357. Race Set Before Us
Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race set before us.
The heroes of faith listed in Hebrews chapter 11 are witnesses in history to the faithfulness of the God we also can believe in. A witness points to something else that happened or to someone else who did something. We have surrounding us in our Bible and in history and in our own lives a cloud of witnesses who are pointing us to Jesus Christ, who He is and what He has done. The witness of the Word of God is all that we need to convince us of the “things not seen.” Nothing but our own prideful stubbornness prevents us from believing in the God who does great things. This prideful self-will is the Sin, which leads to sins that so easily beset us.
If we could lay aside these weights we could run the race better. This metaphor makes it easier to see the real weight that sin actually is. To “lay aside every weight” is to repent, to confess our sin and believe the Gospel. The lightness we feel allows us to live a better life (run the race). Repentance and faith go together, for it is sin that blinds us, deadens us, and weighs us down. The Holy Spirit, through the Gospel, gives us sincere repentance and simple faith. The place to begin is with the sin that so easily besets us. We know what it is, if we are willing to see. If we don’t know what it is, ask the Spirit to reveal it to us. Daily we must repent and believe, and for some easily besetting sins it must be done over and over again.
This is how we live better, live free, and run with patience. We can live with patience because we have so many promises of the prize at the end of the race, of the rewards of grace waiting for us, and for the eternal life that shall be revealed. By way of encouragement He gives us this promise: there is a race that is set before us. My life, in God’s hands, has a plan and a purpose, and my life is meaningfully going somewhere definite. God sets this race, this life, before us. The race is unique to each person that the Lord calls to faith. We do not run someone else’s race; we have our own. We do not need to know where it leads or when it ends, but we do need to know thatthe Lord, who saves us, has already laid out the course and set the finish line. Because we have the promise of a race set before us we can the more readily repent and believe. We can be sure that God will not leave us without a race. God created and saved us for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We can trust the word and promise: there is a path and a racecourse.