Why Suffer?
Shivering, burning, sweating, moaning. The fever has run through your entire household, and the only reason you're alive is a neighbor moved in. He cooked, cleaned, drew water, and washed the soiled bedding. But in nursing your family back to life, he caught the disease that will end his. His final words were, "Your humble servant bids you goodbye." Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, watched this happen as a plague tore through his city in the third century. When everyone else ran away, Christians cared for the infected. An "empty courtesy," he wrote, had become true.
Read Hebrews 12:1-13
When I ran track, I cared about the weight of my shoes. Without much natural talent, I needed every advantage I could get. As our legs and lungs burned from the exertion, our teammates' cheering helped us keep going. If we take this much care to win athletic competitions, why not give greater care to how we run the race of life? When everyone else is competing to get ahead, God wants us to see how Jesus ran his race. He ignored the shame and the suffering; his attention was fixed on the joy set before him. He wanted to be with God in glory. The pastor who wrote this passage covers three obstacles to running like Christ. The first is our sin, which holds onto us even as we try to shake it off. Resisting sin is a matter of life or death. Under persecution, believers must choose between apostasy and martyrdom. In prosperity, we must choose between easy comfort and sacrificial love. I often get discouraged that I have not yet overcome my many sins. How can I teach the Bible and still have sin holding onto me? But the pastor who wrote Hebrews understood this battle is brutal. Only Jesus ran the race without sin. We can trust that one day, he will make us perfect, too. The second obstacle is our natural desire to avoid pain. Sometimes I go to a pastry shop in my workout clothes. I should be at the gym, but I want a croissant more. Most of us want to be comfortable more than we want to be like Christ. This passage reframes everything: discipline isn't a sign that God is ignoring us, but that he cares about us. We know the Father loves the Son, and the Son went to the cross. So, how should we expect our heavenly Father to treat us? First-century disciples of Jesus had hard questions for their leaders: if Jesus has saved us and loves us, why are we losing our jobs, and sometimes, even our lives? The pastoral answer of this chapter is that the suffering is evidence of Sonship. That might seem like it excludes women, but consider that both women and men are now called God's sons. Every disciple is given the honor that was previously understood to be only for sons. Nor is there any spiritual bypassing. The discipline hurts. It is unwanted. But the benefit is to share in God's holiness. Instead of violence, we choose peace; instead of evil, righteousness. The third problem is trying to follow Jesus on our own. When we are limping in our faith, it's hard to confess our struggles. In the 2026 Boston Marathon, Ajay Haridasse collapsed about 1,000 feet short of the finish line. Dozens of runners sprinted past him, but then Aaron Beggs and Robson De Oliveira sacrificed their own race times to stop, lift him up, and carry him to the end. On social media, De Oliveira explained, "Two are stronger than one. I'm grateful to God for the strength He gave us in that moment." God gathers not only a great cloud of witnesses to cheer us on, but also the very present help of one another as we follow Jesus together. The Christians in Alexandria lost their lives, but they finished their race with joy. The plague decimated their bodies even as their Heavenly Father shared his holiness with them. As they laid down their lives for their neighbors, they looked ahead to the everlasting joy that would soon be theirs.
What do we learn about Jesus that he endured the cross for the sake of joy?
Has a difficult season ever shaped you to be like Jesus in a way that you couldn't understand at the time?
When you're limping in your faith, what makes it hard to let other Christians help you?
Tell Jesus about one place you're struggling to run after him. If you have someone trustworthy to talk to, let them know where you're having a hard time.