter 11, while the thought of them watching us is a new idea altogether. Some translations even translate the word as “example” or a similar phrase, rather than witness.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by a great cloud of people whose lives tell us what faith means…[1]

Since we are surrounded by so many examples of faith…[2]

So we have so many people of faith around us. Their lives tell us what faith means.[3]

You can be as the men and women of God that Paul has reviewed. You can! Not in your own strength, but in the desire and power that God provides through simple faith.

1. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,^[4]

Because we have these marvelous examples we need to run the race by laying aside every weight. Oh! There are many things that distract us, weigh us down, as we try to run the race. This is not the first time that Paul uses the analogy of a foot race as  a picture of our living for the Lord:

²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. ²⁵ Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. ²⁶ So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. ²⁷ But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. ^[5]

As we live for the Lord, we must not be like those who just go along with the flow of American life, or European life, or Filipino life…any living that just conforms to the culture, especially with the availabilities of comfort and entertainment that beckon to us all. Of course, it is not a sin to enjoy comfort, nor entertainment. But these can become a “weight” that slow down our running the race.

It’s not just the desire for comfort. Jesus warned about other beckonings that make our lives unfruitful. He names:

• Cares of the world (these can include our necessities of life)
• The deceitfulness of riches. (the desire to make money can steal our time)
• The desire for anything, really! Jesus says this!

According to the Lord. These things can “choke out the word,” meaning they cause us to neglect God’s word and we are distracted to pursue other things (Mark 4:19).

We must envision ourselves in a race, not a stroll down a garden path. It’s a good thing to stroll down a garden path for an hour or two in this life to take in the beauty of God’s creation and to experience peace and quiet. I mean that we must not see our life as a whole as a stroll. We need to see it as a race.

As Paul says in 1 Cor. 9, we even need to see ourselves as not simply running, but running in order to win the race! He says that not all will receive the prize (vs. 24); therefore, he cannot be referring to eternal life. Because every genuine believer will get eternal life and enter the New Jerusalem. But only the winners will get a crown or a wreath.

Further proof that he is not referring to eternal life is that is that he entertains the possibility of the runner, and he includes himself (!), of being disqualified. We cannot be disqualified from eternal life, if we have placed our faith in Christ. But we can be disqualified from the prize! He is referring to the reward which awaits us… “the hope of our calling,” as he has termed it previously in Hebrews.

In order to avoid disqualification we must lay aside every weight, and “the sin which so easily entangles us.”

He does not refer to sin in general. He uses the definite article, the, to describe this sin. Some versions leave the word, the, out. But it is there in the original language.

 I do not think he has a specific sin in mind. Rather, it is the sin that easily causes you to stumble. This is likely a different sin for each person. For a single person, it might be fornication. Marriage is a protection against fornication!! For others it might be an addiction to a substance, like alcohol or pain relievers. For others it might be laziness. For others, it might be overworking. We all have our weaknesses. We know what the easy-entangling sin is.

Whatever that sin is, we must lay it aside. This means that we take measures to flee it. We renounce it. We take some simple measures to avoid it.

• If you are falling into fornication, get married! (This is Paul’s exact advice to those who cannot control their passions.[1 Cor. 7:2]) Until the Lord brings you into marriage don’t look at things that arouse passion and don’t be alone with single persons of the opposite sex. This is not radical at all. In fact, this is the way Western societies have been for 1,900 years. It is only in the last 75 years or so that a looseness about male/female relationships has taken place. As little as 30 years ago, when I was courting Josie in the Philippines, it was expected and even demanded that all couples be chaperoned. That is no longer true there. Chaperoning has been out of style here for a hundred years.
• If you are prone to addiction, never buy those products. If you are tempted to buy them don’t even go to a store that carries them or, if you must go to that store, cry out the name of the Lord. He will deliver you.
• Laziness is a difficult sin to overcome. You must fast and pray. It will not be overcome by prayer alone or just will power. That was a sin in my life in my younger years. I had to fast and pray for three days in order to get a victory.
• If you are overworking, so that you have no time to serve the Lord, then have someone else create a schedule for you and be satisfied with fewer things.
• There are dozens of other sins that I have not named. I only gave some examples. But, according to the apostle, we must lay aside the sin that entangles us, whatever it is. Thus, take it seriously. Take action against it!

You can do it, otherwise, Paul would not tell you to do it.

Still in verse 1, Paul tells us to run the race with endurance. Most of us have run or jogged before, either in high school or just to keep fit. Whether you are required to run a certain distance by your coach, or whether you are trying to run a certain distance as the goal that you have set for yourself, there comes a time when you want to give up and quit. You’re gasping for air. Or your leg muscles are getting weary. Or both. You start thinking, “I don’t have to do this. I can quit now.” Or, I’ll make up the two laps I’m missing the day after tomorrow.”

