The Weight You Can Set Down

Therefore let us also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2, WEB)

Runners do not compete in coats. They strip down to almost nothing, because anything extra is something the distance will punish them for, and over enough miles even a light thing becomes heavy. The writer of Hebrews uses that picture for the life of faith. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.

He knows this is a distance and not a sprint, which is why he names endurance rather than speed. There is no pace fast enough to be done with it early; there is only the long staying-at-it. And he knows something clings, because he says so plainly. The sin that clings so closely is not described as a monster you must slay in a single decisive blow. It is described as weight, the kind of thing you set down deliberately and then set down again when you notice you have picked it back up. That is a gentler and a truer picture of this fight than the one most men carry, where every fall means the war is lost.

What holds a weary man to the race is not gritted teeth. Teeth give out; willpower runs dry somewhere around the middle miles. What keeps a man running is where his eyes are. Looking to Jesus, the writer says, the founder and perfecter of our faith, the one who ran ahead of you and finished. Your endurance is borrowed from watching him, not manufactured from within your own tired chest. When you look at the weight, it grows; when you look at him, your legs remember why they are still moving.

So the question this morning is less about how strong you feel and more about where you are looking. The weight is real, but it is the kind of thing a man can lay down, and then keep laying down, all the way home.

Lord Jesus, I have been running in a heavy coat. Show me what to lay down today, and keep my eyes on you so my legs remember why they are still moving.