As Paul moves from recalling the accomplishments of many of the heroes of the Jewish faith in chapter 11, he has his readers focus upon their own predicament, which is not unlike the circumstances faced by the men and women of the Old Covenant, whom Paul’s readers in the first century AD grew up admiring. The heroes of the past are meant for the encouragement of the heroes in the making during the first century AD (Hebrews 12:11; cp. Romans 8:18). In chapter 12 Paul uses the discipline of an athlete preparing for his contest to encourage his readers, hoping to offer them the needed encouragement to continue on and face the dire circumstances just ahead, as they walked with Christ.
In Hebrews 12:1 Paul mentions a cloud of witnesses, which are the heroes of the faith in chapter 11 of his epistle. These witnesses weren’t alive and looking down from heaven upon the deeds of the Jews in Judea and Galilee. Paul wasn’t trying to relay that kind of message, as some may think. Rather, Paul wanted his readers to visualize something similar to what athletes of the first century would imagine, as they prepared for one of the Olympic Games (viz. the phrase “let us run with endurance the race set before us”). The mental picture that Paul wanted to convey was the idea that, when athletes of the first century AD prepared for a contest, they encouraged themselves by visualizing their heroes who had contended in contests before them, and what each did in order to finish his course to win his crown.
The cloud of men whom Paul pointed to witnessed to truth in their own days. They proved themselves by trusting the word of the Lord and endured adversity in doing so. Paul wanted his readers to encourage themselves by remembering the men and women he just referred to in Hebrews 11, and face their own troubles in the first century AD in a similar manner.
The very first thing Paul told his readers to do was to lay aside anything that might interfere with running their course, just as athletes set aside such things as comforts, inappropriate diets, long robes and jewelry etc. in an effort to keep such things from interfering with the object of the contest. In the context of Paul’s readers, it might be cutting themselves off from close friends and other associates who might pull them away from Christ.
The second thing Paul told his readers to do was to (lay aside) the sin that easily entangles us (G2139). The Greek for easily entangles us (euperistatos – G2139) is used only here in the entire Bible; even the Septuagint doesn’t use it. It seems to me, therefore, that great care needs to be taken in order to properly understand how this word is used by Paul at this point in his epistle. Thayer defines it as skillfully surrounding, to beset. The dictionary defines beset as: “to surround or hem in; to attack, especially from all sides.” I get the idea that Paul means to contrast this “sin” with the surrounding cloud of witnesses, mentioned earlier. The difference would be that the witnesses are mentioned for the benefit of encouraging the reader, and it is he who acts upon them by drawing his help from their faithful lives. On the other hand, this “sin” in the next clause might be likened to a storm that hems in the believer and attacks from all sides
Therefore, I don’t believe Paul is telling his readers to get rid of sin in their lives per se. Rather, Paul refers to **the** sin of rebellion, which was at that time surrounding the believer in the persons of the Jewish authorities and their followers, who tugged away at the believer’s defenses, thus wearing him out. The big problem here is that the believers were constantly confronted with men of carnal minds, and that conflict excited the old man, which the believer had cast off when he embraced Christ, the new man (Galatians 3:27; cp. Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). Now, these Jewish believers were once again susceptible to their carnality, and once again they needed to cast off or lay aside the old man (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22) in order to live out the spiritual nature of their walk in Christ (Ephesians 4:23-24), for one cannot serve two masters. Believers will either serve their old carnal nature or their new man “created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Finally, having laid aside everything that might prevent them from finishing their course, Paul told his readers to run the race with endurance. Just as the athlete knew that to run the race before him not only meant making great sacrifices in preparation for the contest, but also enduring the hardship of the race itself, so too, Paul reminded his Jewish readers that they needed to be willing to endure the persecution that accompanied everyone who followed Christ (John 15:19-21; 2Timothy 3:12).
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