<p>12:2 <em>Looking to Jesus the author and completer of faith, who for the joy that was set before him- </em>The race is to be run (:1) with our eye on &quot;Jesus&quot; as the finish point. Our ultimate aim is to become like Him; &quot;we shall be like Him&quot;. The joy set before the Lord was to sit at the right hand of God, where He mediates for us. In chapters 8-10 the argument has been that as the Lord entered the Holiest and there does service for us, so we have also entered. Our joy ahead is to be His joy, to be as Him, in working for others to the Father's glory. Our efforts to do so in this life are designed to help us acquire a taste for that eternal way of being.</p><p>&quot;Author&quot; could be translated &quot;prince / leader&quot;, but the translation &quot;author&quot; is valid; and it connects with Him being also the completer of our faith. Grace means that God and not ourselves takes the initiative. As noted on 11:1, true faith in God is predicated upon the Lord Jesus; it is encounter with Him which authors faith in us. And He develops, matures and completes it, if we let Him. All appeals to scientific 'evidence' falsely so called for God and the Bible are pointless and misdirecting us; for it is the Lord Jesus who authors and develops faith in our hearts, through the work of the Spirit which matures our faith. &quot;Completer&quot; is the same word just used in 11:40 of how we shall be &quot;made perfect&quot; at His return; but that point of faith reached at our death or His coming will have been developed by His direct action in our lives. Hebrews 11 speaks of how so many died in faith, the process of faith development continued unto the end of their days. In this we see the significance of old age; we may cease to have much significance in secular life, but the Lord's process of developing our faith continues unto the end. We must remember that the Lord's efforts to mature faith continue in the lives of all His people, including those whom we may consider too far gone in their falling away. Any efforts we make for them will have His blessing, and will be channels of His activity for them.</p><p>&quot;Set before&quot; can imply a vision, as if Christ saw something in front of Him as He hung on the cross. The spirit of Christ in Ps. 16:11 describes Christ looking forward to fullness of joy in God's Heavenly presence, because &quot;at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore&quot;. Christ is now at God's right hand interceding for us. Therefore we suggest that the joy set before Christ in vision as He hung on the cross was the joy of His future mediation for our sins as we repent of them and confess them in prayer.</p><p>&ldquo;For the joy set before Him He endured the cross&rdquo; may seem on first reading to mean that He did serve for a reward. Until we understand that the Greek word <em>anti</em> translated &ldquo;for&rdquo; really means &lsquo;in place of&rsquo;. With evident reference to the wilderness temptation to take the Kingdom joys without the cross, the writer is making the point that instead of the joy that the tempter of His own flesh set before Him, He endured the cross.</p><p><em>Endured the cross, despising the shame, and has been sat down at the right hand of the throne of God</em>- The shame of the cross is a theme of the records. The reproach broke the Lord's heart (Ps. 69:20). It could even be that He suffered a heart rupture, a literal broken heart, some hours prior to His death- hence when His side was pierced, blood flowed out- and corpses don&rsquo;t usually bleed. It has been commented that severe emotional trauma is enough to cause such a rupture. He wasn't hard and impervious to it all. He knew who He was, and where He was going. To be treated as He was, was such an insult to the God of all grace. And He keenly sensed this. Heb. 12:2,3 parallels the Lord's enduring of the cross with His enduring &quot;such contradiction of sinners against Himself&quot;. These mockings were therefore part of &quot;the cross&quot;. The &quot;cross&quot; process began before His impalement; in the same way as some verses which evidently concern the crucifixion are applied to the Lord's earlier life. His was <em>a life</em> of cross carrying. And we are asked to live the same life, not just the occasional 'cross' of crisis, but a life embodying the cross principles.</p><p>There's significant Old Testament emphasis upon the fact that those who are truly on the Lord's side shall not be put to shame. It was prophesied of the Lord Jesus that He set His face like a flint, &quot;that I shall not be ashamed&quot; (Is. 50:7). Perhaps His lack of destructive anger was because He didn't let Himself be shamed by men, instead taking His self-worth and values from God's acceptance of Him. To avoid &quot;anger&quot; in the wrong sense, we need to avoid being wrongly shamed. And we can do this by ensuring we ourselves aren't led into shame, due to placing too great a value upon the opinions of men. Our shame should be before God for our sins against Him, and not before men. Hence the prophets often criticize Israel for not being ashamed of their sins before God (Jer. 6:15). Our shame before men leads to anger; our shame before God is resolved in repentance and belief in His gracious forgiveness. Thus Jeremiah recalls how his repentance involved being ashamed, and yet then being &quot;instructed&quot; (Jer. 31:19). It's through knowing this kind of shame before God that we come to a position where we are unashamed. Thus Joel begins his prophecy with a call to &quot;be ashamed&quot; before God for sin, and concludes with the comfort that in this case, &quot;my people shall never again be ashamed&quot; (Joel 1:1; 2:27). In this sense we can understand the comment that the Lord Jesus 'despised the shame' of the cross (Heb. 12:2). He 'thought against' it Gk., he refused to be shamed before men, even though naked and bedraggled and humanly defeated; for He believed that He was being 'lifted up' in glory from God's viewpoint. Paul could say that it mattered very little to him how men thought of him, for the Lord's judgment was all that mattered (1 Cor. 4:4); and the Lord Jesus gave somewhat the same impression, for He evidently &quot;regarded not the person of men&quot; (Mt. 22:16). If our value, validation, self-worth etc. are dependent upon men's opinions of us, then we're likely to be easily shamed; and this sets us up for all manner of anger feelings, and makes us the more easily woundable by those whose acceptance we crave. Quite simply- if God has accepted us, then don't let ourselves be shamed by men.</p>