Jesus is the believer’s example. We are to fix our eyes on Him who is the Author and Perfecter of Faith. An exposition of Hebrews 12:1-3.
Sermon Transcript
Well, the events of this life can make us weary, not in terms of just getting tired and I need a bit of a break and a nice vacation would be good right about now so I can get a little bit of rest, but I mean we get weary in the race that we run in the Christian life. We have to fight the fight which Scripture describes as an agony, a battle, a conflict, a war. We have to be faithful in that. Being faithful in this world requires constant vigilance, constant discipline, constant effort because we have to be on alert against the deceptions that come from outside of us and the deceptions that rise within our own hearts as we tell ourselves lies. We have to be alert to the false doctrine and compromise which constantly pushes against us, seeking our undoing. We have to resist temptation, kill sin, mortify the flesh, deny ourselves, pursue holiness, live in obedience to Him, serve the Lord, and constantly walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling with which we have been called. And all of that requires constant effort.
And meanwhile, the world, the flesh, and the devil wage a relentless campaign against us on every front, making our every effort to do all of the above even more difficult than it would otherwise be. And then we have to deal with all of the realities of life in a fallen world. We have to face the weaknesses and frailties that come on us and increase even more as we get older and older and progress in our race. Suffering accompanies us in this sinful world. We have to face the world’s hostilities, persecution, their opposition to the truth, and their constant bombardment of lies. We have to fight against and resist all of that.
That’s wearying, isn’t it? I mean, that’s a sad and depressing picture. But that’s the reality of living life in a fallen world surrounded by darkness and being citizens of the kingdom of light. And if you are in Christ, then you have endured up to this point, and if you’re hearing my voice, then you have not yet crossed the finish line and stepped into the end of your race and your reward. So even though you have endured to this point, you have need, the author of Hebrews says, for even more endurance.
And Hebrews 12 contains for us the encouragement that the world-weary soldiers, the world-weary pilgrims in this world need. And so we are returning back to Hebrews 12. It’s been a couple of weeks since we have been in Hebrews 12, and I am aware that only three weeks from now is Christmas Day on a Sunday morning, and it would be customary for me to launch into a Christmas series, which I’m not going to do because I think that the subject matter of our contemplation in Hebrews 12 puts our minds and our hearts in reflection of what Christ has done for us in coming here and taking upon Himself human flesh and living and dying in our stead. That really is what we would meditate upon for the Christmas season, and that really is what is the focus of the author in Hebrews 12.
These things direct our minds toward the reality that the second Person of the eternal Godhead stepped into time and space and took upon Himself human flesh, veiled the glory of His deity in human flesh, and then He lived in this world surrounded by the sin, facing all of the hostility and the opposition and the persecution that you and I face, resisting temptation and doing all of that to live a perfect life so that He may die a perfect death and atone for the sins of His people. That is what Christmas is all about, and that is the reminder that Hebrews 12 gives us continually—the humanity of Jesus, the suffering and the affliction.
As the author of Hebrews says in verse 3, we “consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” All of this is to encourage us to not grow weary in our walk with the Lord by the reminder that there is One who has gone before us. There is One who has accomplished all that the author has encouraged us to seek to accomplish. He has walked in this world, He has faced the opposition, He has lived in obedience, He has run His race, He has finished His race, and He has done so with faithfulness. And He then becomes the example for us.
And He can only be an example to us for our humanity if He was true humanity. This is what the author of Hebrews is constantly reminding us of all the way through this book. Hebrews 3:6, He was a faithful son. Hebrews 4:15, He was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 5:7–8: “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. . . . He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” So One has already lived a perfect, obedient life. He has faced the temptation, He has endured the hostility, He has lived in this world. He has been surrounded by sin and sickness and death. He has seen the devastation that sin can wreak in this world, in cultures, in nations, in families, upon people, in churches. He has witnessed all of that. He has seen the effects of sin. And He has finished His race and done so with faithfulness. And so we look to Him who was made like us in the incarnation so that He might redeem us and then make us like Himself in glorification.
