Bible Commentaries

The Euperistatos

Hebrews 12:1

This text has often been used for the purpose of cheering discouraged and faint-hearted saints, by the doctrine that we are all watched by the living dead; so to say, they are gathered in infinite circles around our earth, and are watching our conduct in the race of life: and the very fact that we are being looked upon by such a cloud of observers should stir our energy, illumine our hope, confirm our purposes, and turn our very weakness into strength. That animated exhortation is full of truth and wisdom: but it is not the truth or the wisdom of the text

What are we to understand by "a cloud of witnesses"? certainly not a cloud of observers. Men say they witnessed such and such an event: that is to say, they looked upon it, they beheld it, they took note of it: but that is not the sense in which the word is used in this verse. The verse has no reference whatever to observance, inspection, or criticism of what other people are doing. The word "witnesses" is a right word, but it must be understood in its right and definite meaning as here employed. The right word would be "martyrs": "wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of martyrs"—that indeed is the literal word: μάρτυρ is the word which designates the witness as in the Epistle it was originally written. The witness therefore, in this case, is one who bears witness, who testifies, who (so to say) stands forward and declares that he is prepared to make declaration concerning certain doctrines, truths, practices, claims, and demands. So the witness is not an observer, but a testifier, and a man so earnest in his testimony that he would die for it rather than contradict it. Time would fail me, saith the Apostle, to tell of all the martyrs, of all the witnesses; nothing could silence them; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: they could have changed the whole situation by a word, but they were steadfast in their testimony:—wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of firm men, who made oath and said, and kept to their word with inflexible fidelity. Or we may vary the criticism, and still retain the same point. It would be right to read the text thus:—"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of Protestants." When you are asked to define the word "Protestants" you instantly think of popery. Protestant, originally, has nothing whatever to do with popery. Men say, We are Protestants, and by that they define a sectarian position. But that is not the original, rich, large meaning of the term Protestant. The word Protestant occurs in the Book of Chronicles, long before pope or popery was ever thought of: and the word is so rendered in the Vulgate translation of the Scriptures, which is acknowledged by the Vatican to be a valid and authoritative translation. There we read of Protestants—quos protestantes—who being Protestants took such and such a course. The word Protestant comes from a word which signifies to bear witness, to protest and say. The word Protestant has an incidental, may be an accidental, but certainly not an essential, relation to popery; in that connection it was invented about the early part of the sixteenth century, when certain men protested against acts that had been done; they were sneeringly called "Protestants." That name has clung to all liberal thinking, to all expressions of mental enlargement, and to all persons who throw off trammels and chains, and claim liberty, and right of private judgment, and right of personal conscience. But though the word was applied in derision it has been turned into an honour. The word "Christian" was so used. The disciples were first called "Christians" at Antioch. The word was pronounced derisively, contemptuously; the people to whom it was applied were designated "Christ"s-ones," "Christ-ones," "Christians." The name has been taken up and is now the brightest of all designations. The Church would not part with it. It accepts the contempt of the enemy, and transmutes it into the gold of the sanctuary. Thus the text might read: "Wherefore seeing we also are pressed about with so great a cloud of martyrs, Protestants, men who had conviction, principle, and stood by it: they were men of backbone, they were not gelatinous men; they were vertebrate, upright, massive, powerful men, of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered about in deserts, and in dens and caves of the earth, and found the cold rocks warm, because their hearts were true; they sang in the fissures of the rocks and in temples not made with hands, they feared nothing—nor king, nor priest, nor law—because they had the commendation of God. Wherefore seeing we also at the latter end of history are pressed upon by a great cloud of Protestants, let us------" That is the argument. It is not an abstract appeal, it is not a fine essay in words. Christianity comes down to us in Christians, and Christian argument is a Christian army. Men are called upon to be firm; and the proofs and the confirmations of the appeal are to be found, not in the inventiveness of metaphysical or poetical genius, but in the realities and the conquests of men who were sons of God.

