Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Hebrews 12:1

"Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us," — Hebrews 12:1 (ASV)

“We” links the writer to his readers. He is a competitor in the race as well as they and writes as one who is as much caught up in the contest as they are. The word “cloud” may be used of a mass of clouds in the sky, but it is also used of a throng of people. The witnesses are a vast host.

There is a question whether we should understand “witnesses” (GK 3459) as those who have witnessed to the faith or those who are spectators witnessing the present generation of Christians. Normally the word is used in the former sense, and it is doubtful whether it ever means simply “a spectator.” Still it is difficult to rid the word of this idea in 1 Timothy 6:12 (perhaps also in Heb 10:28), and the imagery of the present passage favors it. The writer pictures athletes in a footrace, running for the winning post and urged on by the crowd. Yet they are “surrounded,” which makes it hard to think of them as looking to the “witnesses”—and all the more so since they are exhorted to keep their eyes on Jesus (v.2). Both ideas may be present. Perhaps we should think of something like a relay race where those who have finished their course and handed in their baton are watching and encouraging their successors.

With the great gallery of witnesses about us, it is important for us to run well. So we are exhorted to “throw off everything that hinders.” “Hinders” (GK 3839) is really a noun that means any kind of weight. It is sometimes used of superfluous bodily weight that the athlete sheds during training. Here, however, it seems to be the race rather than the training that is in view. Athletes carried nothing with them in a race (they ran naked), and the writer is suggesting that the Christian should “travel light.” He is not referring to sin (see the next clause). Some things that are not wrong in themselves hinder us in putting forward our best effort. So the writer tells us to get rid of them.

Christians must also put off every “sin that so easily entangles.” Sin forms a crippling hindrance to good running. We must lay aside all that can hinder us in our race and “run with perseverance.” The author is not thinking of a short, sharp sprint but of a race that requires endurance and persistence—a long-distance race that demands sustained effort by the runner, who keeps on with great determination. That is what the heroes of faith did in their day, and it is that to which we are called.