passage satisfies us that the words
translated "for the joy set before Him" are correctly so rendered, and
do not mean that Christ chose the suffering and shame of the Cross in
preference to the enjoyment of sin. This also is perfectly true, and
more true of Christ than it was even of Moses. But the Apostle's main
idea throughout is that faith in the form of assurance and faith in the
form of enduring go together. Jesus endured because He looked for a
future joy as His recompense of reward; He attained the joy through His
endurance.

But, as more than shame was involved in His Cross, more also than joy
was reserved for Him in reward. Through His Cross He became "the Leader
and Perfecter" of our faith. He was exalted to be the Sanctifier of His
people. "He has sat down on the right hand of God."

Our author proceeds: Weigh this in the balance.[344] Compare this
quality of faith with your own. Consider who He was and what you are.
When you have well understood the difference, remember that He endured,
as you endure, by faith. He put His trust in God.[345] He was faithful
to Him Who had constituted Him what He became through His assumption of
flesh and blood.[346] He offered prayers and supplications to Him Who
was able to save Him out of death, yet piously committed Himself to the
hands of God. The gainsaying of men brought Him to the bloody death of
the Cross. You also are marshalled in battle array, in the conflict
against the sin of the world. But the Leader only has shed His blood--as
yet. Your hour may be drawing nigh! Therefore be not weary in striving
to reach the goal! Faint not in enduring the conflict! The two sides of
faith are still in the author's thoughts.

It would naturally occur to the readers of the Epistle to ask why they
might not end their difficulties by shunning the conflict. Why might
they not enter into fellowship with God without coming into conflict
with men? But this cannot be. Communion with God requires personal
fitness of character, and manifests itself in inward peace. This
fitness, again, is the result of discipline, and the discipline implies
endurance. "It is for discipline that ye endure."[347]

The word translated "discipline" suggests the notion of a child with
his father. But it is noteworthy that the Apostle does not use the word
"children" in his illustration, but the word "sons." This was occasioned
partly by the fact that the citation from the Book of Proverbs speaks of
"son