"Let us lay aside every weight." The idea was that the racers were enfolded in long, flowing, highly-coloured robes, which attracted much attention, but were liable to interfere with the ease and agility of the racer. Wherefore let us, in order to be worthy of our historic relations, lay aside every weight; strip, that we may run; throw off all coloured things, all decorations, all entanglements, that we may properly execute the race. "And the sin which doth so easily beset us." This has been interpreted as referring to peccadilloes, or small offences. We say of a man that his besetting sin is avarice, censoriousness, selfishness, indolence, the love of physical satisfaction, and we guard men against the sin that seems to have the greatest hold upon them. All that is right; all that is true to spiritual experience, and to actual conduct: but it is not the right criticism of this particular text. In order to represent the word we should have to coin an almost grotesque expression. This is the translation of a word which occurs nowhere else in all Greek literature. Not only does it not occur in the New Testament, a little book you can handle within finger and thumb; but it does not occur in any department of Greek literature. In its negative form it occurs only once, so far as scholars are able to inform us; but in the form in which we find it here it stands alone in this verse. In order to represent it we should have to make some such word as this—the well-stood-arounded sin; the sin that is backed by a million backers, the sin that men delight to own and to proclaim, the popular sin that commands the suffrages of a world. No need to exhort men to keep away from the sins that bite, and that sting instantaneously, and that we are ashamed to mention or name; all these sins may be taken as amongst the drawbacks and offences and inequalities which men would never own. But there are other sins, which, as we have said, are well-stood-arounded,—first the circle of admirers, then a concentric circle, then the circle multiplied by three, by thirty, by three hundred, by thirty thousand; sins that men are proud of, proverbs that they quote when they sit by the fireside, and are in jovial mood; maxims which they write at the head of their letters, and with which they adorn their crests; shallow philosophies that cheat the heavens, and mock the God of eternity, and fritter away all human life. Let us lay aside the well-stood-arounded sin, the popular damning sophism.

This being the reading of the text, the light which comes from it falls back on that historical chapter which immediately precedes the text, wherein we read of Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and the illustrious dead: they laid aside the well-stood-arounded sin, the sin that has fame, and the sin that is supposed to bring popularity to the sinner. Thus the whole chapter is lighted up with a new illumination; old meanings are shed off, and the right idea burns and glows before the reverent imagination.

Take instances. Is there a better-supported sin than the sophism, "one world is enough for me"? A man would say that in company, and think he was uttering a profoundly wise saying. He would not speak it under his breath, as if he were taking a great liberty with truth and history; but he would boldly utter it, and punctuate it with a laugh that meant defiance to theologues and churches, and altars. That sin will kill him; it will deprive his soul of fresh air, of liberty, of the expanse which is needed for truest, largest culture. It looks harmless enough; it does not look as if it were a poisonous reptile; but it Hebrews 12:3

"Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against him self"; "such gainsaying of sinners against themselves" (R.V.); or, such gainsaying of sinners against each himself—in their totality, against themselves.

We are accustomed to talk about sinners against God, and we too frequently lose ourselves in the sublimity of the confession. Here we have it brought before us in another and more direct and simple but not truer form, namely, "sinners against themselves." A man can understand what that means, where he cannot understand what is meant by sinning against God. You must begin with the selfish. Man can hardly ever get beyond himself. This is beneficent as well as embarrassing; all depending upon the circumstances. Self-projection properly conducted becomes an instrument with which we more perfectly understand the mystery of the divine nature. It is difficult to think of God other than as infinite man; it is almost impossible to think of God except under human form. Angels are but glorified human creatures; even their wings do not destroy their human look: and it has pleased God to allow us to climb up the ladder of self-consciousness and self-study, so that we may touch at least the edge of his garments. When men begin to understand that sin hurts themselves, they may begin partially to comprehend what is meant by sin offending, grieving, hurting God.

