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The word “endured”, in Greek, is made up of two parts – hypo (“under”) and meno (“remain, abide, tarry”). How did the Lord Jesus endure? First, He came under or subjected Himself to the Father’s will. Whether He was in the Temple in Jerusalem at 12 or being baptised by John before His ministry at 30, the Lord Jesus says, “I always do the things that please my Father”. Second, He remained on earth until it was time for Him to finish the work His heavenly Father sent Him to do. He “endured” the contradiction – the opposition and the cheek of us minions. The Saviour of the lost was despised because He ate with outcasts. He was the Word which made the world but the world rejected His Word. So His enemies could gain populist mileage, Jesus was “SMS-ed” – spat at, mocked and scourged.
The word “run” (Heb.12:1) in Greek writings gives the idea of “being in extreme peril, taking the exertion of all of one’s effort to overcome”. In the wilderness, exhausted over the 40 days of fasting, Jesus exerted His mind to stick to what His Bible taught, not what it appears to say. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He subjected every ounce of His will to groan, “Not my will but thine.” We see His “agony and bloody sweat”. After six hours on the cross at Calvary stained with our sin, the Father turned away from His Only Begotten. Jesus cried out – not just under the uncharacteristic darkness of a 3 pm sky – but in the darkness of His soul: “My God, my God” (personal agony), why have you (on top of everyone else, so double tragedy) forsaken (totally abandoned) me?”
Was this the “joy” that was set before Jesus? The same joy with which the wise men of the east saw the star and came to worship the Child Jesus? No. The joy was that as Pioneer and Perfecter (Heb. 12:2) of faith, He knows what we go through in our own exertions to finish our course. He thought nothing of the social, physical and spiritual shame so that He may bring us to favour with God. Like the saints before, let us throw off our doubts and fears (weights) and unbelief (“the sin”). Let us not just look but lock our focus, like a guided missile, on the Lord Jesus, who is cheering us on.