He ran His race. And the goal that we have is to run our race with endurance. And so we’re going to pick it up back in Hebrews 12. And if you are new here or not been with us up to this point, I’m just going to give you a brief overview of what we have looked at thus far in verses 1–3. We are to run our race well as we consider the others who have run it before us. We are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. Then we are to run as we cast off every encumbrance and hindrance and sin which so easily entangles us and threatens to hinder us. And then we have to continue in this course that is set before us as we run the race. That’s verses 1–2. We’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, so we are to lay aside every encumbrance. And then, the end of verse 1, we are to run with endurance the race set before us. And the fourth thing we are to do is to focus, to concentrate, on the Lord Jesus who is both our soul’s reward and our example, the one who rewards us. “Fixing our eyes on Jesus,” verse 2 says, “the author and perfecter of faith, 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.”
Last time we were together, we looked at Jesus as the object of our faith, that He is the one upon whom we are to set our gaze, taking our attention off the distractions and the discouragements and the disappointments of this world, disregarding all of the pleasures and the treasures that this world will offer us to distract us in our race. We are to fix our mind and our heart and our attention upon Christ, who is that great example. He then is the object of our faith. We look unto Him. That is the call. He is in a unique way not just our example, but He is the object upon which our faith rests.
And then today we look at a second description of the Lord Jesus. He is the author of our faith. And then next week we’ll look at Him as the example of our faith. Look at the phrase in verse 2: “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” So He is both the object of our faith as well as the author and perfecter of our faith. And I’m saying here He is the author of our faith, but we’re going to include in here the idea that He is the perfecter or the finisher of our faith as well because if He is the author of our faith in the sense that I believe the text means here, then He must also be the one who completes or finishes the faith. If He started it, He will finish it.
So today we want to look at what it means that Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith. This entire phrase is probably one that is well-known to most Christians. In fact, before this message, if I had stepped up here and asked you to complete the following sentence—“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the . . .”—probably 90 percent of people in here, if you’ve been a Christian for any period of time at all, would have been able to finish that phrase, “He is the author and perfecter of faith” or “He is the author and finisher of faith,” depending on what translation that you are most used to. It’s a phrase that is familiar to us, a description of Jesus that is very familiar to Christians. But I wonder how many of us really have thought through the implications of what this means and why it is that the author uses that to describe Jesus in this context, that He is the author and the perfecter of faith.
The word author here is the word archegos. It’s used four times in the New Testament, always of Jesus. This is a description, by the way, that is very fitting for the context. Of course, it fits the context of faith. Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter, and we’ve been talking about faith from one angle or another since back at the end of chapter 10. So you probably are all faithed out on describing faith and listening about faith, etc. We’ve seen all the examples of faith. But here the author describes Jesus as the author and perfecter of faith. So why does he use that phrase, that description of Jesus, in this context? Even disregarding faith, the nature of faith, and the fact that the context is faith, why is that significant? I think it is significant because there is something in that description that fits the point of the author, the intention of the author, in this passage in encouraging us to persevere in our faith. Of all the ways that the author could have described the Lord Jesus, he describes Him as the author and finisher of faith.
For instance, the author could have said, “Fixing your eyes on Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” He could have said that, right? He could have said, “Fixing your eyes on Jesus, the divine Son of God,” or “Fixing your eyes on Jesus, our great high priest,” or “Our forerunner.” He could have said, “Fixing your eyes on Jesus, the bread of life, the living water, the Light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth, and the life, the living One.” Of all the descriptions that he could have used concerning Jesus, why “the author and finisher of faith”? I think that that will become obvious as we look at the implications of this and see how this can be very encouraging for world-weary saints.
