Click here to return to Blog Post Intro
Heroes of Faith by Douglas Connelly
In The Message, Eugene Peterson says, “Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on?”
The author of Hebrews uses the idea of a great audience of witnesses to move to the picture of the Christian life as a race. The Christian life is not a sprint that takes all our effort for a very short time. This spiritual race is a marathon—a route already marked out by Jesus and by the feet of faithful men and women who have gone before. Their example encourages us to remain faithful.
Successful runners focus their attention on the goal. Jesus stands at the goal line of our faith race, ready to receive us and reward us for a race run well. Jesus ran the race set before him even though it included hatred and insults of wicked people and the agony of the cross. If he took all of that for us, we should certainly be able to endure whatever suffering or insults come our way for him.
Jesus’ example demonstrates the kind of dependence on God we need to complete the race. Other qualities we learn from Jesus are patience to wait on God’s timing, wisdom to respond appropriately to attack and slander, forgiveness toward those who oppose us, and concern for the people around us who are hurting. To be like Jesus means (among many things) to endure difficult times with the same grace and faithfulness he displayed.
Focus your heart on renewed allegiance to Jesus alone. Ask God to help you get back or remain in the race—and to persevere to the end.
Faith for Life: Inspiration from the Ordinary Heroes of Hebrews 11 by Richard Coekin
Perfected in Jesus: By faith Jesus endured the cross, so fix your eyes on him
Hebrews 11 has been an epic survey of characters from the Old Testament empowered by God to endure by faith to be:
- Confident in God’s word (verses 1-3)
- Commended by God (verses 4-7)
- Obedient to God’s call (verses 8-12)
- Patient in waiting for God’s heavenly city (verses 13-16)
- Sacrificial for God (verses 17-19)
- Aspirational for life with God beyond the grave (verses 20-22)
- Courageous for God before governments (verse 23)
- Self-denying in joining God’s people (verses 24-29)
- Empowered by God for achieving victories (verses 30-35)
- Empowered by God for enduring victimization (verses 35-40)
Now, this emotional rollercoaster reaches its climatic crescendo in Jesus.
In preparation for his concluding call—that we should run our race with our eyes fixed on the front-runner, Jesus, making him the hero we follow—our author clarifies three tactics for completing our race:
1. Let us throw off everything that hinders
The word translated as “hinders” means “excess weight” or “burdens”. What could they be?
- A Toxic Relationship: In our honest moments\, painful as though it is to admit it, we know that this relationship is slowing down our Christian growth and things can’t carry on like this.
- Our Ambitions: Sometimes, we are enslaved with hours spent in the office or work brought home on weekends. No one ever retires and says, “I wish I’d spent more time in the office”, and no one ever arrives in front of Jesus on judgment day and says, “I wish I’d got further in my career”!
- Guilt for Past Sins: We’re like that soldier played by Robert de Niro in the classic film The Mission, who, having killed his brother in an argument, is carrying around on his back a massive, crippling sack full of armor representing his violent past. What joy when it was finally cut free. Let’s not increase the damage of our sin in our past by allowing it to cripple our joy in the future; let’s confess it, dump it before God and leave it behind.
We’re all recovering addicts when it comes to sin. So, it’s okay to admit that you’re struggling and ask for help. The first tactic in this marathon of faith is obvious: let us throw off everything that hinders.
2. Let us run with perseverance
Living by faith is not a sprint but a marathon. We must run—it requires effort and determination.
Our Western culture is in general now afflicted with an angry, rights-oriented, “all must have prizes” approach to life. This can skew our understanding of God’s grace. We demand the same experiences and outcomes as everyone else—and to just be and not have to do anything. But this is not biblical.
God gives us incentives to run hard and not just walk—to do our best and not be lazy. This passage encourages us to run—don’t settle for average. And don’t be surprised when it hurts. Just remember that the finish will make it all worthwhile.
3. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus!
This third tactic is the most important of all for persevering by faith.
