Our Life Isn't That Hard

May 13th, 2026
by Lance Waldie

Hebrews 12:3-4 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;.

The author exhorts all in v. 3 to “consider” (Gr. analogizomai)—analyze, a Greek term that means “to think about with effort and precision.” In this case, we are to think about Jesus, expressly the “hostility” (Gr. antilogia)—the contemptuous behavior He “endured” (Gr. hupomenō)—that He withstood; remained under. The author could be talking about Jesus’ entire ministry on earth, but he is likely referring more specifically of His passion—His sufferings on the cross and the immediate events that preceded. Worse, Jesus endured what He did not by righteous people with pure motives but “by sinners.” Why would the author want Christians to think so deeply about Jesus’ sufferings? “So that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” It is believed that this phrase was sports lingo in the ancient world for a runner’s exhausted collapse. In relation to Christians, we are to take our trials and difficulties and compare them to what Jesus endured. And lest we think that Jesus was impervious to pain, and His physical sufferings on the cross were somehow easier for Him than the average man, John Henry Newman says this:

As men are superior to animals, and are affected by pain more than they, by reason of the mind within them, which gives a substance to pain,… so, in like manner, our Lord felt pain of the body, with a consciousness, and therefore with a keenness and intensity, and with a unity of perception, which none of us can possibly fathom or compass, because His soul was so absolutely in His power, so simply free from the influence of distractions, so fully directed upon the pain, so utterly surrendered, so simply subjected to the suffering. And thus He may truly be said to have suffered the whole of His passion in every moment of it.

As compared the Jesus, the writer points out that we, unlike Jesus, “have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin” (v. 4). In other words, our trials do not even compare to Christ’s who suffered death for the gospel. And He remained faithful unto death, the very worst kind of death preceded by hours of torture on a cross. The message is clear for Christians: we must be totally absorbed with Jesus, not ourselves. As such, we are to turn away from those things that distract us and turn toward He who gives us life through His death, Jesus. It no wonder that reading and re-reading Gospels is so helpful for believers.

Food For Thought
As Christians, we are in the race surrounded by a great cloud of people whose examples call us to be excellent: the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob); the prophets (Moses, Elijah, Samuel, Daniel, Jeremiah); the apostles (Peter, John, Paul); the martyrs (Stephen, Polycarp, Cranmer, Elliott, Saint); the preachers (Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Spurgeon); the missionaries (Carey, Taylor, Carmichael); and there are the countless others we do not know but that God knows who finished their race well. Their very existence, and the stories of their lives, propel us on to finish our own races. Now let us lay aside all encumbrances and sin and finish our race strong!