Resisting unto Blood

'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.' — Hebrews 12:4.

'Ye have not yet resisted' — then others had done so, and the writer bids his readers contrast their comparative immunity from persecution from the fate of such so that they may cheerfully do the more straightforward task devolved upon them. Who were those others?

If the supposition of many is correct that this Epistle was addressed to the Mother Church at Jerusalem, the fate of Stephen the first martyr and of James the brother of John, who had 'had the rule over' that Church, may have been in the writer's mind. If the date assigned to the letter by some is accepted, the persecution under Nero, which had lighted the gardens of the Capitol with living torches, had already occurred, and the writer may have wished the Jerusalem Church to Bethink themselves that they had fared better than their brethren in Rome. But whether these conjectures are adopted or not, there is another contrast evidently in the writer's mind. He has Been speaking of the long series of heroes of the faith, some of whom had been 'stoned and sawn asunder,' and he would have the Christians whom he addresses contrast their position with that of these ancient saints and martyrs. And there is another contrast, more touching still, more wonderful and impressive, in his mind, for my text follows immediately upon a reference to Yahushua Christ, 'who endured the Cross, despising the shame.' So Himself 'had resisted unto blood.' Thus, the writer bids his readers think of the martyrs in the Mother Church, of the blood that had deluged the Church at Rome, of the slaughtered saints in past generations, and, above all, of the great Captain of their salvation, and, animated by the thoughts, manfully to bear and mightily to resist in the conflict that is laid upon them. 'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against Sin.'

1. So then, we have here, to begin with, the permanent condition of the Christian life as one of Warfare and resistance.

The imagery of the whole context is drawn from the arena. A verse or two before the writer spoke about the race: now he slightly shifts his point of view and is talking instead about the wrestling or the pugilistic encounters that waged there. His point is that always and everywhere, however, the forms may vary in which the conflict is carried on. An element of effort, endurance, and antagonism is inseparable from the Christian life. That is worth thinking about for a moment. It is all very well to sing of green pastures and still waters, and to rejoice in the blessings, the consolations, the tranquillities, the raptures of Christian experience, and to rejoice in the thought of the many mercies for body and soul which come to men through faith. That is all true and all blessed, but it is only one side of the truth. And unless we have apprehended and have reduced to practice and experience the other side of the Christian life, which makes it a toil and a pain to the lower self and a continual resistance, I venture to say that we have no right to the soothing and sweet and tender side of it; and need to ask ourselves whether we know anything about Christianity at all. It is not given to us merely — it is not given to us chiefly — to secure those great and precious things which it does connect, but it is given to us so that, enriched and steadied and strengthened by the possession of them. We should be the better fit for the conflict, just as a wise commander will see that his soldiers are well-fed before he flings them into the battle.

But then, passing from that, which is only a side issue, let me remind you that our antagonist is 'striving against sin.'

Some people would take my text to mean solely the conflict we have to wage with our evils, meannesses, and weaknesses. Some, guided by the context, would take the reference exclusively to the antagonisms with evils around us and with the embodiment of these in men who do not share Christian views of life or conduct. But neither the one nor the other of these two exclusive interpretations can be maintained. For sin is one, whether embodied in ourselves or embodied in men or institutions. We have the same conflict to wage against precisely the same antagonist when we are occupied in the task of purging ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and when we are occupied in the broader scheme of seeking to bring every man to recognize the power of Christ's love, and to live in purity by obedience to Him.

And so, the first field on which every Christian is to win his spurs, to prove his prowess, and to exercise his strength is the field within, where the lists are very narrow and where self wages war against self in daily conflict. Every man of us carries his own worst enemy inside his waistcoat. We have all lusts, passions, inclinations, desires, faults, vices, meannesses, selfishnesses, indolences — a whole host of evils lying there like a nest of vipers within us, and our first task and our lifelong mission is to take the sting and the poison out of these, and to throttle them and to east them out.