Take the first meaning of the words, to which there is no objection—that there was a gainsaying of sinners against Christ. He was encountered on every hand by obstinate and cruel hostility. That sense of the text is not disputed. It Hebrews 12:16

You pity Esau. You think that he was driven by necessity to make this poor bargain. You say that, if he had been less hungry and weary, he would have stood for higher figures. That is the common mistake of men. There is only one price that can be had for a birthright, and that is "one morsel of meat." There are no higher figures; there are no better bargains. If he had received ten thousand worlds they would have constituted but one morsel of meat, when in the other hand there was a birthright. Now what becomes of your clever compromise, your sharp sight in trade, your keen sagacity? If you have been so foolish as to sell your birthright, I know what you got for it—you got "one morsel of meat," and nothing more. It is very desirable to impress this upon young minds, who may not yet have fully completed the momentous transaction. The devil has no more on his counter; the enemy has no more at the bank; he pays you all he can pay you when you sell your birthright,—one gulp, one morsel, one flash of pleasure, and then hell! Nothing more is possible. Then why haggle with the old serpent, the devil? Why ask for three-half-pence more for your soul? The whole transaction totals up to one morsel of meat. That is all he gave to the mother of the world. She and he struck the first bargain about birthrights. When she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took fruit—how much can a woman hold in her hand?—and she did eat: and then she knew that she was naked. So it comes and goes, age after age, the same temptation, the same bargain, the same price, the same perdition!

See if these things be not true in experience, in every degree of the circle of life's tragedy. You will have pleasure, you will gratify a passion: do it; having done it, what have you got in your hand, in your mouth? In the very indulgence of the passion you consume the compensation; when all is over there is nothing left but fire, shame, reproach, the sting of hell. This is inevitable; this is the law of providence, the law of experience, the law of justice. Never gratify a passion, for thus you would take the pleasure out it; never gratify an ambition, otherwise you will be delivered over to the misery of reaction. Never take the poor man's one little bit of garden; whilst you do not get it you may have some little pleasure in considering how you may obtain it, but the moment you lay hold of the deeds, the sunshine dies on the hill, the landscape is gone. This is the gospel that needs to be preached through all the market-places, and through all the sanctuaries of unbaptised and unholy commerce. You must feel this, or we cannot go profitably one step farther. You have made your fortune: now what of it? You cannot enjoy it if you bargained for it with the wrong party; if you gave your birthright for it, if you gave anything for it more than honest labour and a fair proportion of your time, I defy you to enjoy it. If you tried to enjoy it, it would reduce itself to one morsel, and you would swallow it in one Hebrews 12:17

This seems to be hard. Is it possible that a man can cry his heart out, and be no better for it? Has it come to this, that, notwithstanding all the healing and redeeming ministries of life, there is a possibility of a man repenting to the point of tears, many, hot, and bitter, and yet the whole penitential process coming to nothing? We must examine this apparent state of the facts, because, if it is as real as it is apparent, we ought to be filled with sadness. This is a poor account to give of a man's life: first he sold his birthright, and secondly he could not recover his position. Is it possible to condense life into two points? Is it possible that we may say of some man at the last only two things, leaving all other things, many or few, to be included or suggested in the pregnant summary? It is not in all cases a pregnant summary; it is, contrariwise, a barren void summary, and there is nothing in it beyond the first line and the last. Thus men may disembowel life: this miracle of evisceration may be wrought by any man. It rests with us whether our life should be full of glittering points, indicating brightness of mind, fearlessness of spirit, love of intelligence, devotion to progress, and consecration to the service of the world; or whether we shall have for an epitaph, Born—Died—. To be born ought to have tragedy in it; to die ought to be a fact redeemed from contempt by suggested immortality. Yet how nearly possible it is for a man's story to be comprehended in two words—Born: Died;—or, Had his opportunities, lost them; or, Started well, and soon came to a pitiful end. Of Esau we hear but these two things: yet what fresh air there was about the man! How like a living mountain he was! He might have been the flower of the family, yet history, even written by the eloquent pen of Paul or Apollos, says of him, He had a birthright, and he lost it.