If you are actually in a race, where you are running many miles, the gasping for air will be worse. But you may not give up so easily because you don’t want to be considered a quitter.

In any of those scenarios, you need to overcome your desire to quit and press on to the goal. That is endurance! We need endurance in our physical efforts, but we need it even more in our race to reach the prize! Don’t give up in your service to the Lord! Oh, how we may be tempted to give up. The difficulties of life may press upon us. We may be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. We may be mocked. We will feel like giving up  more than once. We need endurance! Endure! It is the apostle’s command!

Our will power may work if you are running a physical race. You can endure. But your will power will not work in the spiritual race of which we all participate. If you depend on your will power, it may work once or twice, but eventually life gets too difficult and you will quit.

The way we endure is by looking to Jesus:

                                                                                                                                                 Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the ^aauthor and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.^[6]

He is the author of our faith. What does an author do? An author creates a literary work. He writes a story and the story would not even exist unless he/she wrote it. The story would never come into existence without the author.

Some versions of the Bible have words that mean the same thing as “author.” Some have “initiator” (CJB, NLT, TLV), “founder” (ESV), “source” (HCSB, God’s Word, Phillips), “originator” (Lexham, original NASB), “maker of faith” (Wycliffe).

Jesus is the one who authors our faith, initiates it, originates, even makes, our faith!

There are other passages that reveal that the faith that we have is not of ourselves but is a gift from God:

⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,^[7]

Notice that the second sentence in this verse says that “this” is not your own doing. To what does the pronoun, this, refer? Pronouns in both Greek and English most commonly refer to the last noun in sequence up to the pronoun. As you can see, the last noun is “faith.” (The word order is the same in Greek and English) The apostle is saying that faith is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God.[8]

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:^[9]

Observe that the faith that we have was received. It wasn’t worked up in an act of human will.

The ESV, LSB, and NKJV have the word obtained, which is the same thing as received. If you obtain something, it didn’t come from you.

Possibly the strongest verse in this regard is Galatians 2:20.

²⁰ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.^[10]

See that in the KJV it is the faith “of the Son of God.”[11] Many translations have “faith in the Son of God,” but the word “in” is not connected to “Son of God” in the original language. It’s not there. The word “of” is there.[12] Why do so many translations insert the word “in” into the text when it is not in the original? I think because it is hard to understand, or maybe too radical to understand, that the faith that we have actually is Christ’s!

You know that one of my favorite expositors is Robert Govett, a language expert and theologian of the 1800’s. Here is what he had to say:

But may we not at least take to ourselves this credit of faith, as something furnished at God’s call, by ourselves? No! Unbelief is the only weed that springs by nature out of the barren soil of enmity against the Lord. Where can be the goodness of one dead toward God? Faith itself is the gift of God![13]

Brother Govett truly had the gift of words!

Looking to Jesus as the author of our faith will enable us to run the race with endurance!

The Lord Jesus is also the perfecter of our faith. He will perfect it, or bring it to completion. Do you know that if it were left up to us, our faith would never be completed? We would fall. We would fail. Its not that we would. Haven’t you already failed? Haven’t you already fallen after coming to faith?

“Thank you, Lord, that it does not depend on us! It depends on you! Thank you, Lord! Thank you!”

When we know that he is the author and that he is the perfecter then we have the confidence to press on and to endure.

Finally, Jesus is our example in that he looked forward to the joy that was to come to him. This helped him, as a human, to endure the cross and to disregard the shame of it.

This life is full of heartaches and tears. As we wait for the Lord to answer the yearnings of our heart, we can kook forward to the joy that awaits us. It’s coming! Our Lord Himself looked forward to it. So can we!

[Application and Conclusion]

What should we do?

• We must lay aside every weight. I am asking you to identify a weight in your life. Three may come to mind. But just focus on the heaviest one. The one that slows you down the most in your service to the Lord.
• You must make actually lay it aside, that is, you must change something you are doing or not doing. May I suggest that for some of you, it may be something as simple as the television or the internet? Those may be weights for you. You need to lay them aside! They steal your time.
• Forsake a sin. There is a sin that you may have that easily entangles you. Review some of the examples I gave earlier for suggestions on how to leave your sin behind.
• Then endure the hard times. Endure when you are gasping for air. You do this by knowing and trusting in Jesus as the author of your faith and as the completer of your faith.

Leave it all behind you! Run!