12. Run to Zion Hebrews 12:4-29
HEBREWS CHAPTER 12 VERSES 4-29
12. Run to Zion
12. Run to Zion Hebrews 12:4-29
I can still remember where I was when it happened. It was 1980 and the United States ice hockey team was in the Olympics playing the Soviet Union. I was in my living room and I was running around screaming my head off because, with about a minute to go, we were doing the unthinkable. Here was this pesky little group of college kids from America playing the greatest ice hockey team in the entire world. There was no chance of winning this game. And yet we were winning—with about a minute left. The commentator cried, “Do you believe in miracles?”
Then—“YES!” We had won.
Was it just through sheer blind, dumb luck that the team managed to pull it off? Of course not. A lot of it came down to the coach, Herb Brooks, and what he did with his players. Brooks knew he didn’t have the best team in the world. But he became famous for his grueling fitness routines as he pushed his team right to their limits. His was a simple philosophy: we may not be the best team, but we will be the fittest. One of the reasons the US team beat the Russians is that they simply wouldn’t stop skating. That was because of the training they had received.
The next section of Hebrews 12 explains how hard training helps not only in sports but also in the Christian life. The word our author uses is “discipline.”
Now, let’s be honest: no one likes the word “discipline.” We tend to think of “discipline” as negative, while “training” sounds positive. But they are two sides of the same coin. A coach may make his team run as a punishment because they did something wrong. If someone shows up late, he gives them five laps round the field. It is a correction of bad behavior. But he may also make them run to build their endurance in general. Later in the same training session, the whole team is running laps around the field—not because they have done anything wrong but as part of their training. If you were looking at that training session from a distance and just watching players run around the field, you wouldn’t know which reason was motivating the coach. Is he disciplining them or training them? In a sense it doesn’t matter. It is all to make them better runners and better members of the team.
That is the same perspective we should have on God’s discipline. Sometimes he disciplines us because we do wrong things; sometimes he brings discipline just to make us better runners. It is not always clear which of these God is doing. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. We can trust in our good Father, who knows what we need. He is making us fitter and more prepared to run the race.
The Means of God’s Discipline
In verse 4 the author acknowledges the difficulties faced by his audience. They have faced all sorts of challenges, though none of them have yet had to pay the ultimate price: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Curiously, he describes the difficulties of the Christian life as a “struggle against sin.” This is not talking about fighting personal sins, but it is a general way to describe the challenges and difficulties of living a life faithful to Jesus, and the persecution which that entails. We know this because he compares their experience to that of Jesus, “who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” (v 3).
In the following verses the author interprets this situation for them: “It is for discipline that you have to endure” (v 7). In other words, God has allowed this suffering as a way of training these believers.
Here we come to a core (and uncomfortable) truth about discipline: it hurts. God’s discipline, in order to get our attention, involves things that are “painful rather than pleasant” (v 11). We aren’t best trained by blessings but by trials.
It’s not that different than the way we discipline our children. How do you keep little Johnny from running into the street? You could try giving him a popsicle every time he stays inside like he’s been told; but truthfully that just doesn’t work as well as disciplining him when he disobeys.
C.S. Lewis, who endured a tremendous amount of personal pain, understood this. He wrote:
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (The Problem of Pain, p 93)
Disciplined As Sons
Of course, if God brings pain and difficulty into our lives as discipline, then that raises questions about what he is up to. What exactly is God trying to accomplish when he does this? Our passage offers two purposes in God’s discipline.
First, God’s discipline is designed to comfort us. Now, that will sound strange in our ears. Comfort us? Pain seems like the opposite of comfort. But it comforts us because it reminds us that we are God’s “sons,” his real children.
In verse 5 our author reminds his audience: “Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?” Then in verse 6 he quotes from Proverbs 3:11-12. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Every parent gives that little speech to their child when they punish them: “I’m doing this because I love you.” And it is usually (although sadly, not always) true. It is hard, diligent, laborious work to rightly and lovingly care for your children through discipline. It is easier not to discipline children. Good parents discipline their children because they love them; they go the extra mile to rightly and carefully discipline them. They know what is good for them, and they know that discipline keeps them on the right path.
When my son John was a toddler, he kept getting out of his crib after we put him to bed. It didn’t seem like a big deal, until one day when there was a knock on the door and our neighbor was standing there holding John and telling us that he had found him in his yard. We had put John down for a nap, but he had climbed out of his crib, got out of the front door, and wandered outside near a busy street. After that, we knew we had to discipline him every time he got out of his crib. Why? Because he was our son and we loved him and wanted nothing bad to happen to him. Although his little mind couldn’t understand it at the time, our discipline was directly connected to his status as our beloved child.
It is the same with the Lord. He disciplines us as an expression of love. He is saying, You are my daughter, and I love you. You are my son, and I love you. You belong to me.
In Hebrews 12:7-9 the author goes into this more fully. “God is treating you as sons” (v 7). Being disciplined actually validates the fact that you are a child of God. It shows that you really belong to him. And therefore discipline is a form of comfort. It shows you that God really cares about you.
That means that a smooth, easy life may not be the good sign you think it is. “If you are left without discipline … then you are illegitimate children and not sons” (v 8). Physical comfort and ease are not necessarily a sign that God is pleased with you; in fact, they might be a sign that he is displeased. Sometimes God lets the wicked prosper and have a life of ease, at least for a time (Psalm 73). Thus, a life of ease is not necessarily the blessed life.