The word archegos is used four times in the New Testament, always of Jesus. It’s used twice in the book of Acts and twice in the book of Hebrews. It’s translated differently in the book of Acts than it is in the book of Hebrews because the word has two different but very similar and actually related meanings. First, the word can be used to describe one who is a leader, a ruler, or a prince. In fact, that is how it is used in the book of Acts. It’s translated as “prince.” In Acts 3:15, Peter, implicating the Jews of his day for the death of Jesus, says to them, “[You] put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.” Very fitting there that Peter would say, “You put to death the Prince of life.” Notice the play on words there. You killed the One who is the giver of all life is the idea. And the meaning of that word in that context—really “Prince of life” is a great translation there. It could also be “the originator of life” or “the author of life.” He could have used it in that sense.
It’s also translated as “prince” in Acts 5:31: “He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” So there you see it kind of used as a proper title, one who is a leader or one who is a ruler, a prince. It really has the idea of one who goes before, stands out in front of the crowd and leads the crowd as a leader or a prince in that sense.
It’s also used a second way, and this is how it’s translated in Hebrews. It’s translated as “author” and it refers to or describes one who is an initiator, a founder, an originator, or a pioneer. And you can see how these words are used together. One who is an initiator or a pioneer might be one who steps out in front of the crowd. So it kind of has the idea of not just one who leads a group of people or rules over a group of people but also one who initiates or authors something, originates something. He pioneers something. That’s how the word is used here in Hebrews. It’s used back in chapter 2, verse 10: “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.” And there it’s translated as “author,” and then here in Hebrews 12:2, “the author and perfecter of faith.”
So what does he mean by the author of faith, the Prince of faith? It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to translate it as “the Prince of faith” or “the ruler of faith,” so instead they translate it as “author of faith,” using the sense of that word which means an originator or an initiator. To understand what he means by “author and perfecter of faith,” particularly “author” here, we have to remember what he’s talking about in terms of faith, what type of faith he is describing. And this could be a much longer discussion, but I’m going to make it very simple. He is not describing faith in the objective, external sense of faith, like we have a faith once for all delivered to the saints, a body of truth, a content of doctrine that has been handed over to us. The faith in that sense is something outside of us, something apart from us. It’s not something subjective or inside of us. The author has not been speaking of faith in that sense anywhere in this context, from chapter 10—the faith that justifies, by which the righteous live—all the way through to the present text. He hasn’t been using faith in that sense.
Instead, he is speaking of faith in terms of that subjective, personal, individual belief and confidence in the word of God, the faith by which the righteous live back in Hebrews 10. It is the faith that saves and sanctifies us, a faith which is a trust in God’s word that lays hold of the promises and considers them as substance, those things which we hope for. It’s that faith. It is the individual and personal trust in God and His word that the author has been speaking of all the way through this context.
And here he said Jesus is the author of that faith. So in what sense is He either the Prince or the originator of that faith? The author is not saying that Jesus came along and He founded a new faith system and He is the founder or pioneer of a new set of beliefs, clever ideas about how to relate to God, that He has then handed off to us. That is not what he is saying. He is describing something about the faith that you and I have that we place in God. Jesus Himself is the author and perfecter of that faith. He could be describing Jesus as the leader or example of faith, like a trailblazer or a pioneer or one who has gone before, that first description, the idea of a prince. He could mean that because either one of these definitions would fit the context and it would fit the flow of thought. And here’s a dirty little secret. I think the author has both of these ideas in mind.
There is a sense in which Jesus is the leader or pioneer, the trailblazer, one who has gone before us in this race of faith. You and I are called to face the hostility of this world by faith. Did Jesus do that? He did, didn’t He? In fact, that’s what verse 3 says. He endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, and we’re to consider that so that we do not lose heart and grow weary. We are called to run our race faithfully and to finish it well. Has He done that? Yeah, He completed everything that the Father gave Him to do. He did only the Father’s will and all of the Father’s will. And when He got done with it, He said, “It is finished.” So He has run His race and He has finished it, accomplishing everything that was laid out for Him to do. The course that was set for Him, He endured that. He went through that. He persevered and ran that race.
