Hebrews 12

Notes

Ver. 1. Since, from the preceding instances of the excellency and power of faith to support under and triumph over all difficulties and dangers, it appears that we are surrounded on every side with multitudes of glorified believers, who unite in testifying the duty and advantage of an entire reliance upon the infinite wisdom, power, faithfulness, and goodness of God, in the greatest trials, let us, animated by and in imitation of their example, and as under their eye, cast off the works of darkness, inordinate care about this present world, and the load of ceremonial observances, and, by the influence of God's grace, disentangle ourselves from the power of indwelling corruption, and of every sin to which, through our natural depraved constitution, and our peculiar circumstances, company, and situation in life, we are most easily disposed, and especially that great sin of unbelief, which stands in direct opposition to faith, and is the root of all apostasy; and, thus disencumbered from every load of temptation or corruption, let us, with persevering fortitude, quietness, and patient resignation to the holy and sovereign will of God under our manifold sufferings, hold on our way with speed, steadiness, and vigour, till we finish that course of faith, affliction, and unreserved obedience which is appointed for us by God, and marked out in his Word and the examples of his saints, till we arrive at the mark of his high calling, and obtain the crown of life; 2. Always by faith looking off from sin, self, and the allurements and terrors of this world, or whatever else would retard and dishearten us, and looking forward to Jesus Christ—that we may derive grace and strength from him to enable us to follow his most perfect pattern, who is not only an unparalleled example, but the efficient Cause, Leader, and Captain of our faith, to begin, encourage, increase, and perfect it, and crown it with eternal glory—even as he himself, in the joyful prospect and hopes of the honour to God, salvation to men, and reward of mediatorial glory to himself, which would issue therefrom, calmly submitted to, and with astonishing meekness and patience endured, the agonizing and lingering pains of his crucifixion, and overlooked all the ignominy and reproach of that scandalous form of death, and all the contempt and derision attending it; for now, in consequence, and as the just reward of all this, he, in that very nature which suffered, is exalted as a triumphant conqueror over sin, Satan, the world, death, and hell, to a state of the most perfect, glorious, and everlasting rest, honour, and authority. 3. To prevent dejecting discouragement, impatience, or weariness under your manifold tribulations and apprehensions of danger, seriously consider and contemplate the person and office of Jesus Christ, in all their circumstances, and particularly in his invincible patience and undisturbed composure of mind wherewith he for your sakes bore up under, passed through, and triumphed over, all the opprobrious opposition and blasphemous insults which the most malicious and wicked men threw out to his face against his divine person, office, doctrine, and miracles, all the days of his public ministry. 4. And it would be the more sinful, shameful, and dangerous for you to draw back from your Christian course; for though ye have already cheerfully suffered the loss of your liberty and property for your adherence to it, God has hitherto restrained the fury of your wicked persecutors, that ye have never been called to suffer unto death in striving to avoid sin. 5. Are ye unmindful of, or dare ye forget, or be unaffected with, the endearing exhortation by which God, as a most tender and compassionate Father, for your direction, caution, and comfort, under tribulation, warns and beseeches you, on the one hand, to beware of overlooking and contemning his kind chastisements of you on account of your sin, and for your spiritual and eternal good, or of behaving in an unaffected, obstinate, and incorrigible manner under them; and, on the other, of impatiently, ignorantly, perversely, and unbelievingly, shrinking and being disheartened, to the neglect of duty, despairing of relief, or refusing to be comforted. 6. For the Lord does not afflict his children in wrath, demanding satisfaction for their sins; but either, in lesser or greater severity, to manifest his distinguished kindness to them, in embittering their sins, purging from them, and preparing for heaven. 7. If therefore ye be not only visited with afflictions, but enabled, in faith, patience, and perseverance, to submit to, and courageously bear up under them, God, as a kind but infinitely wise Father, is certainly correcting you as his dear children, to promote his own glory and your unspeakable advantage. 8. But if, notwithstanding your remaining sinfulness, ye are indulged in uninterrupted ease and prosperity in the world, and thus exempted from the corrective and instructive chastenings wherewith God exercises the very best of his children; or if ye are not brought to some cordial submission to this wholesome and necessary discipline of his family, God neglects you, as a spurious issue, who are none of his true children, nor heirs of his heavenly inheritance. 9. Moreover if, in the days of our youth, we all submitted to the chastisements of those natural parents from whom we derived our frail, corrupt, and mortal bodies, and who, under God, provided for their subsistence and safety, have we not infinitely stronger reasons to submit to the sovereign authority and disposal of him who is the immediate Creator, Preserver, and Governor of our immortal souls, and renews them by his regenerating grace; and meekly, and even thankfully, to accept of his fatherly chastisements for our iniquities, being ashamed of and turning from the causes thereof, that so we may live in holy fellowship with and devotedness to him here, and in heavenly glory with him hereafter? 