Likewise, a life of trials is not a sign that God is out to get you, any more than me disciplining my son was a sign that I was out to get him. He couldn’t see the bigger picture, but the reality was that I was out to love him.
Therefore we must not “regard lightly the discipline of the Lord” (Hebrews 12:5). This is an interesting way of putting it. He knows that we have a tendency to push discipline aside as if it is no big deal—like teenagers rolling their eyes. I don’t need to listen to you. Some people go through trials and even end up hating God. That is why our response is as important as the discipline itself. If we are to keep on running our race, we must respond well.
Thus, it is wise, when trials come, to ask, “Is there something I need to repent of?” There may not be anything that you are actively, stubbornly holding on to; but there may be. Not all trials are due to personal sins (John 9:3), but some trials are (John 5:14).
The bottom line is this: don’t ignore the difficult things in your life as if they were random. You and I know that God is in control of the universe—intimately. Not a hair falls from your head that God does not know about. So we know that these things have more importance than random events. God is using all these things in your life to train you and shape you. This means we must respect God, just as we do our earthly parents (Hebrews 12:9). When we do this, we will “live.” In other words, if we pay attention to our sin and keep asking for God’s help, the result will be that he strengthens us in our faith and leads us to eternal life with him.
Disciplined for Our Good
God’s discipline changes us. Our parents disciplined us “as it seemed best to them,” but God “disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (v 10).
Earthly discipline is flawed, and our author acknowledges this. Earthly parents, by and large, do the best they can; but their best is not perfect. Sometimes they discipline well, but other times they blow it. They don’t always time it well or do it rightly. Some people’s experience of discipline as a child is only one of fear and never of love. But God is not like that. He never messes up. He always knows exactly what you need. He is always perfect in his timing. His discipline is always done precisely for the good he knows it will bring you.
Verse 11 describes the change discipline yields: “the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” God trains us so that we can be more holy and more righteous. That is what will help us to make it to the end of the race.
Stay in the Race
A common reaction to discipline is to give up—to stop running entirely. But in verse 12 we are encouraged to “lift [our] drooping hands and strengthen [our] weak knees.”
I know you’re tired, but don’t stop, says our author. In an allusion to Proverbs 3:6, our author says, “Make straight paths for your feet” (Hebrews 12:13). That is, stay in the lane you are running in. Do not divert from the track you are on and head towards wickedness.
The paradox is that the hard thing that makes you want to quit is the very same thing that can keep you from quitting. An athlete running painful drills can give up and disobey her trainer, but in the end that means quitting her sport altogether. Or she can persevere and run those drills, and that is what will keep her in the race. In a sense, we are always on a knife edge when it comes to God’s discipline. When trials come, will we quit or will we persevere and be strengthened? It is one or the other.
We must stay on the track and run, “so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.” Again, our author continues with the running analogy. Any disability or injury we have will be helped only if we stay on the same straight path; if we verge from the path, things will “be put out of joint.”
In the following verses we see what it actually looks like to persevere in this way.
First, our author exhorts us: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (v 14). Throughout the Bible, godly people are presented as pursuers of peace with their fellow man (Psalm 34:14; Matthew 5:9). That’s one of the key marks of holiness.
What is particularly sobering is that this holiness is somehow necessary in order to “see the Lord.” To be clear, this does not mean that you earn your way to heaven through holiness, but that if you love Jesus, holiness is the result of your commitment to him. Holiness is not the condition of salvation but the consequence of salvation. If you are not on a trajectory toward holiness, you may wonder whether you are really in the race at all. This explains why our author says we should “strive” for holiness. Even if holiness is not the grounds of our salvation, it is nonetheless something that we should pursue eagerly. Grace and godly effort are not opposed to one another.
Not only are you to keep on the path, but you have to keep others on the path too. This is the point in Hebrews 12:15: “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.” Make sure, as much as humanly possible, that no one else fails. Make sure no one else falls short. Grab your brothers and sisters and keep them running with you. That means we don’t leave them behind. We pray for one another and support one another.
This is important because we are in danger of a “root of bitterness” springing up which “causes trouble, and by it many become defiled” (v 15). This is an allusion to Deuteronomy 29:18, where the root of bitterness is not (as we might assume) a feeling but a person—someone who abandons the way of the Lord and even leads others astray. The point, then, is to be on watch for one another so that apostates don’t arise and harm the body of Christ.
The author ends this passage with the example of Esau, who essentially fell out of the race. Esau’s undoing was the pursuit of pleasure: he “sold his birthright for a single meal” (Hebrews 12:16). He was willing to sacrifice his long-term standing for short-term pleasure. He decided to take the meal and forget about the consequences. That kept Esau from finishing the race.
Of course, Esau regretted his actions later, but “he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears” (v 17). At first glance, this passage might seem to teach that God denies a person a chance to repent, even if they wish to do so. However, the focus here is not on repentance in general, but particularly on Esau’s desire to undo what he had done by giving away his birthright. Thus, the lesson is rather simple: sometimes the opportunity to turn away from your rebellion passes you by (see Hebrews 6:4-6). Pursuing short-term pleasure can have long-term consequences that cannot be undone.
The way you stay in the race is to be a pursuer of holiness. In other words, the best response to discipline is not to run from God but to run to him.