Hebrews 12:4

“Some want to live within the sound of Church or chapel bells; I   want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” - - C.T Studd

Hebrews 12:4

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Our passage this month has many interpretations and applications that have been conveyed throughout the Christian tradition. Countless teachers and theologians attribute this passage to be addressing the shedding of blood that Christ poured out on the cross and that in our trials and Christian persecutions, we have not yet endured that ultimate test, that of martyrdom. One 1800’s theologian and author, Albert Barnes, sheds light from a different perspective that will amplify the magnitude of this passage and how we as believers may apply this truth today.

In Barnes “Notes on the Bible”, he conveys that the passage above is referring to the struggle and tension that our great Savior and Advocate faced in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prepared Himself for the redemption of the world. Barnes writes,

“To encourage them he refers them to the highest instance on record where there was a “striving against sin”- the struggle of the Redeemer in the garden with the great enemy who there made his most violent assault, an where the resistance of the Redeemer was so great as to force the blood through His pores.” Barnes continues,

“If to this consideration we add the thought that the Redeemer was engaged in a work never before undertaken; that He designed to make an atonement never before made; that He was about to endure sorrows never before endured; and that on the decision of that moment depended the ascendency of sin or holiness on the earth, the triumph or the fall of Satan’s kingdom, the success or the defeat of all the plans of the great adversary of God and man, and that, on such an occasion as this, the tempter would use all his power to crush the lonely and unprotected man of sorrows in the garden of Gethsemane, it is easy to imagine what may have been the terror of that fearful conflict, and what virtue it would require in Him to resist the concentrated energy of Satan’s might to induce Him even then to abandon his work.”

The biological condition that Barnes is referencing is today known as hematohidrosis. This takes place in the human body when the body is under so much extreme physical or emotional stress that the capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands break down and the mixture of sweat and blood come out of the pores. The weight and magnitude of this reality is that our Savior knows our struggle and tension in this fallen world more then we can ever know.

The love of our King caused Him to descend to this broken world and take on the form of man. It is a mistake to apply the thought that because Christ was the God-man, He did not face the same battle with the tension and temptations of our flesh and sin. Christ was sinless, but the tension of the weight of submitting to the Father’s will is a weight we cannot fathom to understand. We, under a state of grace, fall short every single day, it is who we are on this side of eternity in our sanctification and Christian walk. As Paul says in Romans 6, this is not an excuse for us to “let sin abound.” But the point I’m emphasizing is that Jesus did not have this “out”. He had to be, and remained the spotless lamb. One who at every waking moment of His human existence walked within the perfect will of His heavenly Father. The pinnacle of this tension came to that very moment where in His foreknowledge, Christ knew the gravity of what He faced, so much so, that He sweat blood through His human pores.

The foreknowledge of complete shame, abandonment, torture and crucifixion would be enough for even the best of us to shudder and withdraw. But our King not only submitted to His Father’s will, but did so willingly and entirely as He drank the full cup of Wrath and cried out, “It is Finished,” for everyone of us that call Him Lord. The power of this gospel is that when you struggle through your own tensions; whether that’s tension in your battle against sin, the tension of the consequences of your sin, the tension of relationships and loving others, or even just the tension of a lack of faith in Christ and who He is, we can rest in the truth that our Savior endured it all. Scripture tells us that at this very moment Christ is advocating on our very behalf to the Father. Why? Because He loves you and cried out for you, “It is finished!” We do not serve a God that is indifferent to our pain, sorrows, and fears. Trust Him, for He as the God-man faced and endured them all.

Hebrews 7:25

“Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

“Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty.” – John Calvin

James Doyle -January 2025-