10. For truly our natural parents, during the short time of our minority, were apt to correct us in an arbitrary manner, through humour, passion, pride, or weakness, without duly aiming at our good, or at least mistaking the proper season or measure of the rod; and all the benefit we received from it was confined to this life. But God corrects us, in infinite wisdom and compassion, in order that he may graciously promote our spiritual and eternal benefit, by subduing and purging away our sin, and rendering us more and more like to himself in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. 11. It is true indeed that even fatherly chastenings are in themselves irksome and distressing while we are under them; yet, being sanctified by God, and, in consequence thereof, dutifully endured by us, they render us more wise, humble, watchful, prayerful, more circumspect in our walk, more weaned from this world, and more spiritual, holy, and heavenly-minded than before; and work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 12. Since, therefore, these are the gracious ends and advantages of God's correcting you with such manifold sore afflictions, beware of giving way to dejection and despondency under them, or of disheartening one another, but encourage yourselves and each other, in the Lord your God, to hold on in his ways with alacrity, vigour, joy, and triumph. 13. And that your afflictions be suitably improved, in a close adherence to Christ, and a conversation becoming the gospel, remove all hindrances and stumbling-blocks out of your own and your brethren's way to eternal life, that ye and they may walk uprightly, and run steadily in the paths of truth and holiness—lest through temptation, ignorance, or fear of suffering, or the cunning craftiness of Satan and his agents, any weak Christians among you should be turned aside from Christ and his paths of righteousness and grace; but rather let it be your earnest care that such may be duly informed, directed, encouraged, strengthened, and confirmed in the profession, faith, hope, and holiness of the gospel. 14. Study, by all means, to pursue and maintain peace with all men, Jews or Gentiles, friends or enemies, and to promote universal holiness in heart and life, in conformity to the image and will of God—since, without a conscientious regard to this, no man, be his pretences or profession what they will, can be fit for, or, in the nature of things, or according to the constitution of the gospel, ever be admitted to immediate fellowship with Christ and God in him. 15. Therefore let each of you carefully inspect your own principles, temper, and conduct, and watch over one another, lest any of you, through sloth, carnality, or unbelief, should live destitute of an interest in the special favour of God, and of a real work of heart-changing grace; lest any apostate, or any corrupt principle of apostasy in doctrine or practice, offensive to God and ruinous to men, should spring up among you, to the hurt of the infected, and the grief and trouble of others, and thereby many be defiled with erroneous principles, or divisive or profane practices, marring the beauty, purity, peace, and order of the church: 16. Lest any of you who make a profession of Christ's name should abandon himself to whoredom or other uncleanness, or profanely undervalue the special blessings of the new-covenant and gospel state of the church—as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat to gratify his sensual appetite, sold his birthright, and all the peculiar honours and blessings attending it—the consequences of which were very tremendous and irretrievable. 17. For ye cannot but have learned from Scripture, that when he earnestly wished to have recovered it, in order to obtain his father's principal blessing, his most importunate and mournful entreaties were, through the direction of God, absolutely rejected by his father Isaac; and so will every empty professor of Christianity at the last day hopelessly cry for mercy, and bewail his condition, when God shall make him feel the terrible effects of his irreversible sentence of condemnation. 18. The transcendent excellency of the blessings of the gospel above those of the ceremonial dispensation, renders it also the more sinful and dangerous to come short of, or slight them; for ye are not called to covenant or hold fellowship with God in the manner of your fathers, at the material mountain of Sinai, and when covered with flaming fire, thick clouds of smoke, and storms of thunder—which represented that dispensation as carnal and movable, terrible in its threatenings, dark in its manifestations, and severe in its curses and punishments; 19. And where the thunders and the voice by which the ten commandments were published were so terrible, that your fathers entreated that God would no more speak to them in so immediate and awful a manner, but communicate his mind and will by the ministry of Moses, as a mediator between him and them. 20. Conscious to themselves that they were utterly incapable of perfect obedience to God's commandments, or of being justified by their imperfect obedience, they could not even bear up under those dreadful appearances of God, which were displayed in the manner of publishing them; for, as an awful indication of his inaccessibleness to sinners, according to the tenor of this law, and of the vengeance to be executed upon the violators of it, if either man or beast but touched Mount Sinai during that solemnity of the Divine Presence, he or it was to be stoned to death, or pierced through and slain. 