You and I are called to fix our eyes on the reward and to trust God for that reward, for the things which are unseen. Did Jesus do that? He absolutely did, right? For the joy that was set before Him—that is, He fixed His eyes on that reward for the joy that was set before Him. He endured the cross, He despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So in that way, Jesus is an example then of the race of faith in that He has accomplished it and He has done it and He has gone before it and laid out the course. And now it is up to you and I just simply to follow in the same path of obedience that the Lord Jesus Himself followed in.
But there is another sense in which He is the author of faith, and that is the sense in which He is the originator or initiator of that faith. By the way, these things should be encouraging to us, that Jesus Christ has already done it. We read at the beginning of the service Hebrews 2:9: “We do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor.” See, that is the reproach, that is the suffering that accompanies faith. He has endured that and He is now crowned with glory and honor. This is the example that you and I are to follow. In that sense, He is the pioneer of that faith.
In terms of the race metaphor, He has already taken to the starting blocks and He has heard the starting pistol and He has run His race. He has crossed the finish line. He is seated there at the Father’s right hand. He is holding out the reward. His eyes are fixed on you, and He is saying to you, “The end, the finish line, is not that far away. Just keep running, keep enduring, cross that line, do it faithfully, and you will receive the crown of glory as well.” In that sense, He is the example for us.
But He is also not just a pioneer of the race of faith, but He is the originator of faith. And this is the second way that the word is used, one who originates or initiates something. In this sense then He is the creator or the beginner of a thing, one who initiates the thing. This is how it is used back in Hebrews 2:10: “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author [or originator] of their salvation through sufferings.” Who is the initiator of salvation? Does it come from men? Does it come from fallen man? Do we design and plan and originate salvation? Christ is the initiator and the originator. He is the author of our salvation because salvation is of the Lord. And again, we’re not talking about here the faith in the sense of an objective body of doctrine that we believe. We’re talking about the subjective, personal, and individual trust and confidence in God and His word.
That faith the author has been commending for us since back in chapter 10, a faith that saves us and sanctifies us, a faith by which the just live. The faith that is the substance of what is hoped for. The faith that is the conviction of things unseen. The faith that worships like Abel, walks with God like Enoch, works like Noah, obeys and believes like Abraham, trusts God for the triumphs, trusts God through the trials. The faith that belongs to men and women of whom this world is not worthy. That is the faith that he is talking about. Christ is the initiator of that faith.
Let me make it very simple and put it very personally. Jesus is the author of the faith that you have in Him. That’s it. He is the author of the faith that you have in Him. Now, you say, “Hold on a second. There was a time when I had no faith, and then somebody came and presented the gospel to me and commanded me to believe, and I placed my faith in Jesus Christ. I remember doing that. That was an expression of my heart. I did that thing. They said, ‘Believe,’ and I believed.” Did that come from you? Was that the product of your heart? Was that the product of your soul? You do have faith. You have placed it in Jesus Christ. But I ask you, Christian, where does that faith come from? Did it originate in your darkened heart? Did it originate in your sinful soul?
It did not. Ephesians 2:8 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that [what is that?] not of yourselves.” The faith that you have did not come from inside your heart. You had no capacity to conjure that up from within your sinful soul. It is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, so that no one can boast. You know what makes you and I unable to boast even in the faith that we place in Christ? The fact that that faith is a divine gift that God gives to His elect, and He causes it in the hearts of His people so that they will trust in Jesus Christ. He is the author, the initiator, the originator of the faith that you and I have placed in Him. That faith that you have did not come from within your heart and within your soul.
This is why Philippians 1:29 says to you it has been granted both to believe in Jesus Christ and to suffer for His name. Those are two fantastic gifts that God gives to His elect, the faith to believe and the grace to suffer for Him. You get to believe. That’s a good part. You get to suffer. That’s also good, by the way. You get to believe and you get to suffer. Both of those things have been granted to you by the good grace of God. Your faith, your trust in the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ is a gift that God granted to you. He gave it to you. He initiated it. He originated it. It comes from Him.