How unavailable was his repentance. What does crying amount to? Everything depends upon what we are crying for, or crying about. There is a crying that is simple selfishness. A man breaks the law, finds himself in prison, and cries. Why does he cry? Not because he broke the law, but because the law found him out, and is punishing him: crying for punishment is not penitence. Crying because of sin, the hatefulness of sin, its offensiveness to God: that is real contrition, and that penitence avails everywhere and through all time. What did Esau seek? We hear that he sought something "carefully with tears." He did not seek repentance, he sought a blessing. Insert the word "blessing," instead of the word "it," and we read:—Esau found no place of repentance, though he sought the forfeited blessing "carefully with tears." He wanted to have it back again, and he could not secure it. "Place of repentance": what does that mean? Does it mean room to cry in? No; that would be a fatal mistake. "No place for repentance": was he seeking a mountain where he could be alone, and where he could pour out rivers of tears before God, but was unable to find a solitary hill? No; there is no such meaning in the text "Place of repentance" is an expression which does nor refer to locality or to space; its meaning is infinitely larger, both in depth and width. He found no room for repentance, no room to prove his better desire, no sphere or scope in the use of which he could establish before God and man the reality, the sincerity, and the completeness of his contrition. No doubt he was penitent enough in a selfish way. But do not let us mock him; the devil wins all his triumphs in a moment. If he took months we might turn round and smite him on the face, and when we have thrown him down by great violence, we might run away miles before he could recover himself. The devil puts a man into hell in one act. If this were a tragedy in three Acts , men might escape from it, but no sooner does the devil come, than the man is gone. Consider the suddenness of temptation, the violence of temptation, and consider how unprepared men are for fatal results. So much depends upon one Acts , one word, one condition. The fall of man was not a tragedy in ten volumes: it was a word, and then death; it was all over in one morning, in one interview, in one action. Nor are men to be mocked herein, but rather pitied. A man is an hungered: who but one ever refused bread when the wolf of hunger bit him? Consider the hunger, pity the hungerer. We do not know whether a man can make up his mind to a long course of dissoluteness, but we do know that many a man goes out in the morning, fresh in spirit, happy in domestic relation, and at night he is brought back worse than dead. How was it done? By a long, tedious process? No; by a stroke: one whiff from the devil's garden, and self-control was lost; the man was felled to the earth, the man was unmanned.

This was the case of Esau: he was cruel, he was supplanted, he was victimised; and yet having done the deed, having lost the blessing, he could not recover that blessing, because he never had opportunity in which to develop and prove his penitence. Nor need this be any mystery to us, because it is written on the first page and the last, and all the intervening pages, of every man's practical experience. A man has neglected his early education: can he ever recover it? Never. He may be veneered, he may be painted and decorated and certificated, but in the soul of him he has no culture, he is no scholar. But did he cry over his want of intellectual capacity, culture, and refinement? Will that not help him to scholarship? Not a whit. A man cannot go back to his youth and repair fully and enduringly the vacancies which marked his opening days. You never can recover your youth; you never can go to school again, in the same sense in which you go when the brain is young, and all the susceptibilities are keenly alive and are responsive to every appeal; you cannot be a boy again. Mark how the man whose early education was neglected halts, how he lacks confidence, how he is devoid of conscious power: he stumbles, hesitates, blurs his words so as to give them helpful ambiguity, that he may have the benefit of a doubt, if there is one, as to how he uttered the word. Why all this trickery of expression? Because the man's soul does not know the secret of the word; he has never been within it, behind it, above it; he is not its master. Will not crying do something towards retrieving the position? We need not answer the inquiry. The man has no opportunity of showing his repentance in any availing sense, because a man cannot live two days at a time; he cannot be living as a man of maturity and as a boy who is acquiring education. He has lost the one period, he has come into the other, and no man can be living two contemporaneous lives—the one young, and the other old; the one in business, and the other at school—with any adequate and blessed effect. Redeem the time, buy up the opportunity: while you are at school take out of that flower all the honey that is in it.