21. Nay, so alarmingly dreadful were the tokens of the Divine Majesty, that Moses, notwithstanding his eminent sanctity, his office of mediator between God and the people, and all the familiar converse which he had with him, was overwhelmed with the utmost terror and consternation.—22. But, as a prelude of, and as a step of advance towards the inexpressibly delightful happiness of the heavenly and eternal state of the church, ye are brought, under the gospel dispensation, into delightful fellowship with God, in his most excellent state of ordinances, in which is the perfection of beauty and joy of the whole earth, and in which God, who has all life in himself, and bestows all life on others, calls all the people, Jews and Gentiles, into a comely and orderly society, endowed with glorious privileges, and governed and protected by himself—a society the original, nature, privileges, and tendency of which are heavenly, and in which ye are admitted to a most noble and exalted communion, in love and service, with astonishing multitudes of holy angels, 23. And into a spiritual and holy fellowship with the delightful assembly of all true believers in earth or heaven who are born again by the Spirit of God, and adopted into his family as heirs of himself and joint-heirs with Christ, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, and who in these last days is manifested that he might take away the sins of all who believe; and to God the Judge of all, as your reconciled Father, who has accepted you in his beloved Son, and will quickly vindicate your character and reward your services: and, though not yet personally admitted to heaven, ye have spiritual communion in faith, love, joy, worship, and obedience, with all the separated spirits of all the saints of former ages, which, having departed from their bodies, do now live perfectly free from sin, sorrow, temptation, trouble, or danger, and enjoy perfect holiness and happiness in the vision and enjoyment of and likeness to God—being children of the same Father, united to the same Head, Christ, as living members of his mystical body, animated by the same Spirit, and entitled to the same everlasting inheritance; 24. And ye are brought not to Moses, a typical mediator, but to Jesus, the only true and effectual Saviour and Mediator between God and men, with whom the covenant of grace was made, by whom its conditions are fulfilled, and its blessings administered; and ye have communion with God and his Son, angels and people, not by bloody sacrifices of beasts, but by faith in the virtue of Jesus' precious blood, which was shed for many, and is divinely applied to your consciences for justification, sanctification, spiritual comfort, and eternal salvation, and which speaks better things than Abel's own blood, which cried for just vengeance on Cain his murderer, and still speaks warnings of wrath to all persons of a persecuting spirit; nay, better things than the blood of Abel's sacrifice, which only availed for his own acceptance;— whereas this blood of Jesus pleads for pardon and everlasting life to his betrayers and murderers, and to all sorts of sinners who believe in him.—25. Since therefore the gospel state of the church is so incomparably more excellent than the Jewish, as ye regard the glory of God or your own salvation, take heed lest temptations, worldly-mindedness, unbelief, or excessive attachment to ancient ceremonies, should make you reject, refuse, or turn away from that blessed Mediator of the new covenant, who, in the most gracious and endearing manner, speaks to you in his preached gospel, and by the miraculous influences of his Spirit which attend it; for if your fathers, who rebelled against Moses, and refused to receive the laws of God at his mouth, did not escape distinguished punishments, how much more impossible is it that any of us should escape who, through unbelief, reject, despise, and disobey him who is the Lord from heaven, and who, being ascended to heaven, thence publishes to us the glad tidings of eternal salvation, in all their spirituality, light, and glory, by his Word and Spirit. 26. Whose voice of thunder and awful majesty at the giving of the law made Mount Sinai and the people around it to quake and tremble; but now, in order to introduce the full happiness of the gospel dispensation, he has promised to remove and destroy the whole Jewish constitution, civil and ecclesiastic. 27. And his words, yet once more, plainly intimate that the Jewish constitution, in which so many things were made by the hands of men, should be removed, that the glorious and unalterable privileges, worship, and ordinances of the gospel, which are introduced in their stead, might abide till the end of the world. 28. Since therefore we by faith actually receive the blessed and fixed state of the gospel church, with all its privileges and blessings, under Christ our Royal Prince and Head, let us, according to the nature, provisions, and encouragements of this kingdom, hold fast our profession, and, in a careful and conscientious use of the ordinances of Christ, receive and improve those free favours which God has bestowed upon us, to excite and enable us to serve, worship, and glorify him in an acceptable manner through Jesus Christ, under a deep sense of our meanness and vileness, and of his holiness, power, and majesty; 29. For he, who is our covenant God—by visible dispensations, as we are professed Christians, and by special grace, as we are true believers—is still infinitely jealous for his own glory with respect to his worship; and his righteous indignation burns against those who reject him and the blessings of his kingdom, by unbelief and daring contempt.