Now, do you deny this? Do you say, “Oh, no, no, Jim. I didn’t grow up in one of those kinds of churches where we talk about things like this. No, no, my faith, that is all me, bro. That is all me. That comes from within me. He did everything. He called upon me to believe, and I believe. That belief, that faith, comes from inside my heart. That’s my work. That’s my contribution to salvation.” Are you sure about that, Mr. Dead In Your Trespasses And Sins? Are you sure about that? Darkened in your mind, alienated from the life of God, hostile in your mind, against the law of God, unable to submit to the law of God, an enemy of God in your mind through wicked works. And by the way, I’m not just rattling off accusations about you. I’m giving you how Scripture describes you in your fallenness. You are one in whom dwelt no good thing, unable to please God, a slave of Satan, a slave of sin, a slave of yourself, a citizen of the kingdom of darkness, a child of wrath, unable to change your heart of stone, a lover of darkness, a lover of sin, a hater of God, and a rebel to His will. So you think that you are the initiator of your faith?
Tell me then, what part of your soul, your heart, your inner being was so untouched by sin, uncorrupted by wickedness, unfallen, so pure and pristine that you could conjure up from within your heart, within your soul, this God-honoring, God-glorifying, God-facing, self-reproving, self-denying, self-humbling faith that endures trials and tribulations, that endures afflictions and suffering, that is willing to be sawn in two, that is willing to be stoned, that is willing to be wandering around in caves and holes of the earth like Hebrews 11 describes? Where did that faith, the one that goes through the fiery trials of the furnace of affliction and comes out the other side like a precious metal, where did that come from within your sinful heart? It was not there.
You know where it came from? The author and perfecter of your faith. It was a gift of God. It does not originate with you. It originates with Him. You did not initiate it. He initiated it. You did not conjure it up. He created it and granted it to you. It is the gift of God to His people. That is what it means that He is the author of salvation. It does not come from us. It is not of yourselves so that no one can boast. Because dead people don’t believe. If physically dead people cannot get up and walk out of the grave, spiritually dead people cannot repent and believe. We are unable to do that. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). He’s not saying, “No one’s permitted to come to Me.” He’s saying, “Nobody has the power to come to Me.” You know why we don’t have the power to come to Him? Because we are broken in our will and in our hearts, and we lack any spiritual capacity to do anything that is pleasing in His sight, which includes repenting of our sin and placing our faith in Jesus Christ. So something outside of us must regenerate us, give us a new heart, grant us that we might believe upon Him, and give us the gift of faith so that we will believe His promises and trust in His Word.
How is He the author of this? He is the author of it in the sense that He purchased this gracious gift for us. God the Father gives to His elect the gift of faith because Christ the Son died on the cross to pay the penalty for their sin and to purchase for them every good and spiritual gift. So every good thing that comes into our lives, every spiritual blessing, has all been purchased for us by the death of Christ. So why is it that God gives this gift? How does He give it to us? He gives it to us because it has been purchased for us by His Son, and then He has granted that faith to you. It is His gift to His people that secures their salvation. His sheep hear His voice, Jesus said. He guarantees that. He guarantees that they will come to Him and that He will cast none of them out. And then He guarantees that He will give to them eternal life, sanctify them, and secure them everlastingly, and hold on to them to the very end in His own hand so that He may be able to say of all that the Father has given to Him, that He has gathered them all in and He has secured all of them and raised them all up on the last day. How does He guarantee the end? By guaranteeing the means. How does He guarantee the end that He has ordained? By ordaining all of the means that come to pass that grant the gracious gift of that end. So He is the originator and the author of it.
