Last night at Bible Study we looked at Hebrews 12. It starts with that wonderful verse 'Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.' Not the race that we have chosen - the one marked out for us. For one christian friend today that race is coping with the death of her husband in an accident just weeks before they were due to share retirement together. For another, it is struggling with secondary cancer when just months ago she had been given the all-clear. There are times when you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other (metaphorically speaking). That's perseverance.
There is some debate as to who wrote the book of Hebrews but my money is on the Apostle Paul. He knew about both hardship and perseverance. He finished the race and kept the faith (2 Tim 3:7). He called himself the least of all the apostles and yet, in many ways, he was the greatest. He left us a wealth of instruction on how to live the christian life and was himself a shining example for us to follow. It therefore concerns me when people write him off as legalistic or his example as too difficult to follow. How could the writer of Galatians possibly be legalistic! Paul, were he alive today, would be the first to say that we should follow Jesus, not Paul, however if we ignore Paul we are missing something, because Paul's writings, inspired by the Holy Spirit, point us to Jesus. That is why they are included in the Canon of Scripture and I am uncomfortable with the current trend among some christians to minimise or sideline Paul's epistles - an example being Professor Donald Macleod of the Free Church, who is reported as saying in a BBC radio interview "My concern is to go back to Jesus. I even feel uncomfortable going back to St.Paul." Why? The two (Paul and Jesus) are not incompatible. If we didn't have the gospels, we would still be able to understand the gospel and know Christ through Paul's writings.
It seems to me that those who want to go back to Jesus and who ignore Paul are really modern-day liberals who preach a gospel of love and grace while quietly ignoring the fact that grace is not a licence to sin. Paul was an observant Jew who had a supernatural encounter with the living Christ which changed his life from that moment on. He then became the apostle to the gentiles. That's you and me, unless you are a Jew. That's why we need to pay attention to his teachings. He had the background to understand the law and the prophets and he had the revelation of Christ as Messiah. He is also a wonderful example of perseverance in the face of persecution. The writer John Buchan understood this. In his book, Mr Standfast, one of the characters discourses on courage. 'It's easy to be brave if you're feeling well and have food inside you ... but the big courage is the cold-blooded kind, the kind that never lets go even when you're feeling empty inside, and your blood's thin, and there's no kind of fun or profit to be had, and the trouble's not over in an hour or two but lasts for months and years ... fortitude's the biggest thing a man can have - just to go on enduring when there's no guts or heart left in you ... the head man at the job (fortitude) was the Apostle Paul.' (Mr Standfast Chapter XI)
Now Paul is one of the great cloud of witnesses who surround us and I, for one, am glad of his example.