Ver. 1. 'The sin that doth most readily entangle us'—an allusion to the inconvenience of long flowing robes in a race. The specific sin intended must be unbelief, seeing faith is the particular grace required. C.

Ver. 4. You have not yet suffered as martyrs, as did the prophets of old, and so many of your fellow-Christians in your own days. C.

Ver. 5. A quotation from Pr. 3. 11, 12, which is of great importance, not merely on account of the practical exhortation it contains, but as showing, upon apostolic authority, that God, and not Solomon, is the speaker—a fact of primary value in the interpretation of the book of Proverbs. C.

Ver. 11. This fruit is not yielded to them that suffer chastisement, but 'to them that are exercised thereby'—exercised in watchfulness, self-examination, prayer, and patience. C.

Ver. 14. Without which (holiness) no man shall see the Lord. This specialty is important—as to attain, or even 'follow peace,' may, at times, be utterly impossible, or even unlawful, Jude 3-18. C.

Ver. 18. For ye are not come, &c.; therefore your privileges being so much greater than those of Israel at Sinai, how much greater must be your judgment should you, like so many of them, disbelieve and apostatize. C.

Ver. 21. This saying of Moses is not found in Scripture, but is probably a reference to the unrecorded speech Ex. 19. 19.—Note, Such an instance affords no countenance to the Romish doctrine of unwritten tradition, for this is recorded upon apostolic authority. C.

Ver. 24. According to R. Baxter, Doddridge, &c., 'which crieth not against us as Abel's blood did for revenge, but saveth us by satisfying vindictive justice.' But how could the blood of Abel shed by Cain be said, in this or any sense, to have spoken good things? for that is implied, if any blood speak 'better things.' By 'the blood of Abel,' therefore, must be understood 'the blood of Abel's sacrifice,' which spoke the language of faith in an atonement to be made, whereas 'the blood of sprinkling' speaks of salvation accomplished. C.

Reflections.—There is need of much care and activity in imitating ancient saints, and especially in imitating Jesus our Forerunner, in persevering faith, patience, and holiness. And great is our encouragement in his success, and from his furnishing, directing, and strengthening us for our work. What kindness and care the Lord shows in afflicting us only for our great honour and benefit! And yet we rarely either relish or behave aright under afflictions, especially if they are severe. There is need of watchfulness, mutual excitement, and assistance in our Christian course, and that the strong should bear with and help the weak.—And delightful is the appearance, and happy the end, when peace and holiness are properly united in our conduct. But, alas! fearful and desperate is the issue of unconcern under the means of grace, or of apostasy from gospel truth.—Delightful is the state of the gospel church, of the new covenant, and of heaven; and how much superior to that under the law and the ceremonies! Firm is its establishment, and sweetly our exalted Redeemer speaks to us therein. With earnest attention and holy awe ought we then to hear his voice, and perform the duties of his worship. No covenant relation or gospel grace can render him less holy, just, jealous, awful, or majestic. And great fear is due unto him in the meeting of his saints.