For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. (Hebrews 12:03, NKJV).
From looking unto Jesus as a light in the darkness, a guide on the path to godliness, and the author and finisher of our faith, we now are exhorted to consider Him.
Looking is a conscious sensory act, a turning of the eyes (or the mind's eyes) from all else and fixing them on one thing.
To consider is a conscious mental act, a focusing of the engine of thought in one direction, from start to finish, like a sojourner embarking down a road of many possibilities with the intent of thoroughly exploring each one.
You might think that the Son of God would be guaranteed an earthly existence of security and comfort. You would be wrong.
Jesus came to pay the price of sin, to die horribly at the hands of ruthless and hate-filled sinners despite having done nothing to warrant such enmity, and in fact, having actively engaged in only good.
He was deserving of nothing but praise and gratitude, and received instead the vilest of hostility and abuse from the very sinners He came to save.
So then, not only is He the author and finisher of our faith, but also the model and example of how we ourselves, His children by faith, are to endure the hostility of the world.
For we are most certainly in enemy territory. Jesus Himself taught that there was no lasting middle ground of neutrality when it came to Him. Every human is either with Him or against Him. Those who are with Him are promised to suffer the same antagonism that He did, and the exhortation here is to focus on how He endured, lest we become weary and discouraged in [our] souls.
Soul-weariness is the most debilitating kind of exhaustion, effecting even the ability of the physical body to heal or survive. Studies have shown, for example, that orphaned infants languish and sometimes die, not because they are unfed, but because they are un-held and unloved.
The prognosis for recovery from any life-threatening condition is often directly proportional to the victim's will to live, regardless of the extent of injuries, trauma, or illness. Hopelessness and discouragement are often fatal.
So then, what is the example of endurance that Jesus provides? I see seven main things, though more could be listed.
He returned good for evil.
When reviled He did not revile in return.
Though possessing all power, He forgave rather than exacted retribution.
He placed every detail of His life in the hands of a faithful and just Creator.
He surrendered vengeance to God.
He loved unfailingly rather than hated.
And even in the most extreme final circumstances of His life, He focused on others, not Himself.
All of these characteristics are detailed beautifully in the gospel accounts of His life and ministry on this planet, and lest you excuse yourself from following His example by arguing He was able to be the way He was because of His deity, He himself has destroyed that argument forever.
He proclaimed and proved repeatedly that He did nothing in His own strength. Every word, every teaching, every miracle, every thought and action was in perfect accordance with His Father's will, and in the power of the Holy Spirit - the very same will and power that is ours through faith in Christ.
If anything, His surrender to the Father, and His resisting temptation was far more wearying than any similar effort on our part because, though Man, He was also all-powerful God, and because of His perfect righteousness, sin itself was far more a horror than we could ever conceive.
We will discover in the very next verse, in fact, that resisting the temptation to sin for Him was akin to bloodshed.
So our own soul-weariness and discouragement will come in this life, but the Captain of our salvation has already shown us the way forward into being more than conquerors of all that assails us.