Peter says in 2 Peter 1:1, introducing his Epistle, he says, “To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours.” Did you hear that? “To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours.” Peter’s not talking about objective doctrine delivered outside of us that we all look at from different angles. He is talking about that subjective trust and faith in Jesus Christ. You and I have received the same kind of faith. John 6:44, which I already referenced: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jesus Himself is the author of faith. Now you say, “Whose faith? Your faith? My faith?” He is the author of everybody’s faith who has ever had faith. And this goes all the way back into Hebrews 11. How do you explain Abel’s faith? He is the author of it. See, Abel was just as dead in trespasses and sins as you were and as I was. How do you explain Noah’s faith, Abraham’s faith? Where does that remarkable faith come from? Inside the heart of that idol worshiper Abraham? Does he get to claim credit for that faith? Or did God do something in Abraham so that he would believe? That faith was authored by Christ Himself. The faith that endures mockings and trials and scourgings and temptations and tribulations, all of that, that faith that comes out the other side of it pure, undefiled, purified, and precious, that is a faith that is authored by Christ Himself.
I hope you can see how encouraging this is. The faith that binds you to the Son of God is not your own creation. It is not conjured up from within your sinful heart. God did not leave it to you to seek for Him. You know why? Because no man seeks after God. So He didn’t just hold out the prize and say, “All right, everybody who wants it, you all come.” If He had done that, how many people would rush toward that prize? It’s not a big number. Rhymes with hero. It’s zero. Nobody would have pursued that. Why? Because we do not have the capacity to pursue that or the desire to pursue that or the will to pursue that. We have no inclination to pursue that whatsoever. He has not left it up to us to pursue Him.
And if He had, if that were the way that faith worked, if faith came from inside of us, from inside of our own darkened soul, if it’s just a human conjuring, a human belief that you and I placed in the divine Son of God, then we would have every reason to panic in a world like ours. Because we would always be asking ourselves, What if my faith is not strong enough? What if my faith is not pure enough? What if my faith is not big enough to hold me through to the very end? What if I face persecutions? What if I face suffering? What if I’m to face tribulations? What if there is a long delay between the promise and the fulfillment of that promise? Will my faith hold on? You see, you and I might clutch our pearls and wring our hands and dab our sweat and worry that our faith might fail in the event that God takes a long time to fulfill His promises, or in the event that we have to go through some affliction or suffering. You worried about that?
What if I can’t maintain my faith enough to the very end? You mean that faith that you didn’t originate to begin with, the faith of which you are not the author or the creator? That faith? If He started that, then He will finish that. That is how I know what the end holds for me. Because if He has begun this work, He will hold me through to the end of this work.
The perfecter of faith—our English translation doesn’t do justice to that word because it doesn’t have the idea of somebody who keeps improving something until they make it perfect, right? If you’re a perfecter of a golf swing, you might start off real horrible, and then by the time you get to the end, you have perfected the golf swing or you’ve perfected some skill or talent that you have. That’s not what this word means. This word means to complete or to finish, to accomplish. It describes one who is a finisher or a completer of something. If He starts it, He will complete it. If He is the originator of it, if He began it and initiated it, if it started with Him and it’s His divine creation by His grace, then He must see it through all the way to the end. That is why the author says He is the author of it and He is the completer or the finisher of it.
How has He completed it? He has completed it by accomplishing all of the work that is necessary in order to secure our salvation. So He has done the work, accomplished redemption, finished the sacrifice, never to be repeated, never to be duplicated, nothing to add to it. It requires no contribution by you, no supplement by you. You don’t have to bolster it up. You don’t have to do anything to add to it. It is a finished and perfect and completed work that we have placed our faith in. And so He has finished it in that sense, and He is the finishing of faith itself.
When will your faith end? Faith is no longer necessary when you have what? When you have sight. When you see the end result, when you have reached the culmination, the pinnacle, the conclusion of faith and you see Him as He is and you look upon the Savior face-to-face and all of the promises that God has ever made to you and to the church have all been fulfilled and you have received them all and you are in the kingdom, there is no longer need for that faith. It doesn’t mean that we no longer believe God and trust Him, but the faith that you and I have now, which regards as substance those things which we have not seen, that element of faith is no longer necessary.