And then, and only after that, there comes the next thing — viz., the antagonism in which Christian men must permanently stand to a world that does not sympathize with their views, which is strange to the maxims that rule their lives, and which renders no allegiance to the King whom they are sworn to obey. And that antagonism runs out into various forms. First of all, it is the solemn duty of every Christian to wage war to prevent himself from being caught up in the current of godless living that prevails around him. We must fight to keep ourselves from being harmed by the world and the worldly communities we dwell in. What would become of the captain of a ship who did not take care to have his compass corrected to neutralize the effects of all the mass of iron in his vessel? You walk as in the wards of a hospital. If you do not take precautions, you will catch the disease in the air. It is as sure that careless Christian people who do not ever keep on guard against impending and surrounding evil shall be infected by it as it is inevitable that if an Englishman goes out, say to the United States, he will come back with the intonations of our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic slipping unconsciously from his tongue. The first duty, imperative upon Christian people, is to realize that they live amid an order of things not by the Master's principles and to beware that they do not catch the infection.

I do not need to say a word about the other form of antagonism, which is equally imperative and will prevent us from caring much about the judgments that may be formed of us by the people around us. 'With me, it is a tiny matter that I should be judged of you or man's judgment.' But the resistance against sin, which is the Christian man's merciful warfare in the world, is not completed either by keeping himself from complicity with surrounding evils or by refusing to let antagonism divert him from his course. There is something more that is a plain duty: every Christian should be Christ's soldier to get Christ's commandments recognized, and the principles of His word obeyed in the world.

Society is not organized on Christian principles. You have only to look around you to see that. I do not need to dwell upon the various discordances between the plain teachings of this Book and every community, and every nation, and every individual, but let me remind you that until the Sermon on the Mount is the law for individuals and communities, the Christian man if he is loyal to his Lord, must be 'striving against sin' in the endeavor to get established Christ's kingdom, which is the kingdom of righteousness. That sermon does not contain all Christian truth, but it is the Magna Carta of an applied Christianity, the kingdom's laws from the lips of the King Himself.

So, brethren, I come to you with this for my message that no Christian man is doing his work as Christ's soldier, 'striving against sin,' until he is seeking, with the best of his strength, to get Christ's law, which is righteousness, established on the face of the earth.

Talk of dynamiters and explosives, why, there is explosive power enough in Christianity to shatter to pieces the corruptions that make so large a part of modern social life. But, alas! The Christian Church has too long and too generally been employed in damping down the gunpowder instead of firing it and seeking to explain away the large and plain commandments of the Master instead of seeking to apply them.

There is a new spirit around us today, for which we should be devoutly thankful, but we must also forget that, like all new move-merits, it is apt to be one-sided and exaggerated. Much harm is done in many directions by Christian teachers seeking to apply the principles of Christ's commandments to various phases of social iniquity without explicit knowledge of the facts of the case. But that being fully admitted, I still rejoice to believe that Christ's men round about us are waking up, as they never did before, to the solemn obligation laid upon Christian churches, if they are not to perish of inanition and inactivity, to proclaim and seek to have recognized Christ's laws for the individual and Christ's direction for the community.

Only remember the limitations and the antecedents about which I have already spoken a word. Man has the business to go crusading among other people once he has cleansed himself. And the first task of the Christian reformer is with his own heart. And again, it is only helpful to deal with institutions if you deal with the men who live under them. The main work of the Christian Church must always be with individuals, and through their improvement, the improvement of society will be most fully secured. But the error of many excellent and earnest men today is in thinking that if you set the 'environment,' as they call it, right, you will get the men right. It is a mistake. Take a pack of drunken wastrels out of the slums and put them into model lodging houses, and in a fortnight, the lodging houses will be as dirty as the sites from which the men were dragged. Mend the men, and then you may set them in a new environment; mend them, and society will be mended. And repair yourselves first, and then you can fix society. Resist your sin, and then go out to fight with the evil of others.

2. Notice the brunt of the battle which others have born.

I have already said that the immediate context suggests two contrasts between the comparative immunity from persecution of the letter's readers and others.

The first is that suggested by all that glorious muster-roll of heroes and martyrs of the faith which precedes this chapter. Without dealing in rhetoric or dilating on the subject, Christian men in this generation may well think themselves of what their fathers bore and did that has won for them this ease.

