exhibited as an example in

My take on yesterday's verses:

Like Heb11:32 states, "What more shall I say? For time will fail" if we wanted to list all of the great heroes of the faith – not just those in the Bible, but also all of those testimonies of all of the brothers and sisters we know and don’t know – in our church, in other churches, our missionaries overseas. Every believer who lives or has ever lived, or will live has a lesson on faith taught to them by God. Heb11 is not the end of the story. Heb12:1-3 tells us where we are to go from here.

All of these great heroes of the faith, all of these examples of faith should give us encouragement that faith can survive and flourish; that plenty of people have gone through difficult circumstances and not given up hope; that plenty of sinful, broken, incomplete people in circumstances far more dire than our own, that these people have been able to keep the faith.

Then Paul moves to the ultimate example of faith. The great heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 are nothing compared to the example of Christ Jesus "who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Paul lays out in Hebrews 11 a ton of familiar acts of faith and encourages us with these examples only to then point to the pinnacle of faith: Jesus and the Cross of Calvary.

You can pick out your favorite Biblical character and examine their faith, sure, but what Paul is saying here at the beginning of Hebrews 12 is that to really, really get through your life and live your life in a manner that pleases God, to do that you need to focus on Christ. The ultimate goal of faith is to have a faith like Christ’s faith – a perfect obedience to God. By doing so, by having a faith like Christ’s we become like Christ. Paul says in 2Cor3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." That is faith.