So who is it that is going to bring us to the completion of what it is that we have hoped for? If my faith has started out over here and it is dragging me this way and compelling me toward an end, an object, a finish, a conclusion, the fulfillment of all of His promises, who is the one that ultimately will bring me to that? It is Christ. If He is the author of the faith, then He is the perfecter of the faith as well. And I’m talking again about my subjective confidence and trust in Christ and in His word. Philippians 1:6 says, “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will [what?] perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” There is not a person in history for whom Christ has started the work of salvation and gotten them partially through and then dropped them or let them go. Doesn’t happen. There is no such thing. I’m confident of this very thing, that if God has initiated your faith, He will see it through all the way to the end and He will complete what He has begun in you.
First Peter 5:10 says, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” That’s the end result. If God has started the work, He will finish the work. He will not lose you. He will not let the completion of His purposes for you rest in your weak and frail and failing hands. He does not leave the completion of His work up to you. So I hope that what you’re hearing me say now is that your salvation, both the beginning of it and the end of it and all of it in between, rests upon the absolute authority and sovereignty of a God who created and initiated that faith in you and has promised that He will carry you through all the way to the very end.
So here is how this is an encouragement to world-weary saints. What about persecution? What about suffering? What about sin and affliction in this world? What about times of darkness and doubt and despair and discouragement and depression? What if this world gets darker than it already is? Will my faith hold on? Will my faith endure? If it is the faith that is described in this book and in Scripture, that confident trust in God, which He initiated and which He has begun, then the answer to that question is absolutely it will.
Now, listen, this does not mean that you and I do not need to use the God-ordained means for strengthening our faith, encouraging our faith, informing our faith, purifying our faith. There’s the means to that end. This is what the author has been describing when he says, yes, in running the race, you must consider the great cloud of witnesses that has gone before. Who does that? You do. That’s what the whole sermons were about. Keep up with me now. Who does this? You do this. Who is it that casts off every sin and the hindrances and entanglements and encumbrances and protuberances that so easily trip us up? Who has to do that? You have to do that. I have to do that. Who is it that is commanded to run our race with endurance all the way to the very end? You’re commanded to do that. I’m commanded to do that. So this is the work that we do. Consider others, cast off sin, continue in our course, fix our eyes on Jesus—these are all things that we do, but we do so with the confidence that that faith cannot fail. That, then, is my motivation to do all of these things.
If you think that the sovereignty of God is a motivation or an excuse for you not to do any of those things, to simply take your hands off the wheel and coast and let momentum take over, you’re not understanding a thing that I’m saying. The fact that He is the author of that faith and the fact that He is the completer of that faith is the very thing that gives me the confidence that I can obey the promise of fixing my eyes on Jesus, the perfecter of my faith, casting off the sin that so easily entangles us, considering the others who have gone before, and then run my race with endurance all the way to the very end. I can do that. You know why I can do that? Because I’m strong? No. Smart? No. Good-looking? Maybe, but no, that’s not the reason. It has nothing to do with any of those things. You know why I can do that? I can do that because He is the author and finisher of my faith. And if it were up to me, I would have no confidence at all that I could either begin this race or finish this race or run it with endurance.
So what is the encouragement for world-weary saints? He’s the author and the finisher of the faith that you have. Therefore you can consider others, you can cast off the encumbrances, you can continue in your course, and you can fix your eyes on Jesus, who is the author and the perfecter of it. You see, there are all these things that you and I are to do in the passage that are the efforts that we make, the things that we do, the means to this end. We are to do these things. But we are to do these things as we look and gaze upon the One and are reminded of the fact that I’m only in this race because He put me in this race, and I am in this race and running this race because He has promised me that He will carry me through all the way to the very end. And therefore I can run with endurance the race that is set before me. Our confidence is in the power of the Christ who will fulfill everything that He has promised to us.