A man has neglected seedtime, he awakes to a consciousness of the fact, and he begins to cry: will that bring him an abundant harvest? It will not add one ear of corn to his field. But the man is very sorry. True, but the time has gone by. The man tears his hair, and cries night and day, and says, Oh, fool that I have been! if I had my time to live over again! Exactly: but that is just what you have not. Do you understand that? Life is one journey. Does that fact get into you, stir you, and make you sensible and wise? But a man ought really to get something by repentance—not by the way of harvest, not in the way of neglected opportunity. There comes to every man—shall we personalise it and say—a fair, sweet, hospitable angel, whose name is Opportunity. The angel says, Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation: I love you, I have come for you, I want you to go with me; here is the chariot, here is the king's welcome, here is the divine authority: come! We are sullen, obstinate, perverse; if we answer, it is in a negative; we reply surlily or loudly, but in either case repellently, No. The angel has gone: will crying, repentance, bring that angel back again? No, though we seek her carefully with tears: she is gone. A man has been unkind to his parents. He sees it now. Every man is sure to find that out sooner or later; there is a spirit parental in the air that punishes all domestic cruelty. The man is now in his better mind, and he says, "If I had but the old folks back again." True: but we cannot have them back again, do you see that? do you feel it? do you acknowledge it? Now is the accepted time: they are with you, love them. Your parents are dead and gone, what will your repentance do? You neglected both of them, you rejected their counsel, you declined all their persuasions, you sneered at their prayers, and even in some cases their poverty did not draw out your energy—you lived upon them like a vampire: pray do not add insult to dishonour by saying what you would do now it you had the chance. You would do nothing now unless your heart is born again.

These illustrations will show how possible it is for a man so to allow opportunities and rights and duties to pass without improving them or accepting their responsibilities, and afterward to cry and howl and weep, the whole tragedy coming to nothing. We deny the doctrine of eternal punishment, but we practise it. Man is a contradictory creature, self-contradictory, perpetrating the most glaring and palpable ironies, all the day long. A man will stand in quite a philosophical and theological attitude with a Bible in his hand, and will prove to you that eternal punishment is nonsense. Yet that man is practising the very thing that he denies. And he cannot help it. There is more than the letter on this subject, there is the spirit. The forger is never forgiven. Hear that! What, never? Never! not by society. But one man may forgive him? Yes, that is possible; it just shows you what one man is, namely, nothing, in relation to the settlement of all the deeper and greater questions of life. Not What one soft-hearted, kind-hearted soul would do, but what constituted man—society—will do is the question. There are many units; there is the unit of the individual, there is the unit of society, there is the unit of God. The unit of society is much larger than the unit of the individual, and that larger unit never forgives. How long a punishment would you assign to a forger? He has suffered five-and-twenty years" imprisonment, now he is at liberty again, and you have a very large commercial establishment in the city, will you forgive him, reinstate him, and treat him as an honest man? Or, if you advance towards him, will you do so without inspection, without keeping your eyes open, without watching him night and day? Suppose there should be one kind, loving soul that would even go so far as that; yet let it be told to a number of men who have not heard the circumstance before, that there is a forger in the house, and at once the atmosphere is changed.

What shall come hereafter we cannot tell. With men many things are impossible, with God all things are possible. It is not for us to tell God when his mercy should begin or when it should end; we leave that with him: but do not set up any theory of punishment that will enable you to sin with impunity; do not get up any theory of the universe that will enable you to be a greater criminal than you have been under another theory. Suspect any philosophy that licenses you to serve the devil. The other philosophy is more likely to be right, the philosophy that says, Take care, take heed, beware: for sin croucheth at the door. That was what the Lord said,—sin and punishment crouch like couchant beasts, wolves at the door. Believe the philosophy rather which says, The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God: The way of transgressors is hard: It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks: Our God is a consuming fire: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. These are terrible words, and men are now confectioned and pampered to that degree of refinement that they do not like these words. Not to like them is not to disprove them. Why make a risk of it? Why say, All will turn out right at last? It did not in the case of neglected early education, it did not in the case of neglected seedtime, it did not in the case of neglected parents: why should it at last prove to be an artifice, an invention, a trick, that comes right at last, do what you may in the middle? The repentance spoken of in the text has no relation to moral and spiritual repentance. Every soul may repent and live, or the Cross of Christ is the supreme mistake of the universe. That Cross means, The worst man may repent, and live; that Cross says, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

The case of Esau was the loss of an earthly blessing, an earthly relationship, a temporary supremacy, and that could not be recovered by repentance; but, blessed be God, this is the gospel of blood: "Return, O wanderer, to thy home." Do not be discouraged by the case of Esau, for that was local, temporary, and superficial. The Gospel of Christ proclaims that there is no man living who is really sorry for sin, that may not come back to his father's house, and be jewelled, and robed, and readopted, as if the apostasy had never taken place.