Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Hebrews 12:2

"looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." — Hebrews 12:2 (ASV)

We are to run this race with no eyes for any one or anything except Jesus. He is the one toward whom we run with undivided attention. The “author and perfecter of [the] faith” may mean that Jesus walked the way of faith first and brought it to completion. Or it may mean that he originated his people’s faith and will bring it to its perfection. Both ideas may be involved, but since it is not easy to think of the faith by which Jesus lived as essentially the same as our own, the emphasis seems to fall on what he does in his followers. As the heroes of faith in ch. 11 are OT characters, the thought is that Jesus led all the people of faith, even from the earliest days.

The expression rendered “for the joy set before him” is problematic. The preposition translated “for” (GK 505) strictly means “in the place of.” Accordingly, the meaning may be that in place of the joy he might have had, Jesus accepted the cross. The “joy” is then the heavenly bliss that the preincarnate Christ surrendered in order to take the way of the Cross. He replaced joy with the Cross. But this preposition sometimes has the meaning “for the sake of,” which is preferable here. With this understanding of the term, Jesus went to the Cross because of the joy it would bring. He looked right through the Cross to the coming joy, the joy of bringing salvation to those whom he loves. For this joy, then, Jesus “endured the cross.” The “cross” is not as common a way of referring to the death of Jesus as we might have expected. This is the one occurrence of the word outside the gospels and Pauline letters. If one “scorns” a thing, one normally has nothing to do with it; but “scorning its shame” means rather that Jesus thought so little of the pain and shame involved that he refused to avoid it; instead, he endured it. Then, having completed his work of redemption, he “sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” .