I remember an old church on the slopes of one of the hills of Rome, covered over on all its interior walls with a set of the most gruesome pictures of the martyrs. There may be an unwholesome admiration and adoration of these. I think modern Christianity, in its complacency with itself, would be all the better if it went back sometimes to remember that there were times when 'young men and maidens, and old men and children,' had to resist blood and when they went to their deaths as joyfully as a bride to the altar.

Ah, brethren, you Nonconformists in this generation, who have an easy-going religion, only sometimes remember how it was worn. Think of George Fox and the Friends. Think of the early Nonconformists, hunted and harried, their noses slit and ears cropped off, their pillories and exile, and then be ashamed to talk about the difficulties that you have to meet. 'Ye have not resisted unto blood.'

A far more touching contrast is suggested, and apparently mainly in the writer's mind, because just before he has said, 'Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners.' His word for 'consider' might be rendered 'compare, weigh in the balance,' Christ's sufferings and yours. He has borne the heavy end of the Cross, laying the light end upon our shoulders. Of course, the more mysterious and profound aspects of Christ's death, in which He is no pattern for us, but the propitiation for our sins, do not come into view in this contrast. They are abundantly treated in the rest of the letter. But here, the writer is thinking of Yahushua Christ in His capacity as the Prince of sufferers for righteousness' sake, who could have escaped His Cross if He had chosen to abandon His warfare and His witness. Yahushua Christ is a great deal more than that. And the differential of His sufferings and death is not touched by such a consideration. But do not let us forget that He is that, and whatever else His death is, it also stands as the very climax of all suffering for righteousness. He is the King of the Martyrs and the Sacrifice for the world's sins. Let us turn to Him and mark the heroic strength of character, hidden from hasty observation by the sweet gentleness in which it was enshrined, like the iron hand in a velvet glove.

Let us understand how His pattern is held forth to us and how the Cross is our example and the ground of all our hope. 'Ye have not yet resisted … Consider Him.'

3. And now, lastly, note the lighter warfare incumbent upon us.

The resistance changes its form, but in essence, it continues. In the old days, warfare consisted of men bludgeoning each other or engaging in hand-grips, foot, and face-to-face. Nowadays, it is artillery duels — a great deal more scientific, a great deal less coarse; but it is warfare all the same. The world used to burn Christians, to hang them, to stone them. It does not do that now, but it fights them yet. The world has become partially Christianised, and the principles of Christianity have, in a certain imperfect way, infiltrated themselves through the masses so that the antagonism is not quite as hot as it once was. And the Church has weakened its testimony and essentially adopted the maxims of the world. So why should the world persecute a Church that is only a bit of the world under another name? But let any man for himself honestly try to live a life modeled on Christ's maxims, and let him cast himself against some of the clamant evils round about him, and seek to subdue them, because Christ has bidden him. He will see whether the old antagonism is not there yet. What a chorus of select epithets will immediately be discharged! 'Impracticable,' 'fanatical,' 'one-sided,' 'revolutionary,' 'Pharisee,' 'hypocrite.' These will be the sweet, smelling flowers in the garland that will be woven. Depending upon it, a Christian man bent on living out Christianity for himself and seeking to apply it around him will have to fight and endure.

But all that is. as nothing — nothing — to what the front rank had to go through, and went through, joyfully. They fell in the trenches and filled them up so the rear class could pass across. They bore sword stabs; we have only to take pinpricks. Stones were flung at them, as at Stephen outside the wall; handfuls of mud are all we must be afraid of.

So, brethren, accept today's form of the permanent conflict and see that you do the task laid upon you unmurmuringly, cheerfully, and thoroughly. And do not think much of the discomforts and annoyances. For us to speak about sacrifices for Christ is as if a bargeman on a canal were to dilate on the perils of his voyage in the hearing of an Arctic explorer or as if a man that went in a first-class carriage to London were to speak to an African traveler about 'the perils of the road.' 'Ye have not yet resisted unto blood. Consider Him; take up your cross, and follow Him.

This is a non-WLC article by Alexander MacLaren.

We have taken out from the original article all pagan names and titles of the Father and Son, and have replaced them with the original given names. Furthermore, we have restored in the Scriptures quoted the names of the Father and Son, as they were originally written by the inspired authors of the Bible. -WLC Team