Jesus is the pioneer of our faith because he has lived the life of faith before us as our leader and has now created a life of faith in us through the gospel.
And he is the perfecter of our faith because he is our King, who has completed a perfect life of faith for us, as our representative, by his trusting obedience to God’s word, even to the point of death on a cross. It is his life of faith which is reckoned as ours to qualify us for heaven. And now he is training us to live by faith like him.
Consider Jesus everywhere in the Bible, starting with the Gospels. Listen to his teaching; obey his commands; watch his behavior; learn from his decisions; and worship him!
Baptist theologian Andrew Fuller demonstrated from Scripture that saving faith is not just belief in the facts of the gospel but also involves delighting in the Savior of whom this gospel is true—fixing our eyes upon him as our personal hero above all others.
Consider the hymn originally known as “The Heavenly Vision” composed by Helen Lemmel in 1918. Her hymn—later retitled to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”—drew its inspiration from a Christian tract, “Focused: A Story and Song” penned by Isabella Trotter with its lesson on dandelion. Isabella was an English artist and missionary to Algeria.
The words that touched Lemmel most when reading the tract were, “So, then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”
Immediately after reading this, Lemmel wrote the words of this hymn and its well-known chorus—
Fix your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
For the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.
Faith is truly perfected in Jesus. So, fix your eyes on him—and live by faith in him.
Joy of Living Bible Studies – Hall of Faith: Study on Hebrews 11 by Ruth M. Bathauer
Having given concrete examples of faith that worked in the lives of the people of faith in chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews now urges us to “fix our eyes on Jesus.”
As the author and perfector of our faith, Christ Jesus is the One upon whom the Christian faith rests and He is the One who leads us in our daily walk.
In Jesus Christ, we have One who is the paramount and unsurpassed example of faith. During His entire earthly ministry, Jesus Christ displayed flawless faith in God the Father. In what must have been the darkest hours on earth, He committed Himself completely into the Father’s hands in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed:
Realizing that the life of faith will at times have hardships, trials and temptations, we must remember that if Christ Jesus endured these things, we, His followers are not exempt from them.
As we conclude the study on faith, let us continue to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
A Great Cloud of Witnesses: A Study of Those Who Lived by Faith by Trillia Newbell
If we want to apply all that we’ve learned from the Heroes of Faith in Hebrews 11, Hebrews 12:1-2 is a good, if not necessary, place to start. It’s here we understand the context of our faith and how to walk out our faith. It’s here that we also get a beautiful picture of how the Old Testament saints and all those who’ve gone before us function now.
When we think about the Christian walk of faith, it feels like a hurdle event. You start sprinting and running hard and then you have to jump over some obstacle. You find your rhythm and jump again and then again…over and over again, stumbling at times, but never stopping. You and I run that same race.
When you are running the race, the proper form is for your head to be up and your gaze to be straight in front of you. Where you set your eyes matters. No surprise that the writer of Hebrews encourages us to do likewise. It’s interesting, however, that the author doesn’t tell us to fix our eyes on the finish line—at least not in these verses and in the context of running the race with faith. We aren’t looking at the future; we are looking at Jesus who secures our future.
Those who ran the race before us witnessed the goodness and faithfulness of God. There’s something comforting knowing that men and women who finished their races well for centuries.
If we’ve learned anything through studying the lives of those who have gone before us, it’s that this walk of faith can be difficult. Like the great cloud of witnesses, you and I will endure trials of many kinds throughout our lives too. And we aren’t called to do it on our own.
You and I need others to encourage us to keep running. Wherever you are in your faith, don’t go it alone. Let’s pursue community as we fix our eyes on Jesus for the race set before us.
We have the privilege of knowing the promise the people of old never saw fulfilled while on earth. The author and perfector of our faith: Jesus. Although we thank God for all of those who have gone before us, they are not where we put our faith and where we fix our eyes. We can emulate their faith, but let’s fix our eyes on Jesus.